Sometimes you get in a rut at the gym. You work your way through the same tired-ass routine and come out feeling like you’re not making any major moves forward in your game. Sometimes it just takes a simple suggestion or a new idea to get you moving again. Check out the four tactics below for a refreshing change from the same ol’, same ol’. (Skip straight to number four if you love pain.)
1. Four Punch Combos
My sparring partner (and pro fighter) Yvonne gets credit for this one. Most new boxers throw one punch at a time. Even experienced boxers can easily default to single- and double-punch patterns. It’s so common, it’s a cliché: Give it the old “one-two.” The jab-and-a-right (if you’re an orthodox fighter) is as common and predictible as shave-and-a-haircut (two bits).
To be sure, you can win a fight with ones and twos. But what if you trained yourself to throw three or four punches at a time, rather than one or two? Not only would you significantly increase your potential score, you also throw your opponent off her game, and interrupt the two-punch tradeoff rhythm. Now you’re in control, racking up the score, and forcing your opponent to move and defend.
Train in four-punch combos. Do it for an entire round. Hell, do it for FOUR rounds. (Can you tell I’m getting off on this whole “four” thing?)
Don’t make all your shots right-left-right-left; that can be the fastest way to get your shots off, but it can also get predictable in the ring. Mix it up, badass. Toss in a slip, or throw two in a row from the same side now and then.
I like the guy in the video below, although some of his “crosses” look like straight rights to me… Still, he’s got some shit, right? I would be motivated to stay outta his way.
2. Four Punch Combo Slip Drills
It’s easy to work four punch combos into a drill. Ditch your gloves so that you both remember to work for speed rather than strength. Now shadow box with a partner and trade off four-shot combos. She throws four (and moves her feet), then you throw four. Don’t work for touches, work to ingrain the habit of throwing four in a row. Then practice it in sparring later.
3. Video Yourself
I hate this one; there’s nothing worse than seeing yourself suck on the replay. But, it also helps you improve. If you’re neurotic like me, try not to pick everything apart. Just get your four shots while moving down.
Btw, Coach’s Eye is a great app for capturing boxing video, because it lets you slow down the motion and markup the replay.
4. Four Punch Tabita-Style Sprints
Wanna kick your own motherfuckin’ ass? Dude, dial summa this up. When my coach is feeling pissy, he has us do these for an entire round. You know, like at the end of a workout. Uh-huh.
I’m officially about 8 weeks out from my next fight, which is just the right amount of time I need to set up my training goals. About a year ago I started categorizing the main areas of my boxing training, and since then I’ve refined my system enough to find it pretty useful as I plan my workouts.
(It would be fair to say I’m a bit compulsive about organization. Obsessed, even. But people hire me for it, so I’m allowed. Note to you: try to get paid for the stuff that makes you weird.)
The acronym I use to lay out my goals is FASTER, although if you want to be picky about it — which I generally enjoy doing — you could also say FASSTER, because it stands for Form, Anaerobic Conditioning, Strength, Speed, Timing, Eating Clean, and Resting.
But first, a note about training hours…
How many hours of training each week?
Remember those awesome gold star stickers from first grade? I’ll still do damn near anything for those suckers.
So when I’m in my normal routine, I use a “medal” system for every week of training. This means I give myself a mental bronze medal for every week in which I train three times, a silver for four good training sessions, and a gold for getting in five training sessions for that week.
I used to train two hours or more at a time, but now that I’m more efficient, I train about an hour to an hour and a half each time. If I’m focused and not jacking around, I’m finished inside of an hour.
I know plenty of people who put in far more training hours, but I just don’t have that luxury. And anyway, I would die of boredom spending long, slow hours on a trail or treadmill; besides, that sort of training doesn’t produce the kind of conditioning you need for boxing (see Anaerobic, below).
I average about 4 hours of training in a normal week, but when prepping for a fight, I try to stay consistently in a 5 workout-per-week mode.
Form
Ideally, you get your form cleaned up by shooting video of yourself sparring or working the heavy bag. That way you can watch yourself and correct the sloppy stuff. You can also watch yourself in a mirror. Either way, make sure you always have a form goal you’re working on.
Here are a few examples of good form goals:
Keep your guard high and tight
Launch your jabs from your chin (don’t cock it or your opponent sees it coming)
Launch your hooks from the inside (or they won’t land)
Keep your knees soft (slightly bent)
Stay balanced on the balls of your feet
Keep your head moving
Turn your punches over
Fully extend your jab
Put your hip and rear leg into your straight right (or power hand)
Don’t square up; keep your lead shoulder toward your opponent
Keep your chin down
Anaerobic conditioning
Anaerobic (coined in 1863 by Louis Pasteur, from the Greek: an – “without” + aer “air” + bios “life”) is very different from aerobic conditioning. Anaerobic conditioning means you’re teaching your body to function at high levels for very short periods of time with a shortage of oxygen to your system.
The win here is in interval training. Nobody cares if you can run five miles because what you need to be able to do in boxing is sprint hard for two (women’s rounds) or three (men’s rounds) minutes, recover in one minute, sprint another round, recover, and sprint again.
You can do interval training on pretty much everything. Weights, jump rope, treadmill, stair runs, box jumps, tire flipping, elliptical, rowing, sprints, you name it.
Boxing Interval Training: Do as much of your training as you possibly can in rounds or two or three minutes each, with 30 second recoveries between. Work crazy hard during the round, and keep moving during the recovery. Don’t slouch over or put your hands on your knees during your rest period. Stand tall and get plenty of oxygen back in to your system.
Tabata Interval Training: I generally keep my intervals to boxing round times, but that’s not the only way to do it. Tabata interval-style training was founded by a Japanese scientist named Izumi Tabata, and someday soon I’ll write a post on Tabata training, but the basic gist is this: After your warm up, you do 8 intervals of 20 seconds all-out intensity exercise followed by 10 seconds of rest. Sound short and easy? Check out these killer Tabata-interval burpees. (Note he slouches to breathe at 2:30; Tabata will do that to you.)
Strength
For fight sports, speed and strength go hand in hand. When I do strength training I typically use light weights and high reps because I’m working for quickness and explosive power as well. Although I also slow it down and work heavier weights now and then because it’s so good for your bone density.
I’m not a huge exercise gadget person, but I do make use of dumbells, freeweights, tractor tires, sledgehammer, and medicine balls, and if I were in a fancy gym I’d be using slam ball, kettlebells, heavy rope, balance rings, and harness pulls as well.
Speed
You can build your speed by focusing on agility, explosion, and sprinting exercises. I have an agility ladder, but I’m just as likely to work along a sidewalk line or parking lot stripe. I also use dot drills, box (or wall or bench) jumps, and my general interval training to train for quickness.
You’ll definitely want to build up a set of reaction drills to use in building speed, too, and for some of those you need a partner. Practice letting your partner throw jabs at your head while you slip and duck. (good for Timing too, see below). Tie up a slip rope and work your way down it, moving quickly and lightly as you duck under and bob up on the other side.
Timing
If there’s an area in which I shortchange myself, it’s in timing. I do regular rounds on the speed bag (which really should be called a timing bag, because that’s what it trains), and once in a while I get on the double-end bag, but most of your practice in timing will come by way of regular sparring.
There’s just no substitute for learning to get out of the way than by having someone come after you with a blazing fast combo. And when you are getting regular sparring in, you’re also building timing by looking for the open shot and trying to land it consistently.
Eating Clean
My dietary outline comes mainly from the Dr. Sears Zone Diet, but I also incorporate Paleo once in a while. Above all, I work pretty hard to avoid the Forbidden Five foods (white bread, white rice, white pasta, white potatoes, and high fructose corn syrup). If you’re subscribed to my emails I love to send out recipes (as well as workout plans, training stories, playlists, random shenanigans, and free books once in a while; sign up here if you haven’t already).
And yeah, I cheat. You should too. Make your goals for eating sustainable, not ridiculously lofty. My goal in this area is usually to eat 80% clean every week. Which leaves room for spinach, mushroom, sausage, and onion pizza once in a while. (With extra garlic, yeah baby.)
Rest and Recovery
You’ve probably already heard the newsflash that you don’t build muscle while you’re training; you build muscle as you’re recovering. I have never been a train-every-day person anyway, but since I’m in my forties I’m particularly aware of a) being efficient with my time and training, and b) not getting injured by overtraining or making stupid mistakes.
Your turn…
What’s missing? What do you include that isn’t listed here? Leave me a comment below and share your ideas, additions, and training secrets.
Warning: rambling post filled with (clearly labeled!) tangents ahead. Feel free to skip to the bottom for the playlist.
It was about 90 degrees outside but the sun was dropping when I headed out for a run. I’m not yet acclimatized to summer heat workouts, although I have no choice but to get there eventually.
I was just about to drop onto a 2 mile circuit when a man ran past me, looking like he was on a ten-minute per mile pace, which is where I was feeling I would be running. He was there first, so I watched him cruise past. I’m a bit anal about pace suckers running right behind or in front of me, so I cranked up my Shuffle and stretched until I was pretty sure I’d given him at least a quarter-mile lead.
Tangent #1: The pan-galactic rule is, if they are there before you are and they are running on your pace, give them room. Don’t be a leech. I don’t care what planet you’re from, there’s no excuse. (And I think I’m not the only one who feels this way.)
Fortunately, I wasn’t in a hurry.
I just needed a little baby 20 minute run and 20 teeny minutes on the jump rope, since it was my “off” day.
Tangent #2, or why I call this an “off” day. Boxing-specific training is sometimes so hard on my body that I can’t always do it two or three days in a row. I’m at a new gym and working my way up to a Mon-Tue-Thur (plus Sundays training with Jay) boxing-specific schedule, which is ambitious simply because of that three-day marathon at the beginning of the week. So far I’ve had to skip the Tuesdays. On off days I run and jump rope and do other stuff. I do actually take at least one or two off-off days each week. Was that clear at all? Let’s just keep digging, shall we?
Tangent #3: Sometimes I use the language of “non-boxing-specific” to designate “off” days. But that sounds a bit awkward, don’t you think? Maybe I’m just linguistically lazy. I do flip flop on it, because I also think it sounds painfully pretentious to be working out on an “off” day.
Feh. Whatever.
I was telling you about my off day, during which I run, rope, and sometimes do hurdles (I don’t do those 2 days in a row, either).
(Here I’m powerfully resisting an entire fresh tangent on my hurdles. You’re welcome.)
Once my path was cleared of people on my same pace, I dropped on and the first mile felt pretty fast, especially considering the heat. In fact, I was chagrined to catch up to the man on my pace, but fortunately he finished his run just as I passed him on the trail. I may have been doing 9.5 minute miles; I know they felt easy.
It was the rope that was hard.
I was already stripped down to a sports bra and shorts, and I was sweating so much the foam padding on the jump rope handles was soaked and kept slipping out of my hands. There was a perfect circle of sweat droplets around me on the picnic shelter’s cement floor. I was in the shade, thankfully, but I could feel myself riding the edge of overheating.
I took 4 or 5 fifteen-second breaks to sip and spit water (if you swallow it, you end up jumping rope and sloshing, which is uncomfortable — woo, narrowly avoided a Tangent there.), but I was careful and never got that eerie, suddenly chilled feeling that indicates onset of real problems.
And as I was reflecting on the reasons I ran so fast and worked so hard to make it through my simple, short “off” day workout, I decided it wasn’t the heat that was the determining factor.
IT WAS ALL THE FAULT OF HAIR METAL.
It’s crazy how much music controls my pace! I think this playlist was part of why I had such a fast run, and also why my rope session was way too fast and difficult — hair metal rocks! So I am putting a few more low-bpm power ballads in the mix next time. Every Rose Has It’s Thorn or something.
Tangent #4: I just downloaded an app called beaTunes that will catalog my music collection and tell me the acutal beats per minute on all my songs. (Strangely, iTunes doesn’t do this automagically. But don’t even get me started on an iTunes Tangent, because I have a whole series of those and they’re better termed Rants.) The app hasn’t had time to work yet, so you don’t get the playlist ordered by bpm, so if you go for a run and rope in the heat on your off day, you’re on your own.
Oh, and I gotta give credit — or possibly blame — to Jay, with whom I regularly exchange hair metal playlists. He’s the one responsible for a chunk of these songs.
Actually I only want to say very nice things about Jay, on account of his vicious hooks.
Anyway, hair metal is accustomed to taking the blame for all sorts of ills. One more won’t matter. I hereby dub this playlist:
Overheated
Welcome to the Jungle / GNR
Ready to Strike / King Kobra
Big Guns / Skid Row
Hellion / W.A.S.P.
Blind Faith / Scorpions
Slide it In / Whitesnake
Bang Go the Bells / Babylon A.D.
Heartbreak Station / Cinderella
Rocket Queen / GNR
Hunger / King Kobra
Wait / White Lion
Cold Blood / Kix
Electric Gypsy / L.A. Guns
Heaven / Warrant
Back for More / Ratt
Unchained / Van Halen
Knock ‘Em Dead, Kid / Motley Crue
Hang Tough / Tesla
Wild Child / W.A.S.P.
Okay, final tangent, #5, not that you’re keeping track: I realize there are absolutely no Megadeth songs on here, and yet I’ve posted a picture of Dave Mustaine. It’s that incredible hair!!
Long live hair metal, and the hair that goes with it. Tell me your fave Megadeth songs and I’ll cue ’em up for the next playlist!
I need to travel over to Athletic Women Blog more regularly, because every time I go I get dosed up with a massive hit of all-out inspiration. Look people, I knowthis video is a advert for UnderArmor (which I do in fact wear), but the fact is that any commercial that powers me up like this is a win. For them, for me, for my game. Women love to kick ass and take names, don’t we?
Here’s another one, also poached from Rob Mars at AWB, that does the same thing and it’s not even selling me stuff. It’s just an incredible show of woman power in its most graceful and (potentially) dangerous form. I clearly need to sign up for ballet lessons. Somebody hand me a sword.
Finally, I can’t seem to get embed support on this one, but check out this women’s boxing newsreel, dated 1928, from British Pathe. Again, posted by Rob on AWB. It cracks me up that the woman (who is boxing a man) is wearing her boxing boots with a fringed leotard. She flat out rocks, too.
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 order to bring the best workout to your sparring partner.
Agility dot drills can help you increase the speed and balance of your footwork while also increasing your cardio. Try setting up a series for yourself and see how quickly you can run a set of drills. Be patient with yourself as you work; these drills might feel simple going forward, but going backward will really challenge you.
The best thing about these drills is that you don’t need any equipment to practice them. Yes, you can shell out cash for agility dots and agility dot mats (I found both online for $50 each — I refuse to even link it, that’s insane), but you don’t need them! Use a piece of chalk or a bit of masking tape to mark your five dots and you’re up and working. You can increase the size and spacing of the layout if you are taller, or as you increase in speed and ability.
Check out the dude in the video below, or scroll on down for a list of drills you can set up and try on your own.
Agility Dot Drills
X Drill. Start with feet split, one foot on dot 1 and one on dot 2. Jump to dot 3 with both feet, then to dots 4 and 5 with feet split. Repeat the steps jumping backward.
X Drill Hopscotch. Start with feet split, one foot on dot 1 and one on dot 2. Jump to dot 3 with ONE foot, then split feet to dots 4 and 5. Repeat jumping backward with same or alternate foot landing in the middle.
X Drill with Turn Around. This is the same as the X Drill or X Drill Hopscotch except that when you get to the top or bottom, you turn your body around to go in the other direction.
Z Drill. Form a Z pattern (4-5-3-1-2) using one leg or both feet together.
M Drill. Form an M pattern (4-5-3-2-1) using one leg or both feet together.
Figure 8 Drill. Form a figure eight (4-5-3-1-2-3-4) down and back, keeping feet together or on one foot only.
Big Arrow, Little Arrow. Keep feet together, start at 1 and jump diagonally to 5, then back to 1. Now jump 1-4-1, 1-3-1, 1-2-1. Start over with the big diagonal jump.
Box Drill. Keep feet together and hop the perimeter of the square (1-4-5-2-1), facing the same direction at all times.
Single-leg Triangle. Hop on your left leg to form a triangle in a counterclockwise direction (2-3-1-2). Make five triangles then switch legs and make five triangles. Repeat the drill moving in a clockwise direction (1-3-2-1).
We were training hard and had each had several rounds of sparring already. I had just finished a round in the ring and was tired, slow, and at the end of my strength when the coach called someone else’s name and I rolled under the ropes and out of the ring with a sigh of relief.
“Wait,” the trainer called in my direction, as he ducked into the ring. I turned and peered up at him. “Where you going?” he asked, grinning broadly.
“Toward the shower quickly?” I asked hopefully, sweat dripping off my headgear onto the canvas.
“I didn’t send you out,” he continued, “Get in here.” The two guys in the ring with him looked at each other and stared at me.
One of them began to smile; he was the freshest of all of us. “Three-way death match!” he hollered, and I laughed.
“The three of us against you, Coach?” I inquired politely, like a lady at tea. One lump or three?
“You better hope not,” he said, shaking his head, “You people would get hurt. Just get in here and stick close.” He held down the ropes and I rolled back in, riding on fumes and now, a spurt of interest.
Our trainer Nas promptly turned toward the other two guys and set them to work sparring each other. But this time he was in the ring, right in their space, calling combinations, barking commands, and critiquing form as they went. We both worked to stay out of the way, but I found my excitement rising. You don’t often stand right in the ring with a trainer and two men boxing; it’s rather like watching a basketball game from the center of the paint during a furious scramble for the shot.
He pushed them on while I watched and paced them, trying to match footwork and throwing a few shadow combinations as Nas called them. The bell rang to mark the end of the round but no one received permission to stop. The boys circled, blocked, and threw punches on command. Nas kept a constant stream of instruction running, adding a periodic shove to tilt someone back into form, or a nudge to remind someone to keep their elbow in tight to the ribcage.
Mid-round he pulled one of the guys back and pressed me forward and I was suddenly at the center of our tight, quickly moving knot. “One, one, left hook,” he called, “Two, three, two.” And I threw them, doing my best to fire my shots as soon as the words left his mouth.
My opponent was tired, but still moving lightly on his feet. I quit registering the sound of the ring bells; I only heard our trainer’s voice as he put us through our paces. Everything became a blur of shots thrown and feet shuffling across the canvas. I circled out to let someone else work, then circled back in. Exhaustion became the baseline; we boxed anyway.
I began to sense Nas’s irritation with my performance; only about half my punches were landing. Then less than half. My young partner of the moment was doing incredibly well at blocking everything I threw.
“Snap ’em off,” Nas called to me. “You’re gonna have to throw them faster.”
No, I thought irritably, You’re gonna have to send your requests in by telegraph, Joker; my partner here can translate your offensive calls into his defensive movements. Dammit, I added mentally, grinding my teeth against my mouthguard and throwing the hook to the head, hook to the body, both blocked.
For some boxers it takes years to be able to translate an opponent’s offense into your own defense faster than the speed of a punch. With deep fatigue and — I hate to admit it — age, it grows even more difficult. My two death-match partners were 21 and 26 years old. Once in a while I envy them their youth, speed, and power.
But most times I don’t care. I don’t care than my punches that night were blocked, slipped, evaded. I don’t care that the next day I had a bruise or three over my ribs because I failed to keep my elbows in tight. When you’re past the end of your strength and you’re still in the ring swinging, punching, and sweating, there’s a deep satisfaction that can’t be found any other way.
Oh, and regarding the next three-way death match at the end of a long boxing training session? Count me in.
