Learn Effective Counters With Teddy Atlas
When it comes to pretty much any combat sport. The main thing that a lot of people, fan or fighter, tend to focus on, is power and speed. It makes sense, since it’s pretty easy to see power and speed in action.
There’s nothing that takes the attention of people's eyeballs more than a fighter who is seemingly faster than light or a fighter that might literally have the touch of death. These are all great things to watch and have on highlight reels, the problem comes in when fighters try to focus too much on those two aspects.
In recent years fighters and even coaches have become obsessed with being or having the fastest or strongest athletes. This has unfortunately led to some fighters dedicating most of their training time to those attributes and maybe even quitting their sport because they weren't the strongest or the fastest.
It’s easy to forget that combat sports are still sports and that means that the main thing you should be focusing on is technique. Yes, being the strongest or the fastest helps but there’;s always a way to beat people who are physically gifted.
That’s why we’ve brought in one of the best boxing coaches of all time to show you how to slow down and beat the stronger fighters you will face.
In this video, Teddy Atlas goes over a counter that you can use to control the pace of the fight by stopping your opponent from jabbing.
Who Is Teddy Atlas?
If you're a striker and haven’t ever heard of Teddy Atlas before, then you are in for a big treat. Teddy Atlas is a boxing coach, analyst and commentator who has been around for longer than most modern fighters have been alive. He’s worked with countless legends of the sport like Mike Tyson, Micheal Moorer and many more.
Upgrade your Boxing fundamentals, footwork, counters, timing, and more with Teddy Atlas! Click Learn More!
The Leapfrog Cross Counter
The video starts off with coach Teddy talking about how, when it comes to sports, unless you’re one of those genetically lucky few, there is always going to be someone who is faster or stronger than you.
The unfortunate reality for most fighters is that some people are just power with god given speed or power that you won’t be able to match, no matter how hard you train.
However that doesn’t mean that you're completely out of luck and should give up on your sport. There are ways to beat those genetic freaks. Teddy then goes into how you can beat that speed and even the playing field.
The way to beat speed is through timing beaucase timing allows you to take advantage of their own speed.
The way that coach Teddy demonstrates this is with what he calls the leapfrog, which is a simple cross counter over the jab. Now you might be thinking what makes this specific counter so special and the answer is nothing really, it’s about what it does.
If you’re able to time a counter, any counter really, on your opponent’s jab and land it hard, it will most likely stop your opponent from jabibing, at least as often. This will help slow down the pace of a fight, which will in turn slow down fast fighters and make powerful ones more gun shy.
If you literally take away one of your opponent’s weapons, you are one step closer to winning.
The way that you time the counter is by being calm and making reads on your opponent. Analyze them and get as much information as possible. Do they always throw their jab at the same speed, do they do something before they throw their jab, do they move their head when they throw it. You can only do this when you’re calm.
Once you get good reads on your opponent, timing their jab and landing the counter becomes much easier. Now that you have your read, you can take advantage of your opponent’s tendencies.
The way that coach Teddy demonstrates this is by having his partner throw the jab from too close a distance. This means that Teddy can take advantage of that distance to land the leap frog.
What Teddy says is to be patient, let your opponent throw their jab a couple times and just slip it with no counter. This will get them to build up confidence in their jab and they might get lazy. Whether they get lazy or not, after a few jabs, time the jab and hit them with the cross counter and they’ll lose their confidence quickly.
Now if they're faster or stronger than you, it doesn’t matter, because they are going to throw less punches.
Learn More From Teddy Atlas
If you like this timing breakdown from coach Teddy Atlas and want to learn more from the legend himself, you can check out his complete video series that focuses on timing “Timing: Boxing’s Shot Clock For Success By Teddy Atlas” available exclusively on Dynamic Striking!