Why has the long boxing guard disappeared?

[Flying Crane]

In my tests with a strike meter, the arm actually proved the most important. The whole body punch might have more weight behind it, but velocity is more important to kinetic energy than mass. Energy = Mass * Velocity Squared. Velocity is doubly important, and you lose that when your acceleration is from Point A to Point A Adjacent.

If full body connection has not been part of your training, then it is not something you can effectively do on the spot, for the sake of a test on a strike meter. Like anything, it takes time and work to become skilled at it.

obviously I don’t know how you train. Your comment suggests to me that full-body connection is not a regular part of how you train. Feel free to correct me if it am wrong about that. But at any rate, I suspect your test on the strike meter in this case is faulty.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

If full body connection has not been part of your training,.

Almost all personal trainer in the gym will teach you "muscle group isolation". No personal trainer will teach you "body connection".

When I ask people to punch by putting arms behind their back, most people don't understand what I'm talking about.

I assume, "Only see the body move and don't see the arm move" is very high level MA skill that it may take us life time training to achieve it.

I have always believed that to coordinate punch with leading foot landing can generate the maximum amount of punching power.

 

[Flying Crane]

Almost all personal trainer in the gym will teach you "muscle group isolation". No personal trainer will teach you "body connection".

When I ask people to punch by putting arms behind their back, most people don't understand what I'm talking about.

I assume, "Only see the body move and don't see the arm move" is very high level MA skill that it may take us life time training to achieve it.

I have always believed that to coordinate punch with leading foot landing can generate the maximum amount of punching power.

We train this concept from day one, and it is integral to everything that we do. It takes time and effort and work to become skilled with it, but I think if done diligently then it is within reach, within a reasonable amount of time. Of course it always benefits from constant practice and polishing, continuously striving to make it better.

I think the mistake is when a school does not teach it to beginners, and operates on the assumption that they will get back to it later, or the students will figure it out in their own good time. I don’t feel that is realistic. They don’t seem to ever get back to it later, and people don’t tend to figure it out on their own. In my opinion, there needs to be a systematic approach to training it, and best to start at the beginning.

As to the punching simultaneous when the foot lands, that is one way to manifest the concept. We use that as well, but our primary method is to rotate the torso by pushing with the feet. We can integrate both ways simultaneously.

 

[JowGaWolf]

If full body connection has not been part of your training, then it is not something you can effectively do on the spot, for the sake of a test on a strike meter.

I agree with this even some people who have it in their training may have trouble. I used to train 4 students who had a really difficult time with it. A lot of times they were engaging muscle groups at the right time. Where there muscles should be stiff they were relaxing and allowing the arm to give way. In other cases they couldn't get the lower half of the body to sync as one. Things were always moving in parts Some people catch on fairly quickly, but there are some that have a real challenge in feeling that connection.

I think it gets easier once they get a small experience of what they are supposed to feel when they make that full body connection. I hope that one day I'll be able to teach in a way that will allow people to really understand that connection faster.

 

[JowGaWolf]

Almost all personal trainer in the gym will teach you "muscle group isolation". No personal trainer will teach you "body connection".

This was western fitness for a very long time. They they learned that things weren't so simple as they were creating a lot of muscle imbalance. That's when the term "Functional Fitness" came into play and "Functional Muscle Building" shortly after that cross fit became a thing. Most trainers these days should be following the "Function Fitness" approach which utilizes the who body fitness.

Western society often things that everything can be singled out. We fail to realize it's not just one thing that makes it work, it's a punch of things. We see this mistake in many aspects of society as well, where the belief is that one thing can be fix, and everything will be already. Prescription Medicine is probably the largest example as a doctor will try to fix "One Thing" and then prescribe other medicines to try to balance things out.

 

[Ivan]

First off to clarify, i mean the "old school" pugilism style of boxing guard.

In the vein of this style. (there are variations but most seem to have died out as far as i can see)


To answer the question you probbly have to go back to why it has disappeared from sports boxing, of which i dont recall why it fell out of fashion. I have heard knives being the reason for it falling out fo favour, but its not like europeans never carried knives, they fought like that alongside carrying weapons. So that sort of didnt stand up to some mental scrunity when i thought about it.


Any imput for why it fell out of fashion? Best i can come up with is the modern boxing style is more entertaining to watch and works better in the gloves they use so with it falling out of favour there it means it fell out of favour with the general population as boxing became more of a sport than for fighting study.

There are 2 primary reasons. The long boxing guard was a stance called "Fighring Irish" and was mainly used by English and Irish boxers. The stance was one of little mobility, and it emphasised on absorbing hits as it was seen as masculine to absorb or take damage, and a pussy move to avoid it.

The second reason was the lack of boxing gloves. Before gloves, boxers would be more concerned with body shots, as hitting the face was a great way to break your hand. Thus, one arm is the extended one, used as a jab to maintain distance, and the other one was used to protect the body.

Sadly, I don't remember the sources where I read this, and I can't provide any evidence for what I've said, so please correct me if I am wrong, and also take my words with a grain of salt.

 

[Buka]

Why has it disappeared....

Typewriters were necessary at one time as well.

 

[JowGaWolf]

Why has it disappeared....

Typewriters were necessary at one time as well.

They are still here. They evolved into keyboards for digital input

 

[elder999]

I blame Oscar Wilde, myself....

 

[JowGaWolf]

The long boxing guard was a stance called "Fighring Irish" and was mainly used by English and Irish boxers.

The long boxing guard is one of those thing things that didn't belong to one culture. If my memory is correct. This is how photographers wanted to pose the fighters. Which is why you see so many fighters posing like this facing right..

I guess they thought it looked more dramatic. Or it may have been the best pose to show muscle for the types of cameras that were being used back then. If you take into consideration the limitations of the camera to handle light and skin color, there may have been difficulty in catching certain details.

As you see can see the same pose doesn't work as well for people with darker skin tones. It is what it is. Camera's back then were very limited. Some you had to hold your breath just to keep it from blurring the shot lol.

 

[JowGaWolf]

The long boxing guard is one of those thing things that didn't belong to one culture. If my memory is correct. This is how photographers wanted to pose the fighters. Which is why you see so many fighters posing like this facing right..

I guess they thought it looked more dramatic. Or it may have been the best pose to show muscle for the types of cameras that were being used back then. If you take into consideration the limitations of the camera to handle light and skin color, there may have been difficulty in catching certain details.

View attachment 23784


As you see can see the same pose doesn't work as well for people with darker skin tones. It is what it is. Camera's back then were very limited. Some you had to hold your breath just to keep it from blurring the shot lol.
View attachment 23785

I'm following up on this just to make sure my memory hasn't failed me

 

[geezer]

Maybe this is the last vestige of a 19th Century pugilistic guard, preserved in an obscure form of Chinese folk-boxing:

 

[JowGaWolf]

Maybe this is the last vestige of a 19th Century pugilistic guard, preserved in an obscure form of Chinese folk-boxing:

2 arms 2 hands for punching, How long would it take before things start to repeat itself?

Here you can see the long guard used here. Long Guard interferes with incoming strikes so that the fighter can counter with his own. This concept is true in Martial Arts as well.

How long have humans been on the planet? How many centuries does it take to perfect a good punch?

 

[Buka]

They are still here. They evolved into keyboards for digital input

Same could be said for that guard.

 

[Mitlov]

Boxing gloves and boxing rules favor the modern boxing guard, but the long guard isn’t dead in MMA. Chuck Liddell and Lyoto Machida both used a modern interpretation of this long low guard.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

Long Guard interferes with incoming strikes

Long guard:

- Put your hands near your opponent's face.
- Interfere opponent's punch away from your head. You won't give your opponent enough space to generate his maximum speed and maximum power.
- Protect your centerline.
- Can be used to deal with kick.

Short guard:

- Put your hand near your own face.
- Interfere opponent's punch near your head. When you do that, your opponent's punch already has generated maximum speed and maximum power.
- Expose your centerline.
- Ask for groin kick.

 

[Flying Crane]

Long guard:

- Put your hands near your opponent's face.
- Interfere opponent's punch away from your head. You won't give your opponent enough space to generate his maximum speed and maximum power.
- Can be used to deal with kick.
- Protect your centerline.

Short guard:

- Put your hand near your own face.
- Interfere opponent's punch near your head. When you do that, your opponent's punch already has generated maximum speed and maximum power.
- Ask for groin kick.
- Expose your centerline.

To which post number are you replying? You are attributing a quote to me that I do not believe I made. I think something got jumbled in your quote feature.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

To which post number are you replying? You are attributing a quote to me that I do not believe I made. I think something got jumbled in your quote feature.

Have fixed it.

 

[Martial D]

Long guard:

- Put your hands near your opponent's face.
- Interfere opponent's punch away from your head. You won't give your opponent enough space to generate his maximum speed and maximum power.
- Protect your centerline.
- Can be used to deal with kick.

Short guard:

- Put your hand near your own face.
- Interfere opponent's punch near your head. When you do that, your opponent's punch already has generated maximum speed and maximum power.
- Expose your centerline.
- Ask for groin kick.

If your arms are extended you are vulnerable to hooks as you can't quickly do a hair comb cover, you also can't quickly slap parry(pak sau in CMA). As these are the two main defensive movements in boxing it makes no sense to have your arms extended in boxing.

Now if you add in kicks, elbows, knees, and grappling...there is an argument to be made.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

If your arms are extended you are vulnerable to hooks as you can't quickly do a hair comb cover,

You can still use your long guard to knock down your opponent's hook punch far away from your head. That's the advantage to use long guard.

The long guard is like the Chines spear, any attack can be deflected by either clockwise circle, or counter-clockwise circle.

When you move both arms in circle in front of you, you should be able to stop all incoming attack.