This question seems counter-intuitive at first thought. Like, why would you want to catch a punch with your forehead? Is that not what the assailant was aiming for in the first place?
We are going to be addressing that in this short article.
The truth is that there is an excellent argument for catching a punch with the forehead.
Whether you know this or not: the forehead is one of the hardest parts of the head.
If you watch a lot of professional fights in MMA, very rarely do you see fighters aiming for the forehead.
Instead, they’d go for the face and the sides. Not directly onto the forehead.
In a bare-knuckle fight, it is very easy to break your hand when you hit someone’s forehead directly.
On the first day of martial arts class, you are taught to protect the vulnerable parts of your head, like the temple, the eyes, the face, the jaws, and the neck. But the forehead is left relatively exposed.
Floyd Mayweather protecting temples and leaving the forehead relatively exposed
Furthermore, while there is no real technique to effectively block a punch with your forehead, there is a theory that it reduces the acceleration of the punch and the impact it would ordinarily have on your brain compared to when you just leave your head to be passively hit.
Generally, you do not want to be hit directly in the face. However, when you find yourself in that position where you cannot prevent it, the general rule is “hit hard with soft; soft with hard.”
This means that while the noise of a boxer hitting a dummy bag in the gym can be terrifying, there is a reason why they are not hitting the wall.
The punching bag is soft relative to the hand, and the wall is hard relative to our knuckles.
Even professional boxers can have their hands broken if they do not get the right technique, or if they use the right technique to hit the wrong part.
There is, however, a downside to taking a punch straight to the forehead.
The person can hit you hard enough to break your forehead and the person’s knuckles. So, you want to use this as a last resort when you do not have any time to get your head out of the way.
Finally, and importantly, the impact on the head doesn’t just disappear. You might have broken the other person’s hand, but now you might be concussed, which to a fighter is the worst form of defeat.
Avoid punching the forehead, instead, aim for the chin, temple, nose, etc. to avoid breaking your hand
