Holding Kickboxing Pads for Uppercuts

Video Transcript

"Hello, I'm Sifu Mallon, with the Clearwater Kung Fu Center. This is my assistant, Melissa, and this is kickboxing. We're working on basic pad holding or focus pad holding. The one we're going to be working now is for our upper cut. Now, the upper cut can be done low, okay, or it can be thrown high. To work the upper cut, okay, you want to start with your hands in front of the body, and again, you're going to push the hands downward this way. Your hand inside the mitt is actually kind of pushing your knuckles upward and your fingertips downward, okay, so that you have a real good control of how the hands are held in your glove. The elbows are in tight to the body this way, and again, as you meet the punch, you're going to give a little bit of contact and a little bit of tension, pushing in and downward. To start a this off slowly, so Melissa, may I have you stand over here so we can see from this angle. I'm going to have Melissa fire her right hand, throwing the upper cut. I'm going to be using my right hand as a glove. So again, we meet each other. I get a small base. I don't want to do this with really wide feet, because if I need to move my body around, I need to have some mobility with me, so I get kind of a narrow base. My weight is in the center, right, and my hands are up. Now, she's going to be firing here rear uppercut. She's going to do it slow first, okay. Now, when she makes contact here, my hand, in the beginning, is just going to meet it just as the target, okay, and now as she makes contact, she lifts her hands up, and bring it right back, again, again. And I'm just keeping it there to make as the target. Now, as Melissa increases, right, her ability to strike, her speed and her power, right, what I'll do is as the hand comes down; a little bit harder next one, I'll meet the hand, okay, meeting the glove. Meeting the glove is important, because this starts really building the strength in your hand that you'll need later on for actually going into sparring and impacting things. This is how we hold the hand targets for upper cut kickboxing."