How To Use Your Eyes In A Fight With Teddy Atlas
When it comes to fighting, seeing is believing.
When people new to combat sports first start to spar, they basically just throw the few combinations that they know and have drilled. While this is good and it makes sense, as you get more experienced, you will quickly realize that going with pre planned combinations doesn’t always get the effect that you want.
When you throw certain combinations you begin to realize that your opponent is blocking you. You might even start to notice that your opponent isn’t even blocking, you might just be hitting their hands.
That’s because you are just throwing whatever strikes you want and you aren’t seeing any openings. A big part of landing strikes isn’t just knowing combinations, it’s being able to see and take advantage of openings in your opponent’s defenses that you can find. That’s why we’ve brought in one of the most legendary boxing coaches active right now to talk about its importance.
Who Is Teddy Atlas?
If you're a striker and haven’t ever heard of Teddy Atlas before, then you really need to fix that! Teddy Atlas is a boxing coach, analyst and commentator who has been around for decades. He’s worked with countless legends of the sport like Mike Tyson, Micheal Moorer and many
More. If you’re one of those people who hasn’t heard of him, do yourself a favor and do some film study on his fighters.
Check Out Teddy’s Other Instructionals HERE! Click Learn More!
In this video, Teddy Atlas goes over how seeing and not just looking to find openings on your opponent.
How To Use Your Eyes When Your Fighting
This video goes over how important actually focusing on your opponent and really looking at them is. Coach Teddy does this by having his athlete throw a jab and move off diagonally forward to his rear side. This way his fighter is now at a good angle to land a straight rear hand.
Now from here what coach Teddy wants his fighter to do is throw the rear straight and follow up with a lead hook. The catch is that Teddy doesn’t say what level he wants his fighter to throw those punches.
This is where really looking and analysing the opponent comes in. You see, after you throw the jab and move diagonally, your opponent's hands might still be up. This means that throwing those punches to the head isn’t the best idea, however their body is probably wide open.
The thing to note is that you would only be able to notice that your opponent’s hands were up if you were really looking at them and analysing their movements. If you didn’t see your opponent then you would have just thrown the shots to the head and you would have missed a golden opportunity.
This is why slowing down slightly so that you have the time to really see and analyze what's going on in a fight can mean the difference between winning and losing.
As coach Teddy says in the video “See, don’t just look”
Learn More From Teddy Atlas
If you like this breakdown from Teddy Atlas and want to learn more from the legend himself, you can check out his complete video series covering the peekaboo style “The Peakaboo Style Of Boxing By Teddy Atlas' ' available exclusively on Dynamic Striking!