Okay, Knucklehead Nation, I have bored you to death with the base basics of the jab, and as lazy as most of you guys are with shadowboxing and jabbing in general I expect to hear, “But, James, what if he catches me on the ropes and I’ve just been jabbing? I need to bang, Pops! What kind of hook or straight should I use to get him off of me? How about the uppercut, Boss?”
Jab, son, jab, I say!
Unless you have invited him to the ropes, it is not where you want to trade bombs. Bomb where you want to bomb, not where he wants to bomb. We are going to take another step in learning the jab, and put it into its rarely used pure context.
Understand that this is a defensive jab most of the time, and should be practiced extensively as an open handed strike or check—not a palm thrust for God’s sake. Never thrust with the palm—ever! Ignore stories of death by nose bone in the brain from an upward palm thrust. That’s 1970s fantasy.
This is the standing lunge.
Say he has you against the ropes, or he went to the ropes and you find yourself, having pursued too closely, with no more room to step into the jab, and no time or lacking the proper balance, to stutter step. Find a telephone or light pole—look, I just did it on White Avenue in broad daylight, in front of some black folks who are now convinced that Santa Claus is insane.
Stand within touch reach, but not power reach of the pole. Now shoot out the open hand jab, pushing off your rear foot and letting a deep bend go in your lead knee. This sinks you low into a body jab and puts all of your weight into the punch without moving. You will find that you can range this.
Find your chin and gut range.
Practice doing this open handed to the forehead and shoulder to keep your man off, and then pivoting out.
Practice just standing there at different distances and sinking your knee as you push into the target with the rear leg as driver, banging the pole with your open hand.
Take this to the gym and practice it gloved on light bags and the heavy bags. Practice the open hand high line version and the palm down [pronated] punch body thrust version as the bag swings toward you.
Stand there and push it off and then practice thrusting or checking and then moving. You should make this bag break from the energy transferred from your rear leg. Practice doing this flatfooted and up on the balls of your rear foot. Usually, when you need it, it’s a flatfooted situation. You can use it to turn out off the ropes and get to a light-footed situation again.
During this whole process you defend with your lead shoulder and rear hand.
Next up is the falling lunge. Do not try to do it until you have gotten really good at the standing lunge.
