Reading Your Opponent: How To Spot Subtle Tells And Patterns During A Fight

Becoming a great fighter in martial arts requires more than strength, speed, or endurance—you must also be smart. While most martial artists, typically aren’t viewed as the most cerebral members of society, There are clear signs of how vital intelligence is to dominate at the highest levels of combat sports.

Learning to read your opponents gives you a considerable advantage in combat, often leaving opponents frustrated as they wonder if you have psychic powers. It’s one of those skills you have to master if you plan to compete professionally. One key to this is spotting tells and patterns during fights. Here’s a step-by-step breakdown of how to sharpen your ability to predict movements and exploit the openings they create:

Tune In On Opponents

You need to learn to pay attention to everything your opponents do during fights, not just their strikes, but even their posture and body language. A fight is like a game of poker, and your opponent’s body language can be the ace that wins you the pot. The trick to mastering how to read opponents is learning to shuffle through the noise. Experienced opponents will always try to use false body language to lure you into traps, so you don’t want to react to everything they do.

1) Watch Their Hands And Feet

The hands and feet are where the action begins during fights, so pay attention to them. If your opponent lowers one of their hands, that might signify an incoming strike. For example, inexperienced boxers sometimes drop their rear hand before throwing crosses, while a Muay Thai fighter leaning back could be preparing to throw a teep.

Also, pay attention to your opponents’ foot positioning, especially regarding the centerline. An opponent moving off the centerline could be angling for a power shot. A fighter’s feet are often their loudest tell.

2) Study Their Breathing

What does that have to do with anything, you wonder? Fatigue appears in a person’s breathing patterns before it impacts their output. Heavy breathing could be a cue for you to turn up your pressure and overwhelm the opponent with a fast pace.

Some fighters also have the terrible habit of holding their breath as they prepare to launch a combination. Make them pay for this tell by stepping off the centerline and landing hard counters.

3) Notice Their Favorite Combos

Every fighter has their go-to combination, so learn to spot these patterns early on during contests. Don’t just react to your opponent’s favorite techniques once you notice a pattern; instead, use that knowledge to set traps by baiting them into using the same combinations again and exploit the openings created.

Understand Their Strategy

Once you’ve learned to spot a few tells, the next step is figuring out how to capitalize on them.

1) Determine Their Strengths

Every fighter wants to play to their strengths, so they use that knowledge to disrupt their game plans. Are you facing a submission specialist at an MMA event? There’s a good chance their game plan is to take you down and finish you.

Look for patterns in their takedown approach and use that to keep yourself out of their grasp.

2) Identify Their Weaknesses

Most fighters have weaknesses that can be easily identified, so pay attention to things they struggle with during your match. For example, your opponent might drop their hands whenever they throw a lead hook. You can capitalize on that weakness by ducking under their hook and responding with another hook. That’s what WBA lightweight World Champion Gervonta “Tank” Davis did to Ryan Garcia during their hyped bout.

3) Adapt To Their Adjustments

One of the most significant attributes that separates the best fighters is their ability to adapt mid-fight. Floyd Mayweather is one of the best examples of this. While his 50-0 professional boxing record might fool you into thinking he didn’t face much adversity inside the ring, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Fighters like Shane Mosley and Marcos Maidana were able to exploit weaknesses in Mayweather’s seemingly impregnable defense and land hard blows that would have left lesser fighters unconscious. The problem for these guys was they could only land these clean, hard punches once as Mayweather instantly fixed whatever weaknesses led up to the openings.

Good fighters adjust mid-fight, so don’t expect to be able to exploit a weakness all night long. For example, your opponent might start checking your leg kicks after you’ve landed a few powerful ones.

Use Tells To Take Control

Use everything you learned from reading your opponent like a book to turn the fight’s momentum in your favor. Confidence is crucial here, so trust your observations and commit to your counters.

1) Test The Waters With Feints

Feints are a helpful tool to gauge reactions during fights. For example, you can feint a jab to see how your opponent reacts. If they move their hand forward to parry it, that leaves the side of their parrying hand open to hooks.

Feints also help to disguise your true intentions, making it more challenging for opponents to read your patterns.

2) Capitalize On Predictability

Use patterns to your advantage once you spot them. Remember, you don’t always get to exploit them for the rest of the contest. For example, an opponent retreating straight back after exchanges often means you can catch them with a lunging strike as they move away.

3) Stay Calm Under Pressure

Don’t panic when your opponent turns on the heat during contests. Staying calm allows you to see their tells even if you’re getting overwhelmed. Chaos creates openings, so look for gaps in your opponent’s defense that you can exploit whenever you’re getting pressured with strikes.

Put It All Together

Reading your opponent is like solving a puzzle during a fight. It requires sharp observational skills, quick thinking, and the confidence to act on the information you’ve gathered.

You can turn any matchup in your favor by recognizing your opponent’s patterns, decoding their strategy, and exploiting their tells.

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