We all know the object of a fight, you know, hit your opponent without getting hit back but do you know how to do that? Well one way to increase your percentage of hits verses misses is to increase your accuracy!

Wow, with this one statement where I have seemingly stated the obvious, one can put together a strategy and formulate a plan to increase your accuracy? Yes if you think about what accuracy is!

Accuracy is hitting your target. This does not mean your aim has to be better then the next guy or gal but rather you have to figure out a way to land punches. In this post I will explore ways to land kicks and punches that you otherwise might not. I will not talk too much about avoiding getting hit in this post but logically if you do that, you will probably increase your striking accuracy too! Here is one classic example of a sneak attack.

Did you notice that the guy was expecting a high kick? While I don’t know the circumstances of this demo, the guy clearly was not ready for what happened. It might be funny to know what he did to deserve that!

I digress but my point of this video is to show one way to increase your effectiveness in striking. You make your opponent think you are trying to kick one area and then kick another.

When I was fighting tournaments I was known for my inverted lunge punch and my fast kicks. Truth be told I did not really have kicks that were faster than the next guy but I did three things very well.

1. I knew how to relax (there by allowing my kicks to go as fast as possible)
2. I did not telegraph the kick by moving other parts of my body at first (except for the kick)
3. I make the guy think I was striking somewhere else (by pattern or distorted intention)

Relaxation is easy. One cannot throw a fast and thereby powerful kick if ones muscles are tense. Do you remember the old saying? “Speed equals power?” That is true. The faster you kick, the more powerful it is but if you tense up and really punch or kick hard, my grandmother will probably beat you in a fight (maybe not but almost).

So now you are relaxed. Good. Now if you actually want to hit something with your kick and the guy is not tied to a tree – you will have to throw the kick without telegraphing (or giving away) the kick! That means you throw the move like Bruce Lee or Joe Lewis. They were masters of leading initially with whatever kick or punch and letting the body follow (catch up) with initial movement. 

Ok you are now the master of relaxation and initial movement. How do you hit something? I just coined (I think) the phrase, “distorted intention” because that describes what I used to do to fool opponents. I used to get someone thinking I was going to kick them in the groin, only to let the kick float up and hit them in the face! I used several methods to do this including fighting a pattern, fading back and distorted intention.

Fighting a pattern is when you become predictable for your opponent like throwing flip-kick to the groin and back-knuckle to the face a couple of times and then break up the rhythm by letting the initial flip-kick to the groin, go to the head.

Fading back was another way I used to sneak a kick in by moving away from my opponent and circling my back foot behind my front foot. That used to fool people into thinking I was retreating when in reality when my back-leg wheel-kick hit them – I was easily in striking range!

Now for the phrase I just coined – distorted intention. I used to watch Steve “Nasty” Anderson mess with peoples heads in tournaments. He would all of a sudden say, “stop!” The other guy would stop but the judges did not call break so Steve would slap the guy with a back-knuckle and get a point! That got me thinking. Steve won some easy points because his opponents thought he was doing one thing, but he did another.

I started using my eyes to intentionally give away my next strike (telegraphing my intent) by looking where I was striking. My opponent got used to me giving away where I was about to strike and then I looked where I was not going to strike! Do you get it? I often got opponents thinking I was going to kick their groin and then I would just slap my flip kick a little higher and hit his face! Do you see if I distorted my intentions – I could sneak in a kick and increase my accuracy.

That is my (hopefully) sage advice for today – If you liked this post please subscribe to my RSS feed.