Good footwork. The term gets thrown around more than Stephan Bonnar fighting Jon Jones. It’s a vague and ambiguous piece of verbiage that paints an incomplete picture in the same vein as someone having “good jiu jitsu.”
So, what is good footwork? In short, good footwork is the ability to maintain your stance, balance, and ability to utilize offensive techniques while moving around the fighting surface. Over the next few months, I’ll break down the specifics techniques to maintain those goals.
Before getting into the details of movement, we must address the details of proper stance. Body types and fighting style will dictate the exact stance a fighter takes, but all have common threads. We can look at the above picture of Fedor Emelianenko as an example. His legs are just about shoulder-width apart with his lead foot pointed towards his opponent. His back heel lines up with his lead toes and his back foot turns at near a 90 degree angle (the “triangle stance”). He stands on the balls of his feet with his weight equally balanced between his two legs and his knees slightly bent. His elbows are tucked into his sides with his hands up near his face.
Sound footwork will maintain this stance as much as possible.
The basic essence of movement is this: start with the foot closest to the direction you want to move. For an orthodox fighter this means that he will use his lead leg to move forward or to the left and his rear leg to move backwards or to the right. A good visual description can be found at Strictly Business Boxing.
After stepping in a direction, the opposite foot should drag across the mat in the same direction. At no point should a fighter’s feet be closer than in his basic stance. (A fighter who crosses his feet is committing a cardinal sin.) This allows a fighter to throw strikes with correct technique while also providing an avenue to avoid his opponent’s movements and actions.
In the next installment, we’ll take a look at more advanced techniques such as lateral movement and pivots. I’ve also included a couple of relevant videos after the jump.