fighting without punching

[jun_erh]

I keep forgetting to bring my hand wraps to the gym. I have pretty dry skin so I don't like to punch the bags barehanded. got me thinking that maybe I could just eliminate punching altogether. Elbows are harder anyway.

[MasterKiller]

You have to be pretty close to hit someone with an elbow. Better hope they don't throw you, first.

[Losttrak]

Elbow their punches. If you can do a slap block, all you gotta do is shoot a quick elbow up into their knuckles after the redirect. Hurts....

[SevenStar]

doing that would be getting rid of a vital part of your arsenal. punches are faster than kicks and have a greater range than elbows.

[joedoe]

Why not palms?

[Meat Shake]

JoeDoe is correct.

[Shaolinlueb]

ilike to use my feet, no im not a kicker, im a runner. usually i use my mouth before that, but yeah jsut condition your hands man. lotion and some jow.

[Yum Cha]

Joe makes a good point. When you focus on glove sparring, you can sometimes tend to neglect or forget all the other wonderful things you can do with your hands.

If you consider kick-boxing one end of the scale, and shoot fighting at the other end, with bridge fighting in the middle, perhaps you're right, its a good opportunity to explore some other aspects of your closed fist, versus open hand techniques.

If you've got a fist full of hair, its a little easier to get that elbow across the bridge of the nose....if you take my point.

[Ray Pina]

Elbows are half as long as full punching. Wing Chun likes to roll the elbow a lot and they take a lot of rib shots that hurt and keep their elbow from landing, too.

Don't get me wrong though, in the right circumstances elbows are deadly. I use elbows a lot for not for rolling them around or hitting with them in the round house fassion. I use them for all my blocking and wedging in and like to elbow the body while punching the head.

For a second I thought this was going to be a shooting without bullets type of thread.

[red5angel]

Wing Chun likes to roll the elbow a lot and they take a lot of rib shots that hurt and keep their elbow from landing, too.


Thats too general a statement. I can't recall ever taking a rib shot.

[Ray Pina]

I've trained Wing Chun and know how popular rolling the elbow is because I have the habit myself. My teacher has also trained Wing Chun and has taught me to look for this tendancy and how to exploit it. It's there.

I believe the statement is no more general than TKD likes to kick high from a stantionary position. If you know the tendency, you can anticipate it and exploit it.

[Gangsterfist]

Elbows are great weapons, and fight enders. However, they are committed strikes and you have to be really close to use an elbow. I know, because I love the elbow and use mine a lot when slow sparring.

Wing Chun has 11 elbow postures (that I was taught) and a lot of times they are not used for striking they are used for controlling.

Your hands are you most valubable weapons IMHO. Whether it be palm strikes or punches or whatever (finger jab, pheonix eye, etc). They are the most versitle and are usually the most coordinated because you use them for everything.

[jun_erh]

I don't know, I think if I was fighting a really big guy i would have an easier time tapping him out than knocking him out. Which is not to disparage boxing or promote grappling, just that going toe to toe with one of those huge muscelhead guys is really doing it the hard way

[SevenStar]

it's all pretty relative, depending on what you train in. To a capoeirista, for example, not using the hands isn't a problem. A grappler may say the same, as would many tkd guys.

[jun_erh]

there is so much emphasis on punching in the martial arts. I'm not going to troll like punching ruined martial arts or something. Just that that is what people are expecting and getting ready to deliver most of the time. So if you are looking for something else maybe that can be to your advantage. My guess is you would have to have some punching. Again, it just came out of my forgetting the hand wraps

[QuaiJohnCain]

Originally posted by jun_erh
I keep forgetting to bring my hand wraps to the gym. I have pretty dry skin so I don't like to punch the bags barehanded. got me thinking that maybe I could just eliminate punching altogether. Elbows are harder anyway.

Easy fix- drink more water and use hand lotion. Punch the **** bag.

[Ikken Hisatsu]

Originally posted by SevenStar
it's all pretty relative, depending on what you train in. To a capoeirista, for example, not using the hands isn't a problem. A grappler may say the same, as would many tkd guys.

maybe thats why capoeiraists and tkd guys arent exactly setting the martial arts world on fire ;) grappling is a different story though, you're trying to tie them up not knock them out. trying to fight without any grappling AND without hands would be nigh impossible.

as for the bag thing, use your palms. worked for bas rutten.

[SevenStar]

I dunno... I know some badarse capoeira guys - they love the knee and throw. As you proved in that statement, people don't know how much grappling capoeira really has. No ground stuff, which is naturally their downfall, but ANYBODY who steps into an MMA type match knows that they need to address grappling, so I wouldn't expect them to step up without doing so...

There are several that have done vale tudo in brazil from what I understand, but I haven't seen it. One of the songs the group I know trains to is about a vale tudo event where the capoeira guy knocked out his bjj opponent.

A friend of mine who's a bb in tkd, wrestled in college and has some MT experience says that one of the hardest guys he's sparred was a capoeira guy...