We aren’t all built the same, which means we can’t all employ the same strategies when we spar. I’m shorter than most of the people I fight, so I have to use different tactics than someone taller. My former master was especially good at encouraging me to fight to my body’s strengths, close the distance, and take advantage of using punches and certain kicks. Velin Draogev offers tips and tricks for fighting opponents with longer reach. Read more about Velin’s background and how to access his writing at the end of the article.
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One of the most intimidating situations in martial arts is facing a taller opponent. Using their long reach, they can keep you at bay as you struggle to get in range to throw a counterattack.
But while your taller opponent definitely has an advantage, you shouldn’t count yourself out of it just yet! Today, we’ll explore different ways of dealing with a taller opponent. The focus is going to be on training and sparring, but these tactics can also serve you well when it comes to self-defense.
Overall Strategy
Even though your opponent has the reach advantage, that doesn’t mean they should be the ones controlling the fight! The key to fighting a taller opponent is footwork.
Your overall strategy should be to constantly keep them on their toes and unable to land a straight hit. As you’re doing that, you should constantly work to make the ring smaller so that you can close the gap where their reach advantage is nullified.
Becoming a Smaller Target
Our first instinct when fighting a taller opponent is to try to match their reach – extend our arms as far as they can go, try to keep them at bay with our kicks… But this is a losing game.
As counter-intuitive as it sounds, the first thing you should do when your opponent has a longer reach is to lower your stance and tighten your guard. Why? Because you’ll become a smaller target, which makes you harder to hit and easier to defend. Combine that with always being on the move, and your opponent will have a much harder time hitting you.
By decreasing their chances of hitting you, they’ll gradually get less and less careful and they’ll inevitably start to over-extend in an effort to reach you, giving you more and more chances of getting close, where their reach advantage is nullified.
Dealing with Kicks
Dealing with the kicks of a taller opponent is much more frustrating than dealing with their punches. Not only are kicks much stronger than punches, but the threat of them can make the distance to your opponent seem much more scary! But fear not! It can actually be a good thing if your taller opponent is mainly relying on kicks to keep you at bay.
This is because blocking your opponent’s kicks leaves them much more vulnerable than blocking their punches – it’s easy for them to retract an unsuccessful punch, but a blocked kick very often leaves them off-balance, which makes it much easier for you to get in close.
So, the most important thing when fighting a taller opponent is to be very aware of the range you’re in and what kicks they can throw at that range. At long range, the most commonly used kick is the front kick (Mae Geri with the front leg in Karate, Thip in Muay Thai, etc.). So you can expect a taller opponent to constantly be throwing it to make your life miserable.
At first, you should keep your distance and bait them into throwing their front kick. What you’re after in this initial stage is information – you want to get a feel for how far their kick can reach. Once you’ve got that down, you can start feinting with a step forward.
After they commit to a front kick, then you can block it by scooping their foot from the bottom, parry it with your shin, or side-step and close the distance into punching range.
You just need to be careful of Mavashi-type side kicks and low kicks. But if you stay on your toes and you’re ready for it, it shouldn’t be a problem.
Moving Around and Staying off the Center Line
Since your opponent has a longer reach than you, it’s vital for you to stay off of their center line. If you try to move straight in, you’ll always run into their longer kicks and punches. This is because almost every single type of attack – whether it’s a punch or a kick – requires you to have your hips facing your opponent.
So, by staying off the center line you’ll force your opponent to constantly have to reposition so that they can actually hit you.
The best way to do this in practice is to circle around your opponent’s leading hand (e.g. if both of you are orthodox, you should be circling to your left). Naturally, they’ll try to match your movement and circle in the same direction. This gives you a brief moment of safety while your opponent is trying to get a better angle on you.
Of course, you can keep repositioning and once again force them to match your movement. This can often lead to a stalemate where both of you are moving around, trying to get a better angle on each other.
But if you do this for long enough, your opponent will probably come out on top, since they have the superior reach.
So, you need to know how to close the gap between you..
Closing the Gap
The best way you to get out of this stalemate and eke out an advantage is to cut the distance with an attack. Sometimes, you can do it with footwork alone, but if your opponent is more advanced, they’re definitely not going to let you do that. They can already hit you while keeping a safe distance, so it’s going to be easy for them to keep up with your footwork.
But if they have to defend against an attack, then it’s much more difficult for them to maintain that safe distance. If you’re in kicking range, then you’ve got a couple of options.
One way is to do a flying kick, similar to the gap-closer done in Jeet Kune Do where you do a Thip or front leg Mae Geri while you extend your lead hand forward at 45 degrees, and keep your back hand at the level of your lead elbow. Remember to raise your knee high in case you need to defend against your opponent’s kicks.
A less aggressive option is to move in with a Thai Step or a Muay Thai Shin Block where you feint a front kick and jump in with your knee held high and your guard up.
The idea of both techniques is to stay defended against both punches and kicks as you move in closer.
If you’re in punching range, then the best way to get closer is to jab your way forward. Since your opponent has a longer reach than you, initially your punches aren’t going to land, but at this point, you don’t need them to.
What you’re really after is to have your opponent respond with jabs of their own and try to move out of your range. Once they start moving back, you’ll want to stay off their center line and start closing the distance by moving diagonally toward them. Since you’re off their center line, your opponent will naturally start to turn toward you so they can have a clear shot, and this is exactly what you want.
Because as they’re turning, their backwards movement isn’t going to be as swift as it was before. And if they’re making big steps backwards, then they’re making the ring smaller and smaller for themselves, leaving them less and less room to keep you at a distance.
The important thing here is to make sure that you’re moving opposite the direction in which they’re turning. That way you’ll ensure that the distance between you is always getting smaller.
Throwing Believable Feints
Almost every technique I’ve mentioned up until this point has included feinting in one way or another. And as a shorter fighter, it’s definitely a vital skill.
So, you really need to practice how to sell your feints. If you’re feinting a stiff jab, make sure you twist your hip so that your opponent really thinks you’re going to commit. When you’re feinting a push kick with your back foot, really lift your knee up and sell the fact that you’re going to pivot your front foot so that you can put your weight behind the kick.
A common problem people have when feinting like that is that they have a difficult time capitalizing on their successful feint – their opponent has bought it and they’ve left an opening, but you’re too slow in transitioning your feint to a different strike or a step forward.
The best way to avoid this is to make sure that your stance is good. Make sure you’re staying low and you have your feet light and mobile. That way you can very naturally turn your feints into actual attacks.
Another good option is to have ready-made techniques for your feints. For example, if you’re feinting a push kick with your front or back leg, it’s really easy to transition it into one of the two gap-closing techniques I talked about above.
Just make sure you’re not repeating the same techniques over and over, because people are eventually going to wise up to them.
Attacking the Limbs
This idea comes from Eskrima – the Filipino martial art, and their idea of “defanging the snake”.
These arts are based on working with various weapons – knives, swords, sticks, etc. In fact, in Filipino martial arts you first start working with weapons, and only then do you transition into empty hands, where almost all of the techniques are based on the weapon techniques.
One of the principles when it comes to weapons is to attack what you can reach (something we see in fencing, as well). For example, let’s take an opponent who’s holding you at bay by constantly thrusting forward with their sword. You can’t reach their body without the danger of getting stabbed.
You could try to time your footwork, but it’s going to be dangerous. So, the best thing to do is to attack what you can reach – their hand! In Filipino martial arts, this technique is called “Gunting”, meaning scissors, and it’s used when working with edged weapons, blunt weapons and empty hands.
It essentially consists of stopping your opponent’s attacking limb from one side and attacking it from the other in a scissor-like motion. This video gives you a nice overview of the technique against punches, but there are variants against kicks, as well.
Speaking from experience, when you do this right, it can really hurt. So, be careful when you do it with your training partners.
Conclusion
So, there you have it! Without a doubt, fighting a taller opponent is very challenging. But if you have the right mindset and use appropriate tactics, it’s absolutely possible. As long as you work on your stance and footwork and your fundamentals are solid, I’m sure these tactics are going to help you!
This article was a collaboration with Velin Dragoev from keenfighter.com. Velin has been practising martial arts for over 19 years. He trains Wing Chun, Eskrima, Boxing, Jeet Kune Do, BJJ, and many others, and he loves exploring different martial arts systems and looking for the similarities between them
