The Theory of the Sweet Science
The Theory of the Sweet Science
If you want to learn how to box, my best advice would be this;
Turn off the computer, pick up the yellow pages, look under ‘B’ for Boxing or ‘M’ for Martial arts and give your local boxing gym a call, that’s what I did. Or alternatively ask someone if they know of any local boxing gyms in the area you live.
There is a Golconda of information on the Internet to do with learning how to box, some of the information is good, and some of it isn’t. In fact there is so much information online to do with the subject of boxing that it’s very easy to experience information overload. Regardless of the amount of information that can be found online, I do not believe that anyone can properly learn how to box from scratch by reading articles or watching online videos.
The key here is that information is not always knowledge that you can immediately take and apply to your life. A very good paper entitled Informing Ourselves To Death outlines some of the problems with the information age. It was actually a speech given by Neil Postman to the German Informatics Society way back in 1990. The passages below, I think, captures the right mentality;
“ Second, we have directed all of our energies and intelligence to inventing machinery that does nothing but increase the supply of information. As a consequence, our defenses against information glut have broken down; our information immune system is inoperable. We don't know how to filter it out; we don't know how to reduce it; we don't know (how) to use it. We suffer from a kind of cultural AIDS ”
.....“ In a world populated by people who believe that through more and more information, paradise is attainable, the computer scientist is king. But I maintain that all of this is a monumental and dangerous waste of human talent and energy. ”
Obviously, boxing and fighting skills are physical pursuits, they require interaction with others, and boxing particularly the foot-work and hand skills, do not lend themselves to being taught through a medium such as the Internet.
What online articles and videos are good for however is after you have learnt to box effectively and have spent time at your local gym, you can pick up some very good tips, techniques and strategies that you might not have come across in the boxing gym you attend. And after 1 or 2 years of boxing and first hand experience, you’ll gain the ability to distinguish what is good information and what is not, you’ll then be able to work the information that you deem as being good quality, into your personal program. This way you’re treating information sources that come from outside your local boxing gym as supplementary rather than being primary.
One of the main problems I see when you try to learn boxing online is that you will have no one pointing out your mistakes as you make them and this will cause you to go on and develop some really bad habits. Also, attending a boxing gym will make it easier to gain and maintain motivation and focus. Good coaches and senior boxers have a knack for getting you motivated, moving and centered and these are things that you cannot achieve when starting out on your own.
Imagine that you wanted to build a modern day house. Secondly, imagine that knew nothing about building houses, in fact imagine that you weren’t even aware what a hammer and nail was. How would or could you build the house you wanted? Simply you couldn’t. Humans pass on knowledge and skills through the generations, it's combined knowledge. Even the very simple things in life that we take for granted such as a hammer and nails, are only accessible and available because of the way we learn from each other.
So having said that, it’s worth noting that whenever you attend a place of learning, whether it is a college, high school or in this case, a boxing gym, you will, in most cases, find people there with the right techniques and know-how, all of which has been passed on through many generations. You are effectively acquiring the accumulated knowledge that has taken hundreds of years and thousands of people who have come before you, and that’s the real advantage of ‘formal education’ in whatever you intend to learn. Maybe a video on You—Tube entitled: 'Nobody can make a pencil' will help to explain what I'm talking about a little better.
