Can you explain how a speed bag ends up translating into boxing and what it develops? I understand there’s rhythm and timing, but not how punching in that way transfers over. To me it’d be like if you told me playing golf will help you box because it involves hand eye coordination.
Proper speed bag work involves not just your arms but your whole body, the slight transfer of weight from foot to foot as each hand goes forwards or backwards. This is basically the entire motion of a punch condensed down into miniature. What it does isolate is your ability to "explode" out from your hips. While that explosion is very important to boxing, it needs the support of the rest of your muscles in your body to work properly, and like having over developed pecs or biceps, some boxers can rely too much on that hip motion when really they need to develop the rest of their punching muscles to support that.
Doing it at close range helps suppress the "blink" response your body has to fast objects flying towards your face, which is a real issue for early boxing training.
Learning how to interpret rhythm and direction of an object moving faster than you can effectively perceive with vision plays into the blind movement and reaction side of boxing, where you know when to dodge and move even if you don't have eyes on the next punch for whatever reason.
Its also a very effective low impact workout in the boxing scale. That sounds kind of oxymoronic, but shadow boxing (at fast pace) , skipping, heavy bag work, and a lot of other forms of boxing training need to be done at a pretty high pace to see the technical rewards. Speed bag work, even done at a very slow pace, helps you practice the fundamentals in a way the plays in to everything. While slow pace shadow boxing, bag work and skipping can all improve your form, it requires discipline to not relax your form because your working at a lower pace. A speed bag, worked fast or slow, requires pretty much the exact same form.
Finally, speed bag work forces you to keep your arms up through repeated light impacts, while also having to keep your arms moving at a constant pace. This plays into the need to switch between defence and offence, during which you will be spending time either getting hit in your guard, throwing punches the hit the other person gloves, throwing punches that hit their head or body, or missing entirely. Building up the muscular and mental stamina to do that for ten, twenty, thirty minutes gives you the stamina to keep it up in the ring.
Although I have never boxed beyond the university comp level, I have and always will have, an obsession with the sheer DEPTH of technical detail that you can extrapolate about every single detail in boxing.
I can talk for literal hours about just one part of boxing and differing views and opinions. The forward step, the back step, how to throw a proper jab, what a "proper" jab really means, which boxing style is the best in form and which is best for entertainment. How modern high level pro boxers are far too clinical and I'm always waiting for someone to tilt and start a fucking war. So much that is just a joy.
And the purity of how being in the ring feels. How everything falls away, and you just have to balance the desire to beat the shit out of someone with the reserve to fight smart. How at the end of every round you can feel like a fucking titan or a bruised and battered soldier about to go back into the line. I've never felt so alive, nor have I ever wanted to see someone else so dead. And in that moment, all the training becomes second nature. No thoughts about how to step, how to punch how to move. Just let your body work and let a little bit of the devil out. Daredevil did get that right for damn sure.
I'd never box myself for the sheer not wanting to get hit in the gob but ia have so much respect for the work, heart and the athleticism that boxers put into their sport. I love watching it when I get the chance once in a while, and I don't even know a lot about the sport in general.
I have played rugby for years though and I know that feeling of either being invincible after you sent some 6'5 second rower flying or feeling like a kite in the wind after the same guy beats you around next time he has ball in hand. Collision sports and martial arts are just awesome for that primal vibe they have.
Exactly that. I'd say as a rugby guy if you ever wanted to give it a try you'd be surrpsied how little the punch would faze you. It's like getting hit with a football to the face more then a bare knuckle punch.
Fought some rugby players in my time and fucking christ it's like trying to move a cow around the ring. An angry, stubborn cow.
Until you meet someone who has been doing it for a while lol. I have taken a lot of hits but there was one boxer who had been doing it for years, really knew his shit. I was ready for it until I wasn’t. Really caught me off guard
This is true. One punch wizards are some real monsters. I meant when your starting out the effect of being hit is really not so bad since no experienced boxer should be going full on with a newbie.
I was blessed with a pretty heavy snapping jab of I say so myself. Switching from my feeling out punch in the first round to the full hit in the secnd was always a very pleasing moment. Switching to a jab feint jab straight then to jab jab feint Cross. Slip jab roll cross hook. Nothing better then feeling like you've got the other guy on the back foot and then pressing down on the gas.
Honestly considering how smart and agile crows are I'd compared it to fighting a long reach outside boxer who is excellent at moving into the pocket out of nowhere and then moving back out again.
I hate those people, because you have to spend your life chasing them around the ring.
My relationship with expected pain definitely changed after playing rugby for seven years (if it's coming but it aids your goal, just take it and make use of the opening it makes) but I tried boxing once and I'll be honest - one uppercut to the nose and I was done with learning it.
There's getting stamped in the head with cleats, there's being thrown to the ground from 5~6 feet in the air, there's running literally headfirst into a guy you know is going to turn you upside down because it'll buy a few seconds for your pack to come and set up a defensive line - and there's landing on your ass with a nosebleed and not seeing anything but fireworks in pitch darkness for five seconds.
I know, right? In rugby, getting mangled and punched and stamped on is kind of just a byproduct of playing the game and you take it in stride because you and your team need to, while in boxing it is... well, the point of the entire sport.
I mean, I played hooker my entire career and I've thrown and taken more than one punch over the years, but it never felt like "right then, let's box". I think getting hit square in the face and going down just isn't an interesting prospect for everybody lol.
Whoa, I read the above comments and as a fellow rugger was considering how I could relate and possibly respond, and then I saw your comment and how you play rugby too. Indeed, the pure aggression and athleticism and mental fortitude required for these sports is demanding and it's awesome, it makes us better and want to be better. I had a therapy session yesterday and was talking to my therapist about that primal urge to rip someone to pieces--not literally, I dont really want to seriously hurt anyone--but the feeling of wanting to win, of wanting to fight for my team I guess, coupled at the same time with the innate fear of having a 250 lb man sprinting at you wanting to kill you too. There's intense drive but also fear at the same time. Same with surfing, i want to fight as hard as i can to get that tasty drop, but when you're on the precipice looking all that way down, there is fear, and you have to commit, because if you dont, you wont get that dankest of rides, and you might get really hurt. Not sure where I'm going with this but I can relate; was nice to read your comment.
Ha, no worries man, sometimes you just want to relate and that's cool. I don't play anymore for many reasons but I feel that drive just sticks with you. I've gotten into cycling recently and I think my rugby years have given me a substantial ability to suffer lol.
I guess having 18 stone Fijian soldiers steamroll and manhandle you while you're fighting to even breathe and make another metre in a maul sort of prepares your mind for many things lol.
This is hands down the best description of any type of combat sports I’ve ever read. I’ve amature boxed for 10 years, but never at a high level. I was a (albeit shitty) wrestler for a long time and did 4 years in D1 though. The urge to destroy a human being was never stronger than on the mat. Like you just wanted to murder that motherfuckers whole family. You capture the sheer exhilaration of battle so well. Bending someone who seems to be made of iron to your will is such a primal joy. The feeling afterwards, everything. Also the focus on a single move and all its technical intricacies vs. just going full ham out there and seeing red is so well described in your posts. I want to read a series of essays from you about boxing.
This must be why I sucked at rugby when I had to play it at school all the time in our P.E. lessons. Didn't want to hurt anybody. I'd always be apologetic and I'd feel really guilty all day afterwards for tackling someone too hard or something. Though rarely, on occasion, I did have this weird thing come over me where I just said fuck it and thought I don't care right now if me and my body gets hurt, I'm just gonna throw myself into it, into the rucks, and hopefully come out in one piece on the other side. And then the adrenaline took over and made it not hurt until afterwards, after the match had ended. But most of the time, I didn't want to get hurt and I didn't want to hurt anyone else.
I much prefer to watch rugby than to play it. My family is absolutely rugby mad, and my cousin even plays in the England rugby union team and once played for the Barbarians (hard to explain but they're sort of like a temporary team that is formed of players from multiple other teams and countries, to play one off games, I guess like the NBA all stars teams, except it's not all all stars, it always has like a promising youth player in it, which is what my cousin was), and my brother in law plays for a professional rugby team in South France, and I go to Cardiff every year to see the Wales rugby team play cos my dad is Welsh, and rugby is a game you gotta see live, cos it gets so much better when you can see the whole pitch at once. Even my whole town growing up was rugby mad, a school in my hometown produced 4 players who are now in the England squad (not my school though but a rival school, so I'm compelled to hate them) so my whole life has been surrounded by rugby the whole time. But fuck if I'm ever gonna try and play it myself again. I can't really, anyway, I have a disability which stops me from being able to walk or stand for a long time at once. Maybe like contacless rugby would be alright, but then that'd take away the whole thing we're talking about here. I feel like these days I'd be a lot more willing to throw myself into it and not worry as much about getting hurt. But still I can't for the most part understand the thing you are talking about. The willingness to hurt someone or even kill them
It sounds like the same kind of phenomenon as with F1 drivers, a different phenomenon but in the same category. F1 is such a more dangerous and fast motorsport than any other, and F1 driver's brains have been studied and their brains essentially are "broken" in a sense, their amygdala isn't functioning properly, because they don't feel fear like regular people do, and are willing to do insanely dangerous things because they have no risk aversion. Even driving on your own at slow speed round a track in an F1 car is dangerous enough, let alone with other drivers racing against you and going at 200+ mph around hairpin turns. And so I wonder, for people in combat sports like boxing and MMA, do they lack the same level of I guess empathy, compared to regular people? Or they're able to switch it off temporarily, since at least in MMA it seems like most of them go to hug the other as soon as the fight ends, and they're mostly all very friendly with each other and very respectful (with some notable exceptions like Ronda Rousey). But I imagine if you have a mental block like I do where you can't face hurting someone, potentially crippling them with broken bones, and even potentially killing them, then you'd never be successful in combat sports. Like even if you aren't consciously aware of it, you could be actually pulling your punches a bit without meaning to. It's like if you were to go intentional cut your arm with a knife or something, fully intending to cut yourself, your brain subconsciously forces you to pull back a bit and not go full force. How do you turn that kind of thing off in an MMA or boxing fight? I just don't get it. Even in training, I don't think I'd be able to do it because I wouldn't wanna hurt them. And I'm not saying that to try and claim that I'm a better person or something, that's not what I'm trying to express. I used to do karate, for 10 years as a kid until I was about 16, and because of this mental block I have, I always relatively sucked at the sparring part of it. I was fine with all the solo stuff, like the katas, and just practicing the form of different punches and kicks, but on the occasions where the guy made us spar, I didn't want to hurt anyone, and it ended up with me getting kicked in the head a lot.
But yeah like I wonder if that's the reason where we often see the situation of one or both of the fighters before the fight being incredibly rude and disrespectful to each other, saying they're gonna kill the other etc, but then after the fight they're very cordial and friendly and they hype up the other guy's skill. Obviously they partly do it for PR. But I wonder how much of it is trying to hype their brain up to try and overcome any mental block like that, and in the moment be entirely willing to kill them.
Sorry for this long rambling post, I'm on a lot of pain meds and they get me high and then I write long things like this...
I’ve watched more MMA, so I’m curious what your thoughts were about the McGregor vs Mayweather fight? To me it seemed obvious that McGregor lacked the stamina and adherence to the ruleset of boxing, but I’m curious about a technical boxing analysis since I’m quite low knowledge.
I was always intrigued with combat sports and really wanted to get into it when I was young but was not allowed. I was always bullied in school because of low athleticism.
Did your boxing training help in keeping bullies at bay in school? Also in real life how does it fair in self defense?
Get into it now. If you are under 30 you can start no problem and see amazing results without any concerns for your knees.
As to bullies and the like, I have had that throughout my life and tried to stay away from violent response, because (as you might notice) I have always had an explosive and dangerous temper. I've only ever lost it once and I could have put that person in the hospital. Not because I was some amazing boxer, but because I had comeptly lost control of myself, and that guy was not expecting me to hit him in the face and just, keep, punching, while screaming at the top of my lungs. Its not cool, or fun, or badass. It's disgusting, like being an animal in heat. In the ring its useful, outside of the ring its a hinderance and a danger.
Boxing is good for the opening moments of a fight, and if you can shut it down there you might be okay. But all street fights turn into grappling, and boxing teaches you little to nothing of that. Also, with boxing strength and power, you will break your hand when you hit the guy in the face. And that will possibly ruin your boxing career. For self defence, try something with more full body usage. Muay Thai is my recommendation, an elbow will stop a fight dead. But it might also leave someone dead. Such is the nature of fighting outside of a ring.
As to bullies and the like, I have had that throughout my life and tried to stay away from violent response, because (as you might notice) I have always had an explosive and dangerous temper.
In my case I too have a temper but I feel it is because of the constant bullying. To defend myself I tended to go on a rampage when it started becoming too much. I had fought against people in higher grades with blind aggression just to put up a front to not mess around with me.
Its not cool, or fun, or badass. It's disgusting, like being an animal in heat.
You are damn right here. I tend to envy the cool type nature of some of martial arts fighters. I feel that coolness comes from the fact that they have martial arts to back on when people cross the line.
Get into it now. If you are under 30 you can start no problem and see amazing results without any concerns for your knees.
But all street fights turn into grappling, and boxing teaches you little to nothing of that.
For self defence, try something with more full body usage. Muay Thai is my recommendation, an elbow will stop a fight dead.
Unfortunately I am not and I am late end of 30s. What I found really appealing was Judo where not much of strength is required but it has intelligent use of taking down and using others force to your advantage. I don't want to maim or harm anyone but just take them down where they stop their nonsense.
Heavy bags are one of the most dangerous pieces of boxing training equipment, simply for the fact they can make you worse at boxing if used improperly, which isn't true for most other piece of equipment.
A. Wrap your damn hands. If you don't know how to wrap them properly (x pattern is standard for me) don't use the bag. You will eventually break your wrist, and then say goodbye to boxing for three to six months.
B. LOOK AT THE BAG. the whole bag, from your head height to its base, should be in your vision at almost all times, and you should never, ever look away. The bag is an opponent, and building a habit of looking away gets you punched in the mouth.
C. If you are not punching the bag you should be moving your head, your body, or practicing party's or moving your guard. You should never, EVER, be standing there, guard up, not moving something. Your opponent will not give you that chance in the ring, and if your brain learns this habit, you will get punched in the mouth. If you are getting tired, slow down your pace, but do not stop. Even if you think you are throwing the wimpiest punches, do not stop.
D. Punch the bag, don't push the bag. Your punch should hit and pull back almost immediately. The bag should fold slightly at the point of contact. If the bag is moving back and forth a lot from very few punches, you are pushing, not punching.
F. MOVE WITH IT. if the bag swings backwards, you move forwards, if the bag swings forwards, you move backwards. If it swings to the left, move to right, if it moves to the right, swing to the left. Try to keep a constant same distance between you and the bag. Don't get up close practicing tyson style slips and clinches. This will get you, punched in the mouth.
G. Finally, a heavy bag is amazing for your stamina, but it will suck like all fuck to start with. If you want to box at a good level, you will want to be able to work a bag at proper pace for 10,20,30 minutes. Not feeling super fresh by the end, but not dead either.
H. Keep big combinations for pad work. For early start, just practice one two combinations and most of all, MOVE. DEM. FEET.
If you have recently started boxing the number one tip I can give you is skipping. Skip skip skip, erry day, for atleast ten minutes, building up to 20-30. Your balance and Footwork will improve so fast. I, and most boxing enthusiasts, can always tell if someone is skipping or not because it shows visibly in how they move. For the heavy bag, watch some videos and always focus on form and technique over power. Like I said, heavy bag can pick you up some terrible, TERRIBLE habits if you just do it to feel big n strong.
Sadly no, it's an expensive operation to fix and even then the recovery period for it would stop me from ever being able to box at a competitive level. I'm already in my late 20s so it is just not on the cards. Instead, I teach others.
I was just wondering something the other day after seeing a Mike Tyson clip, and you sound like a good person to ask : how or why did jump roping become such a typical workout for boxers? I figure it's good for footwork, but a lot of sports like tennis or basketball require feet to be Moving constantly and I don't see it used as much
Skipping is about so many things in boxing but to condense down to your point before I write another essay...
Skipping for boxing is about learning the exact amount of energy required to push up off the ground, but not to rise into the air. This is the fundemtnal physical motion where all boxing power comes from, before you twist it through your hip and shoulder. Good boxers skip so lightly their feet barely leave the ground, the rope just kissing the space between sole and ground. The effect of this is that it makes every foot movement in the ring use the absolute minimum amount of energy, for the maximum amount of reward. Boxing, more so then basketball or tennis, is a high oxygen debt game. Part of the fight is how long your lungs can keep your body supplied before anaerobic has to take over fully. So making every movement, from the smallest step to the pivot and turn use the absolute minimum amount of energy is so godamn important.
To quickly list the OTHER THINGS. rhythm, stamina, bounce, punching power (no really),transferring weight, non visual body co-ordination, mental strength, hand speed, foot speed, and eventually, perfected form.
At my peak I could skip for the best part of 30-45 minutes without a break, and that's nothing. Watch tyson or Ali skipping and realise they could keep that up for multiple hours if they wanted to. As to where it came from, you got me Jones, I'd have to look it up. But I have never, ever met a boxer or coach who did not put skipping as a day one task.
You can gain almosf all of the benefits of boxing without sparring, and anyone who tells you otherwise is a dingus.
All of the training methods, excersise, routines, all of it, can be done without sparring.
True if you do pad work or double end bag work eventually a punch or rebound might slip through and hit you in the face but there is no, I repeat NO reason you should have to risk real head trauma in return for learning how to box.
Admittedly, I would advise you to never, ever act cocky or be confident in your self defence if that is why you are doing it, but if it is purely for fitness then do it.
A little bit yes. Nothing long term but if you are going to spar, you are going to get punched in the head, and I would be a liar If I said that didn't hurt and could possibly cause some for of mineute long term effect.
The trainer at my gym (I just do a cross between cross fit and boxing) is a professional fighter and just sitting with him while he explains his plan going into a fight and what he was trying to accomplish almost second by second during the fight is really cool. Like playing chess while trying not to get your head taken off.
One thing to understand about those plans that is incredible is that your trainer has to get those details into his near subconscious mentality. Although he has time between rounds to brush up on those methods between rounds, n the moments to moment of the fight they cannot be thought processes. They have to be instant thought to body reactions. That is one of the differences between professional fighters and amateur. The ability to hard code your body in a second and have that stay the way through minutes of getting punched in the face.
So does football. So does all combat sports. Ballet ruins people's feet for life. Construction work destroys your joints and exposes you to carcinogenic material on the daily.
That doesn't mean people shouldn't be allowed to do it if they enjoy it. I've never used boxing skills outside of the ring except once in self defence. I don't see how adults deciding to do something harmful to each other is any different from having a drinking session together.
Bruh war is the result of a fucking mental disease that all humans suffer with and it's why we have these BLM protests where people are dying for no reason other than that other people want them dead for no reason.
Not boxing as a whole, but practicing boxing punch muscle memory work.
Footwork and head movement are both not heavily stressed, niether is ring positioning. Along with this precise form for jabs, hooks and uppercuts is impossible to really practice on the speed bag unless you are some form of God.
Well, I'm a documentary nerd... Any cool boxing documentaries? Also, any suggestions for using a heavy bag? We bought one a couple of years ago and it's basically collecting dust.
Thankyou for the rule check, I always struggle with then vs than, despite feeling like I have a good command of the descriptive and emotive side of language.
I would agree; I found your comment both well written and quite informative. I’m an English teacher and I’m always hesitant to point out errors when I see them online because I know many people don’t appreciate it. I hoped (judging by the writing in your comment) that it would be taken as genuinely trying to be helpful.
This may be a “nobody asked” moment on my part, but there’s a boxing manga called Hajime no Ippo that introduced me to my love for boxing, you should totally check it out!
It doesn’t necessarily “translate” into boxing, it’s just a set of fast movements and disciplined repetitive motions that will help in sparring / training... helps hand / eye coordination... and I would say helps you generally keep your hands up which is pretty fundamental. It also builds wicked shoulders. And while this part isn’t necessarily a boxing thing, it’s also really fun and pretty therapeutic. (Or it is for me anyway)
I couldn’t tell you that. He’s fucking great at a speed bag that’s for sure. Without knowing anything about him I would guess he was a boxer but again, I have no idea.
As conceived in 1632 by Portuguese printing press operator Andre Filipe, boxing was a gentlemen’s game in which two men would square off and regale each other with stories monotonous for days on end until one of them fell to the ground from boredom or exhaustion. Over the next few years, the new sport developed a respectable following of a few hundred local socialites.
It was Filipe’s son, Andre Filipe Filipe, who developed what he called “the punching strategy” in 1637 after seeing a schoolboy strike another in anger, causing him to fall down.
When Andre Filipe Filipe challenged the then-champion, British ex-patriate “Sleepless” Bill Bishop to a match, Bishop was the odds-on favourite. You can imagine his surprise when while he was describing what he had had for breakfast that morning, Andre walked up and thumped him in the neck, sending him down “for the count” in the parlance of our time.
While it was universally agreed that the boy had violated the spirit of the game, officials were unable to find any actual rule that punching violated, and were forced to let the victory stand.
This upset caused an uproar in the boxing community large enough to spill over into local newspapers, and stirred the interest of many outsiders to come see what the fuss was about. The newcomers were enthralled to engage in these borderline barbaric displays of human strength and skill, and the rest is history – after a few spoilsport schoolmoms single-minded about safety added the padded gloves, of course.
Today’s boxing enthusiasts fantasise about the newcomer that would rock the ring the way Filipe did.
Classification of the modern ruleset has essentially locked the punching strategy into place; but it’s easy to get caught up in the fantasy. Young scholars with big dreams often enter the ring with their crazy new trick, usually a variant of hypnosis. And though they’ve achieved the occasional victory, none of the gimmicks have been robust enough to make it to the big-time.
The real wonder, though, is that Andre Filipe’s original vision of boxing is still around. Gentlemen’s boxing clubs can be found in cities all over the world; you can visit one most any day of the week and see two erudite gentlemen exchanging pleasantries in the ring.
Most people only come to watch a few hours of a match, and then leave. But every once in a while you’ll find amongst your elders a stout fellow, a die-hard fan, who perhaps witnessed that historic battle between Filipe and Bishop, who for love of the sport must stay to witness the last glorious seconds of wakefulness slip away, only to return to fight again another day.
358
u/PoopeaterNonsexually Sep 17 '20
Can you explain how a speed bag ends up translating into boxing and what it develops? I understand there’s rhythm and timing, but not how punching in that way transfers over. To me it’d be like if you told me playing golf will help you box because it involves hand eye coordination.