How to Punch & Fight with Your Elbows

Video Transcript

"Hi. I'm Tres Tew. I'm an instructor at Yeshua's Ryu Martial Arts and on behalf of Expert Village, I'm going to be talking to you a little bit about open hand combat. Now we are going to talk about how to use punches and elbows to defend yourself. Keep in mind the ranges between punches and elbows. Okay, Nick; hands up. The first punch we are going to learn is a straight jab. This is a quick jab. You are going to keep your hands loose, turn it over and strike. Tighten your fist right at the point of impact, but you want to keep it loose. If my fist is tightened the entire time, it keeps all the muscles in my arm tight and it slows down my punch. But, when it's loose, I'm able to stick it out there quite a bit faster. Now, second, we've got a reverse punch. This is coming off the rear hand. We want to do the same thing as with the jab; this open hand right here and we are sticking that out there, turning everything we've got into it. With our hands and our hips and our feet, we are pivoting our feet down here and we are twisting our hips just like this for all of our punches. So, we've got reverse punch and jab. Second we've got a right hook. This one is coming around. The range on this one is a little bit shorter than the jab because my arm is not straight and I'm turning. This is making connection to the side of the head. With a jab, it's going straight through, so I'm able to push through it. With a hook punch, I've got to move in. So I've got to make sure that I'm covering my body as I come in. Now, range...my range with my elbow and my punch is considerably different. I can't hit him with this elbow where I can push all the way through his head with a hand. So, just keep in mind if you want to use elbows, you are going to have to move in. And usually, you want to soften them up with a jab or two, come in with an upper elbow. We've got several different kinds of elbow. One: grab the back of the head and slam our elbow into it. We've got the ax, coming down just like that, across the side of the head. Then we've got it coming straight across just like that. Elbows are extremely dangerous tools because the point of your elbow is probably the sharpest point of your body. So, it's probably going to leave a little bit of blood. They are going to want to back off of you after that. So we've got punches for long range and elbows for close range. That is the segment about punching and elbows. "