Nerdcore Boxing

So I missed posting for a few days.

Thursday I did my cardio and some shadow boxing, that was about it.

Friday I went to class, but missed out on my cardio. Worked heavily on rotating during my punches and slipping punches. I feel like I made a breakthrough in my footwork and punch range.

I also got in 3 rounds of sparring against a smaller but real quick opponent. It went real well. I was parrying, catching punches, counterpunching and landing 3-4 punch combos. Defenses were sound, I slipped lots of punches and caught a lot on my forearms and gloves. I pulled off a few relatively advanced techniques:

• I threw and landed 1-2 combos while back pedaling during my opponents charging attack.
• During infighting I pivoted out to get an angle and landed combos where my opponent couldn’t reach me.

Got in a good day of work. Woke up early, did 40 mins of cardio and went to a 2 1/2 hr evening class. Due to commotion at home I forgot to eat dinner this evening and I started crashing at about 9:10 PM – just before I sparred.

I got to spar 3 total rounds with my trainer and our resident pro. Between sparring I’ve been working on catching jabs and going over the top with my right and I got in a few of those in sparring tonight. I also came under or outside rights to land some left hooks to the body — which is new for me. I would have liked to put together some more combinations and not had to run away so much, but overall I felt good.

Face Check:

• Small nose bleed
• Little bit of nose swelling
• Potential bruise/redness on forehead

Major breakthrough in sparring! My trainer has been a complete enigma, difficult to hit, effortlessly countering me, can’t see his punches, etc.  Apparently he’s kind of the gatekeeper for amateur boxers at our club, if you can do well against him you’re plenty ready.

Tonight I spent the entire 3 rounds circling away from his power hand and going for jabs. I was able to reach him with my jab consistently and other openings seemed to arise. I got in some straight rights and a number of hooks. I blasted in with some straight punch flurries in the first round. Hell, I might have even won the first round if we were being judged - hard to say from my viewpoint.

Second round was good, third round I sucked wind. My trainer was really nice not to try and kill me at the end. I also got my face marked up again: big ol’ bruise on the side of my nose. But hey, who cares when you’re making the kind of progress I am.

I got lots of kudos on my progress considering this was only my 20th round of sparring and considering the quality of my sparring partners. I feel like my confidence is back.

Last night I decided I am going to stop being so critical of myself. Getting to the level of a good amateur boxer is a process . While I go through this process I’m not going to get down on myself.

I got in 3 rounds of sparring with my trainer. My face is marked up with a few abrasions, good thing I’m working from home tomorrow. Some observers said I improved over last time but I think they were trying to cheer me up after seeing how dejected I looked.

Some thoughts:

1. My conditioning is terrible, I was sucking wind at the end of the 2nd round and the whole 3rd round. I’m rethinking my 30 minutes on the elliptical walking machine. I need to crank up the tension and intensity big time.
2. I know a normal punch landing percentage is about 30%. It felt like I landed 10-15%. I don’t recall landing any really solid punches, which I think was the most discouraging.
3. I need to see the punches coming and work on slipping them better. If I spar with somebody really good, then when they come in attacking I spaz out, bob/weave, v-slip and/or pivot out. During this process sometimes I get hit, but I rarely see punches coming or know why I got hit.
4. The headgear I use looks like it gives a lot of protection, but it also inhibits my vision. Trading vision for more padding isn’t smart. I’m going with thinner more minimal headgear on Friday.
5. I’m not Pernell Whitaker. Right now I get discouraged as if getting hit is a testimate to my defensive ineptitude. I need to accept the fact that I will get hit as a normal course of sparring.
6. I need to come in with authority and follow my jab with a straight right. On the sidelines they kept telling me the right was there, but I kept hesitating.

Sparring keeps you honest. You can be a little off throwing punches on the bag. If you’re training partner isn’t watching close, you can throw them wrong on the mitts. But when you start sparring with good boxers they will exploit those holes.

I haven’t been squeezing all the reach out of my jab and straight right and my arm trails my shoulder in my hook. As a result I’ve been having trouble “reaching” my sparring partners and I have difficulty landing my hook.

I’m still working on ironing out these rough spots, so we’ll see how sparring goes tomorrow night.

…when sparring. I just caught a hook with my mouth open and my jaw still isn’t happy about it.

At this point I’ve sparred 15 rounds against real boxers. Real good sparring, all with either very experienced amateurs or professional fighters. My trainer seems to put me in with a particular guy and as soon as I get somewhat comfortable, he puts me in with someone different and I’m back to square one.

Before I started training seriously I never appreciated how difficult it is to hit a really good boxer. Against a newbie I can pretty much land all my punches and dance around real pretty (well, kind of pretty). But when I first start with these new guys I am often unable to land a single solid punch. Nothing worse than feeling like your coming along as a boxer and then being complete and utterly outclassed.

Got in 30 mins of cardio then went to boxing class today.

I have to say great sparring partners are a true gift. I find you learn the most if you’re sparring partner is better than you are. As of lately I’ve been mostly sparring with a standout amateur boxer who’s had 6 fights or so. He’s 15 or so lbs lighter than me, but very hard to hit. If I can land a particular punch on him, I know my mechanics are solid for that punch.

Tonight I started sparring with my trainer, who’s about 10 lbs heavier than me and has 3-4″ in height on me. He also has the fastest hands of any of my sparring partners. Add in the fact that my recent sparring has been left handed only and tonight’s 3 rounds of sparring ended up being very frustrating. It was hard to land anything, whenever I attacked I was countered. When he attacked I found I was overwhelmed with speed, power and effective combinations. I covered and even (dare I say) closed my eyes a few times. Even though he took it easy on me I definitely felt the difference in weight when it came to his power.

I’m currently licking the wounds to me ego and will need to work on a few things before Wednesday. He sort of paws me with his jab to setup his right, I need to effectively counter this. I also need to get used to right hands, how to defend and counter. And I need to keep covered better with my right hand when I throw the left.

Last weekend one of my sparring partners won a gold medal in the junior Olympics.

The kid is an awesome boxer and no one works harder at my gym. It’s going to be tough but my new goal is to match his work ethic.