The Theory of the Sweet Science
The Theory of the Sweet Science
But you'll spend a lifetime trying to master it. In the gym we never got into discussions about whether boxing was the best or the most effective martial art, but we certainly understood and agreed that it’s the easiest of them all to learn. After personally doing very brief stints in Karate, Kung Fu, Ki—Aikido and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu I can fully attest to that.
Whilst I picked up skills and different ways of thinking from these other disciplines, I found boxing to be the most exciting. It’s fast paced and you gain enormous health benefits from the fitness side of it. You learn how to use your body weight effectively, so much so that the skills gained in the area of footwork and weight transference will carry on over to other sports. Boxing is an ideal cross training option if your chosen sport lies outside of fighting or martial art activities.
I watch others who play sports like tennis and golf and a great many of them don’t have a proper understanding of how to effectively use their body weight. They try to generate their power from both the torso and arms alone, which makes them highly unsuccessful. They’ve effectively built their whole game on a weakness, which will hinder any and all progress that would otherwise have been made.
Once you’ve spent some time in boxing you soon come to the realisation that indeed most sports are all about proper foot work. If your feet aren’t right when you box, you’ve got nothing, you’ve got no power in your shots and you’re off balance.
On televised boxing events the cameras mainly focus on the top half of the boxer’s bodies. But if you do get a good close up shot of the feet, pay close attention to the boxer’s footwork. You can see where their power is generated and also how they put together their hooks and rips. But, even some of the professionals fail to get the fundamentals right, it’s not uncommon to see them off balance or not generating enough power due to having their feet spaced too far apart. Most of the audience at a boxing event don’t notice these things simply because they don’t know what to look for, and if you don’t know what to look for, you generally won’t see it.
In the boxing gym, I have seen a few soldiers make use of boxing training in the hopes to gain entry into the SAS and also achieve different goals, and there were others who were trying to qualify for entry into either the fire brigade or police force. They all had to pass fitness tests upon entry and all reports came back as positive. They put in the effort to their boxing training and in return, it helped to give them an edge. Others that gained benefit were swimmers, dirt bike riders, water skiers and professional football players of both rugby and Australian rules (AFL).
After a goodly number of years jostling around the fitness arena, you soon realise, after cutting through all the bullshit, that getting fit really just requires the use of a water bottle and a pair of running shoes. You don’t have to pay an exorbitant amount of money each year in gym fees. Once you know the skills and drills, you never forget them, you can take that knowledge and know—how anywhere. If you must spend money, then for little financial outlay you can easily set up a home gym and some of the equipment can even be hand made by yourself which reduces costs even further. See details at You—Tube on how to make a slip bag, view the home equipment links at Ross Training for some extra ideas and for some ideas on building a home made weight bench and squat rack, check out my home gym
Kids don’t have to, and in many cases and depending upon their age, should not be sparring, but kids certainly can easily learn the skills and movements involved with this sport. And again it can all be done from your home. Many parents might not want their kids involved in the sport but, I can’t help but feel they are missing out on a lot. Kids learn a lot from boxing and the ones I’ve seen involved with it don’t get into any trouble. Depending on where they are from and given that the selected gym is a positive one with good role models, boxing can actually help them to stay out of trouble.
