ALTA Week 4 Striking
Striking – Hooks, Bodyshots and Uppercuts (HBUs)
HBU’s are all about power punching from close range. These are most likely to be the punches that cause most damage when landed correctly, potentially a KO (knock-out). While they are 3 separate techniques, there’s major overlap in the underlying concepts so we learn them together as a group.
Different Ranges
I mentioned close range. Let’s specify what that means, as well as defining the 4 major ranges you’ll need to know. I use a colour code to make it more efficient to understand.
| Green Range | Yellow Range | Red Range | Black Range |
| Green for Safe. This is when you’re well outside striking range. The only danger here is verbal insults or gang signs. You may be safe but you also have very few options to attack from here so in an actual fight, this is the most rare of ranges. Certain martial arts styles like points style kickboxing have a collection of blitz attacks from this range, but it’s highly specialised and not that common in MMA. The other application of Green Range is in evasive manoeuvring (ie running away from an aggressive opponent) | Think of yellow/amber weather warnings. You’re not in extreme danger but you’re not safe either. This is the most common range and typically where you find yourself when playing the knees and toes warm up drill. At this range, both you and your opponent can land kicks on each other as well as straight punches (if you take a step closer). Most often, you’ll see jabs and leg kicks from here and the strikes will be non-committal (like dipping a toe in the water). | Red is for danger. This is the KO zone. You don’t want to stay here longer than you need to be. Both have the ability to throw power punches from here including HBUs and also knees are a danger here too. This is also the range where takedowns begin. Even if you have a striking advantage, staying in the Red range puts you at risk of being taken down. Any time you’re in the Red range, your guard has to be maximally tight (ie fists pressed against your temples and elbows pressed to your ribs). | Black for darkness. This is the clinch range, where often your vision is somewhat obscured. Here you’ll be pummelling for underhooks or using a Muay Thai style clinch to off balance your opponent and score knees to the body or takedowns. In professional MMA, this would also be where elbows are landed. However, there are no elbow strikes in Amateur MMA. All Cagework is done in the Black range so you will spend a good bit of time here. |
Common concepts for HBU
The following 4 concepts are not actual techniques per se. They are ideas/cues to guide your punching mechanics. It’s important to understand these first.
- Open Shoulder
This refers to the distance between your bicep and the pectoral muscle of your punching arm. “Open” means those two muscles should be far apart. If, as you’re punching, you notice your bicep move towards (or touch) your pectoral muscles, you’ve “closed” your shoulder and this is now what we refer to as “an arm punch”. In other words, you’re using the smaller muscles of your arm/shoulder to generate power, which is far less than the power you can generate with your hips and torso combined with weight transference. We want open shoulders for HBUs.
- The Spear
When you throw a spear, the arrow head goes first and everything else is directly behind it. The spear points in the direction of the target. The tail is not higher or lower, left or right. Everything is in one line headed for the target. This is the same for your forearm. Your fist/knuckles are the spear tip and your elbow is the tail of the spear. Make sure your forearm lines up with the target just like a spear would.
- Weight Transfer
When in a fighting stance, we generally have a 50/50 weight distribution (half front leg, half back). If you shift from one leg to the other, you’re “throwing your weight around”. Imagine slapping someone on the back of the head. Then imagine doing it to someone standing on the footpath while you sit on a motor bike speeding past them at 60mph. Which would hurt more? Even though the slap part of the movement is the same, the difference is how the rest of your body is moving. Your weight is being thrown (in this case by the motor bike) and all that momentum is adding to the slap. For HBUs, we’ll be transferring weight from leg to leg in coordination with the punches to generate maximum power.
- Skimming Stones
This refers to the sequence of movements from your feet up through your body. Not all body parts move at the same time. There’s a sort of ripple effect from the ground up. The timing for each body part to fire is complicated to describe but you already know exactly how to do it. Think of “skimming stones”, when you throw a flat stone across the water to make it bounce multiple times before sinking. Visualise the perfect throw and how the movement starts from the feet, driving a hip rotation which then twists the torso. The lower body is almost finished even before the arm starts and the very last thing to happen is a flick of the wrist. You’ll observe a similar technique if you watch a baseball pitcher throw a baseball, or cricket bowler throw a cricket ball. Also a golf swing, hurling swing, slingshot, javelin throw etc. There are numerous examples. Your HBUs will borrow from that same timing sequence.
Hook
If a straight punch (jab or cross) hits the nose or your opponent, a hook is anything that comes as the jaw, cheek or temple at the side of the face. It’s a circular punch that approaches the target in an arc.
- Thumb up or Thumb back?
This refers to the fist on impact. There are two positions and different boxing coaches will swear blind that one or other is right or wrong. You could land with your thumb knuckles facing the ceiling or your thumb knuckle facing back towards yourself. If you study all your favourite fighters (boxing, Muay Thai or MMA), you’ll see as many of one as the other. Personally, I don’t believe it makes a huge difference as long as you keep “The Spear” concept from earlier. Try both on a punch bag and whichever one feels better, that’s your way.
- Lead Hook versus Rear Hook
Even though the actual punch is the same from front or back hand, the position of your hips and body relative to your opponent is different. Your lead hand is already quite close to its finishing position. Therefore, it doesn’t have much room to develop strong momentum. Because of that, you’ll need a “wind-up”. Turn your hips/torso in the opposite direction to the punch to get yourself a run up and that will generate power in the lead hook. For the rear hook, you don’t need a wind-up. You’ve got all the runway you need already. Just let it go.
- Direction
Hook punches are horizontal in direction, which means your weight will shift from one leg to another along with a rotation of your torso. There are no diagonal forces.
Bodyshot and Uppercuts
These two punches are almost the same. The only difference is the target and direction.
- Hand position
In both bodyshots and uppercuts, the palm of your hand will face back at you as you land the punch.
- Wind-up (loading of hips)
Because these punches have an upward direction to them, this means that in order to give you space to generate momentum in that direction, you need to drop your level lower before the punch. On the lead bodyshot/uppercut, this level change will combine with the wind-up to create a type of corkscrew motion in the opposite direction of the punch. It’s like loading a spring or cocking a gun. Once you’ve hit the bottom of the wind-up, you can unleash that potential as bodyweight movement behind the punch. For the rear bodyshot/uppercut, just a level change is necessary as the wind-up is covered by the fact that your rear hand already has room to build momentum without a wind-up.
- Direction
The body shot is diagonally up, diagonally forwards (think of punching up under the ribs). This informs the direction of the wind-up (exactly the opposite direction).
For the uppercut, the wind-up is the same as the bodyshot but towards the end of the punch, the direction goes more vertical than horizontal.