How To Block Uppercuts With Jérôme Le Banner
Uppercuts are a pretty interesting strike when you think about it. Uppercuts used to be considered un orthodox punches and some fighters and coaches even considered them a waste of time. They are the only punch to come from a downward angle upwards and this makes them a great shot to throw if you want to mess with your opponent’s defence and timing.
Those are good reasons to learn how to throw the uppercut, another one is that defence to the uppercut isn’t really trained a lot. If you’ve been to a few different boxing, MMA, Kickboxing or Muay Thai gyms, you probably haven’t done much work on defending uppercuts, at least not when compared to defending other punches or even other strikes.
This makes them harder to defend against as most people haven’t put the work in to make those defensive techniques to uppercuts natural movements to them. This leads to people making the wrong moves when uppercuts are used against them. This is why you need to have someone show you the proper uppercut defense and then you need to drill it so that it becomes second nature to you.
We’ll don’t work because we have just the man for the job to show you two ways that you can defend yourself against uppercuts from your opponent’s lead hand and rear hand. In this video Jérôme Le Banner goes over multiple methods on how to defend against uppercuts. Jérôme Le Banner is a French Kickboxing and MMA fighter who spent most of his combat sports career in the prestigious K-1 kickboxing promotion. Le Banner is a two time K-1 Grand Prix champion and holds notable wins over big names like Mark Hunt, Peter Aerts , Tyrone Spong, Rick Roufus and Ernesto Hoost.
How To Block Upper Cuts
The video starts off with Le Banner showing how he likes to block uppercuts. Le Banner shows a way to block that is more like cutting the punch off, rather than straight up blocking it before it reaches your head.
When you see your opponent start to throw an uppercut you want to cut them off by jamming your glove or even your forearm into your opponent’s arm. You want to aim for either the crook of your opponent’s elbow or their bicep. Doing this will cut off your opponent’s punch and make sure that it doesn’t reach its target.
How To Slip Uppercuts
After showing the first method of dodge, Le Banner shows how he likes to slip uppercuts. Slipping uppercuts isn’t something that’s commonly done, seen or even really talked about. It’s actually pretty simple.
The way that you slip Uppercuts is the same way that you would slip straight punches. Shift your legs and hips and dip your level to slip an uppercut. It’s that easy. You still want to make sure that you get outside of the punch. That way you are safe from follow ups.
Learn More From Jérôme Le Banner
If you liked this technique tutorial and want to learn more from Jérôme Le Banner then check out his complete video series “Complete Kickboxing Basics By Jérôme Le Banner” available exclusively on Dynamic Striking!