Straights first, circulars second
It is one of the few things federations that agree on almost nothing converge on, and say out loud: you teach the straight punches first — the jab above all, then the rear straight — and only afterwards the circular punches, hooks then uppercuts. Three independent sources set it down.
- FFBoxe built it into the structure of its grades: the White Glove (Gant Blanc) is the straight-punch grade, the Yellow Glove (Gant Jaune) the circular-punch grade. The order of the belts is the teaching order.
- Boxing Canada (NCCP coach education) writes that the jab "and the associated defences, should be taught first, and emphasized throughout the initiation stage," and warns that "the premature discovery of the rear hand's hitting power is one of the biggest handicaps for a learning boxer." Bring the rear hand out too soon and you damage the learning.
- AIBA (now IBA, stripped of Olympic recognition — a legacy reference, never a governing authority in force) teaches "first … in the standing position then with movements without partners."
None of this is a matter of taste: it is a teaching sequence the federations impose on their own progressions. A session plan that puts the uppercut before the jab runs the order backwards from the people who wrote it.
The FFBoxe colour-glove grades
FFBoxe does not file its punches in a glossary: it distributes them across grades, the "Gants de couleur" (G2C), and each grade carries a whole block of striking. It is the sharpest punch taxonomy in the corpus.
| Grade | The striking block the grade carries |
|---|---|
| Gant Blanc White Glove — the entry grade | The straight punches. The whole grade turns on the jab and the rear straight — conditioning drills, rhythm ladder, boxing square, shadow and apparatus work, all built on the straight lines. |
| Gant Jaune Yellow Glove | The circular punches: hooks and uppercuts. The next grade opens the curved trajectories only once the straights are in place. |
| Gant Orange Orange Glove | The means of defence — slips, pull-backs, parries — plus counter-attack and linking. This is the grade where the boxer learns to defend and then reply, not only to strike. |
The mechanics, punch by punch
England Boxing reasons first in terms of the powerline. For the straights, you "drive from the floor, rotate around the central axis, firing a relaxed arm," and the powerline is "a straight line through the target." For the hooks, it is "fast rotation of the hips" and the powerline is "an arc." For the uppercuts, it is "an upward surge of the hip and trunk." Every point of mechanics follows from that.
| Punch | The load-bearing teaching point, as England Boxing prints it |
|---|---|
| Jab to the head lead straight | "The most important punch … the primary range finder": a rapid quarter rotation of the hips, extend a relaxed arm accelerating through the movement. Rotate the wrist 90° at the last moment before contact, palm facing the floor. Chin down, looking through the eyebrows. |
| Jab to the body | Bend the knees, not the waist; slight hip turn; tuck the chin into the shoulder; rear hand at the side of the chin. |
| Rear-hand straight the cross | Drive off the rear foot; explosive hip-and-shoulder rotation using the forward side as a hinge; weight shifts to the front foot; the forearm rotates knuckles up; the lead hand stays high. Boxing Canada's "straight power punch" agrees — and warns against discovering it too soon. |
| Lead & rear hook short / medium / long | Turn the front toe and raise the heel; the arm comes up to 90°, level with the shoulder; rapid hip rotation. "The punch needs to be thrown from where the hand is and not drawn back" — drawing it back telegraphs, and that is the main fault. Long-range hook: more than 90° at the elbow; short-range: less than 90°. |
| Lead & rear uppercut | Wrist turned so the palm faces inward; a slight knee bend, then extend the leg and lift the heel to drive upward; forearm vertical. "Driving across rather than upwards" is the fault to correct. |
SwissBoxing files the same punches in its own technical taxonomy: Geraden (straights, linear) · Haken (hooks, circular, arm at ≈ 90°, fist, elbow and shoulder on one line) · Aufwärtshaken / Uppercuts (uppercuts, "screw-shaped"). On that last one the Swiss syllabus is blunt: "der schwierigste Schlag" — the hardest punch. One more reason to keep it for last.
Boxing Canada’s five-step progression
For the straight punch, Boxing Canada (NCCP) prints a five-step teaching progression whose arc the dossier records as solo → bag → partner-catch → pads. It is the federation's way of raising the contact one notch at a time, without ever aiming at a body or a head with a beginner.
- Solo, no target. The straight is broken into parts — the "pistons" part-progression: the punch is built in the air before it meets anything.
- On the bag. The punch meets a mass, never a partner.
- Partner-catch. The partner receives the jab on "the open palm of their back hand" — "keep the forearm rigid … do not try to reach for the jab." The punch lands on a gloved palm, not a face or a torso.
- On the pads. The coach presents the target and the movement.
Two guardrails the source holds throughout: youth gloves weigh 8 or 10 oz, and — this is the principle of its seven-step defence progression — "the head must be completely excluded from the target area" until the defence is stable, the head reintroduced only later, at controlled speed. So with a child the straight is trained on the bag, in shadow and on the gloved palm — not on the partner.
Bags and pads: which tool for which punch
Punches are not trained on just anything. England Boxing publishes an equipment map with its own caveats — and two pieces of kit are named explicitly for the circular punches.
| Equipment (England Boxing's term) | Use and caveat, as printed |
|---|---|
| angle bag | "The correct shape for uppercuts and angled hooks." |
| maize ball | "Excellent for developing hooks and uppercuts … some benefit for developing timing and distance judgement." |
| 3-in-1 bag / straight bag | General. |
| floor-to-ceiling ball | Reflex and timing — but "stifles footwork." |
| wall pads | In-and-out footwork and angle changes. |
| speed ball | "Questionable value in the amateur gym." |
On the pads, England Boxing prints the basic positions: straight shots land on the right pad at nose height, palm toward the boxer; hooks and uppercuts at 45°. Padwork comes in five types — Set Technique, General, Tactical, Sharpening, Conditioning — in one-minute rounds, 30 seconds' rest. And the source lists its "padwork crimes": an unrealistic target, static feet, catching punches with the pad, offering no counters.
On duration, England Boxing puts numbers on its bag rounds: 3 × 3 min for the senior open class, 3 × 1½ min at "schoolboy" level, with a one-minute gap; as an interval variant, 1 min work / 30 s rest, or 30 s / 15 s. The rounds are always three — only the length moves with age.
What age lets a punch land on
On the bag and in shadow, a straight or a hook has no age: it meets canvas. It is the moment a punch lands on a partner that the federations put up a gate — and they do not put it up at the same age. A club that commits to a limit has to name the federation whose limit it is applying.
| Federation | What a punch may land on, and from what age |
|---|---|
| FFBoxe | Boxe Éducative Assaut = the touch only, from age 6: "favour the touch exclusively, without seeking to land firm blows." The front and side of the head are a legal touch target — but no power, no KO. Full-contact bouts with the KO (BA) open only at Minime (~12-13). |
| SwissBoxing / J+S | Injury-prevention Merkblatt: "bis mindestens 8 Jahre ein absolutes Verbot von Kopftreffern" (until at least age 8, an absolute ban on head strikes), with torso and shoulder touches kept soft; "bis mindestens 15 Jahre ein Kopfschutz mit Jochbeinschutz" (until at least 15, a headguard with cheekbone protection). The ladder: fitness and light-contact from 8; Olympic / amateur boxing, hard blows allowed, from 13. |
| England Boxing | Printed age table: non-contact at 10/11, then skill bouts at 11/15; competitive bouts open only from 15. |
| Boxing Canada | Youth gloves 8-10 oz; "the head must be completely excluded from the target area" until the defence is stable. With a young boxer the straight lands on the partner's gloved palm, never the face or the torso. |
The ages do not average out: FFBoxe opens the touch at 6, Switzerland allows hard head blows only at 13, England reserves the bout for 15+. These are distinct federation positions, to be cited as they stand — the credibility is precisely in not flattening them.
Sources
FFBoxe — Ateliers and Livrets explicatifs for Gant Blanc, Gant Jaune, Gant Orange (the G2C "colour gloves"); BEA / BA regulations · England Boxing — Level 2 Coaching Handbook (2019), §9 punch technique and powerlines, §11 hitting equipment, §19 padwork, §18 sparring ladder · Boxing Canada (NCCP) — Instruction-Beginners Reference Manual (2024) and Workbook, §5 straight punches and progression, §6.3 the "head-excluded" defence progression · SwissBoxing — Box-Technik (the Geraden / Haken / Aufwärtshaken taxonomy) and the Lehrmittel "Light-Contact Boxing" (BASPO / mobilesport.ch) · J+S — injury-prevention Merkblatt (ban on head strikes before 8, cheekbone headguard before 15) · AIBA — Coaches Manual (2019), the international body since stripped of Olympic recognition, cited as a legacy reference and never as a governing authority. Boxing has no single authority: where the federations diverge, the positions are printed side by side, each one named. Content verified August 2026.
help.boxing.straights-hooks-and-uppercuts