What makes for a good trainer?

[Lords Gym]

Tell how to judge a good coach, The guy who doest try to mend something that isnt broken and succeeds

[Chris Nagel]

I think that there's a feeling of enthusiasm for a lot guys that put on a pair of boxing gloves for the first time and are starting out. Trainers can definately be valuable guide, but things such as patience and figuring out the things on your own, a trainer can't really help you with that. Here's what Jack Sharkey had to say:

"The reason you learn, it isn’t too much from the trainers, it’s from your own eyesight that you notice these fighters, standing around in the gym while you are waiting to go in to box or you are jumping rope or punching the bag, you stop while he’s boxing, you pick up little pointers and these things you try, and this is what, if you go any brains in your head at all, this is what makes fighters improve. And you get so that it’s entirely different and easier than your own style, so this is how a good fighter becomes a great fighter, it’s the fighter himself that can improve and try something."

Now that we are in the days of punch-out drills, punching by numbers and a superabundance of exercises and drills, it's easy for a fighter to get lost in the motions and lose sight of what Sharkey was talking about.

[Chris Nagel]

I guess that one way a trainer can really help a fighter develope (and be grow by themselves) is by sitting down and watching fights with them. Just talking with them, of what's going on in a fight. It would be more helpful to be able to watch the fight from the stand point of what it'd be like if you were in the ring. Pick a side, and watch the fight in the eyes of one fighter. All the while asking yourself what the fighter is trying to do, etc. This is all important because this is the kind of eyes that you'll use while watching a fight as well as when you're in one.

Here's interesting account by the great trainer Mannie Seamon on Benny Leonard: "Benny often went into the gym even when he was not training. Because boxing was his life. He said he discovered new moves and tricks by watching the other boxers work out. He was a thorough student of boxing."


Like Sharkey said, it's the kind of thing that makes a good fighter become a great fighter.