different weight of boxing gloves

[psyked]

Hi guys and gals,

I started boxing about 4 weeks ago down at my local gym and I am really enjoying it,
I just wanted to know why there are different weighted gloves and what purpose do they
serve, and just other things like should you shadow box with gloves on or off, etc.

thanks guys.

[Chris Nagel]

Hey psyked, welcome to the forum.

To answer your question there are different weights of gloves depending on what you're doing 14 oz+ gloves are for training, especially when it comes to sparring. 12 oz is intended for amateur competition, and 10-8 oz gloves are for the pros.

If it's your first time buying a boxing glove that's fine. What you want is a glove that allows you to make a proper fist. Being able to make a proper fist will affect your punching power and will protect the bones in your hand. Sadly the gloves that Everlast make today suck! The foam claw as they call it makes movement very difficult to open your glove to catch a punch, and hinders the most important need when it comes to making a proper fist. The attached thumb design prevents you from putting your thumb where it's supposed to be. The new Everlast gloves don't last, and can give you bad wrists and hands. If I was going to put money into something I would get the nicer Cleto Reyes gloves. They feel good, and they last 2-3 times longer from what I hear.

Anyways shadow boxing gloves on or gloves off is on preference. The underlying purpose of shadow boxing is skill development more so over conditioning. If you want conditioning you have a wide variety of bags to choose from. To learn your craft you must practice it shadow boxing and through out your training. Since you're a beginner focus first and fore most on posture and movement. Always punch from a balanced position, don't lean on your front leg, don't over extend yourself and just concentrate on the punches. Next practice your footwork, the quick advance, the quick retreat, side-stepping and shuffling. Once you have become very comfortable moving around coordinate your punches with your footwork, circle to the right. On a rule of thumb you want to move away from your opponents strongest punch which is their rear arm. Practice infront of a mirror so that you can actually see what you are doing. A mirror gives you visual feedback and allows you to easily make adjustments when catch any mistakes.

I'll post an article on shadowboxing later today or tomorrow that will really show you how to make the most of this kind of training. If you need any more help just fire away.

[psyked]

Hi Chris

Cool thanks for the advice, how long have you been boxing you sound like you really know your stuff,also Im a little bit overwhelmed Im not trying to become a world champion but there are so many areas that a boxer needs to concentrate on to become a complete figther, I think personally
you have got to give it up to any person who steps inside the ring, do you have any suggestions
as to what areas to concentrate on and also some homemade or old school type methods to
enforce that, also (final question) are there any simple methods to improve hand-eye coordination,
by simple I mean for example a cricket analogy Im not sure if your familiar with cricket but the
great sir donald bradman used to practice with a golf ball and golf stick... something like but
for boxing

thanks...

[Chris Nagel]

I've heard of him, he was the world famous Australian cricket champ. I heard he used a broken cricket handle and a golf ball to practice on for long periods at a time. Boxing's version of this is shadow-boxing. You can learn a great many things from shadow boxing, how to move, all the techniques, tactics, and strategy that you gonna use. But first and foremost you should develop your stance, you don't want to hinder yourself with bad balance and bad technique, now a good trainer can help point out things that you wouldn't notice by yourself, where to put your weight, how to position your body. You should start paying attention to these things on your own, eventually getting a 'body feel' concentrating on your movements. As you develop you can start working on different things such as becoming faster, shedding extraneous movement, adding power to your punches.

Now keeping your stance/posture in mind you can work on movement. Practice proper footwork, how to move from side to side, forwards and backwards, circling and pivoting. If you're willing to put in the hours to master it, then you'll be awarded with the benefits of moving easily and gracefully without even thinking about it.When you don't have to think of any how-to's you can concentrate on improving your quickness and begin to work on other things. You can then being to coordinate your hands with your feet. Moving and punching, moving and defending. It's also good to use a mirror as a reference tool just to get that live visual feedback of what your doing.

Do you see now, there's so much you can do when it comes to shadowboxing. I haven't even covered the tip of it. Now shadowboxing can be a great exercise mentally and physically. It all depends on how far you want to take it. Of course there's other ways to train hand to eye coordination. You play ping-pong, bag work, and their are also a few drills that are worth doing.

Getting back to good stance and movement, it's in your best interest to spend a lot of time to get it right. Look at the some of the great fighters say for example Sugar Ray Leonard. He had great balance, good posture and good quick feet, the best that I've seen. Even after a 4 year of ring rust and he still had these great fundamentals, and that's how he could take on guys like Marvin Hagler. Guys that developed bad habits, slow feet, bad posture can't escape it, but if you start out right you don't have to fall into those bad habits.