the shoulder roll

[Yuzo]

the shoulder roll has nothing to do with the shoulder. theres only one moving part in the entire motion: your back hip. using your back hip as a ball hinge joint you can twist your torso and swivel away from an oncoming right hand. thats the shoulder roll. but whats a right hand?

punches are just shapes moving through space. try to picture a right hand traveling on an axis thats invisibly connected to your head and continues to extend forever.



when you shoulder roll a right hand you're not trying to block the punch with your shoulder. you're trying to move your head off that axis.



your head is simply a point on an axis that continues to extend forever and the shoulder roll is just a movement we make to break away from that coordinate in space where any contact on the shoulder is actually totally incidental to that movement.



to shoulder roll a right hand: dip and twist on your back hip, your front shoulder will move up and swivel ahead of your back shoulder, and concurrently your back shoulder will move down and swivel behind your front shoulder, creating a break away action.

[Yuzo]

when you shoulder roll a right hand, the right hand should fully extend, creating a triangular wedge shape where his right elbow and your front shoulder meet forming a peak, with the end of his fist and your back shoulder forming its base.



when you shoulder roll a right hand, you are using one kind of shape, that is, his right hand, to join with you to create a kind of super shape where a and b are your shoulders, h is your head, r is his right hand, and c is the end of his fist.



thats an overhead view of all the parts of the shoulder roll and thats the shape you always want to create when you shoulder roll a right hand. try to rotate that shape around in your head. when you shoulder roll you're not just trying to make a right hand miss. you're trying to create a shape. punches are just shapes that you can join and build into more shapes and its the marriage of these shapes that make you hard to hit.

[margaret thatcher]

the shoulder roll is a super advanced move that even world class boxers mess up badly. pulling back to evade and counter shots here and there is one thing, but very very few can make the shoulder roll work as a major part of their style

[Yuzo]

the shoulder roll is a super advanced move that even world class boxers mess up badly. pulling back to evade and counter shots here and there is one thing, but very very few can make the shoulder roll work as a major part of their style

i think that at one point there was a time in boxing when everybody had a shoulder roll. why was it easy to do then, but hard to do now?