Elastic Bands for Footwork

**Fran@myboxingcoach** · 11-01-2010 02:14 PM

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):

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.)

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?

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

**Scrap** · 11-01-2010 06:55 PM

Fran enjoyed reading that

, 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.