Thread: Elastic Bands for Footwork

I am using an elastic band between my feet to aid my stance/footwork. I am trying to make sure my feet are not too wide while keeping my weight on the back foot. My question is what is the proper distance when using these bands? Shoulder width? Slightly more? If so, should there be any tension or not at this length?

Should be your walking gait, thats your biomechanical balance. Use 5mil elastic that will give you variation when working at diffent levels for foot placement, and gives a better feel.

A little tip, go to a shop that sells things and apparrel for Horses and get Horse shackles. Cost £8, use them for your ankles and tie the elastic to the clips on the shackles. Makes it comfortable, they are wool lined.

at the proper distance, I assume the bands will not have any slack in them, but they wont be stretched either?

They will stretch, thats the idea, gives the receptors Feel.

I know this might sound obvious, but is the point of these bands to make sure your feet dont over-step. Or the tension keeps them under you so you dont reach with your punches? What about posture?

Through feel the oral cavity, The Head, the communication centre, works with the feet and Coxxys to estabelish posture qiucker. By giving a better awareness through Feel your qiuckest sense.

Personally i think this little trick is one of the quickest/easiest ways to improve any fighter wether it be a beginner learning the basics or an experienced fighter ironing out those creases and steps with less than good economy of movement and balance etc to find their weak points and at the same time correct them, saves repeating yourself over and over as a trainer and like scrap says through feel it will teach you good technique and without feel we would be useless numb lemmings plodding about now wouldnt we so as you could imagine feel is quite important whatever where doing , does wonders for foot speed, balance, mobility and the double jab.. tbh it would be quicker to list the things it doesnt do.. erm.. it doesnt make toast good thread god, very interested to see what others think about this one.

when i started boxing two years ago i tried the bands for foot work but they didnt help much. I just worked on my foot work in front of a mirror for six rounds a day. eventually i started doing it right all the time witout even thinking about it.

Your technique must be wrong.

Originally Posted by Scrap

Your technique must be wrong.

Seems quite an assumption to make Scrap. Are you suggesting that if a boxer doesn't use elastic bands to establish a gauge for their stance that their stance must be wrong? I've known fighters who have held a wider stance (having transferred to boxing from Karate they brought elements of that stance with them) and they certainly didn't lack success because of this. My own view is that the feet should be at least shoulder width apart with a little extra if needs be (an excellent 'lay back' type of defence is widening the stance to take the upper body out of range.)

For the record, my own belief is that footwork can be mastered without the aid of elastic bands, a simple line on the floor and an understanding of the basic do's and dont's is more than adequate. Oral Cavity? Isn't this just the mouth? Coxxys? This being the tailbone? I am only a lay-person when it comes to anatomy/physiology, but I do feel sometimes that we can over-complicate what are fairly basic and fundamental concepts. Use of elastic to aid footwork must be amongst boxing's best kept secrets because this site is the only place (in the virtual world or the real world) I know where the use of elastic to aid footwork is promoted to almost fanatical levels.

Fran I do assume, its 50 years of experiance that tells me Im right. Its a simple formula of feel response from the head [oral] to the thing 1" above the arse your centre of gravity the coxxys, through to the feet, which are sensative for a reason. Worked with 3 Karate world champions, they loved the idea which improved there Footwork in rapid time. As do many very good fighters who are sent to me for tweaking technique, from all over the place. Fighters for sure can aqiure good foot technique by using lines and circles or any other formula. Using elatic rubber Ive found it quickens the process and understanding of the fundamentles of Feel, which I find misunderstood by many, your primary sense of do, of the neuromuscular systems response. Anyway 38 Titles including 4 world tells me theres something to it

Originally Posted by Scrap

Fran I do assume, its 50 years of experiance that tells me Im right. Its a simple formula of feel response from the head [oral] to the thing 1" above the arse your centre of gravity the coxxys, through to the feet, which are sensative for a reason. Worked with 3 Karate world champions, they loved the idea which improved there Footwork in rapid time. As do many very good fighters who are sent to me for tweaking technique, from all over the place. Fighters for sure can aqiure good foot technique by using lines and circles or any other formula. Using elatic rubber Ive found it quickens the process and understanding of the fundamentles of Feel, which I find misunderstood by many, your primary sense of do, of the neuromuscular systems response. Anyway 38 Titles including 4 world tells me theres something to it

OK Scrap, so you're saying it's about the speed at which footwork can be taught and problems can be ironed. I got the impression that you were saying that if elastic bands aren't used that the footwork must be incorrect. Lost in translation I guess. I was not criticising, more observing, and I certainly didn't intend to cause offence. I have always felt that more problems are encountered with fighters narrowing their stance as opposed to widening it. Anyway, with only 32 years in the game I've got some catching up to do!

Cheers for the response Scrap

Fran

Fran not a problem thats what Forums are for.. One thing ive found with the system, is its self tutorial. in a safe place can be done with eyes shut which gives faster response in movement. Its not just Boxing, its all sports as I work with Sports people across the board.

I met scrap after training in several different martial arts and somthing i can say ive seen from day 1 is that the elastic is the dogs bollocks for many reasons. when it comes to correcting bad habits in footwork without it it would have taken me ages to learn the basics and i would say for this purpose it is the best footwork drill why do i say its the best? because it does what every other footwork drill does only faster and with added benefits, what benefits? the combination of resistance and restriction works good because the resistance intensifies the feeling of the movements setting feel/neural pathways, the restriction effect it has teaches good technique at the sametime without having to watch your feet (which is the idea of footwork drills) or have a coach watching you.

Then beside from technique advantages from elastic there is endurance and strength building properties for the muscles that are actually used to move/strike in a way thats very hard to mimick using any other method ive seen and it does it in a very sport specific way which i love and find is often missing with a lot of strength building ideas that are believed to be carried through to the boxing ring, i hate it when im doing exercises and my brain is just telling me that this exercise has almost jack shit to do with boxing or the muscles used most in it so sport specific is a big thing for me.

think about it when your pushing off with your back foot to throw a jab or move what is it that causes that movement mainly? what part of the body are you conciousley driving from? to work the body at its best i find its the knees that usually cause the most movement and are the point where the drive occurs most when good economy of movement is maintained, if we can agree on this then what muscles move the knees in all directions? get a fit ball against the wall and test it..
place your knee against it and try to drive your knee into the ball, is it your quad your feeling? no its not, now try reversing that and with the back of your knee pushing into the fit ball behind you, what muscles are you using now? these muscles that you can feel are the muscles that are being used for movement/strikes in boxing the rest seem to be just offering resistance against gravity to remain upright rather than being concerned with the actual explosive movements of lets say striking or defencive movements and its these muscles you want to train not the muscles that assist you in standing upright , anyway you can find to train these muscles in an explosive way is an advantage in my eyes and elastic has the added advantage of not just training endurance/stamina wise but has greater tension the more its stretched which is a very old school principal of strength building..

im not an academic either im simply a lad with a passion for combat sports ive been in plenty of gyms but only 2 boxing gyms and ive seen elastic used to aid footwork in both gyms one where i went to meet scrap obveousely and one where i train in my home town which has nothing to do with scrap and there is also elastics for the feet there so obveousely people are realising there are benefits to this elastic stuff and must be getting results from using them because it seems to be catching on.

I wouldnt say footwork drills without elastic is wrong id just say theyre much slower at getting results so might aswell be wrong lol, if the bands dont help with footwork then its because your not aware of how to move to maintain as good balance as possible, in these cases it sort of has a tripping effect on people but once explained how theyre using theyre body properly to move theyre off and you dont have to watch em do shoddy/lazy footwork you can just come back to them in time to see where theyre at and guaranteed you cannot do this as a trainer with other methods so it has time saving values aswell as the physical benefits.

Sorry for the long boring post guys but like i said, elastic for footwork is my favourite