Today, we are going to talk about second version of the right hand. It’s called the Short Right or The Short Right Hand. I love this move. I learned this from my old boxing coach. It’s kind of an old technique if you will from the 30s.
How To Throw The “Short Right” in Self-Defense
The short right is a very powerful right hand. I love it personally. It doesn’t just add to your list of techniques, it helps you to win fights also. Sometime, a short right hand is all you need to knock your opponent out.
Principle One: Catch Your Target At About A Quarter Extension
Maybe the best way to explain this is in contrast to the standard right hand. With the regular right hand you’re going to catch your target at about three quarters extension. Obviously you don’t hit it at full. You want to catch it about three quarters extension on a regular right hand. That gives you a quarter left of penetration. So you want to hit in about three quarters of the way out. If I hit with a regular right hand, I’m about three quarters extended and I’ve got room to extend into that target. That’s the standard right hand.
With the short right hand, it’s different. You catch him at about a quarter extension. So, it’s very close. If I hit, my fist hardly moves at all. As a matter of fact, Mike Tyson’s old boxing coach Kevin Rooney called this a 6 inch punch. With the short right hand, your arm doesn’t move very much. You will feel it like a stone, like a statue arm. The arm turns out to be big piece of stone. And what does the majority of the work is the step and the twist.

Principle Two: Stay Closer To Your Target
With the short right hand, you’ve got to be a little bit closer. I can’t throw a short right hand from far away. So what you need to do to is when you get your opportunity you gonna step and close and catch it right there.
I tell students to take position in way as if they are going to fall on the back. Obviously you don’t want to really fall and lose your balance. But the idea here is to put all of your weight and effort and energy into this really tight punch. You’ve got to fall on the back . But land with your fist on his jaw. Give it a really tight punch and then stab it back. So that’s the short right hand.

More About The Short Right Hand
So, the short right hand is just a little bit tighter than the standard right. Like I said, I love it. I feel like I can really hit hard with the short right hand, harder than I can with with a standard. So, this is a good tool to have in your toolbox . Just a short choppy motion; all the body mechanics are the same as compared to the standard right. And you get the drag, step, twist, and all that stuff. That’s all the same. So, practice “short right hand” and add that to your toolbox.
Summary: Things We Learned
To summarize, we learned pretty basic stuffs about the short right hand. The synopsis are given below:
- In standard right hand, you catch your target at about three quarters extension. In short right, you catch your target at about a quarter extension.
- When you throw a short right, step and twist and get closer to your target.