footwork

How Many Rounds Does it Take to Shake Off Ring Rust?

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I lost my most consistent sparring partner to 6 months of overseas travel this year, and while I got rounds here and there when I could, there’s nothing like sparring two days a week, every week, to keep you in boxing shape. NO amount of conditioning (running, weights, etc.) can make up for straight-up ring [...]

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X-Ring Boxing Workout (OR, Non-Boxing Training is NOTHING Like Boxing Training)

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Since my gym is connected to at-risk students, it’s closed over the holidays. Which simply means I train in a horrible, cheap-ass purple and yellow joint (because it’s $10/month), or in the park. All of which was fine, or so I thought, for the 3 weeks I was doing it. And believe me, I was [...]

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How to Spar When You’re Dead-Ass Tired

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I’m deep in training for my next fight, and recently had the opportunity to travel to a nearby gym to get sparring rounds with a group of people whose fighting habits I wasn’t already accustomed to. Amazingly (and for the first time in my entire boxing experience), these 5 sparring partners were all women, and [...]

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When Sparring is Magic

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I can’t remember when I last had one of these days, but this week it all came back to me in one of those clear, beautiful, pristine experiences of pure sparring magic. Sparring is always hard boxing work. It’s actually much more pleasurable than having a fight in many ways — less stress, less endless [...]

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What You Should Know Before You Spar

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I have written about what you can expect the first time you spar, but my friend Amy Scheer — also a boxer — recently asked me what I thought a new boxer should know before getting in the ring for the first time. She also framed the question this way: Which Comes First, the Learning [...]

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Agility Dot Drills

Light, agile, lightning-speed footwork can make the difference in winning and losing in the ring. Great boxers have the ability to win a round on footwork alone, and if you have ever been put in the ring with a newbie and instructed to use defense only, you’ve had to power up your best footwork in [...]

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How to Know If Your Boxing Is Improving

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Sometimes after you get in the ring you want to debrief, talk with other boxers about how you did. So most nights after the team is finished sparring I’ll ask some of the newer boxers: “How did you do tonight?” And I’ve found that many of them have trouble answering in a way that satisfies [...]

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A Boxing Footwork Epiphany

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You know how sometimes — just once in a great while — everything you’ve worked so hard for suddenly comes together in a beautiful, quiet epiphany? I had one of the best boxing nights ever last night. The boxing team had finished warm-ups and we were slugging our way through six rounds of independent shadowboxing. [...]

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Lessons in the Ring: Footwork

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Recently I had the privilege of working one-on-one with a favorite trainer of mine; his name is Mike and he has the moves of a ninja assassin (I know tons of those guys) and the heart of a teacher. He mostly teaches MMA, and I frequently find myself thinking, “If I could box like he [...]

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