Boxing is one of the sports that have a mental game behind the scene of every match. You may or may not have heard about feints in boxing, but it is one of the essential techniques of boxing.
Feint or fake can be used for various purposes. It can be used to pressure your opponent mentally, control the fight, or just to have him make a mistake that you can take advantage of.
Can You Fake a Kick?
Since it is boxing, you have to use your hand to hit your opponent. But is it possible to fake a kick? To find the answer, here are facts that I found from my research. First of all, it is not illegal to fake a kick.
Several things are banned in boxing. Such as kick, head butts, biting, or wrestling. These are all illegal moves. Making an illegal move can cost you points or it can go as far as disqualification.
Even if you can’t use your leg to kick your opponent, you can certainly use them to faint or fake a kick. Although it is rare to see a professional boxer using a fake kick to bait his opponent, it can be great at times. As long as you don’t hit your kick you are not violating any rules.
How to Feint?
Some consider it as the forgotten technique of boxing. It is less and less seen these days. The goal of feints or fakes is to make your opponent commit more than you do. Feint can be a kick or a punch.
Body Feint
This feint is used to hit the head. In this, you go for the body with your punch then quickly follow up with a head punch. You have to remember that the body is not the target here. Your target is the head. So it does not matter if your opponent blocks the body punch or not.
Air Punch Feint
The idea here is not to hit your opponent the first time. You can go for the head or body in this type. Don’t commit to hitting your opponent. Just hit the air in front of them then when your opponent tries to block that, hit their exposed part.
Remember to not commit and go all the way with your punch or else you will miss your chance to hit your opponent and he will recover. You can also try to punch the air on one side to follow up on the other side for an easy hit.
Little Movement and Noise Feint
At the highest level of boxing, every single little detail matters. You can use that little detail to your advantage and create a feint. A little movement like twitching your gloves or changing the sound or your breath is sometimes enough to create a feint.
It will only work on the highest level of boxing but if it works it can be very effective as you don’t need to make any commitment and get a hit on your opponent.
Good Feint Vs Bad Feint
A good feint always takes less commitment. The less commitment you need the better is your feint as you can more easily follow up with a real hit if you have less commitment in your feint.
On the other hand, a bad feint can easily backfire. If you commit to your feint too much or don’t able to execute the feint properly, we will become vulnerable to hit and your opponent can get an easy hit on you instead.
As you do more boxing, you will gain more experience. A master boxer can find out his opponent’s sensitive area more easily and exploit that. Sometimes they can even see through your feint attacks. So you have to be very careful when executing a feint.
Conclusion
Feints or fakes are like a double edge sword. If used properly, it can give you a big advantage. At the same time, if used poorly, it will leave you very vulnerable to your opponent’s attack.
Even if the use of feint is decreasing, it is a good strategy to give you an advantage when it counts. So mastering feint is going to do you more good than bad.
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