Change Up Your Targets With Randy Steinke
Switching up targets is a great way to keep your opponent guessing and make it hard to block your strike. Switching targets is a great way to prevent your opponent form blocking. If you go to the head of your opponent, they will try to block their head which opens up their body to attacks. The same thing happens when you attack your opponent's body. Your opponent will likely drop their hands, which exposes their head.
The same thing can be said for faking. Faking is another great way to open up new targets for your strikes as you draw out your opponent’s defense with false attacks.
In this video Randy Steinke shows a drill that can also be used as a combination that integrates feints and target changing to keep your opponent guessing. Randy Steinke is a professional MMA fighter and Striking coach out of Arizona. This technique is what he likes to call a change up.
The drill starts off with a fairly basic level change combination. The first two punches are what Randy calls a fast ball, which is a quick jab to the head and a hard cross to the body. Randy then follows up the fast ball with another jab cross but both of them are to the head this time. Randy says to be quick with the follow up, especially if the cross to the body really hurts them.
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After that they should be lowering their guard a little bit. This is where you can start to add in some fients. The first one that Randy shows is simple. Just fake the first jab and then follow up with that shot to the body. The second set of fients that Steinke shows is a little more complicated. There are actually three in total. First you feint the jab to the head and the cross to the body, you then swing your head to your lead side to feint and load up the lead hook. From there you fire off the lead hook and rear cross.
The ability to switch up your targets and integrate feints into your combinations is one of the best ways to confuse your opponents and make you hard to read. Your opponents will constantly be guessing what is a strike and what is a feint, all why trying to figure out what your target is and if a strike is even coming.
This is a great way to create new openings for your strikes, as your opponent’s hands will either lower or tighten up depending on what you have set up. This is also a great way to demoralize your opponent. If your opponent is constantly guessing and doing their best to defend against your strikes and still getting hit by most or all of your strikes, they will quickly become flustered and demoralized. This will further help you score more strikes and lead to an easier victory. You might even get them to quit.
