Why does everything start with the jab?

The jab is the straight punch off your lead hand. Shortest thing you own, fastest thing you own, and the reason everything else works at all.

It measures. It tells you whether you are close enough to hit them and, more usefully, whether they are close enough to hit you. That is range, and range is most of striking. It interrupts, because a jab in the face stops somebody walking at you and buys half a second of them thinking instead of throwing. And it sets up, because almost nothing lands cold. The cross, the hook, the low kick, the shot for a takedown. All of them get their opening because the jab was there first.

So your first hour goes on a punch that does not look like anything. Beginners want the big right hand. The big right hand is the punch that gets people knocked out, because they throw it from too far with their chin in the air.

There is more to it than sticking an arm out. Weight under you. Lead shoulder up against your chin. Rear hand home. The hand comes back along the line it went out on, not dropping. That is why it has to be felt rather than read, and why I will hold the mitt at exactly the wrong height until your feet fix themselves.

It is also half your defense. A jab thrown into somebody stepping in stops more punches than any slip, and it costs you nothing: how you learn not to get hit.

Boxing and Muay Thai share the lead hand almost exactly, which is why your first weeks look the same either way: Boxing or Muay Thai.

Get the jab honest and the rest of striking has somewhere to live. See what pad work is.