Have you ever seen a little guy try to attack a big guy and get held by the head by the bigger guy? The little fella is swinging wildly with no success. This scenario describes the definite advantage to understanding range in a fight.

In my book, You Can’t Beat Me, I go into much more detail about range than I will here, but you will get the point. There are five ranges to all fighting. The furthest is weapons, then kicking, then boxing, trapping and finally grappling. Weapons range can be infinite in distance. This range is where I can not touch you with any part of my body and need a stick, gun, missile, or whatever to actually strike you.  The kicking range is the range that I can efficiently strike you with my leg.

The boxing range is the reach of my arms which allow for powerful fists to impose their will. The trapping range can best be described if you are familiar with old Kung Fu movies. When the two fighters were toe to toe and did all the funky hand attacks, blocks and counter-attacks.  This is trapping, too far for wrestling/grappling and too close for boxing. Finally, grappling is the body to body fighting and most often this is on the ground.

Every experienced fighter understands this concept, and he bases his entire strategy around this. I have quick powerful kicks that I know can do some damage.  However, I am not so confident in my grappling abilities.  To compensate for this while in a fight, I try to keep you in my kicking range.  Whichever fighter dominates the range game usually wins the fight.  This is why boxing and MMA announcers make such a big deal over the reach one fighter possesses.  A couple of inches can keep the opponent out of striking range and force him into a defensive posture.

Throughout the course of a fight almost all of these ranges are exploited. When an MMA battle begins the fighters are out of reach and are in the weapon range.  See if you can spot the others. Which is your favorite?

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