Upper Body Combatives

Linear Upper Body Strikes

Circular Upper Body Strikes

Mastering Upper Body Combatives

• Your hands, forearms, elbows, knees, shins, clod feet, and head can be used as personal weapons.  There is a distinct advantage in using these hard parts against your attacker’s vulnerablebody parts.
• Attacking an opponent’s soft vital tissue, especially the eyes, throat, liver, kidneys, the groin and the knees is one of the surest ways to prevail in a fight.
• Proper hip and weight movement are essential to delivering optimum reach and power to take advantage of your body’s core strength and mass behind the combatives.  The striking hand or forearm must also be properly positioned and aligned.
• No matter what type of strike you deliver, shifting your body weight through is paramount.
• For punches, always make contact with the first two knuckles; for elbows make contact just below the elbow; for chops and hammerfists, make contact using the fleshy underside of the hand.

Striking Essentials

• With any type of combative strike, physics dictates that acceleration times mass equals force.  A combative strike will manufacture more force when you accelerate the strike’s speed in combination with a total body weight shift as the you extend your personal weapons through the target.  The best way to practice these combatives – as with all techniques – is in stages.  Each stage is isolated, practiced, and perfected.  As your master each stage, combine each stage for the whole technique.  Using a mirror will help self-monitor your form.

• Make sure to align your wrist properly.  Knuckle push-ups are a great way to show proper wrist alignment.  In short, straight combatives use the body’s entire weight.  Arm action alone does not develop true power.  Straight Punches/palm heels can only achieve quick and accurate power by shifting one’s weight that the hip and shoulder precede the arm with the feet under the body.  Striking is not the same as pushing.  A strike explodes at the end or point of contact while a push focuses the power on the initial contact but is no longer present at the end of the movement.  Note, pushing often off-balances the body by only driving off the rear foot rather than proper footwork and hip pivot.

• Use your entire body mass and core strength when striking.  As you strikes, move the entire body in concert to use the entire torso. With correct timing, as you propel all of your strength and body weight through the strike, you will maximize the strike’s impact.

• Be sure to breathe and remai loose/relaxed until impact. Exhale as the Student delivers the strike. Some people like to use a blood-curdling cry as they strike. Either technique – the cry or exhale – will prepare the body for both delivering a strike and receiving a strike. Exhaling facilitates oxygen transfer to one’s muscles, tempers one’s movements keeps one in control, and creates a vacuum to defend against a counter-strike.  Try not to clench or tighten up until the last moment upon impact.  The punch should increase its speed with enough force and momentum to drive through the attacker.   By clenching the fist at the very last moment prior to impact, this last accelerative movement maximizes the power.

• Aim for vulnerable targets. You will get more proverbial bang for his buck, if you strikes at the vulnerable targets.

Most Common Mistakes

• Not pivoting correctly with the rear leg; dragging the rear foot rather than pivoting.  (Do not, however, allow the Students to over-pivot.)  Instructor may wish to use the analogy of “putting out” a cigarette.
• Failure to strike with the first two knuckles.
• A short rather than a long movement.
• Pushing the target rather than going through it.
• Improper or lack of weight shift.
• If stepping, the feet do not move both in tandem and equidistant, either bring the feet too close together.
• Dragging the rear foot rather than pivoting on it.
• Dropping the arm prior to delivering the strike.
• Cocking the arm back or winding up.
• Telegraphing the strike by the shoulder or head moving before the hand.  (The hand should always initiate.)
• Tightening the fist rather than leaving it loose until a fraction of a second before impact (recruiting fast muscle fibers until the last possible instance).
• Failure to tuck the chin.
• Dropping the other arm or both arms.Failure to recover immediately into a fighting stance.
• Failure to breathe correctly.

Safety Notes

• The bones in the hand are small and fragile.
• Without proper alignment during a strike, using proper alignment, they can easily break when making contact against hard bone.
• When practicing punches/palm heels in the air, do not lock your elbows.
• Elbow injuries are often caused by punching powerfully without resistance.
• If the punch does not make contact, the ulna bone in the lower arm jams into the humerus bone in the upper arm.
• When not making contact with training pad (or sparring partner), extend the arms about 90 percent as you deliver a strike.
• Strong pad and bag work will accustom your limbs to impact while building strength and stamina.
• Heavy bags are particularly useful for this type of training.

Practice Suggestions:

• For each upper-body combative presented, we suggest that you practice a minimum of 20 repetitions with each of your left and right arms.  In other words, you are executing at least 40 repetitions per practice session.
• Execute the upper-body combatives from a passive stance, a left-outlet fighting stance, and a right-outlet fighting stance.
• Practicing at least 10-15 minutes per technique is recommended (with, as noted above, a minimum of 20 repetitions per side).  Therefore, you should begin to both understand and embed approximately 4-6 techniques per practice hour.  (Note, though, for our group classes we generally teach 3-4 techniques per cumulative one hour lesson plan.)
• Observe and help your partner other analyze his/her movements.
• It may be helpful to film each other in action to further evaluate the fluidity and execution of each technique, if your weight shift and pivoting is correct, if your footwork and fighting stance is solid, and how well you can adopt to slight angle changes and heights of various attacks.
• Additionally, you may wish to refer the books Krav Maga, Chapter 7 and Advanced Krav Maga Chapter 7 for specific lowerbody combative drill recommendations and suggestions.