Your Preference?

If you were to get into a fight, do you watch the persons eyes, shoulders or what? What do you watch? What gives away their movment?

when rolling jiu jitsu (yes actual fighting is slighty different, but it is also very similar) I find myself looking at their upper chest/core area and relying on peripheral vision to see what the appendages are doing. Same goes for the Muay Thai fighters i talk to at my gym.

The way I train you never look at a fighter's eyes. Your eyes should be locked on their center of gravity, right about where their belly button is.

There are a few reasons for this:

a) you avoid feints this way... a fighter can feint you with his eyes while his body moves a different direction

b) a fighter can't move anywhere without moving his core, so you always see one of the first sections of the body to move (watch professional basketball players defend on the perimeter against a fast guy - if they're decent defenders at all, they'll be looking right at the player's core so they can move their feet to stay in front of him as quickly as possible)

c) it allows you to stay calmer - staring a fighter in the eyes can lead to intimidation

d) if your fighter has good feet and you're staring him in the eyes, he'll shred your thighs up in no time, it's very hard to see low kicks

Keeping your eyes a little lower also helps you keep your chin tucked, decreasing the chance you'll get knocked out by hooks or whatever else gets through your arms. All good points above.

I usually look around the sternum.

TUF had a perfect example of an eye feint if you caught the Apr.22 episode.

I just realized that this post is spam. Look at the links in his signature. Spammers are getting more clever these days. I've seen this kind of search engine spam on other forums. They're posted by real people so they're harder to spot, and the spam is in the sigline.

Doh!

I didn't look at the first post that carefully...

I kept the topic although banned and removed the user's signature. It did generate what seemed to be good discussion so ... carry on!

Brilliant, thanks!

Hey,

I general don't look at anything but allow my peripheral vision to come into working more.

Instead of watching my opponent I sort of "feel" where they are and once I'm close enough I can use body heat and where parts of their body are touching mine to know where they are and how they are standing. In this way I can turn around and still know where they are and feel if they are moving in a particular direction. It's also easier to know my surroundings incase I want to use a rock on them or throw them at something.