Principle 9

Principle 9 - Avoid staying in the “transition zone”either be close to your attacker or far away from them

One of the things that has always put me off boxing is theacknowledgement and acceptability that you are going to get hit as part of yourattacking process; something that is acceptable if in the process you are ableto score your points. Whilst I am the first to point out that in a real-life streetencounter you are going to get hit, and if a knife is involved cut, I don’tadvocate “trading” with an aggressor in order to get the upper hand and where aknife is involved there really is no concept such as “trading” with an assailant.

One of the major differences between a street-fight and asparring contest is the idea of “dead time”. In sparring contests/trainingthere are always moments of rest and inactivity between the bursts of actualfighting. This isn’t a bad thing it just reflects the nature of the training,where both opponents feel each other out and look for opportunity; also thepoint of sparring is not to “finish” the person you’re facing but to train withthem, using them to train your own skills and techniques. The Japanesedifferentiate between “Randori” (practice) and “Shiai” (competition), withinregular training everything is “Randori”, where the aim is prepare yourself forcompetition, or the “real thing”.

In a real-life encounter, there should be no “dead” time,a person should always be moving with intent, either to escape the situation orfinish it (finishing it, may involve movement that leads an aggressor to aparticular point/position where you are able to start the process of takingyour aggressor out of the game – a skill that sparring certainly helps todevelop). The “Transition Zone” refers to that space where both you and your assailanthave an equal opportunity to gain an advantage or dominance e.g. you can attackthem and they can attack you. This is not a zone to stay in but one you mustpass through on your way to finishing your aggressor or back out through inorder to disengage from them.

I will often see, in sparring, people jam up, cover up orfreeze in this zone. This is not a viable option, when there is the potentialfor a knife to be drawn in a real-life situation. Staying your ground and coveringup with a pair of 14 oz gloves on gives a false sense of security and a unworkabletactic for the street. Covering whilst moving out of this zone however may makesense, but staying stationary whilst taking blows (and cuts) is not somethingthat makes much sense if the focus of your training is for the street andreality.

Whatever drills you do, you must make movement part ofthem. You must learn how to move in and how to move out – in reality your goalis to do each one just once e.g. move in, finish, move out etc, or just moveout – anything else is just prolonging the fight.