Appreciation of Feints

[Pugilistic]

To paraphrase Sun Tzu, war is a game of deception. Fist fighting is the same, and one of the best ways to deceive your opponent in a fight is the use of feints. There’s much ado about individual techniques, and how to throw certain punches or kicks, but the next level of discussion is to how land those techniques by deceiving your opponent.

Feints can be thrown in a variety of ways including throwing punches deliberately short without compromising your defense, a slight torqueing of your body as if you’re going to throw a punch, an elevation change, a slipping movement to the side, a quick step in, etc.

One of my favorite ways to feint right now is feinting to a jab to the body. I usually land a few jabs to the body to sell the feint, and try to drive in deep into the other guy’s stomach so he can really feel it. In this regard, I think the jab to the body is one of the best punches in boxing. It gives you so many opportunities. Now when I feint to the body, usually done with a small change in elevation with slight step in, a shot to the head is opened up. I can follow up with a jab to the head, a left hook, or straight.

Now I have another option available: a feint to the head. Now my opponent doesn’t know if my feint is going to the head, or to the body, a real punch, or just a feint. He’s confused; he can’t predict my rhythm, lost the initiative and is reactive. This is a tactic Floyd Mayweather used quite often to set up his lead left hook, with which he dropped Marquez and Corrales.

In my other thread I mentioned I throw a lot of left hooks. A part of my tactic is that I do this to not to just land the left hook, but to get my opponent to think about the left hook and not expect a different punch. After I throw a few hard left hooks, I will threaten with a left hook and follow up with an uppercut. That in return, gives me another feinting opportunity: I can follow up my fake left hook with a straight to the body, confusing my opponent regarding which punch will come after my left hook feint. Is it a straight to the body? A straight to the head? Maybe an uppercut? Maybe the left hook feint isn’t a feint at all, but an actual punch this time.

Feints can also be thrown not as fake punches, but actual punches thrown lightly to set up the real punches that will do the damage. Golovkin is great at this. He mixes in light punches with the shots intended to kill so his opponent doesn’t know where to defend.

Instead of making the opponent think your feints are real punches, you can do the opposite as well. Against Pacquiao, Marquez used feints to lure Manny into a false sense of security and to not react to a feint by feinting in one direction but now throwing a punch. That way when Marquez finally throws the punch, Manny would think it’s a merely a feint.

Your footwork can be feinted as well. As a method of trapping an opponent who’s getting away, I will feint a step towards my left, then quickly change to the right as my opponent will move to the right as a reaction my feint. This is a move I see running backs use to evade defensive players in football games. A defensive fighter can use this as well to evade an opponent who’s trying to trap him.

Feints are obviously useful for opening up holes in the opponent’s defense preceding a punch, but feints are useful for seeing your opponent and breaking up your rhythm (another element to deceiving your opponent), as well as helping you seize the initiative (make your opponent react to you). Since feints can be thrown from a safe distance and without compromising your position, you can threaten your opponent and observe him react to it in relative safety. You can see your opponent better and predict his movements. Since feints can be thrown faster, by adding feints into your combinations, you can break up the rhythm and be less predictable to your opponent, allowing you to land a punch when (as opposed to where) he does not expect it. If you have sold your opponent on a feint, it means he’s now reacting to you, giving you the initiative and control of the fight.

Feints seem to be under discussed and underappreciated, but they are one of the most important facets of the fight game.

 

[biscuitsbrah]

Good stuff

 

[Henddong]

jon jones' feint at ufc 200 was unappreciated

 

[Pugilistic]

Good stuff

I wish I had video and gif examples but its harder to look like I’m working when I’m on youtube and editing gifs. I don’t usually log on sherdog at home but I may try to post examples later.

 

[rmongler]

I like what you're saying here, its something I've been thinking on recently as well.

Sometimes during a fight you'll see guys enter a 'dead zone', where you're sizing each other up and not really sure what to do next or how to 'fill up' the space.

I think if that's the problem, then feinting is the solution. You look at Dominic Cruz, and something like 50% of his game is bump fakes, to make the guy wonder whether he's going for a dart, a takedown, or nothing at all.

Its not even about drawing a reaction really, but dulling their trigger finger. Reactions are not really reactions but anticipations; the better fighter is the man who can see the future better. Things like feinting, or setting a tempo/rhythm/pattern just so you can break it, are tricks a smart fighter uses to play with that game of prediction.

If a guy (or yourself) is looking to counter, and he wants to be able to do it in time, it has to be on a heuristic level. He can't be analyzing everything precisely to determine whether you're going to go or not or with what, but rather to look for certain tells. Its like a radar with the sensitivity turned up, or a search algorithm with very general parameters. In that situation, its very possible to pick up false positives, and that's what feinting is for.

If he does react to feints in some way, that in turn gives you information on what kind of fighter he is, clearing uncertainty for better anticipation. And if he's not reacting, then you know its time to go.

Unless he's next level and knows that you know, and is only fooling you. But that's the rabbit hole you go down with two sides using systematic toolsets on each other.

That's also why the saying goes in swordplay: 'the master fears the novice'. The biggest advantage someone who has training has over someone who's untrained is that they have a concrete direction they can commit too 100%. That in turn though makes it a 'known quantity' to someone with more experience and prescience. Whereas for someone without enough enough training to solidify habits, they don't have the familiar tells of a style, and might be liable to attack any which way.

They might each individually not be particularly effective, but when you're using deadly weapons all it takes is one slip up. You don't see that as often in unarmed combat since guys can often just take a punch, especially from someone with no conditioning, so one fluke doesn't average out from getting destroyed 90% of the rest of the time. In grappling things like that hardly exist at all, since its a much more 'controlled' or 'deterministic' situation, and someone untrained would not even know the technique to even threaten damage in the first place.