An important concept in the striking arts is your stance relative to your opponent’s. If you are standing with your left foot forward and right foot back this position is called an Orthodox Stance. If you are standing with your right foot forward and your left foot back this is called the Southpaw Stance.
This terminology is outdated because it doesn’t take into account your opponent’s stance. It’s much more useful to think about your stance relative to your opponent’s because which technique works best is completely dependent on this relationship.
If you are standing with your left foot forward and so is your opponent this is called a closed stance. If you are standing with your right foot forward and so is your opponent this is also called a closed stance.
If one of you move a foot back and the other stays in the same stance this is called an open stance.
It shouldn’t matter if you take an orthodox stance or a southpaw stance. The relationship to your opponents stance is what matters. Here are the combinations.
Left foot forward – Right foot forward = Open stance
Right foot forward – Left foot forward = Open stance
Left foot forward – Left foot forward = Closed stance
Right foot forward– Right foot forward = Closed stance
If you’ve watched a lot of boxing you will have heard the commentators saying to pump out the jab or the boxer needs to get his jab going. A lot of the times this is wrong because they haven’t taken into account the relationship between their stances.
If you are in an open stance and you try to jab you will find that your opponent’s lead hand is often in the way like in the above picture of Izzy and Silva. Jabbing works great in a closed stance because there is a gap in between your opponent’s guard. If you are in an open stance your right hand now has the opening between his guard to sneak through.
In the gif above you see Manny throwing a jab from open stance and taking a heavy rear straight.
It’s important to note that everything works sometimes and there have been some examples of fighters hurting their opponent with jabs from the open stance but it takes timing and good foot work that even professional fights are missing. Overall the jab is much harder to land and the fighter who uses the rear hand in the open stance has the advantage.
The distance between the two stances are drastically different. The closed stance is much closer because your hips are close together. In the open stance your hips are further away. So even if your opponents hand wasn’t in your way when your in the open stance you’d still find yourself needing to lean in to land the jab if you haven’t used the correct foot work.
Look at how close the rear hand is to your jaw in a closed stance.
Now compare that with the distance between the rear hand and your jaw in the open stance.
In a closed stance the jab, lead hook, overhand right, straight right are going to be the most useful punches. While the teep from either leg, rear leg kick, rear calf kick, lead body kick, lead head kick and oblique kick are going to be the most useful kicks.
In an open stance the rear straight, lead hook and the rear straight to the body are going to be the best punching options while the rear body and rear head kick and the lead leg knee stomp are going to work best.
I hope this gives you something to think about. In the next article we will go more in depth on the closed stance and how to use it.