Boxing - Speed and Power (diary entry)

01.06.2013

I was given the mandate to teach a two hour western boxing private lesson yesterday. I am not a western boxing coach. I have trained under a fair number of excellent senior boxing coaches and I consider it to be a superb base combative art for anyone who is interested in improving their striking. Therefore, I used the lesson to offer my CCMA perspective through the restriction of this combat sport. Over the past few weeks my general children’s class and two of my private students have been working on combination work, which has largely been based on western and Thai boxing. Today’s student got a distilled version of the approaches I have used, focusing primarily on punches.

We began with speed training. This started with a simple three-punch combination. Then I restricted arm movement by having the client pin two pads to his armpits whilst striking. It is interesting to see how self-conscious a striker can become when you have them perform this exercise. However, as my coach Mo Teague routinely pointed out to me, if you want speed you lead with your hands. So we got the hands moving and the student was forced to not rely on his arms. He had to move his body to angle strikes better. Later, when I introduced uppercuts into the combination, he really had to think about how he moved his body. We also used a tyre ring to perform the combination through. A secondary benefit to this type of training is that it keeps the arms in tight and prevents a fighter from telegraphing his strikes by “winging”.

I then had the three punch combination done at full power. Here we looked at the flow, as in how to set up one strike with another. Yet again, I emphasized the importance of the withdrawal. Pulling the strike from the target creates the momentum for the following strike. We isolated this precise transition and looked at how the body moved between a withdrawing cross and throwing a lead hand hook. Looking at the same combination I then inserted a roll to evade an incoming hook. Now the fighter threw a cross, ducked under a hook and threw his own lead hook to the outside of his opponent’s guard. Of course, here we get the break now between the two punches and a new movement and momentum created by the squatting motion from the evasion.

Then we went through the asymmetrical combinations that combine a flurry of fast light techniques with a powerful finishing strike. This was repeated periodically. We also added to the combination building it up to 11 punches. The session included some agility work, focusing on footwork between obstacles and also mirroring a coach’s footwork. We put the combinations into different tempos and then brought in some muay Thai combinations to emphasize certain points.

We discussed different approaches and how whether cross-training can harm a core art. I don’t really like thinking of arts as entities, as I only see people and every individual expresses an art in their own way. Techniques are a matter for heavy debate and, boy, do martial artists like to debate them! It isn’t an exact science despite what many have tried to prove. Science is certainly the best tool and I promote the scientific method, but there a too many variables when it comes to combat. My view is that the best techniques are those that strike the balance between having the best mechanical value – as can be determined by physics – and are tactically proven.