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By Pinnacle Martial Arts San Antonio
# Your First Punch Will Feel Weird (That's Normal) The first time you throw a jab in a class, your brain and your body will have a brief disagreement. Y...
The first time you throw a jab in a class, your brain and your body will have a brief disagreement. Your brain knows what a punch looks like—you've watched enough UFC or action movies to have a mental image. But your shoulder won't rotate the way you expect. Your feet will be in the wrong spot. Your fist will land soft and crooked against the pad, and you'll think, I'm terrible at this.
You're not terrible. You're just brand new. And there's a real difference.
Striking—punches, kicks, elbows, knees—is one of those skills that looks simple from the outside but has a surprising amount of detail underneath. If you're an adult in San Antonio thinking about starting, especially if you're in your 30s and haven't thrown a punch since middle school, here's a honest walkthrough of what the learning curve actually looks like.
Most beginners obsess over how to punch. That makes sense—it's the exciting part. But your stance is the foundation for everything in striking, and getting it wrong makes every technique harder.
A basic fighting stance puts one foot slightly ahead of the other, knees bent, weight distributed roughly evenly. Your hands come up near your chin, elbows tucked close to your ribs. It should feel a little like you're bracing for something, but relaxed enough that you can move.
The tricky part: staying in your stance while you move. Beginners tend to stand straight up after throwing a punch, or they cross their feet when stepping sideways. Both habits leave you off-balance. In your first few weeks, a good instructor will keep pulling your attention back to your feet and your posture, even when you'd rather be working on combinations. Trust the process—solid footwork makes everything else click faster.
A jab is your lead hand shooting straight out and coming straight back. A cross is your rear hand doing the same thing but with more hip rotation and power. Together, these two punches make up the backbone of striking.
They're also the two techniques you'll drill the most as a beginner, and that repetition is intentional. A clean, fast jab is more useful than a sloppy spinning kick. Fundamentals aren't boring—they're the skills that actually work under pressure.
Here's what "clean" means for a jab:
That last one? Almost nobody does it correctly at first. Dropping your guard while punching is the most common beginner habit, and it's the one your training partners will remind you about constantly.
If you're sitting at a desk most of the day—and in San Antonio's sprawling layout, many of us are commuting and desk-bound for hours—your hips are probably tight. You'll discover this the first time you throw a roundhouse kick.
A basic roundhouse kick pivots on your lead foot, swings your rear leg in an arc, and connects with your shin (not your foot—a common misconception from the movies). The power comes from your hip turning over, almost like you're trying to point your base foot's heel at your target.
For the first few classes, your kick might feel like it stops halfway. Your hip flexors and adductors need time to loosen up and strengthen. Many adults find that after a month or two of regular training, their hip mobility improves noticeably—not just for kicking, but for everyday movement. Getting up off the floor, playing with your kids at Brackenridge Park, even just feeling less stiff after a long day—it all gets easier.
New strikers tend to hold their breath when they punch. This is an instinct, and it works against you. Holding your breath tenses your whole body, slows you down, and drains your gas tank fast.
The fix is exhaling sharply with each strike. You'll hear experienced students making a short "shh" or "tss" sound when they hit pads. That's not for show—it's a deliberate exhale that keeps the body relaxed between movements and maintains a rhythm.
Practice this early. It feels unnatural for the first week or two, then it becomes automatic. Once your breathing and your strikes sync up, combinations start to flow instead of feeling like a series of disconnected movements.
After your first striking class, expect your shoulders to be sore. Keeping your hands up for even 20 minutes is real work for muscles that don't normally operate in that position. Your calves might ache from staying on the balls of your feet. Your core will remind you it exists.
This is all normal and temporary. By your third or fourth class this spring, you'll notice the soreness fading as your body adapts. The key is showing up for that second and third class instead of waiting until the soreness fully disappears—light movement actually helps recovery.
Striking is one of those skills where the gap between week one and week eight feels enormous. The technique that frustrated you on a Tuesday will start making sense by the end of the month. Your body is learning a new language, and every class adds vocabulary.