Maintaining Eye Contact with our Opponent

Training ourselves to stay focused on our opponent without blinking or turning the head.

Drill:

Our partner puts on his focus mitts/pads. While moving around he pats us on our head from different angles while we hold our fighting stance and don’t blink.

Tips:

1. We don’t practice any response aside from not blinking – we must maintain concentration only on the objection at hand. Later “un-blinking” is an element of our fighting behavior and technique

2. Our partner pats us rather than hits our face and head. If he does hit us, we’ll be tempted to respond and defend, preventing us from actually concentrating on the task at hand. Nevertheless is essential the touch itself exists – to make it as real as possible.

3. It’s important this drill be done in a dynamic fashion and the pats be delivered from unexpected angles and timing – causing us to be surprised.

4. It gives us a great opportunity to view how an attack on us looks from beginning to end – identifying the pre-action that an attack begins with and ends with and so on…

5. For our partner this is shadow boxing drill – good for improving martial arts techniques and physical training: agility, stamina and so on…

Maintaining eye contact with our opponent whether he defends or strikes is essential for ability to win the fight.

Enjoy the Sweat

The Warriors Project