How to block punches by keeping a strong, tight guard. A mistake people will always make when trying to block punches is they will keep their hands far in front of their face. What really happens is punches will easily slice through the guard and hit them in the face.
The best approach is to keep your hands close to your face and right before you are struck – touch your face with your guard. Have your chin tucked in and use the shoulders to help protect your chin.
Beginners are very worried about their hands impacting their face – but with gloves on the padding will help soften the blow. Remember – it hurts a lot more to be punched in the face than to have your own hand touch your face and be impacted.
This strategy will help block punches that come straight at you – but what about hooks. Blocking hooks require you to raise the arm slightly so that your hand is covering the temple region of your head. The moment you are finished blocking a hook – bring the arm down again. By having your arm up you are also exposing the sides of your body.
Again – do not put your arm out to block hooks. Keep your arms and hands close to your body and head.
Please note there are other boxing defensive skills. For example this video does not cover evasion techniques which is used to evade / dodge punches with slips, weaves and footwork movement to get out of range or change angles. I will be introducing those advanced techniques later, in the boxing combination videos.