The Different Zones In A Fight With Henry Cejudo

Distance management is one of the most important aspects of fighting. An athlete that is good at managing distance can fight with anybody and dictate how the fight will go as he can initiate the breaks and the action whenever he wants to.

Many athletes face the problem that they don’t manage the distance consciously; they are just flowing with the fight, choosing the wrong range to implement their tactic successfully, which only leads them into traps the opponent can easily set to them. To solve this problem, athletes need to have simple guidelines that will help them choose the proper distance for their current strategy 100% of the time; this is why fighters developed the “3 distances” concept. 

Now let’s look at the three distances we are going to manage :

• Distance A - this is the close distance, in here both athletes can land punches at each other with no additional step
• Distance B - in here, I can land kicks with no extra step, but to punch, we need to use 1 step forward; this is the boxing range
• Distance C - this is our safe distance; we need to use 1 step to land a kick and 2 steps to land a punch

After we understand those guidelines, separating our distance into three zones is easy, and in each zone, we know what tactics are available for us and what to choose to be successful with them.

In this video, Henry Cejudo will share with us how he manages the distance with the simple concept of the safe zone and fight zone.

Who Is Henry Cejudo

Henry Cejudo is a well-known figure in MMA that has burst into the MMA scene in recent years. Henry is a very decorated athlete winning an Olympic gold medal in freestyle wrestling and becoming the UFC Flyweight and Bantamweight champion. Those achievements gave him his nickname - “Triple C” (for the three Championships he won). However, Henry has retired from the sport after his last fight with Dominick Cruz.

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Safe Zone And Fight Zone

In this video, Henry will talk with us about managing the distance using what he calls the safe zone and the fight zone.

First, we will look at the fight zone; the moment we can land a jab at our opponent with no step forward, we are standing in the fight zone where both of us can hit each other with no additional steps.

This zone is significant to understand, especially for fighters initially, and we cannot stay here. The fight zone is where things can go wrong in a split of a second, and we can easily find it by extending one of our arms and see if we can touch our opponent.

The only time I want to be in this zone is when I’m losing the fight, and I have to make something happen; I have to take risks or else I will lose. Henry reminds us that he talked about it in his video about the five senses.

Remember, we don’t want to be in the fight zone because we wear little gloves in MMA that can put anybody out with any punch. MMA is not boxing where I can catch shots and return fire in the pocket; here, every punch is significant.

Understanding the significance of the fight zone made Henry think and develop a distance management method like they do in karate and taekwondo, who are the best at managing distance.

So the safe zone came to us from karate. And to be in this zone, we must be far enough from our opponent so he cannot land a punch or kick on me, and I can’t land anything on him. So the safe zone is also called borders because we need to imagine a border in front of us in the safe zone, and when we cross that border, we are back in the fight zone.

As fighters, it is essential to understand that we have the fight zone, safe zone, and borders in between them. When we are fighting, we are primarily in the safe zone, waiting like a predator until our opponent makes a mistake and entering the fight zone at the right time to land shots or secure a takedown.

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