In Classical Greece, 500 to 350 B.C., a form of boxing known as ‘highhandedness’ came into vogue. This was a type of boxing that relied on checking, parrying, and stopping the opponent’s hands with your own hands, and was done with nothing but light soft leather hand-straps.
Also at this time other factors where intertwined with the rise of this school of boxing, which seems to have centered on Athens, which fielded more successful pankratiasts [MMA fighters] than boxers.
1. Finger thrusts to the eyes were permitted in boxing, though gouging was not.
2. Boxers were having much success in the pankratian, more so than wrestlers.
3. Finger breaking was permitted, and formed the basis for the successful career of one wrestler and one apparently terrifying pankratiast.
4. Handball coaches—with handball then being a leisure activity, not a sport—were employed in gyms and wrestling schools as coordination coaches for fighters.
Point #4 has its analogy in Oscar De Lahoya’s ping-pong ball training from the 1990s. While researching The Broken Dance my partner and I decided to experiment with tennis and lacrosse balls. From my reading I had gleaned that this was a cooperative partner activity, not a competitive one, and not requiring a wall; in other words more like playing catch or volley ball.
Keeping highhanded boxing methods in mind from the same period we developed a game that might serve as a hand checking drill for MMA fighters and stick fighters. Play catch with two tennis balls from 1 to 3 paces away. Hold the ball in the palm of a cupped hand, with your fingers and thumb mutually supporting like a gung fu practitioner would use, not gripping. Now play catch without deploying the thumb as an opposing digit but in line. Try that and it will develop your eye-hand coordination and digit saving hand discipline that will aid your use of the bare or lightly gloved hand for parrying, catching, and stopping fists and sticks.
Chuck and I noticed an immediate reduction in thumb injuries when boxing with thumbless gloves and a reduction in bruising to the interior of the fingers and thumb when working disarms and stick catches when stick sparring.
Give it a try and check in here with your own observations. I haven’t worked this drill in some time and plan on starting again soon.
