OUR PHILOSOPHY

Everything we do at our club flows from this basic philosophy:

There are 2 Pillars

1. Teach you how to box
2. Give you an amazing workout

Everyone has varying degrees of interest between the 2 things but they go hand-in-hand. Better boxing will make a better workout. When your technique improves, you use more muscles, you move more explosively, you burn more calories, increase cardio output, etc. A better workout also makes you a better boxer. Not even just for fighting. When people get tired, technique tends to fade. Not just you, professional boxers. When your fitness improves, you can focus more on technique.

You may only care about one of these these things, but again, both will support each other. It doesn’t matter who you are. Whether you like combat sports or ever imagined you would throw a punch in your life.

How to box doesn’t just mean how to throw punches. Understanding the why behind them, the strategy, defense, footwork, head movement, different styles and so much more.

We train like we’re fighting a professional (as opposed to amateur) fight. Why? Because amateur fights are based purely on points and power is not taken into account for their scoring system.

We throw explosive punches, punches with an intention. You may see boxers - most notably Floyd Mayweather Jr. - ‘touching up’ the bag during practice but remember that this is only one tiny sliver of their training regimen. Floyd doesn’t throw punches like that in the ring! No fighters generally do, unless they are really tired. Also note that professional fighters train morning, noon and night, most days of the week. They work many different aspects of training. Most of us don't have that kind of time and if you've only got an hour few nights and mornings a week, you are going to want the most out of that hour. Touching up the bag is not going to get you there. Not even with your technique and definitely not for fitness.

Our classes take place mostly on the heavy bag and the heavy bag is the best (and sometimes only) tool that exists for practicing POWER. Mitts require more precision, sparring requires holding back, but you can really develop that power on the heavy bag. This does not mean every punch has to be 100% or you should get into bad habits of throwing wild punches but again, we are looking to utilize that explosive energy. Produce a lot of force in a short period of time. This is what makes a punch a punch, as opposed to just a movement. Being wild and throwing powerful strikes do not go hand-in-hand. Technique must be learned first and proper technique leads to more power.

We throw punches on the bag how they would be thrown at an opponent. Of course heavy bags do not have the exact same physique of a person, particularly the flat surface and lack of chin, but this does not mean we have to alter our technique on the bags. The main example that I've brought up before involves uppercuts. Just because bags don't have chins does not mean that we can't throw uppercuts to the chin level. It doesn't make sense to train differently than you would for a fight.

Same is true for switching stances. There are a small amount of boxers who will actually change their stance for any length of time, like Terrence Crawford, and there are others who will dynamically switch like Tyson, Hagler, Sugar Ray Robinson, and more. Great fighters, all of them, but again, this is not the way to learn for both technical and fitness reasons.

We throw realistic combinations that make sense. Sometimes our combos are longer than you might generally see in a fight but only to help better understand the flow between strikes.

The other main component of realistic training is defense. The bag doesn’t throw punches back but we must train as though it will.

That means good habits like keeping your hands up, chin tucked, staying on the balls of your feet, being on balance, etc.
You will see plenty of boxers break those rules but this is not how anyone should learn boxing. Learn the safe, proper way first.

We would never teach offense that compromises defense. Dropping hands is the big offender here. You will see fighters do it, often on purpose as part of their low guard, but this is not the safe way to learn boxing nor does it have any positive effect on the workout at all (in fact, the opposite). 

It is true that there are drills we will do for training purposes that support the 2 main pillars, even if they don’t translate to something you would throw exactly that same way in the ring.

Besides heavy bag classes, I also do 1-on-1 boxing training at our club. This general philosophy applies to mitt work/pad work with my clients as well. One of my BIG pet peeves is when you see mitt holders doing far more work than the punchers. These type of videos are all over Instagram and I've never understood it. The punchers aren't able to get full extension on their punches because the mitt holder is meeting them more than halfway. Sure, sometimes your punches would get stifled in the ring as you are fighting a moving target but we should train to throw our strikes properly and not with T-Rex arms. And it's another case where people tend to focus on the dance - the quick tap-tap-tapping of unrealistically long combinations to look and sound cool - rather than developing good body mechanics and explosive movement we need in boxing and even just getting a great workout.