Boxing

Understand Tactics and Win

One of the reasons I love boxing as much as I do is that it directly relates to my profession. Being in the military, a lot of the strategy and tactics that are relevant at work are also relevant in the ring.

Once you step in the ring, the following tactical principles apply. They are not applied separately but combined to achieve maximum effect:

1. Decisiveness. An essential quality – indecisiveness leads to inaction which leads to you reacting rather than controlling a fight. If you are reacting, you are defending and receiving damage rather than dishing it out. You must have a clear purpose and gameplan. You must enter the ring knowing you are going to destroy your opponent and not hesitate giving him openings to get inside your decision cycle (OODA loop).
2. Speed. Instinctive, rapid movements that come from muscle memory and drills executed without thought will help you gain the initiative over your opponent. If you can act and react faster than they can, you have surprise on your side and they don’t stand a chance.

Try and picture this - you’re by yourself or with your coach in your dressing room or warmup area. You’ve been skipping, lightly hitting the pads, stretching, and generally loosening up. You feel good, your mind is clear, and you are ready to fight the fight you’ve trained hard for for many months.

You have a gameplan, you know how you want the fight to go and when the time comes you head out of the dressing room and walk toward the ring with crowds of people cheering and screaming on both sides of you. Suddenly, as you realize you’re headed into combat, your pulse becomes a little quicker. Your mind starts thinking irrational thoughts and is no longer focused.

Your field of vision starts to narrow to the point of tunnel vision and you find it harder and harder to hear anything. Your trainer’s advice becomes nothing more than a low mumble in the background. Just before climbing the stairs to get in the ring, you notice your legs feel like blocks of concrete.

As you stumble your way up the stairs and clumsily step through the ropes, you realize that at this point, if someone were to ask you to write your name or perform any type of fine motor skill it would be completely out of the question.

The referee comes over and checks your gloves and mouthguard. You hear the bell and that’s it…next thing you remember, the fight is over and someone (hopefully you) has their hand in the air. What the hell happened?

Boxing, like all contact sports, is a form of combat – and combat causes your body to do some whacked out things. You can never truly negate all of them, but with proper training and preparation, you can reduce their effects. That training includes recognizing the symptoms and then initiating measures to control them.

I like to think that How to Box is the best of the boxing websites on the internet, but of course that would just be arrogant. There are of course many boxing websites that are worthy of mention, so here's my top twenty favorite boxing websites on the internet.  It's a hodge podge of different categories, but I'm sure you'll get the jist.

A couple of days ago I tried to convince all the wannabe boxers out there that they really should go out and find a partner to learn to box with - not to become hermit boxers. This is part two of that two part series and is a guide for all you partners that were recently recruited.

Hopefully, you want to learn to box yourself, but even if you don't you can still help train that aspiring boxer who came to you looking for someone to train with. You do need to learn a few boxing basics and be willing to go through the motions, offering advice and motivation where you can.

Make Boxing a Social Event

It's hard to make a committment and do something by yourself for any length of time. You have no one to be accountable to except yourself and the result, unless you are extremely strong willed and disciplined, is to convince yourself not to train any harder.

Why Do You Need to Find a Friend to Learn Boxing With?

A partner is absolutely essential if you really want to learn boxing and here are the reasons why:

The term shadowboxing comes from a training method that boxers use where they pretend to box their shadow on a wall, although more commonly they use a mirror.  Shadowboxing is the most cost effective boxing training method you can use to improve your boxing skills. 

If you think about it, shadowboxing requires absolutely no equipment, and you can do it anywhere and nearly anytime.  I've routinely worked shadowboxing into my day, throwing punches as I walk up stairs or down a hallway.  (I generally try to make sure no one is watching :)).  Have to say, much to my embarrassment, that I've been caught more than once in my own little boxing world.  Try explaining to a co-worker why you are jumping around like a lunatic in a suit in a board room punching something nobody else can see...

In a boxer's training arsenal there are few pieces of equipment that will hit back. The double end bag is the best you can get without a sparring partner until I figure out a way to create a fighting robot that learns from past encounters.

You can go out and buy a double end bag, but one of the things I love about boxing is that the equipment is simple enough to improvise if you don't have the cash or the desire to go to the store.

Boxing weight classes are a way of ensuring that boxers of similar size and weight are matched up. While one can argue that a true champion would fight anyone, fighting within one's weight class makes for better fights. Bigger boxers have more natural weight behind their punches. Heavyweights tend to inflict more knockouts but the fighters tend to be slower. Featherweights, on the other hand, are blindingly fast. Dividing up boxing into weight classes helped to reduce the number of lop sided victories and the ability of boxers to pick on smaller opponents.

It is not uncommon for boxers to move into and out of weight classes. As they grow older, they could move from middleweight to light heavyweight in order to challenge themselves more or to take a title in two different weight classes. Nothing says one has to stay in one class for one's entire career. If one can add or lose the weight, one can fight in whatever class one wants.