Tag Archives: boxing drills

Solo Drills for Evasive Boxing Head Movement

Posted on 11/11/2018

By Bryanna Fissori 

Blocking and evading are the two general ways to defend yourself when boxing. Blocking involves allowing the punch to touch you in a controlled way to minimize damage. Evading is the act of avoiding contact altogether. There is a time and a place for both methods of defense, and both are crucial to being successful in boxing. In this article, we will give you some tips on how to practice your evasive boxing head movement techniques on your own. 

Slip Drills – Used to avoid straight punches by moving head out of the way

Slips are an important part of boxing head movement. Stand in front of a full-length mirror. Most gyms will have a mirror somewhere in the facility and often for this purpose. Choose a spot in the middle of the mirror or place a piece of tape on the mirror. Stand in your fighting stance with your hands up and knees slightly bent like you are ready for action. Lean or “slip” to one side of the tape. Your elbow should touch your hip as if you were doing a side crunch. Repeat to the other side. Continue to do this for a certain period of time or number of slips.  

Duck Drills- Used to duck lower than a straight punch thrown to the head

Stand in your fighting stance, hands up and knees slightly bent like you are actually getting ready to fight. Essentially all you are going to do is a squat. Do not transition out of your fight stance. There is no need to drop all the way down (a** to the grass), but you should since down at least six inches. 

Roll Drills – Used to avoid hooks to the head

Use an extra hand wrap or a rope of some sort to tie from one point to another. The rope or wrap should be positioned approximately six to eight inches below head level to encourage proper level changing. If there is a fixture such as a pole or heavy bag to use as anchors, that would be helpful. 

Stand on one side of the rope, in your fight stance with your head close to the rope. Dip down and roll yourself underneath the rope so that your head is all the way to the other side. Step forward as you roll under the rope. Repeat, stepping forward with each roll. You may also do this same drill walking backward. 

 

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How to Develop the Muscle Memory to Keep Your Guard Up

Posted on 10/21/2018

By Bryanna Fissori

Defense is often underrated, especially in fitness-oriented boxing classes. This can often give a false sense of security. Just because you can punch effectively, does not mean that you can effectively avoid punches. Step one of any defensive boxing lesson should be keeping your guard up. The hands serve to block or “guard” you from incoming strikes. The position of having your hands blocking your face is often referred to as “the guard.” You may here coaches yell at their boxers to “Keep your guard up!” This is what they are referring to. 

Keeping your guard up sounds like a simple task, but after a few moments of moving around with your hands at the level of your face, the arms will begin to fatigue or lose focus. This is why it is imperative to develop muscle memory and take the thinking element out of the equation. 

Here are a couple of drills and suggestions to help develop the muscle memory to keep your guard up without conscious effort. 

Defensive Shadowboxing

Shadowboxing is an important element of any boxing regiment. Start off your workout with one round of shadowboxing defensively with no punches thrown. Keep your hands up the entire round. If a mirror is available, do this in front of a mirror. In your next round add defensive blocking techniques such as parrying and blocking hooks and straight punches. Do not start throwing any punches until you have been shadowboxing defensively for at least 3 or 4 minutes, more if possible depending on the length of your rounds. This will help you remember to keep your hands up once you start offensive work. 

Rope Slipping Drill

Use an extra hand wrap or a rope of some sort to tie from one point to another. The rope or wrap should be positioned approximately six to eight inches below head level to encourage proper level changing. If there is a fixture such as a pole or heavy bag to use as anchors, that would be helpful. Keeping your hands up the entire drills walk forward in your fight stance, moving your head from one side of the rope to the other in a slipping motion. Do this going forward and backward. Do not drop your hands. This should help you get use to keeping your guard up.

Heavy Bag Blocking

This drill will require a partner, heavy bag and a foam pool noodle if available. The actual combinations thrown to the bag are not important. The focus is on returning your hands to your face after each punch. Your partner will stand on the opposite side of the heavy bag. While you are throwing punch combinations they will intermittently hit you with the noodle. (These are cheap and can be purchased at most stores that have a toy section. Some boxing gyms keep them on hand for these types of drills.)

If your hands do not return to the guard position you will be smacked with the noodle, which is not painful but will remind you to keep your guard up. 

Advanced Pad work Drill

If you have a pad holder, it is a good idea to incorporate defensive work into your pad feed. Most boxing pad holders will use small rounded focus mitts rather than square Thai pads. This means that they are fairly mobile. Encourage your pad holder to throw back at you occasionally to make sure you are returning to the guard position in between combinations. A strike from the pad holder will sting a bit more than the noodle if not blocked. 

If All Else Fails

If you are just a chronic hand dropper, some coaches will literally tape an athlete’s hands to their head. It is hard to say whether this is actually effective or just a solid and embarrassing disciplinary measure. Either way, it gets the point across. 

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The Boxing Details that Make You Look Like a Pro

Posted on 09/16/2018

By Bryanna Fissori

When watching people hit the heavy bag there are a couple of factors that determine who looks like they know what they are doing and who does not. Details are crucial! Here are a few boxing details you can use to clean up your technique and box like a pro.

No Chicken Wings!

It is important to keep your elbows from flaring out when you punch. It is common for beginners to start their punches by lifting the elbow. Doing this leaves you vulnerable to body punches and takes longer for your punch to reach its destination. There are several ways to correct this using some serious mental focus.

  1. Imagine you are throwing your elbow rather than your fist. This boxing detail should help propel your elbow forward rather than to the side.
  2. Focus on pinching your elbows to your sides until the last second of your punch.
  3. Pretend you are Superman and someone tries to attack you in your phone booth (There is a chance you may be too young to know what a phone booth is). The space is too small to flare your elbows. Focus on punching the bad guy straight ahead of you in your limited space.

Be So-FIST-icated

You are high class and that includes in boxing. Sophisticated people drink tea with their pinky finger up. When you punch, keep your fist closed, but angle that pinky finger up like you are sipping a cup of tea. This will help straighten out your punches and allow you to connect with your first and second knuckles, which is ideal. This angling of the wrist also assists in splitting someone’s guard (punching between their gloves). This technique may also help correct the chicken winging because if you were to bring your elbow out before throwing with the pinky up, it is going to feel kinda weird.

Keep Your Hands Up

The number one sign of a newbie is that their hands do not return to their face after each punch. It is an EXTREMELY obvious indicator of inexperience and not difficult to correct. There should never be a time when one of your gloves is not touching your face. This would mean that you were punching with both hands at the same time. That’s a no-no. Please don’t do that. As far as boxing details go, this might be the most important. 

Keeping your hands up is not only crucial for defense, but also for proper punching technique. Your punches should never start from your hip. (Yes, there are exceptions to this, but until you can move like Floyd Mayweather you better keep your hands on your face!). Your punch should initiate from the defensive position against your cheek, extend out to your opponent and then come right back. A punch is a great toy to play with, but we have to put our toys back where we got them.

Keep your hands up or you will look like this!

Flat Stance

In order to generate power, you have to be able to engage your hips and core while maintaining stability. Standing with both feet parallel to the heavy bag is going to leave you powerless and off balance. In a fight, it will get you knocked out faster than you can say “jab-cross!”

Your specific stance will strongly depend on whether you are right-handed or left-handed. If you are right handed you will generally stand with your left foot forward. This is an “orthodox” stance. Left-handed people generally stand with the right foot forward and this is called the “southpaw” stance. The front leg should be facing forward and the rear leg angled slightly (45 degrees or so) to the outside. Your weight should be on the balls of your feet for ease of movement.

An easy way to check your stance and balance is to have a training partner push you (not hard) from each side, as well as front and back. You should be able to easily adjust to not fall over or stumble.

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