Footwork is the essential ingredient in hand-to-hand combat, fighting, self-defense, martial arts, however you want to refer to it. If our footwork is bad, our fighting is bad. Like a home we live in, if the foundation is bad, the house falls down.

Our ability to remain effective in fighting, or sparring is built upon the foundation of our footwork. The better our footwork, and movement, the higher the likelihood of success with our striking, blocking, and takedown defense.

We practice the art of Mantis Boxing (螳螂拳), but you can apply this footwork training to Western Boxing, MMA, Kickboxing, San Da, Muay Thai, or a plethora of other stand-up striking arts. Styles like Karate, Kempo, Tae Kwon Do may have to be adapted to integrate this stance.

Let’s Get Started

To begin any instruction on footwork we would be remiss to skip over a detailed explanation of our fighting stance. Lets delve into the basics for our structure and movement when fighting. The following video is also found in the striking course.

Warning: the videos below further below depict the monkey stance as our primary method of moving. This has changed since the videos were shot. If you would like to know more about the various stances and why I stopped teaching the monkey stance as our predominant stance, you can read the following article that covers this topic ad nauseam.

Basic Footwork Training

Use the stance covered above when applying these drills.

Here are the ins and outs of basic footwork training. This is the place to start when learning Mantis Boxing footwork, or movement related to hand-to-hand combat & self-defense.

The primary components of basic footwork in Mantis Boxing are:

• Shuffle Forward

• Shuffle Back

• Circle Left

• Circle Right

• Step Forward

• Step Back

• Change Step

Drill these with a partner, or train them solo to improve your footwork and prepare yourself for Advanced Footwork Training later on down the line.

Solo Drills - here are a few solo drills we use to practice this footwork on our own.

• Chalk line on pavement

• Score a line in the sand at the beach

• Lay a line on the front lawn.

Any of these visual aids help give us a reference point to make the right movements.

Mirror Drill

One skill of the utmost importance when learning footwork is the ability to recognize critical distance without thinking about it. In order to do this we use mirror drill to help ingrain this skill. As with our other basic footwork training, once we accomplish our goal, it is time to move on and leave these drills behind.

Basic Footwork is pivotal in understanding how to move when fighting/sparring. Bad footwork creates vulnerabilities in our game that our opponent can capitalize on. Once we have an understanding of our basic footwork skills, Mirror Drill becomes a great tool to help train fluidity and responsiveness, as well as range sensitivity, and neutral position; where our guard/blocks work best. We are using some newer students to help show this drill - Lauren and Natalie, as it's important to understand that, once you have this down, you dump it and move on to the Advanced Footwork.