What is meant by boxing feints?

These are special maneuvers that are used by a boxer to mislead or distract his/her opponent during a fight. In such maneuvers, a fighter takes a certain half action and follows it up with another action, which leads the opponent to make mistakes. These techniques are highly popular and used commonly by amateur and professional boxers.

These feints techniques are especially useful against a defensive boxer, where it becomes really hard to find an opening to attack. Sometimes boxers make a grave mistake by just relying on brute force and hard hitting, as a result they get knocked out by great piece of counter attack by their opponents.

This post is about some of the finest feints techniques that a boxer must learn. To say these techniques will improve your boxing skill set, is an understatement.

These following five feints techniques aren’t easy to master, you will need hours of gym training and sparring sessions to perfect them. A clever opponent would already know about these techniques so you need to disguise them well in your arsenal.

1) Half-Way Punch:

The term is self-explanatory, although you need much practice, technique and right set-up to get maximum out of it. Basically, a half punch is thrown without getting full movement, your opponent is misled into thinking that your punch is coming his way and he acts accordingly and moves in a certain direction, then at this exact moment you follow it up will an actual punch. It is important that you don’t overdo this feint, otherwise you will fail to capitalize on it.

2) Forward Step:

This feint technique is not that easy to pull off effectively, as there are lot of factor you need to go in your favor. Like, you need to be in opponent’s range, to pull this off you must shake your upper body slightly at the exact moment you step forward, forcing your opponent to believe that you are actually going to attack or punch him. It will force your opponent to take a defensive action and take a step back. You will follow this up with a step forward in one swift motion and when you get into his range, fire a quick punch. All of this needs to go in one motion. Manny Pacquiao is an excellent advert of this technique.

3) Leaning to the Side:

This is not a defensive technique, when you lean on one site you intension is to open up your opponent and find an opening in his defense and throw a cross or a lead hook. This lean doesn’t have to be quick. Always keep an eye on your opponent’s movement and surprise him with this feint technique. Sergio Martinez is an expert at this. Watch his fight against Julio Cesar Chzvez Jr.

4) Bending the Knees:

When you bend your knees, you will get more power into your punches. However, don’t bend too low otherwise it will take too long to get back into position where you can defend or attack. In order to implement this feint, all that is required is slight bending of knees and slight movement of hands. Guillermo Rigondeaux is considered one of the best boxers to implement this feint to perfection.

5) Distraction Jab:

There are two ways you can implement this feint technique.

In the first technique you throw a fully extended job just to target one side of the opponent’s head but not intended to hit his head.

In the second technique you bluff your opponent by throwing a half-way job, this is achieved by not fully extending the elbow.

For this feint to work you first need to study your opponent’s movement every time you throw a jab, and once you are able to predict his movement you can implement this distraction jab to perfection.

I hope these feint techniques will help you improve your boxing as a whole, and make you a better fighter in the ring.