The Way of Least Resistance

Introduction Making a fist is one of the most central and important, yet insufficiently understood, basics of the martial arts. So how should you make a fist? The first thing you should do is have a tight grip. I think that much is self-evident. I often watch boxers and other combat sports fighters "air boxing" without gloves and notice that their hands are lightly clenched, if not open. These fighters are used to having their hands strapped and then placed into protective gloves. If you're going to fight ungloved don't, I repeat don't , think you can get away with this. It might feel fluid and relaxed. It might even feel "natural" (the strapping forces your hands open to some extent, so might find a fully clenched fist "odd"). But it is also very dangerous to you, as I'll discuss in a minute. There is more to making a fist than simply clenching it. To begin with, you need to learn how to cultivate a clenched fist that doesn't ...

Too often I've heard the lament that clenching your fists causes undue stiffness in the arms. This stiffness is seen as detrimental to martial techniques. After all, most of us know that if you tense a particular muscle it is hard to move it - a situation often likened to "driving a car with the brakes on". The perceived "stiffness" resulting from clenched fists has resulted in a number of "fixes": In my own beloved internal arts , there are many who suggest training with absolutely no tension at all in the fist. Then there are those who suggest (quite rightly) that this is impractical, so they propose a lesser tension in the fist - enough to "hold, but not squash, a fly" being a common example. Last, there are those who suggest (quite rightly) that this too is impractical (since you will smash your fingers with light tension almost as easily as you will when your hand is not tensed at all). So they suggest that you should tense, but onl...