Mastering Defence in Boxing Personal Training
- jamie03066
- Dec 22, 2025
- 2 min read
19.12.2025
Boxing Personal Training
My client started her second lesson in this Boxing Personal Training course. Having gone through self-protection and cross-training discussions in the previous lesson, she has settled on Boxing as a base art and hopefully will pursue a self-protection seminar next year.
Positioning - Feet
Footwork's main objective is efficient and fluid positioning. In order to acquire a good position in a fight, a boxer needs to understand why they are going somewhere. We focused on the outside position. This is the safest position on the whole. Here the opponent is compromised as their jab is off-center and they cannot reach the boxer with their rear hand. The opponent has to reposition or fight from a weak structure. In order to get here, my client needed to understand how to step backward and laterally. By using live training protocols, she quickly understood how to adapt this movement, which brought us to the pivot step. She also learned through these exercises how to stand in order to move efficiently to stay safe whilst also being in a strong place to throw punches: the boxing bladed stance.
Positioning - Head
Head position is paramount, and I believe in ingraining it before teaching guard. A boxer needs to understand how and why to tuck their chin and how and why to slip. My client was taught to approach their opponent, moving into range, with a mobile yet protected head. She was also taught to move her head off the centerline when throwing a jab.
Positioning - Hands
Although I don't like to model a guard, but rather have my client work it out for themselves, I used the live training to encourage her to protect her jaw with her rear hand. The hands need to stay active at all times rather than be placed in a static position. Again, live practice, where she was throwing jabs while handling defense, taught her to maintain tight yet mobile hands.
Sparring
One-for-one sparring - This is a great way to build confidence, create micro-adaption opportunities, defeat heistance and train instinctive fight responses
Body shot sparring - Again another confidence booster. Here the client doesn't fear getting in the face, but gets a feel of resistance fighting.
Defense only versus attack only sparring - Here the client gets a live situation to attack and defend in isolation, creating steps towards free sparring.
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