Lighter gloves don't equal faster hands... I think I'm going to have to let that concept sink in for a while

Great workout tonight. The advanced class was kind of put on hold as the big boys were sparring, plus I was late and lost my mouthguard apparently, so I chilled out, did a nice long warm-up, and watched the champs throw down. I jumped into the regular class after 4 or 5 rounds of shadow + stretching, feeling great. I did a round of skipping intervals, then we went into hand pads. I partnered up with a younger, smaller guy who I've gotten to know from the gym, and he pushed me to the best hand pad workout I've had. 3 rounds each, then to the bags for combo work. 40 each of jab-jab-right, then 1-2 step-out 1-2, then a third one that I forget. Finished with 3 rounds of speed interval punch-outs, and a round of ring dips / push-ups.

I'm glad you mentioned pride... this is something that could easily get out of control and negatively affect my training. I've gotten friendly with the trainers, to the point where my buddy got razzed for turning down a spar today (I ended up shaming him into jumping in!). I feel it would be smart to skip the sparring this week, but I know if I get asked by a trainer or a fellow boxer, I'm going to jump in... so I think I'll wait till next week to replace my mouthguard!

lol. I think our wires are still crossed on this. Maybe it is my wording of it. Of course you are faster with lighter gloves. You just won't be increasing your speed by wearing a heavier glove, and then switching to lighter. You'll be the same speed you were before with that lighter glove, and if we now understand science correctly, possibly slower.

Just got news they are gonna try and get me on the card for a fight with a visiting team from Italy in early July. This is sorta the off season now for AM boxing, but things are looking good with lots of action. If I have to step way out of my age range and it only be an exhibition am prepared to do it. Just want the experience.

This time of year is generally rest time, to cool down the training and relax. Especially for those of us still growing in mad spurts. To give you some idea, 1 1/2 years ago I was 5'10" and roughly 135-140lbish. Am now 6'2" 165lb (75kg). The coaches worry about burnout and creating long term injuries. I've had a fairly decent layoff earlier this year, so am not too worried about it. Just need to not over due it, so can prepare properly for fall and the bigger tours that are important to me and our club.

Been doing a lot of work lately during sparring on body shots. From both sides. Left hook liver shot as finishing combo. Right hook kidney as a counter. Doing this with my coach and his protector asa drill, and then working it with weaker sparring partners where I am not allowed to throw anything but body shots. Am liking the results so far and feel it will be a great additional to the arsenal.


OHOH, and the PENS just scored. woot!

Mmmm... early in my sparring I got just crushed with a kidney shot! My life was painful for a good 2 weeks, and I had bruising. Elbows down and in

Yea, hear lots of stories of guys peeing blood after a hard kidney shot. Haven't experienced it, glad for that, but been hit hard in both kidney and liver. I found the liver shot the worst. First time I got hit hard with it, I remember immediately the thought I had whilst paralysis quickly set in..."Okay then, I got 2 choices, do I throw up on the canvas, or the pricks shoes who just did this to me?"

When working on sparring sessions like this, it helps in 2 ways. Firstly it helps you focus on the goal, practicing body shots. And secondly, defence, because while your hands are having to go low to strike, it leaves your head open. I've caught my fair share of shots in the process.

Another type of sparring I do in these situations is limiting amount of punches. I get to throw 6 punches per round. No more, no less. Not an easy task to do, especially with a bull rusher, but it sharpens the defences, and challenges the temperament.

Refering to the kidney shot, I thought you couldn't hit in the back.

You are correct. It is not allowed, but often does happen. Especially behind the ear, one of the most dangerous places. A well-placed legal kidney shot is usually a hook, so will hit the side of the body, so I imagine the shock wave alone is what causes the damage.

OK, bad news first. I thought I left a DVD in my friend's parking lot, so I went back to look for it. Finding nothing, I decided to get some mcgarbage for a 2am snack

Crazy! I had a round like this, not long ago. It was against a guy who charged me, wildly throwing body hooks and not defending himself at ALL. I felt a serious need to learn to block, so I just took it on the forearms for the most part.

New schedule for me!
Monday - advanced boxing
Tuesday - spar + endurance
Wednesday - maybe spar + regular class
Thursday off (skip core circuit)
Friday - advanced boxing

I think I'll alternate taking Wednesday or Thursday off. I definitely wear myself out with the 4 days in a row, so I'll put in a break, and add an advanced class

Great workout today! I got there a bit late for the advanced class, and upon asking my trainer about the class, he gave me the standard "I'm thinking of the best way to break your balls" glare, and then informed me he didn't feel like running the class today. Fair enough! I boiled my new mouthguard (lost mine last spar) and went into 3 great rounds of shadow. I got 5 mins of stretching done before getting called over for the regular class. We did 3 rounds of running on the spot, push-ups, standing punches, etc (being warmed up, I should have ducked out and finished my stretch). We broke into groups for 3 3-minute rounds at each different station:

#1: regular bag work, emphasis on left hooks
#2: hand pads
#3: shadow, but with a 3lb weight in the jab hand... to allow for matching speeds between hands. My trainer was on me hard to never lower my jab hand from it's guard, so my shoulder was absolutely on fire by the end of this, good stuff!

Finished with 3 3-minute rounds of speed punch-outs, 15s on and off. First round was jabs ONLY... second was straights, and third was 4-minutes of regular speed. Total, 18 hard rounds of fairly basic stuff... a great start to the week and a good lead-up to tomorrow's sparring. My trainer definitely stayed on me today. Key points were keeping my left hand in guard, work more head movement/slipping into shadow boxing, and working my ass off every single round. The moment I started to slow down in the cardio punch-outs he was on me like ****!

way tl;dr

Here's a workout a pro trainer put together for me a while ago. I never really used it for too long. But I did follow a lot of it to switch things up. It was his critical look at my original workout posted in this thread and offering suggestions, as I was currently plateauing..

Here it is verbatim: (He trains and coaches a top 10 cruiser weight belt holder and various other high ranking pros)

"Hey mate,

Ok mate have looked at the workout, is a little repetitive and not enough rest periods, all the respect to you there your heart is obviously in it.

You are obviously not scared of hard training as well, but you have to remember you are still developing and over working can be as bad as not doing enough. You are training more than a pro fighter would in a lead up to a fight and this can only lead to one thing, boredom which lessens the amount of effort you put into the workouts over time and also their is serious damage that can be done to your body, over a period of time and then by the time you have to train like this (Turning Pro) you will have so many miles on the clock it you will severely shorten your career.

Here is a workout that I would suggest for you.

Monday

Make sure before every session you stretch fully, (at least 5 mins) can make your work out 10% more effective, if you stretch before and after)

15-20 minute jog followed by sprints (Sprints would use a football pitch for example, do 10 sprints to 1/4 line, jog back, 10 to half way line jog back, then 10 to 3/4 jog back)

Full Stretch

Weights session

Warm up - 10 mins skip + Full Stretch

Important to use low weights with high reps,

3 x 50 reps Bench press and butterflies
3 x 50 shoulder press and over head dumbbell press
3 x 50 Bar Curls and dumbbell curls
3 x 50 dips
3 x 50 standing press (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wX8mJhvPULo


)
3 x 50 forearm curls

Stomach -

1 min cruches
1 min toe touch
1 min twists
1 min v-ups
1 min leg raises

(No Rest in between)

Full Stretch

Tuesday

15-20 minute jog followed by suicides (jog up to 1/4, 5 push ups, sprint back, up to 1/2 5 push ups sprint back, 3/4 and then full, do the following exercises in place of push ups

1. Push Ups (as above)
2. Burpees
3. V-Ups
4. Squat Thrust Press Ups
5. No exercise just sprints

normal Boxing class

Wednesday

Off

Thursday

Longer run say 45 mins with fartlict training, jog for 2 mins speed up for 30 secs, jog for 2 mins speed up 30 secs for whole route

Drills

10 min warm up skip and stretch

Below each round 3 mins with 45 sec rest period

1. Ton up
2. Sit up mixture
3. Jabs
4. Fast Punch
5. Combo's
6. Exercise mix
7. Bag Medicine Ball
8. Step ups
9. Jabs
10. Fast Punch

Explanations

1. TON UP

basically 10 exercises you do 10 times and you complete as many as possible in 3 mins

1 10 push ups
2 10 Full Sit ups
3 10 burpees
4 10 snake push ups
5 10 V-Ups
6 10 Squat Thrust
7 10 Finger touch push ups
8 10 crunches
9 10 jumping jacks
10 10 Squat thrust Press ups

A fit person should at least complete all the exercises properly inside the 3 mins, someone with very good fitness would get through 1 1/2 times

2. Sit up mixture

30 secs V-ups, 30 secs Crunches, 30 secs twists through twice

3. JABS

Stand 2m away from a bag, go in 1 jab, back out, back in 2 jabs, back out, back in 3 jabs and so on up to 10, then work back down 9-8-7 etc in the 3 min round aim to complete 1-10 and 10 -1 , 3 times

4 . fast Punch

Speed punches work up and down the bag as many punches as possible in 3 mins

5. Combos

Double end bag - think of numbered combinations in your head and through mixture combo's i.e 5 = five punch combo etc

6. Exercise Mix

30 secs press ups, 30 secs squat thrust, 30 sec burpees repeat twice

7. Medicine Ball Bag

hold medicine ball in both hands (Like you would pass a basketball) then get in you boxing stance, hit the ball into the bag at head height, every 30 secs switch your stance.

8. Step ups

use a step or a raised area about 20-30cm in height, do 10 switch foot step ups, then 10 feet together jump ups keep switching

9 & 10 as above

Exercise Bike sprints to finish

10 min in total -

3 mins steady ride L6 or 7 keep RPM over 70

then 30 secs sprint get RPM over 150, then 30 secs back to 70 up and down for the remaining 7 mins

Full Stretch

Friday

Do your tabata work out

Boxing Session

Saturday - no run today

normal Boxing Session - pads etc

10 mins skip, 4 rounds shadow box, 4 rounds double end, 4 rounds heavy bag and 4 rounds speed ball

full stretch

Sunday

45 min light run

Just an idea but in between fights it's pretty much what my guys do, then change when in camp to work towards a fight

Lata"

Wow, read every word, that's some intense stuff. I really like the 10 exercises for the Friday workout there. I have a small problem - if I skip for 3 rounds, for the rest of the day + the next day, my shins are mad sore, to the point where I feel like bitching if our trainer makes us skip again. Same goes for running, if I were to go longer than say 20 minutes. My advanced trainer suggested shadowboxing was a better warm-up than skipping, so I've been doing more of that in the past weeks and it's really helped, skill-wise too.

Yea good advice I believe. Skipping is a good warm up, but not at the expense of potential shin splints, which will hamper your training exponentially. I also agree with the skill factor to shadow boxing.

The thing about shadow boxing I like, and something a lot of boxers don`t focus enough on, is having a goal, or purpose to it. But I`m guesing you do. For eg., if I have an upcoming fight and know of certain strats, combos or counters I think may be effective against that opponent, then will try to do a lot of that in shadow boxing. Helping get the muscle memory and neurons ready in advance. Or using it simply to work on new things.

While this is a poker site, as we know, I just wanted to say thanks to raze, and anyone/everyone else so cool as to share other aspects of the journey.

Ultimately, I suspect, all these pearls of wisdom and experience I get from ya all, they come along side of many hrs. at the tbl. So yea, don't feel compelled to have your responses be boxing only related. I'd really appreciate a varied approach to this thread. Maybe I can help you a bit, and in turn, maybe you can help me also.

Basically by the end of every week, I have new things that I need to focus a lot of attention on, so when I do shadow or any kind of drill for that matter, I emphasize my weaknesses. As you remember, it was keeping my chin tucked before, then it was throwing more straight rights. After this week, I've learned I really need to get some head movement going (sparring), I need to stay out of my opponent's range when I'm not attacking, and I need to duck and roll more. Also, I need to counter-punch instead of lazily standing there, allowing my opponent to unload with combos, and then allowing them to back off before I get a chance to return. Now, when I shadow and do bag rounds, I alwasys move in and out with my punches, and never just stand idly within range when I'm on the bag (a mistake I ALWAYS make, up until two weeks ago!).

Did a night of sparring with the MMA guys. MMA sparring, not boxing like they usually come to our gym for, the stand up. I tapped out like I was doing morse code all night. lol Ain't nothing fun about a choke hold, or wondering if your arm is about to break off...

It prob. didn't help the guys I was sparring all had at min. 40 lbs on me. They were preparing for an upcoming show. Still tho, if there was a blood count, I win. Cuz these guys are square as hell and ginormous targets and wasn't one I didn't tag quickly and piss off with a bloody nose or embarrass...but just long enough it seemed to quickly end up on the ground tappng out for my life.

O well, was an experience, a painful one.

Holy ****... as if you sparred with those guys! I guess you really had no choice but to go for knockouts in your spar? KO punches aren't usually encouraged when we spar... unless our competitive trainer is running it and in a bloodthirsty mood.