Monday, May 10, 2010

Drill Post #11: Shadowboxing

I doubt that I need to explain the value of shadowboxing to anyone interested in these posts. The way I'll suggest rounds of shadowboxing will mirror some of the partner training we've covered up to this point.

- Round one: Just footwork. Make sure that any piece of footwork is connected to any other. That is, if you have, say, six most basic bits of footwork (step/slide advance, step/slide retreat, side step right, side step left, slide;/step advance, slide/step retreat), then that makes thirty six possibilities. No need to put it in a series, just make sure that you are playing with it and covering the variations.

- Round two; Hand strikes. Whatever you want to be part of your arsenal, throw it in there, jab variations (finger jabs, palm jabs, vertical and corkscrew), crosses, short and long hooks, high and low strikes, elbows, "miscellaneous" strikes such as whip hand/finger fan, scrapes. Mix steady and broken rhythms. In other words, a jab, cross, hook smoothly, and sometimes half of the jab or cross before the following strike.

- Round three: Kicks. Just loosely combining kicks and making sure to be able to lead kick to lead kick, lead to rear, rear to rear, and rear to lead, including advancing, stationary, angling variations.

- Round four: Defense. Combining footwork with hand and kick defenses.

- Round five: Putting it all together. Just like with the focus gloves/mitts, you want to move from offense to defense with hands and feet, sometimes interrupting one thing to continue with another. For example, half way to the completion of your jab, you retract it to a modified cover or a bob and weave, imagining that the opponent's hook was going to nail you before your jab landed.

The rounds don't have to be long, but it's good to work through different areas of focus.

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