Throwing A Blinding Jab To Set Up The Right Hand With Teddy Atlas
The right hand is one of the first strike practitioners learn in their boxing journey. Throwing the right hand is one of the most satisfying punches to throw as they are powerful and look good when you work them on the heavy bag and pads.
Because the punch looks good, it attracts many practitioners to develop it early on, but they usually don’t get their right hand better because of how they perceive the punch and the details they are missing.
First, let’s look at how to throw the right hand correctly -
The right hand starts from the ball of the rear foot, where we rotate to open our hips for a full rotation that will continue and torque the shoulders and deliver all our body weight to throw the rear hand as a punch.
Notice that as we throw the right hand, we must move our head over the lead leg so the rear leg is weightless and the foot can rotate; we should also notice that our shoulders change places so the rear shoulder is now the lead shoulder and the whole movement is performed smoothly without stops.
Now, after we understood how to perform the right hand correctly, the crucial part starts, how to set up the straight right hand?
Setting up the right hand is the most critical part of the punch, as the punch is always anticipated and easy to react to and defend. Throwing it without any setup reduces the chances of landing the punch by a landslide.
Good setups we can use to land the right hand are -
In the following video, Teddy Atlas shows us how to use the jab to blind our opponent and land the right hand right after.
Who Is Teddy Atlas?
Teddy Atlas is one of the last Old School teachers in Boxing today, and he has trained countless world champions to gain the reputation of a legend in the sport. Teddy had a special relationship with the great Cus D’Amato. Teddy is working for almost 40 years in the gym, perfecting his methods and passing on what he learned from the best teacher the world has seen, his teacher - Cus D’Amato.
Check Out Teddy's Instructionals HERE! Click Learn More!
Setting Up A Quick Right Hand Off The Jab
In this video, Teddy Atlas will give us a preview of his upcoming instructional called “Tricks Of The Trade.” This instructional will talk about all the different ways to set up our opponent to land our shots easily on him.
Now Teddy asks us a question, “Wouldn’t it be nice if you blindfold your opponent?”. The answer will probably be yes, as we all believe we can beat anyone who is blindfold with a few skills.
Well, if the opponent is blindfold, he won’t see what’s coming, and you know what happens when fighters can’t see the punch coming - they get knocked out. So we can blind our opponent in boxing by using the Jab correctly.
When we use the Jab, most people aim for the jaw, but this time we will throw the jab right in front of the opponent’s eyes so he can’t see for a split of a second, and we follow the jab up immediately with the right hand.
Now notice the rhythm of this 1-2; it’s not the usual Jab and then right hand behind it. Here we want to throw the Jab, and before we hit the target, we already throw the right hand, so as I remove the blindfold off my opponent (retract the jab), the right hand is already at his face where he cant stop it.
We can see this sequence used by Ingemar Johansson against the great Floyd Patterson when he knocked him out with a quick 1-2, which has the same rhythm and setup we learned here.
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