Tips for a faster jab and front push kick

**theotherserge** · Posted On: 11/25/2008 5:03pm

A cool drill I was shown was wrap an elastic band over the inside of your elbow, then step on the bottom of the loop so that your lead foot pulls your arm down as you try to jab.

Now step and jab, you should feel more effort in your legs and hips, if your arm&shoulder are burning right away then you're technique is off.

Hips, then legs, then-maybe-some arm...that's a jab.

**gallantknight** · Posted On: 11/25/2008 6:02pm

Kicking
YouTube - Working on my slow kicks...

Jabbing?
YouTube - Working on the Jab, kinda

**Matt Phillips** · Posted On: 11/25/2008 7:24pm

You have more problems with your teep than with your jab. Imagine you are a cop kicking down a door. Extennndd. You are close to front kicking here. Teep is not an attack, it's a shove to change the range.

Your jab looks decent (from what I can see). You have a tendency to lapse into a kind of uncoordinated body language at times. I wish I could be more specific. It's just an impression. I would focus less on the overall gestalt of shadow boxing, and more on drilling those 2 tecniques over and over. Do 3 minute rounds of just jab, and just teep. Relax, concentrate, snap, blah, blah, I'm sure everyone's said the same stuff.

**Torakaka** · Posted On: 11/25/2008 7:32pm

Kicking video-

With the very first kick and all the kicks after, you're just tossing your leg out there without utilizing your hips at all. Watch how Buakaw throws his kick very closely:

It's a little harder to see because this is a high kick, but Buakaw's hip is the very first thing to move in this video and it's almost as though his leg is being dragged behind his hip and slung into the opponent. When you kick your leg is the only thing that really moves with your hips maybe following at the end. Remember, pelvis out, then leg comes up (almost straight in) and over.

The exact same principles apply for both the round and push kick. For the push kick, pelvis out, knee comes up, then shoot out the ball of the foot using the thrusting of the pelvis.

Punching video-

Your posture needs a LOT of work. You're leaning way in and slugging those punches. Stand with your back straight using good posture and pop out those punches cleanly and smoothly. If you feel any strain in your arm when you punch then you need to really try and relax those muscles. Let your elbows drop down to the sides of your body (your elbows are way up, which is one of the big problems with your punching) so that they're basically resting on your sides and just pop the punches out in one quick burst. Your punches should basically be getting shot out from your body with one single burst of energy and then spring back like a rubber band. If you're hitting a bag and you feel your gloves staying connect to the bag for any amount of time you're not doing this properly and you are "pushing" rather than punching.

**Matt Phillips** · Posted On: 11/25/2008 9:07pm

Spat knows her stuff. Lack of turning the hip over acounts for a good bit of the 'awkward body language' feeling I was trying to get at. Same applys to my (earlier) post about turning the shoulder into the jab. There is an overall out of synch feeling to your some of your movements.

I'm not so good at breaking it down.

**Domite** · Posted On: 11/26/2008 12:32am

The kick in which your hip thrust is most clearly absent is your push kick. I scribbled a little piture to give you the idea. a) is what you are doing b) is what you want to do.

the idea is, line up your (slightly bent) leg before you thrust, then hump your pelvis out suggestivley straight into your target.

What you are doing is raising your straight leg up and then flicking it a bit.

**Matt Phillips** · Posted On: 11/26/2008 7:59am

I feel sightly unclean now...

**gallantknight** · Posted On: 11/26/2008 11:33am

I must admit I ROFLed when I saw that weird diagram, but I think that was helpful too in it's odd little way along with the advice of Spatula and PS. Thanks guys!

**Matt Phillips** · Posted On: 11/26/2008 11:37am

Good luck with it. Post 'new and improved' vid when you feel better about it.

**Torakaka** · Posted On: 11/26/2008 11:40am

My advice to you, and anyone who doesn't feel totally 100% on with their technique is to watch top level muay thai/k-1 matches. Like a butt load of them. probably 2/3rds of my technical ability/know how comes from watching hours and hours of fights and analyzing them.