Falling back in love

Folks,

I am back in love..............COME ON NOW!!!! I am not mushy like that. I dont mean with a person. I mean with a technique. With all of the "practical" sparring that I do with gloves, both boxing and fingerless, I sometimes forget some very simple facts. The martial arts have a LOT of open hand techniques at their disposal. While I am all about sparring full contact, I also notice that people forget about their other hand techniques, and the ones that dont work with gloves on.

What am I speaking of? Well, I have just returned to my love affair with the back-fist aka the back-knuckle. For those of you who dont know, a back-fist is when you strike someone along the butt of their jaw or temple with the back of your vertical fist. It is a devastating shot when you don't have gloves on. It is quick, easy to use, and has amazing effects on larger opponents.

Now, there are a lot of people who will say smart things like" Well, why dont they use them in MMA, if they are so effective?" The first thing I will say is "Dont Taze Me Bro!!" That doesnt really have anything to do with my argument, I just like to say it. The second thing that I will say is that a lot of things change when you are fighting bare-knuckle. It opens a lot of techniques that people dont commonly use. My favorite is the back-fist.

Along those lines and infinitely cooler is the spinning back fist. It looks flashy, but it is really not that difficult to pull off. It hits with the same part of the hand, but the centrifugal force ( power of the spin) adds a LOT of heat to the blow. For all the traditional guys out there, we know that it works. For all you MMA guys check out Shonie Carter versus Matt Serra or Dan Henderson versus Wanderlei Silva. Shonie actually knocked out Serra, and he had gloves on at the time.

So while glove sparring is good, dont forget to take them off and work your back-knuckle on the bag, you will be glad you did.