Want to learn how to deal with feints?
To deal with feints, relax more and react less, have multiple layers of defense, stop looking at your opponent’s eyes, and control the range.
Learning how to deal with feints is essential. It drains your opponent’s energy, hides information about your own strategy, and gives you opportunities to counterattack.
Keep reading to learn how to deal with feints!
How To Deal With Feints
To deal with your opponent’s feints:
- Relax More and React Less
- Be Ready With Multiple Layers of Defense
- Stop Looking At Your Opponent’s Eyes
- Control The Range
Feints are more of a mental attack than a physical one.
When you overreact to your opponent’s feint, you’re telling him that he controls you.
By showing your opponent that you can handle his feints, you can gain the mental edge over him even though you haven’t even thrown a punch.
When defending against feints, remember that you’ll never be 100% correct in guessing your opponent’s move.
Because your opponent has so many kinds of feints available to him (hands, eyes, feet), there will be situations where you have to use all of the tips at once.
Relax More and React Less
First, relax more and react less to deal with your opponent’s feints.
It’s normal to get hit in boxing, even if you have the smoothest head movements. Once you accept that you’re not going to dodge every punch, you’ll stop overreacting to your opponent’s movements.
Trust your training and strategy. Believe that you can hold your own ground, rather than just survive.
When you relax, you’ll be able to move smoother and react accordingly to your opponent’s moves.
Once you’re relaxed, pay attention to what your opponent is scoring with. If your opponent hasn’t landed a jab in the past few rounds, you don’t have to worry about his jab feint.
Pay attention to which of your opponent’s shots have power. if your opponent doesn’t have a powerful hook, you shouldn’t react to that feint every time.
We recommend acting first rather than reacting to your opponent’s feints; take the offensive first when your opponent is overusing feints.
Have Multiple Layers of Defense
Next, be ready with multiple layers of defense to deal with your opponent’s feints.
It’s ok to react to your opponent’s feints, just make sure that you don’t react to them in the same way every time.
Mix up your defense; don’t just rely on head, feet, and hand movements by themselves.
Focus on efficient defense that doesn’t take you out of position. Parry your opponent’s jab feint instead of slipping it; this keeps you grounded and saves your energy.
Staying tight while parrying the jab feint will also prepare you to catch your opponent’s hook.
Focus also on defense that doesn’t open your stance up. If you overextend parrying your opponent’s jab feint, this opens you up for the lead hook.
In this case, trust your basic boxing stance and be prepared to absorb the jab.
You want to vary your defensive patterns and to prevent your opponent from gaining any useful information from his feints.
Watch the video below and listen to Bernard Hopkins describe how he feints to peel back the layers of his opponent’s defense.
Don’t Stare At Your Opponent’s Eyes
Next, don’t stare at your opponent’s eyes and you’ll handle your opponent’s feints better.
If you do this, your opponent can easily misdirect you. Just by giving you a quick glance towards your stomach, your opponent can set you up for a head shot.
Focus instead on your opponent as a whole by looking at his torso and shoulders, while observing his heads, hands, and feet with your peripheral vision.
Looking at your opponent’s shoulder line helps you to anticipate his movements. You can actually see your opponent’s muscle fibers twitch before he throws a punch.
This technique also teaches you to set up your combinations to aim where your opponent’s head will be, rather than where it is in the moment.
From what we’ve seen, training the eyes to see the whole picture is one of the hardest things to teach a beginner.
As you become more experienced and trust your peripheral vision more, you’ll target your opponent’s head less.
Control The Range
Lastly, control the range to handle your opponent’s feints better.
You should only worry about feints if you’re in the pocket and your opponent is within striking range. There’s no point in worrying about a cross that can’t reach you.
As always, use your footwork and jab to measure and control the distance.
Pay attention to your opponent’s range as you do this. Does he like to leap forward with a jab? If so, watch for his foot and hand feints.
Does he like to inch forward carefully? Respond with your own feints to push him back.
Once you get this information, you can adjust your fight strategy accordingly.
See the linked video to study how Canelo Álvarez and Nicolino Locche use feints to control the range and hunt down their opponents.
Conclusion
If you keep falling for your opponent’s feints, follow these tips and you’ll see improvement.
Knowing how to deal with feints is essential: it drains your opponent’s energy, hides information about your own strategy, and gives you opportunities to counterattack.
Knowing these tips also helps you to troubleshoot why your own feints don’t work.
Once you spend more time in the ring and gain more experience, you’ll be better able to tell feints from real punches.
Most importantly, the best piece of advice anyone can give you is to trust yourself and your skills.
Boxing is equally a mental battle as much as it is a physical one. Win the mental battle first and the physical battle is easy.
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