Quote Originally Posted by HerbM View Post

I am impressed that you understand this so thoroughly -- most people don't initially get it. They hear it but it doesn't resonate in their bones.

When practicing the combos stop thinking of them as individual punches -- e.g., a jab and a cross. Instead make it into a JabCross -- no to hurry it, but to join it into a single unit, smoothly with the absolutely minimum of wasted or excess motion.


Slow is doubly important when practicing by shadowboxing, because you punches don't have the same motion when you hit NOTHING if you do it at speed. This is especialy true fo the non-straight punches (e.g., hook, uppercut)

You elbows may stop the straight punch when they straighten, but on curving punches YOU have to exert energy to stop the arc or they overtravel to improbably places that won't be the same as when a punch contacts a bag or an opponent.

When you shadowbox hard there are two possibilities: either your ELBOWS (etc) take a lot of abuse or you must tighten the opposing muscles to artificially stop the punch.

I am not a fan of (lots) of full power shadowboxing. Some is ok if you let the punch just carry through naturally because small reps won't tear up you joints and you must be able to deal with the times when the opponents makes you miss entirely.

Do the hard work on the bag. Do the PRECISE work slowly on both the bag and shadowboxing.
Well, it just seems to follow basic logic. I remember when I was trying to learn basket ball. I wanted to be able to dribble the ball well, so I would stand there with my legs wide and bounce the ball through it once, right hand to left over and over again. Once I got a hang of it and could do it fast... I did left to right, through the leg, over and over again. Soon I was able to stand in one place and continuously bounce the bal through my leg doing the figure 8. Once I could do that fast, Then I started to walk, while bouncing the ball through the leg with each step, then eventually I could run with the ball being bounced through each leg with each step. Overtime I could do damn near anything with that ball, with little to no chance of anyone taking it away from me.

I feel that learning a sport like boxing with all it's complexities, it only would make sense to break it down into smaller more manageable chunks... and what your saying about changing my mind state from jab cross hook, to a jabcrosshook makes perfect sense to me. Basically you're taking the small manageable chunks and linking them into one fluid action.

Also you're right about the non-straight punches, I've noticed that (now that you mention it). Maybe thats what sort of slows me down as well.

I just need to operate in slow motion while practicing combos while attempting to achieve flawless form, and speed it up as I can without losing that form... and repeat over and over again no matter how redundant it feels.

Thanks Herb

(you should look into training [if it interests you], you have a strong ability to explain things and seem to have a good grasp on learning theories)