Sparring is NOT boxing for fitness. When you get in that ring, everything changes. It’s not like drills, it’s not like working the heavy bag, it’s not like padwork. Sparring is radically different. Someone is trying to punch you in the face, and when you’re new to it, this can be not only terrifyingly alien, it can […]
So you think you know the rules of amateur boxing? Maybe you do, maybe you don’t. Take a look at some of the most common mistakes I see and experience (and sometimes make, myself) on a regular basis. (more…)
How many rounds of sparring should you have before you enter your first amateur boxing competition? I love this question, and coaches enjoy arguing about it. We’re naturally argumentative. We’ll punch you, if needed. Seriously. If you make the transition from boxing fitness to sparring, you’re almost always going to be asking yourself the question […]
When you’re training for boxing, you’ll probably wear regular boxing wraps or gel gloves underneath your boxing gloves for protection and support. When you compete under the USA Boxing sanction, the rules on what you can use to wrap your hands, and how you must wrap them, are very specific. Ringside did a particularly good […]
Getting a good amateur boxing match together is never, ever a blissfully effortless ride on the pugilistic merry-go-round. It’s the most complex, chaotic, and frequently emotional mess you ever did see. If all you ever do is show up to enjoy a local fight night it might look smooth, from the outside. But it absolutely […]
Since I’m usually officiating, I’m not the one who packs the gym bag to take our competitive boxing team to their events, but sometimes I pitch in to help the other coaches remember everything we need. And finally I wrote it all down, since that’s infinitely preferable to madly scrambling around at the last minute, trying […]
We were on the upper NC section of the Blue Ridge Parkway this year, which has more open, rolling pastureland than you see in the “High Country” lower down. The park’s boundaries are narrower in this section — sometimes only a half-mile wide — so in addition to enjoying some grassland “hobbit hikes” along with […]
At most boxing gyms you’ll hear coaches tell you to stay off the ropes and control the center of the ring during your rounds. And that’s sound advice. But there’s also some good things to be said about being the kind of fighter who can perform well against the ropes, and even win a fight […]
The transition from the floor of the gym to the boxing ring can be a bitch. When you’re new, you can barely tell a jab from a cross; the prospect of live sparring feels like being dropped into a pit with Jabba the Hutt’s Rancor (pictured above, nomming someone’s arm). So how the hell do you […]
The scoring of boxing events at the 2012 London Olympics was a mess. Yes, we were thrilled to finally see the ban against women’s boxing in the Olympic Games lifted, and despite heavy inequalities between the number of men versus the number of women allowed to compete, there was a tremendous showing of support. But the […]
