Straight Lead. Teri Tom
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Figure 26: From the correct hand position, shoot your fist straight out. This is the fastest way to reach your target with the lead hand.
Think of your right hand as a gunsight. You always want to keep your target within range of this gunsight, which is your correctly placed hand. This will increase your accuracy, of course, but it will also increase your speed, because your hand is already positioned to hit the target without any other adjustments. You just shoot your hand out. No fuss, no muss.
If the hand is positioned too high or too low, you’ll have to lower or raise both your hand and forearm first and then shoot out. This extra movement not only slows you down but telegraphs your attack as well. See Figures 27 through 30.
Figure 27: If your front hand is kept too low (left), you’ll be pointing at your opponent’s kneecap.
Figure 28: You’ll have to raise your hand first, before you can fire a straight punch.
Figure 29: If your hand is positioned too high (left), you’ll be pointing toward the sky.
Figure 30: Keeping your hand too high requires you to lower your hand before you can throw a punch.
T R U N K R O T A T I O N
I’ll talk more about mechanics and hip rotation later, but let’s touch on the subject here, in relation to what proper alignment looks like at impact. From the on-guard position, extend your lead arm as you rotate your hips counterclockwise. As your hip rotates, your shoulder will follow. See Figures 31 and 32.
Figure 31: Straight lead from correct stance
Figure 32: Hip rotation with arm extension. Notice how this makes me less of a target by decreasing the target area. The centerline is virtually unreachable.
Notice that as you rotate your hips and shoulders, you actually become a narrower target, making you less susceptible to counterattacks. Passages in both The Tao of Jeet Kune Do15 and Edwin L. Haislet’s Boxing16 address this additional advantage of the stance. By the way, throwing a modern-day boxing jab does not give you this benefit. The palm-down jab does nothing to narrow your target area. It is only the straight lead that allows you to further protect the centerline as you launch an offensive.
S T R A I G H T S H O O T E R
We call it straight hitting for a reason. From the on-guard position, your right hand should shoot straight out and retract along exactly the same path. I’ve already talked about how keeping the target within range of the gunsight will keep your punch straight and improve accuracy. Another important contributor to straight hitting is the position of your lead elbow. It should be kept close to the body. If kept too far away, your target will be out of gun-sight range. Notice how you’ll be pointing in the wrong direction.
Keeping your elbows close also serves a defensive purpose by giving your opponent less of a target. See Figures 33 and 34.
Figure 33: Elbow pointing away from the body. If you were to extend your index finger from this position, you’d be pointing downward and off to the side. In order to throw a straight lead, you’d first have to center and raise the front hand.
Figure 34: Correct elbow position for straight lead. Keeping the elbow close to your body enables correct positioning of the hand and, consequently, more efficient punching.
R E L A X, M A X
Relaxation, both mental and physical, is something repeatedly referred to in The Tao of Jeet Kune Do, as it should be with all sports and martial arts. In any movement, we have something called “force-couple relationships” occurring. This means that muscles—agonists, synergists, stabilizers, neutralizers, and antagonists—are working together to create the most efficient movement around a joint.17 To maximize efficiency, we want to minimize extraneous motion and unnecessary tension.
I’ve just mentioned muscles called agonists and antagonists. Agonists are prime movers that create joint motion. For instance, when we throw out a straight lead, we are performing a pushing motion. The triceps act as prime movers. Antagonists are muscles that act in direct opposition to the prime movers.18 As we throw out a lead punch, the biceps are antagonists, because they are involved mainly in pulling motions. Therefore, they act in opposition to the triceps. As we shoot out a straight, then, we want to activate the triceps while relaxing the biceps.
As we retract the hand, though, the opposite is desirable. When we pull back the hand, the biceps become the prime movers—the agonists—and the triceps become the antagonists that we must relax.
If antagonists are fighting against the prime movers, you will be slow—and tired. It’s hard enough to fight an opponent; you don’t want to be fighting yourself as well. Maintaining unnecessary tension wastes energy. This is why we want to rest the right arm against our side instead of holding it away from the body. Keeping the arm away from the body requires unnecessary contraction of the muscles to hold it up. Your deltoid has to work overtime just to keep your arm in that position. Then, already in a fatigued state, it must throw out a punch. If you see a fighter constantly holding the lead arm away from the body, you already know that he or she will not be fast with the lead hand.
Likewise, being in a general state of tension—mental and physical—will also slow you down. If the agonists and antagonists are simultaneously activated, the prime mover must overcome the counteraction of the antagonists before it can perform the desired movement. Again, you will be slow, slow, slow.
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