15 Final

"Ring!"

Ray left the shop with a plastic bag holding the newly purchased items.

"Ray let's head home quickly and workout."

'Okay.'

Fast forward a 40 minutes bus ride home.

Around 1:50 pm Ray stepped back into his house.

Locking the door he laid flat down on the floor.

'Ah safe at long last.'

He thought to himself.

'I thought I was going to get beaten up again!'

"Yeah, I was surprised that Simon stepped in for you. Aaron too doesn't seem too bad. ."

'Maybe, but Simon started getting scary.'

"He did seem kinda weird, but the Black Menace Gang seems to be a community of misfits rather than ill-intending gangsters so I wouldn't worry that if I were you."

Slippy pushed open the zipper and jumped out of Ray's backpack.

"Instead I would start training for the showdown against Wu!"

Ray thought back to his fight against Wu.

Not a single of his punches or tactics worked. It was as if Wu seemingly read all of his moves. That said Wu had seemed to always find a way to take Ray's headbutt out of the equation.

'Making me resort to other tactics.'

Slippy nodded.

'That means three things. One is that I need to find a way to make it harder to read my attacks.'

He lifted his hand to his head and looked at it.

'My punches especially since I am going to box him. Two is to learn tactics that will let me become able to use my headbutts. And finally three I need to work on refining other skills besides headbutt.'

"Now how are you going to learn to make your punches harder to read Ray?"

"Hmmm."

Ray took out his phone and started typing on it.

How do I punch faster? Ray's dear old friend expert boxing.com popped up again.

The post was titled: How to punch faster

Without hesitation, Ray tapped on it.

Ray quickly read through it while Slippy similarly read it through his eyes.

….

"This is kinda confusing, but I think I understand a bit."

Be aware, be relaxed, breathe faster, and punch faster!

From what Rat could comprehend and understand.

There are multiple things you could do to punch faster, but this website mainly focuses on the technical aspects of boxing.

One is to be aware! To punch fast is to move your body fast in a certain way. To move a certain way fast you need to develop muscle memory that could make the punch more accurate and faster! You need to practice punching more and focus on technique and muscle memory.

Two is to be relaxed! According to this website, most people punch imagining as if they're going to destroy someone with it like one punch man. That is wrong as most people will start tensing up due to that.

Also loading your punch with power doesn't equal to faster punches.

Your body needs to be relaxed and mobile to deliver your intents fast! You could say be like water!

Three is to breathe the same pace that you're punching! If you're punching relaxed slow punches you could breathe slowly, but if you punch quickly with slow breathing that could mess you up in multiple ways.

Four is to focus on combination speed and not individual punch speed. A concept that both boxing and wing Chun embodies. If you want fast punches don't be focused on each punch individually. Rather focus on your overall punch speed.

Of the four concepts, Ray had experienced every one of these except for number four. As he doesn't know how to throw combination punches, but that could be worked on in the boxing gym.

So he looked at what he could work on properly from the three.

Number one is going to be hard to work on by himself as from his experience learning to headbutt. He knew it was really hard to comprehend the proper form and usage of the technique by yourself.

'I bet that my headbutt would not have been as good in my second fight with Guy if I haven't used it in my first fight.'

That all said he knew that he should get a grasp of boxing basics before he goes there so he could make better use of his time.

So he decided to learn the basic boxing punches then further work the technique at the boxing gym.

'Ok let me search that up.'

Boxing basic punches.

Wikipedia popped up so Ray clicked on it.

On it was the image of punches as well as their name. The four basic punches of boxing are as follows. The jab, the cross, the hook, and the uppercut.

"Oh, so Wu was mainly using jabs and hooks in the fight!"

'Let me think. Did he use it like this?'

Ray got up and started punching in the air.

'That's not it. When he punched '

Several minutes have passed with Ray just jabbing in the air and mumbling under his breath. When Ray had a moment of enlightenment.

'Wait the way he punched was like this."

Ray finally copied Wu's jab.

["shoulder jab"]

So the trick was to punch with your shoulder!

["Weight shift footsteps"]

And you have to use footwork to shift your body weight into your punch!

'Ah, it smacked my ear!'

While raising his shoulder in his jab he smacked his ear in the process!

'There must be videos on how to improve my jab!'

Ray pulled out his phone and clicked a few times on it to turn it on. Before going into Tubeyou and typing in "How to improve my jab".

"Raise your shoulder when you jab! It will work like a guard! Just don't smack your ears!"

"Understand what is a power jab and what is a flicker jab!"

"Take this tiny step before you do the small forward to jab! Once you master this move it's be appear to be a single hop to the untrained eyes!"

Thus Ray spend the rest of that day watching TubeYou videos on how to jab.

--

Hey, it's the author of Gangstar here!

It has been like a year since I started this as writing practice!

I remembered when I was too nervous to post on my account so I used my eng tutor account to post instead!

I thank you for following and reading Gangstar for so long.

I am planning to drop this series as I realized that I am restricting myself as my old writing style in Gangstar was inhibiting my growth as a writer.

Due to the old me having no self control and wanting to put in everything.

My account name is called Book_Knight

On it, I have a novel literally called Gangstar that I may or may not do special something with :p.

And also I am starting a new series called "Dungeon Rookie"!

Please if you like Gangstar go and follow my new webnovel Dungeon Rookie. It is what I consider the spiritual successor of Gangstar and contains the essence of the writing skills that I learned from writing Gangstar!

P.s. I may reboot Gangstar someday when I feel I am ready

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