Reach Advantage Calculator

Reach — wingspan measured fingertip to fingertip — often matters more than height in striking sports, since it determines who can land a jab while staying outside the other fighter's punching range. This calculator starts with the plain reach differential between you and your opponent, then adds two supporting metrics: ape index, which is reach minus height and tells you whether someone's arms are long relative to their frame regardless of how tall they are, and reach-to-height ratio, which expresses the same idea as a proportion rather than an absolute number, useful for comparing fighters of very different heights on equal footing. From the reach differential, the calculator recommends a broad range strategy — a fighter with a strong outside advantage is pointed toward jabs and front kicks to control distance, while a fighter at a reach disadvantage is pointed toward closing distance quickly and working on the inside, where a shorter fighter's leverage tends to improve.

The optimal range estimate for each fighter, roughly 40% of their own reach, approximates the distance at which a jab is thrown near full extension without overreaching, and the effectiveness chart shows how each fighter's striking advantage theoretically peaks near their own optimal range and falls off closer or farther away. All of this is a simplified geometric model based on two measurements — it doesn't account for actual footwork, speed, timing, or fight IQ, all of which regularly let a shorter-reach fighter beat a longer one in real competition.