Boxing training is an excellent way for you to get you fit. It takes stamina, strength, muscular endurance and is great fun. It breaks the boredom and monotony of normal fitness routines and challenges everything from your fitness to your coordination. The great thing about boxing is you don’t need to be at any particular level to really benefit from it. From complete beginner to open-class fighting level we can provide the right coaching for you including integrating boxing in your personal training.
Boxing training, as a way of keeping fit has really taken off and risen to prominence in the past few years. It’s been taken out of the deprived crumbling gyms and dragged into the mainstream. Boxing combines speed, skill, agility, power, strength and cardiovascular fitness. It incorporates just about every element of fitness. The great thing about boxing is you don’t have to be naturally athletic to be good at it. There is a saying in boxing ‘styles make fights’. Your fighting style is developed to co-inside with your natural attributes. If you are light on your feet you can be taught to dance around a ring, picking different angles to frustrate your opponent while hitting and not being hit. If you are clumsy and slow you can keep your feet planted and learn to pressure someone with ring craft and the threat of heavy shots if they get too close.
I have been involved in boxing for the past 20 years as a fighter, coach and fan. At this point I see it more of a lifestyle choice rather than a sport. When my first son was born I told my coach of the news and he promptly handed me a registration form. At grass roots you will often find that boxing has been passed down generations. I would turn up at the gym with my 3 year old son, within minutes someone would be teaching him how to stand hook or jab. Of course there is a more serious side to the sport at a competitive level. We spar regularly leading up to competition and sessions can get heated. I have sparred many professionals who want to get as much work done as possible and will lay into you winging punches in my direction that would stop a bus. Most boxers you meet are lovely people, far removed from their ring persona. It’s taught me humility and confidence. The boxing ring has been both daunting and comforting. It is something that has helped balanced my physicality and thinking and something that I continue to pass down to my kids as they grow so it can do the same for them.
As a fighter boxing becomes a way of life. We often say of a boxer who is eating right, training well, sleeping well and staying in on a weekend ‘he lives the life. It’s where the discipline comes in “living the life”.
Boxing started as a sport for the rough and ready, those willing to take physical punishment through hours of preparation and absorbing punches between the ropes. It was situated in sweaty, run down gyms. But we are in a new era, one where you do not have to be willing to give sweat, blood and tears to gain all of the awesome benefits of being fit as a fighter.
The approach I take when coaching boxing is to look at you as an individual. We all have different attributes. Structurally some people are tall, short, broad, narrow and so on. With this in mind you will set up in your boxing style and stance in different ways. Taller people may have greater range and as a result throw better straight punches and learn how to use their range and height advantages by moving their feet. Shorter people may be more comfortable throwing hooks and uppercuts and may simulate getting closer to an opponent to use shorter punches. Mentality may play a big part as there may be more aggression in one person and another will be more relaxed or placid, this too will affect your boxing style. Naturally you will find that as you learn to box some people throw a higher volume of punches in a round and others hit harder but don’t throw as many. All these variables can be accommodated for when learning to box. We can look at your natural style and flow and the key is not to break that, or change it, but to improve your technique and identify your natural style, so as we coach and teach we work on punch delivery, balance, combinations, speed and power in accordance with your natural setup getting the best out of you.