Interesting

[Sharla]

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?

[Chris Nagel]

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.

[Scrap]

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

[Sharla]

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.

[Chris Nagel]

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

[Sharla]

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

[Chris Nagel]

I'd like to know if Scrap has figured out a way how to make a fighter's responses quicker in lieu of putting on the pads.

I think what's caused by putting on the pads on a regular basis is that your fighting responses are affected, i.e. you don't move your head or react the way that a fighter would. Over time this may dull your reflexes, as you are

Perhaps there's balance on how much pad-work that a fighter-trainer should do that won't have a severe impact on the reflexes.

As for improving the fighter's responses, I think that sparring with skilled opponents should be mandatory. As a supplement, mitt-training can hones the responses such as what Roger Mayweather's method. We rely so much on sight for responding to punches. I think by incorporating our sense of touch and relying less on our eyes we can become even faster.

[Youngblood]

I think is makes a great deal of sense. Almost everything about the pads is contrary to fighting. When a person might be countering, the pad man is sticking his head forward and making himself a target. The footwork, same deal. It's all so contrary.

I can't think of a single thing except maybe reflex that it would benefit a fighter on, receiving. And even then, those reflexes might be be trained to go the wrong way...as into the punches to receive, as opposed to eluding, dodging and countering, thus not making the benefit of it worth any reward. It just seems very reasonable to assume it might affect a fighter to get overly-inclined to catch.

Glad I kinda hate working the pads receiving. Easy call, imo.