Grey & Thomas's Fountain of Knowledge

[Chris Nagel]

Grey & Thomas's Fountain of Knowledge

Even though we have a section for important and useful posts, I still constantly find myself going through the "Ask the Trainer" back pages looking up everything from punching technique to any particular vein of knowledge.

Many valueble posts by two of our respected members, Grey and Thomas Tabin are scattered through out countless threads which makes it difficult for someone to find what they are looking for.

So instead of moving several dozen threads to this section, I've decided that if I find something interesting by Grey or Thomas that's not already on this board, I'll move it to this thread for quick reference.

So please forgive my terrible taste for a gimmicky topic name and enjoy this growing collection of posts. If you find an interesting post by either Grey or Thomas, you're welcome to post it here.

[Chris Nagel]

Stance and Punching Technique

It sounds to me like you are punching too much with your arms. Punching technique is vitally important and would take pages to explain in detail, but let me try a thumbnail version:

While in your basic stance imagine picture an axis creating a center line through your body from each direction. When punching your hips must precede your shoulders through the center lines; your shoulders must precede your fist. This is accomplished by shifting weight from one foot to the other, and pivoting on the newly weightless toe.

Try these couple tricks. First I am sure you've seen in movies a boxer pawing his nose with his right thumb. There is a reason behind that; from your basic stance throw a straight right, begin with your thumb alongside your nose. Put your weight onto your left leg (kept straight, knee not locked) pivot your right toe sharply inward- this will turn your hips through center. They in turn will turn your shoulders. Keep contact with your nose (the thumb of your right glove alongside it) until in your peripheral vision you see your right shoulder passing your right eye.

For another stand close to the heavy bag, your feet under your shoulders left flat, right heel up a couple inches, arms bent 90degrees, elbows resting on your hips. Drop your right fot flat pivot on left toe to torque your hips and let them drive your fist into the bag. Then drop your left foot flat, pivot on your right toe to drive the right fist Keep doing this, starting slow and building speed. Concentrate on that weight shift and realize it must be done every single time. Finally, find yourself some pint cans and stand on them while some one holds the mitts for you. Punch- throw combination. If you don't punch properly you'll fall off. If done properly you won't; a 12yr old I once trained could do three rounds easy on the cans and he could knock you silly with any punch from any angle because it taught him leverage.

[Chris Nagel]

More on the problem with blocking punches

The big problem with the ear-muff defense is that ensures that you will continue to take punches. Think about it for a second: you put both hands up against your head and either put your weight on your front foot or lay on the ropes. Your opponent is now free to whale away with impunity because you cannot punch back from that position. When he finishes- gets tired of- punching he can step back, take a breath and start again. See the Calzaghe/Lacy fight.

While on the subject of defense, let me address my pet peeve of the moment. That would be the "high and tight" position of the left hand as a defense against the right hand. You cannot throw a jab from there, not a proper left jab. What you can do is 'drop' your jab (as opposed to properly throwing it from the shoulder), at which point you get hit with a right. Also, keeping your hand and arm in that position requires muscular tension- especially if you have some guy yelling to keep it up there "strong", to block a punch- and this in short order will cause you to tire, drop your hands and get hit with a right hand. Last, you then have your vision blocked by your own left glove so you can't see the right hand coming, and isn't the punch you don't see the one that KO's you?

These days, using the left shoulder to block the right hand is treated like some type of magical thing that only some special boxers can do, that you have to climb some mountain to learn. It used to be the very first thing you learned about avoiding the right hand. Back when universities had boxing teams many of them published instructional books and you can still find them, and see if I'm right about that. Watch old fights. Nobody walked around the ring with their hands over their eyes.

[Chris Nagel]

Warning: Crazy man's Rant

Quote:

Okay. Never heard the term before but I'm familiar with the concept. It is very effective against right hands of any and every sort, and the right hand should thus be freed up to block the left hook with the glove,and the hook to the body with the right forearm/elbow. And, of course, the left arm if the dfender is willing to leave himself with no hand to counter with. That used to be much more a universal defense than it is now. I never could figure out how in the world it became unfashionable to teach rolling with punches and using the shoulders.

nah that aint what they mean by that. you know, that move where one squares up and holds one arm over the body and the other arm in front the face so that the shoulder blocks the left hook to the head. i always knew that as the cross arm myself not sure about the other term.


*note: i should probably warn anyone that reads this that a crazy man rant is shortly on the way here...


you know its funny you say that about the non squared up shoulder block style in your post. my personal take on why we dont see that anymore i think can be traced back to the introduction of the 15 round limit or as i like to say the start of the end. that spawned a new way to win in our sport: points. to think that boxers should now be able to win on points and not by the real way, the knockout way, is to me beyond foolish. in the old way a bout was never over until one man could not continue so one may have been beat to an inch of his life but even then there was no winner or loser until somebody was out. then suddenly you have bird brain panelists and a points system that took what the entire sport was based on and threw it out of a window then left it for dead. the sport had become entirely different and as a result the styles and ways that saw play in the pre 15 round era slowly lost use as the new points-win-boxers adapted to the 15 round system and displaced the old timers. you can even see boxers slow out of the old styles (like the shoulder block) over the years as clear as day. i think the first time we started to see more and more boxers squared up with both hands up on the temples was in i think the 50's or towards the end of the 40's at least. for such a weak style like this to even exist in numbers like it did truly marked the end of boxing as we knew it. you see a style like that would be fast weeded out had the boxers of that time not been such dolts. but as you can see this style soon took over completely and sunk the sport even further down the drain. so bad is this today that you wouldnt see a boxer of this era set up a punch if you let him have a 15 minute head start. the amateur ranks make me blue in the face and dont even mention the pro boxers to me. i ultimately blame the introduction of the 15 round points sytem. for this reason id be cold dead in the dirt before you ever see me score a round on tv -- i refuse. to sum up the demise of a sport i love so much has left a sour taste in my mouth and now i need a smoke. see you around people.

[Chris Nagel]

Tips and Advice

I have problems breathing and my nose is kind of odd-shaped and it is all related to not seeing hooks, left hooks, coming. The right hook starts from so far away that its generally visible but that left hook will sneak up on you. I think that there are three solid ways to avoid left hooks, even if you don't see them coming.

First and foremost is to stay out of range unless you are working. Second, when in range, keep your right hand at home, ready to block that hook. Third, and this is the best advice I can give and I don't know if I can explain it properly.

See, a human can only throw one punch at a time. Can't throw the left while the right is still out, and the opposite is true as well. You anticipate...if he throws a right you expect a hook behind it. The glove should be up, and you turn in putting the weight on your left leg. This turns you inside his hook and puts you in place to counter with your own.

[Chris Nagel]

In regarding the shoulder roll, and the stance required to do it right:

I am not sure what you mean by that term... I assume you mean the left low, right high, roll the shoulder defense made popular by Toney and Mayweather?
Look, this is not rocket science. Back in the day, EVERYBODY did it that way. Check the old college boxing manuals-they did it that way in the 1940s and 1950s.
Do not ever reach out with your right hand to parry or block punches. Angle your left foot so you are not squared up- turn your left hip. You cannot roll your shoulder if you are squared up.
The hardest parts are picking off body blows with your left arm and catching the left hook.

I've noticed that its difficult for some guys to roll not because of the actual movement it takes to do it but because they arent in a stance suited for doing it best in the first place. For me it always worked smoothly when had my hip in front almost totally sideways like burley (the only guy ive ever seen stand so sideways) and so that i wwas leaning just a bit on my back foot so that my front (left) shoulder was slightly higher than then my right. Very old school stance you'll see it alot in the 20's, 30's fighters. This makes me naturally hard to hit with rights which was always nice. Its very natural to just roll away from them since, from that stance, you are already very hard to reach with a right (literally they have to REACH) and because im so sideways the shoulder can be turned in front of the face almost instantly. Also the right uppercut counter after rolling comes off extremely smooth from this stance. Its the most natural thing to see that counter after rolling the shoulder in such a fashion.

But you see the real sceret to the shoulder roll is not in blocking punches with your shoulder. See its really preformed more like a slip than a block. where youre rolling away from the right hand and not just eating it on your shoulder. The shoulder coming in front of the face is actually just a sort of a side effect of the rolling away movement and not the primary thing.

I'm starting to see more fighters trying to use the shoulder roll. andre berto and jean pascal spring to mind. They're pretty ineffective to me though because they stand straight up in the air like a stick and try to forcibly push their shoulder up to cover the head. They end up just eating the punch because this forces them to block and dissallows the rolling away motion so critical to the shoulder roll. because they have no rolling away motion, the right uppercut which comes off of the shoulder roll becomes difficult for them to throw and thus pretty ineffective.