Southpaws !!!!!

[SevenStar]

just found this on a boxing site:

 

"I receive many questions about strategies to fight southpaws. The old rule is to keep your left foot (assuming you are a right handed, conventional boxer who jabs with the left) outside of the southpaw’s lead right foot. By staying on the outside, you give yourself an angle to land your straight right hand.

 

Boxing is all about finding and attacking from angles. You never want to square up in front of your opponent. By using angles, you become deceptive and difficult to hit. Erik Morales demonstrated the effectiveness of the right hand against a southpaw. He was able to land both the straight right hand and right uppercut throughout the fight. Ayala could not seem to avoid these punches. When you are fighting a southpaw, you can often lead with the straight right hand. You can also slip (to your left) the incoming right jab, and simultaneously throw your own right hand. This is a great counter punch that you can follow with a left hook to the body or head."

[Drunken Monkey]

boxing guys hardly ever switch sides.

 

tht's why they have to note which hand their opponents use.

 

in a martial art that teaches you to use either hand just as effectively as the other, your opponent's stance/power side, shouldn't be that much of a bother.

[SevenStar]

side switching or not, you still have one side that dominant. Boxers are very capable of fighting either lead, but they keep their power hand as the rear hand.

[kotegashiNeo]

It seems no one has any technical advice just esoteric pointers. Southpaws are different fighters because they are left handed simple no. A person who is left handed thinks differntly than a right handed person does, simply because of the correlation of the mind. Using your left side primarily for the majority of your life is quite different than being able to switch your feet. To deal with a southpaw in a orthodox lead hooks nand make sure your lead foot is on the outside theirs. One last thing be calm and unlearn see different angles.

[monkeygirl]

kotegashiNeo has touched on an interesting point that I would like to bring to your attention: left-handed people think differently than right-handed people. It's a matter of brain orientation. We all know that our brains are divided into right and left halves. The left half is responsible for symbolic, systematic and logical thinking. It's the reason why an unexperienced artist's self-portrait will look like a cartoon or smiley face. The left brain is telling him the way an eye, a nose, and lips SHOULD look, despite what the eye truly sees. Thus the portrait is inaccurately drawn.

 

The right half is responsible for artistic, "outside the box" thinking, and allows us to perceive things exactly as they are, not how a pre-existing "symbol system" says they should be.

 

Because of the whole cerebral cross-over thing, the LEFT brain is dominant in RIGHT-handed people, and vice versa. So what's the result? Right-handed people tend to lean towards this symbolic form of thinking and have difficulty overcoming their left-brain tendencies. Left-handed people have difficulty conforming to a symbol system. This does not affect their intelligence or worth as a person (contrary to the Moroccan belief that left-handers are devils or cursed people), but it can allow them to perform certain tasks more easily than others. Each type of person (left, right and ambidextrous) is predisposed to the qualities of their dominant brain half. With practice, they can overcome this, but I'm not too concerned about that right now.

 

Now that we have that bit of introductory info out of the way, I'll get to my point: generally speaking, from a purely neurological standpoint, left-handed people will think differently than right-handed people. So why not fight differently?

 

May sound kind of off-the-wall, but who knows? Anyway, just thought I'd share that with you guys.

[SevenStar]

as a lefty, I don't think it goes that deep. Not in regards to a strategy that needs to be used. Also, based on that, you can't really devise a strategy. Kotegashi pointed out keeping your foot on the outside of theirs, which is correct. The more technical stuff (since KG mentioned it) was touched on earlier, as far as circling into his power hand and such, but then tapered down into "I can fight both ways, so it doesn't matter" kind of thing...

[Treebranch]

Fathers from the south.

[MMouse]

It is absolutely true that alot of boxers train only one side. It is also true that alot of them do not do very much training against an opponent who is in the left handed stance. This is because right handers abundantly out number left handers. Boxing is a sport of very very high skill. Fighters react in split seconds to openings, punches, movements etc. Because of this it is benficial to train alot of their movements into reactions. When they face a southpaw, reacting as they have trained to could mean moving right into a power shot. Of course this isn't the best way to train for self defence. There are boxers, such as myself and my entire boxing club, who train both sides.

 

With that said, I would like to say that there is a difference between sides once again. People have stronger and faster hands on certain sides. Perhaps rather than thinking about southpaws, we should be addressing strengths. After all, the reason southpaws are what they are is because their strengths are different than most.

[Treebranch]

Well the best defense against a southpaw is close the distance, clinch and throw. Oh yeah, that's the same for anyone.

[SevenStar]

I don't agree that that's the same for anyone. A striker does not want to do that to a wrestler, for example. On the street, you want to do what you do best and most comfortably.