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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?:confused:
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 ;D, 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.
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.)Quote:
Originally Posted by Scrap
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
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!Quote:
Originally Posted by Scrap
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 ;D
Which drills do you do specifically with the bands? Do you just shadowbox and work the bags and move about, and the bands help you develop feel through proper feet placement? I think I answered my own question, but I'm not sure. ;D
The basic concept is the feel, Bigger the Feel the better the response, Feel is your fastest response goes direct to the nervous system. It works the bodys Proprereception abilitys qiuckly, your balance mechanisam alerts to it. I find it funny in Boxing that something new takes time to catch on. Yet i work with some very good and well known Footballers, who take to it like Ducks to water ;D, cant get enougth of it and pay me lots of money ;D.
the funny thing with balance, I see so many guys with very wide stances. I even see alot of pros with wide stances. The guys at my gym that box like that say they do it for balance... one guy even said its "physics", anything with a wider foundation has better support he told me. But I know that it decreases mobility. Is this the trade off? Or are they just getting the wrong signals?
Watch people walking, look at their natural gait, ask whys that.
A wide stance will leave you with major weak points/holes in your ability to move/evade/throw shots during certain times while moving around or boxing in the ring, as a boxer you want to cut this small holes or weaknesses down to as minimal as possible or alltogether completely, good fighters can get away with a wide stance, look at prince naseem, why did he get away with it? because he had the reflexes of a cat and could read an opponent well and make the fight go the direction he wanted which enabled him to get away with it, much like ali would, if your an average joe with average boxing skills with a narrower stance you will be a much better boxer than you would with a wide stance and a lot safer/in control in the ring for a larger % of the time, dont get me wrong even with a narrow stance you can find/put yourself in a situation or 2 here or there, but it definently cuts down the % of time where you are vulnerable in the ring due to not being as mobile as you could be, all you need to do is come across a better fighter with a wide stance and he will soon expose the point during moving and striking where you are vulnerable, in my oppinion the bands do this for you aswell. as the wobble board of scraps both of them will show you any weakness in any of your movements just try them out and youll soon find out if a knew movement is leaving you on balance in a good place to move fast ifneed be.
good explanation Wayne, thanks. I guess that's why it always to pays to watch form/technique and fundementatals from guys in the Olymipics or top national/regional tournments as opposed to guys to television. Nassem or Roy Jones Jr. have probably taughts guys scores of bad habits!;D
Thought I'd add some final thoughts to this thread as I've spent a bit of time thinking this through over the weekend. I think I'm in agreement with Wayne and Scrap in that elastic bads on the ankles would provide benefits in 2 areas i) giving a boxer a better 'feel' for the width of their stance and ii) developing some of the footwork-specific muscle groups. I intend over the next few months to introduce this into the gym and see what kind of response I get from the boxer, this will be an interesting period but until I check it out myself I'll reserve my judgement on the matter.
To add some persepctive though, I wanted to further address some common faults that occur with a boxer's stance and when the boxer uses his/her stance to move and which methods/tools might best be used to remedy these problems. To keep it simple, we'll not include side-stepping or diagonal feet movements. These links examine a version of the boxing stance and the boxer moving in and out. Some key faults, in my experience, that occur with the stance and movement are (in no particular order):
I can see how elastic bands on the ankles would assist in addressing points 1 and 2. Can the same be said on points 3 through 6, all very common faults and all serious in nature? Mirrors on the wall, a taped line on the floor and a boxer who has explained to them why all of the above points are bad technique I sense might address all points. We can talk about how wide spread a training method is, but what I can say with certainty is that coming from a city that has more boxing gyms per square mile than any other in the UK, I see in every gym that I visit mirrors on the walls and taped lines on the floor but I don't see elasticated manacles. Maybe this could be interpreted as lending support to Scrap's view that boxers are reluctant to take up new training methods or ideas in a way that say footballers might?
- The width of the boxer's stance will be too narrow or too wide.
- The boxer will step with the front foot and drag the back foot rather than pushing from the back foot which generates the explosive drive required for short, fast movement.
- The front foot will point towards the opponent rather than remaining at a fixed 45 degree angle (this causes massive problems with balance, particularly when throwing right hands.)
- The boxer's back foot will go in line with the front foot rather than being off-set (an imaginary line should run from the toe on the front foot to the heel on the back.)
- One or both feet become flat.
- The boxer will 'heel and toe' with the front foot rather than gliding (this means that during any given movement the boxer may be unable to throw decent shots for a certain percentage of that movement, a similar issue to that previously pointed out by Wayne.)
On the subject of footballers, whilst I am happy that a long queue of very good and well known footballers are waiting to pay Scrap their easy-earned money (good job Scrap!), I'm not sure that I'm ready to take as a consideration in my decision-making that fact that a footballer has invested in something. A certain footballer recently paid £1000 per night on what has to be said a very average looking hooker who he then nailed in his marital bed, so forgive me for taking no notice of what footballers do or don't do!
Great thread, now back to the day job
Fran
Fran enjoyed reading that ;D, as you say about the feet being parrelel. One way to solve it is get. Theelastic on the back foot tide to a ring post, they soon get the hang of it or get nasty burns on the inside of the calf if they bring there feet in line. Usually people who do it as a rule have weak groins.
Some great tips there Scrap. Time to find some elastic bands and wool-lined manacles!
Cheers
Fran,Quote:
Originally Posted by Fran@myboxingcoach
I used a cat collar for each leg... simple and cheap solution.
Fran, like this, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tfDnj4Xwy0
See what you mean Scrap. Good stuff.
i think it is a good idea to use the elastic bands but the downside with them it might distract your form if they are to heavy