The efficient fighter chooses his fighting technique based on the distance between himself and the opponent. This is because some techniques work better than others at any given distance. This is also true of martial arts styles. Most martial arts have a particular "distance between fighters" at which they work most efficiently, which can be categorized for analysis. These categories are known as ranges of combat. For example, the Jeet Kune Do community utilizes the following breakdown: grappling range, trapping range, punching range, and kicking range. The names are merely labels, though. In punching range, you can punch if you like, or you can do anything else (such as an eye-strike) which works efficiently within that range.
The number of categories that you use is also arbitrary. You might use anything from two to five categories. I don't recommend more than four or five, though, because you lose the simplicity that is so important to fighting successfully. It's kind of like deciding how many slices to cut in one pizza - you still have only one pizza no matter how many slices you make. After deciding what ranges of combat that you are going to use, you must assign all of your fighting techniques to a particular range. The following are examples of how you might classify possible ranges of combat:
- 2 RANGES: short-range, long-range
- 3 RANGES: short-range, middle-range, long-range
- 4 RANGES (Jeet Kune Do): grappling range, trapping range, punching range, kicking range
- 5 RANGES (my variation of JKD): grappling range, trapping range, punching range, kicking range, out of range or shooting (firearms) range
In a fight, as you shift from one range to another, you choose a technique that falls within your current range of combat.