Stand-Up Fighting Techniques

Many martial arts focus on the realm of stand-up fighting, in which combatants must use strikes to keep an opponent at bay. While all stand-up techniques have a common element --- that both fighters are on their feet --- there are many different styles of stand-up fighting.

  1. Boxing

    • Boxing is a striking art that focuses exclusively on ranged strikes with the hand. Boxers are not permitted to throw strikes with their legs or elbows, and when two boxers grab onto each other --- creating a "clinch" --- the referee steps in to break the two fighters apart. As boxers focus exclusively on striking with their hands, top boxers have the most accurate punches of all martial arts --- their time in the gym is not split with other styles of striking, allowing them to highly refine their technique.

    Kickboxing

    • The rules of kickboxing matches are similar to those of boxing; however, as the name implies, a kickboxer is also permitted to strike her opponent with leg strikes. Strikes with the leg can be extremely damaging when properly thrown, and can be used both to weaken the opponent with strikes to the body or to seek a knockout through a head kick.

    Muay Thai

    • Just as kickboxing is an art that incorporates the strikes of boxing but also adds kicks, muay Thai bouts feature the skills employed by kickboxers with the addition of new methods of attacking. In addition to hands and feet, a muay Thai fighter throws strikes using his knees and elbows. These strikes are particularly devastating from a clinched position, where a muay Thai fighter attempts to grasp his opponent behind the head, then pulls the opponent's head down as a knee is thrown.

    Dirty Boxing

    • Dirty boxing is a style of fighting in which grabbing onto an opponent, or when the opponent grabs you, is permissible, and is so named because the techniques are cause for a referee separation in traditional boxing. When dirty boxing, a martial artist attempts to get a collar tie on her opponent, by grabbing behind the neck of her opponent. With the tie in position, a dirty boxer throws short, compact strikes from in the clinch, such as hooks to the body and uppercuts to the head.

    Ranged Strikes

    • Top level strikers vary their basic strikes --- the foundations of an offense --- with strikes from distance designed to look like one type of strike while actually being a different type. Specialized strikes often hit the location opened up by the opponent defending the wrong move. A "Superman punch" looks like a leg kick at first; however, instead of driving the leg forward, the martial artist drives forward off their front foot and delivers a straight punch. A switch kick is a move in which a fighter fakes a kick with one leg, then jumps into the air and kicks with the other, while the opponent is defending on the side of the fake kick.