285 - Workshop question: "Why am I having problems guarding against strikes?"

Suggestions for understanding and improving performance

The following are some answers to a question that was asked at the end of the last open workshop on unarmed self defence.

Workshop content

We had been looking at and practicing defending straight and hooking strikes in the context of a fight that is already underway.

Students need to keep a guard up and use the basic defensive ideas they have learned so far to move their heads/bodies and use hands to avoid, redirect and block incoming blows. These attacks are also common type strikes that people use rather than the stylised tactics used by the well trained. Being effective at violence and being technically well trained are not the same thing.

A question

The student mentioned about having issues with his guard during some of the drills. He said that he’d been doing a lot of home practice using the ideas suggested in the article “The dropping hand” and was finding that a rigid, forearms parallel in front / palms in guard was being easily overwhelmed by direct straight punches that forced their way between his arms and were still finding the face target. What could he do to improve this?

I went through several of these points at the end of the workshop but wanted to add them here as they refer to an earlier article and I thought they might be potentially of some use to other readers.

There are really three main points that I see here to work with: