Cardio Kickboxing - Basic Punches

Cheryl Cullina: Hi! I'm Cheryl Cullina. This is a non-contact cardio kickboxing class, intermediate to advance. I would like to review with you some of the basic moves that are in the basic cardio kickboxing class. We are going to use all of these moves throughout this release.

First of all, lets take this to a boxer stance, be wide, but hip distance and a half apart that's our front stance. Here is a side stance. One foot forward, one foot off to the side and the legs are at an angle, not directly behind one another, off to one side or the other.

Now, that we have got our stances shown and of course this way as well. Let's talk about making a fist. Take your arms into guard position, elbows at 90 degree angles, perpendicular to the floor, in order to make a fist roll your fingers down, wrap your thumbs around your fingers and hold in this guard position.

Now, let's talk about the jab, that's the first punch that we talked about in our basic cardio kick box class. A jab comes off your front arm and you always want to lift your heel, as you throw the punch. The jab comes into the nose and chin area, palm down, arm extended without locking the elbow. So, you want to keep the elbow soft, keep the joint soft extend, draw back into guard, that's the jab.

Here's the cross. The cross comes off the back arm and it hits the same target zones. Nose, chin area, comes off the back arm and we really want to lift the heel and pivot through that, the cross is a very strong punch, you want to hold your abs strong, protects your lower back. Anytime you do a punch or a kick there is our cross.

Our hook punch looks like this. You take this to a front stance. The hook is a horizontal punch. The elbow and fist are in line with the floor, parallel to the floor, and rather than a big wind up. We are going to control the shoulders and take the hook through the cheek over our opponent. Once again we are lifting the heels, we are pivoting through this, your option powerful, to the front arm, and bring arm around. Important not to drop the elbows, important not to hunch up the shoulders, important not to lose guard position, bring the elbows in nice and tight.

Our upper cut punch. Under the chin, bring the dip with the hip a bit, dip of the shoulder, lift the heel, pull the hip around and we are going to retract that upper cut, we are under our opponent's chin and then we retract and get that arm out of the way, don't leave it there. Alright. Get out of the way. That's our upper cut.

So, those are our four basic punches, the jab, cross, hook, and upper cut and you will see those again a little bit later on, when we do some combinations.