Got this Kid who was a good Fighter but was getting Hit with shots that He never use to get Hit with. Problem , now 3 years ago He became a coach, Im told by a few a good one. Thinking about it I asked Him did He take Kids on the pads much, His reply a lot. Okay I said if you want to Fight stop taking the Pads. Which He has, now there isnt a problem He was so used to seein g shots coming His way and not relating as He should by movement that it had become a bad Habit. I thought it might be of interest to a few of you

That makes a lot of sense Scrap.

Heh, this reminds me of guys who depend to much on blocking punches, or what Atlas calls, "ear muffs".
They rely so much on using their gloves as a shield that they hardly can react to punches coming their way.

So partnerwork with pads is not good then! Seems so logical but it never occured to me!

Ive just realised something, its taken the penny long enougth to drop. Ive been argueing this with people more qualified than myself for years. So I never questioned it, but it kept coming back cant sleep now very excited Fucking Hell about Time Feels Good.

Chris that doesnt even come close to it. Give me a couple of days Ill pm you, cant stop smiling at the moment Buzzing. This has taken a few years.

Hi Sharla youve been missed

Sub conscious memory stopping the brain neurons from firing sequentially for an instant fight or flight reflex?
I know why you are excited; you are thinking the reverse now, if it can have adverse effects, then logically something can produce the complete reverse.

I agree Andre, this is something else

Originally Posted by Scrap

Hi Sharla youve been missed

Thankyou Scrap

I am still checking in sometimes to garner your wisdom. I guess I just have fewer Qs to pester people with now I'm not boxing but I still appreciate the best forum members like you and other Ask The Trainer people!

I do want to slap myself over the face now for not realizing doing padwork with a partner was not actually helping!

So for old times sake I'll hazard a guess about what was stealing my brain cells when I was training that way -

Partly because you train yourself to balance to catch the punch?

I think I would lean slightly forward into the punch and push a bit off of the back foot but tend to remain flat footed on the front foot when doing pads. Wouldn't have my weight evenly distributed on both balls of my feet at all. I think that's where I'd like to start if I wanted to slip or sidestep something.

Secondly it's because you're waiting to see the end of the punch and hesitate before moving the pad because your arm doesn't move as far as theirs. I think ideally you'd want to register and act at the first sign of the punch coming with movement of the shoulder or elbow.

Close at all?

Perhaps, it's that the person who frequently uses the pads becomes conditioned toward not responding to the punches, or at least not in the way that a fighter responds.

Certainly is different response, to movement, bloody eyes again and response to them nothing . negates Feel or movement response.

So I guess part of it is that a good coach will be watching your form and will get into the habit of using their eyesight more than you would in the ring.

I guess in the ring you will be concentrating on your own balance and the feel of their body weight, direction of punches that land or graze past etc.

Difficulty with this is that it's hard to nail down the exact reason it works isn't it Scrap? I mean how can you tell the improvment from stopping pads isn't due to a number of factors?

Or have you tested some sort of indicator to do with prioreception before and after and found it accounts for all of the change statisitcally?

Reminds me of an stats lesson at uni. They found that the incident of increase in car accidents correlated with an increase in consumption of fish and chips in the population. It doesn't mean eating fish and chips causes car crashes but there are a whole heap of things that might be related to both.

I'm interested in hearing how you figured out how to turn it around.

I'd guess that fish and chip sales and car accidents are both more related to seasonal things. Here there's a lot of BBQs etc in war weather when you'll also be going to the beach and eating more fish and chips. Probably means more people start drinking earlier and there's more drink driving. they didn't actually go into why fish and chip sales and car accidents might correlate - they just said one doesn't neccessarily cause the other. It's a little harder to pin a cause.

Is that what you were asking Chris? Not sure really what you meant.

I mean there seem to be heaps of reasons holding pads might be a disadvantage for people training to fight when we really get to brainstorming it? Could it be that there are a few or many different reasons/mechanisms involved?

x % prioreception, y % not being punch shy, z % balance etc etc