Muay Thai Kickboxing - How to Throw a Jab

Matt Hostetler: This is Matt Hostetler with Capital Jiu-Jitsu. For this clip, we are going to demonstrate one of the foundations of your striking arsenal and thats the Jab. Before, we get into the jab, we are going to spend a quick minute and talk about the, your partner who is holding the focus mitts. Jeremy has a pair of focus mitts for Stuart to hit and Stuart just hit the focus mitts a couple of times. I just want to explain that the person holding the focus mitts or the other equipment that we are going to get into, always offer a little bit of resistance when your opponent strikes the focus mitt. Dont hold it limp because that's not going to help his drilling out at all. So, again just very quickly, when you are holding as a partner, make sure you offer some resistance for your opponent. Now, to get into the jab, Stuart is simply going to take his lead hand and he is in an orthodox stance right now and what that means is that his right hand, his power hand is in the back and his left hand is in the front. They call that orthodox I guess simply because there are majority of people started out with it. The southpaw stance is for lefties and the southpaw stance is just a mere opposite. His power hand, his left hand is in the back and his right hand is in the front. So, getting back to the jab, it doesnt matter which stance you are in, the jab is always going to be your lead hand. So, the way that Stuart is going to throw the jab is to leave his elbow down as long as possible and then at the last minute curl up. Thats going to, thats the shortest distance between two points, a straight line and its not a knockout power type punch. Its simply a punch thats going to disrupt your opponents timing, its going to enable you to perform some combinations and lastly, his rear hand is always up protecting his face at all times. When he is throwing his jab, you never want to drop your rear hand you always keep it up same holds true for the other strikes that we are going to talk about.

You never drop your other hand, you always stand at defensive posture and with the foot movement, when he throws the jab, you dont necessarily have to step forward, you dont necessarily have to curl your foot, but you can if you want to. It all depends on the distance between you and your opponent which you can simply throw the jab without moving anything or you can curl your lead foot forward just a little bit, but you dont want to, you dont want to get into anything more fancy than that because that's not what the jab is designed for. Thats the end of our discussion on the jab.