- Kelly Mccann
- Aug 5
- 3 min read
Most combatives practitioners spend a lot of time learning to develop powerful strikes. It’s important to be efficient, to be able to exploit the momentary vulnerabilities your attacker presents and not waste them on half-assed or weak attempts at hitting and hurting.
Unfortunately, what people don’t spend enough time on in their martial arts training is understanding the importance of movement, establishing range, and being harder to hit. Sure, the combatives mentality lends itself to “hey diddle diddle, right up the middle” and “going caveman,” but is that the most effective approach? The most efficient?
Don’t misunderstand me: Sometimes the absolutely right thing to do is to cover and explode directly into your attacker to stop his momentum and establish the all-important transition from him feeling like the predator to him feeling like prey.
He suddenly finds it necessary to protect himself when he realizes there are negative consequences for attacking you. But not always.
Based on the lack of movement you observe in some combatives training, the assumption must be that the attacker somehow becomes non-ambulatory, stationary, inert, and unable to fight back. It's not just unarmed combatives; stick and knife practitioners also routinely practice techniques that are applied while moving around a stationary partner.
But when you fight, even when an attacker is made to feel at risk, he’s gonna move. He’ll move to protect or defend himself, he’ll move because of a reaction to pain and injury, and he'll move to achieve a more dominant position, trying to regain the upper hand in a fight gone bad.
While it’s true that combatives is generally about linking together individual, staccato, gunshot-like strikes (each thrown with the intensity and intent needed to end the fight), it's the ability to move efficiently that transforms the combatives practitioner from a one-dimensional hammerfist thrower into someone who’s continually in a dominant, powerful position with a defense that’s intact and ready to strike again and again as necessary.
Try this drill. Have your partner attack. Defend against the initial strikes, then cook off on him. Instruct your partner to defend himself and use rearward inquartata movement to cut an angle away from you. This will result in him being at a roughly 90-degree angle from you. React fluidly to his attempts to back away on angles and keep striking him.
Most important, try to flank him. Because each of you is trying to flank the other—him to protect himself and disengage, you to maintain contact and achieve the dominant position—the drill forces more movement.
You can’t do this drill with bad footwork, which is another often-overlooked fundamental. As the drill heats up with more speed, power, and intensity, you'll find it increasingly necessary to ensure that your feet are beneath you if you want to chain effective strikes together and exert your will on your animated opponent.
It’s easy to throw one powerful strike. It’s easy to throw a couple of powerful strikes on a stationary target. It becomes way more difficult when you’re trying to throw multiple and varied strikes on a moving target, yet that’s exactly what you need to do to adequately defend yourself.
For the next drill, have your partner attack you. Simultaneously defend yourself and attack. This time, have your partner continually try to tie you up, clinch, or hold you (simulating that he’s been hurt and wants to wrap you up to keep you from hitting him). Refuse his clinch attempts and flank to a dominant position to keep striking him.
The drill should comprise at least two or three attempts to tie you up from two or three angles, run consecutively. Your objective is to move in a way that lets you avoid being tied up while still being able to strike.
As most of you know, I believe in the benefits of incorporating boxing into your training regimen. Not only does it inure you to punching attacks and pressure, but it also teaches you the techniques of movement that make up the sweet science.
When I say “movement,” it’s probably more accurate to say positioning. I’m not suggesting that the exact same type of movement in the combat sport of boxing is essential to know as much as I’m saying the continual achievement of a dominant position is essential.
It’s all about boxing’s intense focus on the questions of “Where is he in relation to me?” and “Am I driving this or is he?”
There’s not enough room in this magazine to discuss the merits of boxing footwork as it relates to fighting. Suffice to say that in a struggling, scuffling shitstorm, whoever moves in a way that maintains balance and the ability to generate power instantly—and that reliably puts the person in a dominant position that supports continual offensive output—is very likely going to punish a less-competent person.
