It’s been a while since I wrote a “how-to” guide so here is another one: how to keep your guard up in a fight.

First, a quick explanation: The focus of this guide is combat sports like MMA, muay Thai and boxing. That said, to a degree, you can use the same information for self-defense and traditional martial arts as well. In those, you sometimes have to keep your hands in a specific place, for instance on center-line, chambered at the hip, etc.  Some of the ideas I write here will apply there as well, but not all of them. As always, use whatever you can and ignore the rest.

Second, why is it important? Why is there even a need to keep your guard up in a fight? We’ve all seen fighters with low or sloppy guards beat their opponents, right?

True enough, it happens. The most popular example of this is Muhammad Ali, who routinely dropped his hands or just kept them all the way down and still beat his opponents. Here he is in action. Watch the low guard…

http://youtu.be/Vs8Ls6Dx1F0

Here’s the thing: just because some other fighter can get away with it, doesn’t mean you can.

You’re not Muhammad Ali. Do you have his level of skill? His footwork? His speed? His elusiveness? His experience?

Probably not.

But all these elements are a part of why he didn’t get punished all the time when he didn’t keep his guard up in a fight. However, when he got older and slower, the low guard didn’t work anymore and he started taking beatings in the ring. So no matter how good you are, there comes a time when a sloppy guard will come back to haunt you. The reason why a high guard is important is simple: you get hit more often if you drop your guard, especially if you don’t know you’re dropping it.

As a final point, there are two parts to learning how to keep your guard up in a fight: [Read more…]