Elbow Playbook: Range Calibration, the Strike Set, and Entries That Close Distance Honestly

Mat Manual companion guide to "Elbows From the Wrong Range." Print it. The article measures the problem: elbows thrown from punching distance cut air and donate counters. This book installs the fix: freeze-tested elbow range in your feet, each strike drilled in a fixed learning order, the entry systems built as pad progressions and set partner drills, the spinning elbow behind its own gate, sparring integration matched to your gym's etiquette level, and a fault clinic keyed to the failures that actually happen.

Name: ______________________________ Gym: ______________________________ Stance: ______________ Coach supervising elbow work: ______________________________

SAFETY, BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE — ELBOWS ARE THE HIGHEST-CONTROL MATERIAL IN THIS LIBRARY ☐ Elbows cut skin. In partner drilling, elbows are thrown to pads or at touch level to a guarded target as the drill specifies — never at full force to a partner's head or body. Full-power elbow work lives on pads and the bag, with a trained holder. ☐ Your gym's sparring rule for elbows governs every format in this book (Part 14). Where this book offers a format your gym's rules do not permit, the format is skipped, not adapted quietly. Gyms differ and the difference is the point. ☐ Any elbow contact that opens skin — in any drill, at any level — stops the exchange immediately. The cut is cleaned and covered, the coach is told, and that pairing's elbow work ends for the day. Blood in a shared training room is a stop condition, not a story. ☐ The spinning elbow (Part 11) is gated: shadow and pads in its learning order, no live use until a coach authorizes it by name for a named format, and never in rooms or rulesets that ban it. The downward elbow's status in your ruleset is checked in writing (Part 2) before it is drilled as a live-line strike. ☐ Range calibration starts at quarter speed with freezes (Part 3). A missed elbow at close range tends to land a shoulder or a head into the holder — calibration speed is a holder-safety rule, not a beginner insult. ☐ Protective equipment for partner work: mouthguard and gloves always; headgear and elbow pads where your gym requires them or where Part 14's formats specify. Elbow pads, where used, change the weapon's feel — recalibrate contact standards when you put them on or take them off.

Part 1: Elbow Range — The Measurement Standard

Elbow range: standing upright, feet under you, no lean — your forearm laid across the target puts the point of your elbow into it. If your fist on the same line would not pass well beyond the target, you are too far away.

The lean test. Film or partner-check any elbow set: if your head travels forward of your front knee at contact, the elbow was reached for, not thrown from range. Reached elbows are void reps in every drill in this book.