If you move in right and you strike with combinations in close range, alot of times you will see the other guy covers up into a ball. When people see that , they often criticize the guy who’s covering up by saying he’s not fighting back and therefore he’s not a good fighter. Well, I disagree. The reason people cover up in close range is not because they are bad fighters but rather it’s because of” senses overload”. When there’s too much stuff coming in , so much that its too fast for your senses to register , the body naturally covers . You can see that in the professional level of fighting such as professional Boxing and MMA . In almost every professional boxing match in history, there’s usually brief periods of boxers covering up in close range when they are taking heavy punishment . Are you telling me professional boxers are bad fighters and they don’t want to fight back and that professional boxers know less about fighting than the martial arts hobbiest on forums or the critics on youtube?

When the defenders cover up , the most popular tactic to finish the fight offensively is to hit opening directly with hooks and upper cuts since the guy is covering center. In theory this tactic is flawless because it offers maximum simplicity “ just hit” and maximum directness – take the most direct line towards the closest opening. I feel this tactic is a reality for those who are exceptionally fast enough and accurate enough to make this work. The problem is , if we studied professional boxing , at least 95% of boxing matches results in periods of standing grappling and clenching when boxers tried to directly hit openings in close range. The reason they get clenched up is simple – statistically, pro boxers miss up to 60% of their shots. When they miss ,it gives the defender a time-gap to go for a successful clench. So if a Pro boxer cannot make direct hitting work vs cover ups without ending up in a clinch how can a martial arts student make it work considering most professional boxer train a lot harder and they are much faster and accurate than most people taking martial arts classes a couple nights a week?

Going into a clinch is excellent tactic because it allows the fighters to take a brief break or to transfer and take the fight to the ground in the case of MMA ; this tactic is brilliant especially against a superior striker. However for real fights and self defence , this tactic maybe suicidal , since going to the ground can be fatal when there’s multiple attackers or against weapons....

So if you are like me and u are not exceptionally fast or accurate one of the things that you can do is to adopt tactics which allow you to miss a lot less by simply using the idea of tracking targets through touch. In fact it is such an effective and naturally tactic that it was originally outlaw from boxing in order to make the fights last longer to please the audience and making it a safer and more profitable sport

I will not go into the techniques right now since i just finish filming a short blog clip on it but I wanna say that aside from using tactile checking /holding tactics , the footwork for angling is very important . When we observe the footwork for angling, turning, spinning methods of say wing chun , boxing , akikido and even basketball, we see that the footwork are very different . One reason is because we are looking at it horizontally . However , if we are to look at it vertically from the top from a bird’s eye view, it will be obviously that some of these so-called different footwork is actually the samething. In fact, they are merely different cut-off points in a circle.

The reason I wanted to bring up the above point about footwork is that for research purposes, it is vitally important to look at things from birds eye view since we are so attach to conflict which is generally horizontal. We have been train to see feel horizontally since we were kids. Rarely in our daily life are we even slightly aware and sensitive to whats under our feet literally or what is above us. If you make the habit intellectually to look at things from above , new endless options will appear in an obvious manner and more importantly , we will no longer be so attach to conflict and struggling. And off course more than intellect, the actual body direct feeling of whats above and below is even more important which is the practice of nei gung....