Fighting out of the Clinch (diary)

13.03.18 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BHaOqDPeRs Tonight’s lesson brought my client up to the sixth hour of his course on Western Boxing for Martial Arts Cross Training. This lesson focused on combining slipping with bobbing and weaving as well as ducking. We also worked a lot on coordinating all this upper body mobility with footwork and looked at the clinch too.   Training began with basic line-work. This began with isolated movements forwards and backwards before building on upper body movement and punching. We paid attention to moving off the main attack line both forwards and backwards. This was then transferred over into partner-work. We isolated individual body movements against obvious punches – slips for jabs and bobbing for hooks – and then combined them against various punches. I also reiterated the point about using the movements in a proactive fashion for drawing opponents, breaking eye-lines and creating angles or opportunities.  We then took this onto the focus mitts.   Next I looked at the use of the clinch. We began with the Jack Johnson procedure of aggravating a response and tying up. From here we looked at tactics used by Johnson and Joe Frazier within the clinch. Frazier in particular made great use of his bobbing and weaving within the clinch.   The lesson finished two rounds of sparring followed by one round of short bursts of technique/speed/power focusing on jabs and crosses with slips first and then hooks with bobbing and weaving.