On Saturday, June 18, I’ve been asked to give a boxing clinic to an adult class of karate students whose teacher practices a lineal, hard style karate. Having an hour and a half to introduce an art to the practitioners of another art is somewhat easier than introducing the concepts to novices or boxers. With traditional martial arts styles, it’s a simple matter to sit in on a few classes and get a grasp of their doctrine. For instance, this instructor veers away from circular kicking motions and prefers the front kick and the side kick. When it comes to a style of kick boxing, and for me all forms of kung fu and karate are styles of kick boxing, that style’s kicking doctrine has a lot of influence on how I as a boxing coach interact in cross training sessions. Circular kicks tend to work well with hooking punches and linear kicks tend to work well with straight punches. Teaching anything more than a jab to a novice is poor coaching form to begin with but is hard to pull off with MMA-oriented groups who want to learn a wider variety of boxing applications and do not realize that their lack of attention to the jab is compromising those applications. So I expect this session with the group that has, on the surface, less interest in boxing than an MMA club to be more productive. Below is my outline for the session.

• Boxing is not the art of knocking people out but of imposing your will on a fighter you can’t knock out.

• Boxing is dependent on the jab.

• The jab is dependent on mobility.

• The jab pairs best with the straight rear hand. The karate reverse punch is one method of throwing the straight rear hand. So we will not cover the straight rear hand, but work your jab with the goal of setting up and recovering from your reverse punch.

• Each student will demonstrate their jab.

• I will address each student’s jabbing form.

• There are 25 versions of the jab. We will cover the following:

o The blind jab

o The sneaky jab

o The up jab

o The power jab [Most Asian-based martial arts employ an application of this jab as their lead.]

o Measuring jab

• Pulling punches should not be done by stopping short of the target. The puncher may feel that he could have hit the target but does not know that he could have hit the target, let alone that he could have hit it with power.

• Boxing is a punching art in which the fighter punches through the target, not at the target. You may limit damage to your sparring partner by using the following techniques:

o Do not stop short with your feet but step as if you intended to punch through your sparring partner’s head or body.

o To avoid punching through your partner’s head or body, do not extend the arm fully. The amount of bend left in the arm will give you a gauge of how much power you have withheld from your target.

o Don’t stop and “pose” when scoring with your jab, but fluidly punch again or improve your position.

• Boxing has two targets: the cardiovascular system and the nervous system. We are not punching at a bone or a muscle, attempting to break or bruise it, but are punching through the target to disrupt its core functions.

• Powering the jab:

o Slide step

o Heel step

o Rock slide

o Fade

o Post

If I have a boxer free for this clinic, we will structure self-defense drills for these karate students which will consist of them putting on lace-up Kenpo gloves [which will confuse them less than a traditional boxing glove], and defending themselves with the jab while he attempts to clinch with them.