The footwork in boxing is considered a fundamental step if you want to improve your boxing, over the past years, we had seen different footwork styles during the match of boxing.
Some of these are legendary as the Muhammad Ali footwork style that has inspired and continues to motivate millions and millions of aspirant boxers worldwide.
The importance of footwork in boxing has grown during the last decades, primarily due to the improvement of the new era boxers’ physical conditions.
For this reason, the new generation of boxers has to continually improve their footwork to not remain behind the others, and as beginner you shuold always read and remind all the tips necessary for start boxing and continue it on the best way possible.
Apart from some instrument that was almost used at the beginning of boxing, the technology and study on new materials, helped the new boxers adopt different solutions to improve the footwork in boxing. One of the question that always show up is if you can wear running shoes for boxing
Some traditional method that was always used is the jump rope, the timeless jump rope has helped the footwork of a huge number of boxers, but now the adaption of new instruments like the agility ladder, and exercise like box jumps, give to the footwork a new step.
TIPS HOW TO IMPROVE FOOTWORK IN BOXING
Now it is time to see my best advice to improve footwork in boxing, so let’s start:
1 Jump Rope
The first tip that I would like to share with you is the jumping rope exercise.
If you are a fan of boxing, I probably assume that you search on YouTube “training in boxing “sometimes just for curiosity.
As a result, some important boxers were training on the heavy bag, and suddenly on the video appeared the jump rope training.
The jump rope training on boxing is a legendary exercise adopted to improve the cardio-vascular and aerobic of the boxers.
With the passing of the years, boxers notice that the use of jump rope during their training routine brings them an increase in footwork performance.
Why jump rope has a positive effect on footwork?
Because it give a simulation of the movements that a boxers make on the ring.
In more details:
To jump the rope the boxers must shift the weight balance form on foot to another, and if you think on that, this is what the boxers do on the ring.
The footwork applied on the ring is repetition and shifting of foot movements.
Other advantages of jump rope for boxers
The jump rope training on boxing brings a lot of advantages; some of these are:
- Improve coordination improve Quickness and speed
- Improve the balance
Improve coordination on boxing
The nature of the jump rope exercise requires the boxers to use multiple parts of their muscle to do the jump of the rope correctly.
If you think of the nature of the jump rope, it is a combination of working together between the arms and the legs to bring a successful result rhythmically speaking.
The use of both legs and arms together brings the boxers an improvement on coordination as on movements, where it will look more smooth and clean.
The jump rope on boxing improves the speed.
The jump rope improves your movements’ speed because your leg will be more explosive, and the time of skipping and entering to attack will be significantly enhanced.
The jump rope improves balance.
If you want to improve your footwork, your body’s balance is one point you have to work on.
For boxers; The balance is a crucial element. The boxers need to know their body and how it reacts, especially during a match, where a difference of 1 second in movement can make you the winner or the loser.
IF you want to improve your footwork and automatically your body balance, keep training on a jump rope or if you not already start, start it now.
Exercise with jump rope to improve footwork in boxing
To improve the rope’s footwork, you have to adapt different workout and tricks; for this reason, I decided to give you a list of the basic workout used with the jump rope.
This workout is:
- Fast Regular Bounce
- Side Swipe
- Boxer Skip
- Side Swipe Single Under
- Side Swipe Criss Cross
You can use this exercise variation to make your training with the jump rope more efficient and funny.
2 Use The Agility Ladder to improve footwork
The use of the agility ladder is not so known as the jump rope.
The agility ladder is a modern tool developed in recent years, and it was detected to be an excellent tool for improving the footwork on boxing.
The agility ladder can be used differently; you will usually find some coach or expertise in the gym that knows how to make correctly exercise to make your footwork movement more fluid and quick.
If you like to improve the footwork aspect at home like me, my advice is to buy an agility ladder and practice on it at least four times per week, extra of your training at the gym.
In short time you will notice an improvment on reflex too, thanks to the velocity and control motion that you need to do.
I notice a significant improvement in my reflex, but the most visible result is on the movement’s fantasy and the improvement of self-confidence on it.
Others advantage that many boxers notice on the use of the agility ladder are:
Your feet will become quicker, and you can control better your body, in the way that you can go away from a particular position and avoid punches from the opponent.
A lot of famous boxers use the Agility ladder to improve their footwork, like;
- Floyd Mayweather
- Anthony Joshua
- Vasiliy lomachenko
If this part of the article gets you more curious and want to know more about the exercise that you can do with the agility ladder to improve your footwork, here there is one video:
3 Box Jumps
The box jumps is part of this list of the best tips for enhancing footwork on boxing for a series of reason:
- It will boost the power and the explosiveness of the boxer’s leg
- Burn more calories respect of others exercise to improve power on the leg
The first attribute and the most important for a boxer is to improve the power on the legs.
Due to the nature of the exercise, the box jumps require a lot of effort and is not a static exercise; it will involve the all your muscle’s body.
Having explosive power for a boxer is fundamental because it can instantly move from every position they want.
The box jumps are the perfect exercise to integrate into your plan if you want to improve your footwork skill in boxing.
It is fun and is not always the same exercise, the real protagonist on the box jumps are you because you can decide the height, how to integrate the jumps, how many jumps you want to make per minute, and so on.
While performing the box jumps, the importance is to keep focused on improving the explosiveness to convert it into speed and velocity for your footwork.
In this video, you can see the same variation of exercise that you can make with the box jumps:
4 Shadow Boxing and his importance on footwork
Shadowboxing is usually performed before starting a training section to warm-up correctly and move all the body muscles.
However, in the last period of time shadow boxing is not only used as a warm-up, but it is recognized as one of the most important exercises to improve footwork.
If you feel that you need more from the listed tips for improving footwork on boxing done until now, this exercise is the perfect solution.
Every boxer loves shadow boxing because they can improve their movements and understand where to improve thanks to this exercise.
The best solution to practice shadow boxing is to do it in front of a mirror to have more visibility of your body and movements.
Shadowboxing is a substance used to exercise because it can be practiced everywhere, starting from your room, finishing outside in the park, or everywhere.
Why pro boxers use shadow boxing?
Because it is a great way to build muscle memory, the free movements, and the control of the surrounding space give the pro boxers more control and substantial footwork improvement.
The pro boxers often practice shadow boxing because they want to make the boxing footwork they have to perform on the ring as naturally as possible.
5 Observation Of other footwork movements
Another critical tip to improve your footwork in boxing is to observe the movements of other boxers.
Visual memory is considered one of the most efficient of our memories, followed by auditory memory.
Nowadays, we are fortunate because we can exploit technology to build and improve your knowledge.
For this reason, my tip if you want to improve your footwork on boxing is to use YouTube or other online resources to observe the footwork movements that your favorite boxer makes, either during a match or training sparring section.
Study and analyzing the movements of your favorite boxers will boost your learning process of footwork technique.
This happens because if you study something that you like, you will do it better, so what better than watch the movements and easy try to make it appeal similar.
6 IMPROVE POWER ON YOUR LEGS
We already discussed the importance of having strong legs, but I think that it was better to introduce and make it a single and important point to remember.
You need to improve your power if you want to become good at footwork.
If there is one thing that boxers cannot permit, is to arrive in the middle of competitions and feel no power on the legs.
As you probably notice, the boxers will rarely get tired or without power on the legs, the opposite case for the arms, where they can get tired if not trained correctly at some point.
To have powerful legs, the boxers do a lot of training on their legs, creating a solid base for their footwork training.
My advice is to create a routine of running, cycles, or some exercise-related to increase your leg’s power. You will automatically improve the resistance for your footwork.
7 START PRACTICE DANCE
Another tip is to practice dance; it can be shocking advice if you are a beginner, but learning a new way of movement will benefit your footwork.
You can practice dance alone at home, in front of a mirror, play a YouTube video of some particular dance you like, and see a good improvement.
Now probably are you wondering, but who are you to tell me that I will see improvement in making dance in front of a mirror?
I want you to think for just a second:
Thinking of what you want to improve, in this case, the footwork on boxing, what better than integrate new movements for your feet?
Some legendary fighters like Bruce lee were always dancing. It was a competitive cha-cha dancer.
To conclude this advice I want to tell you that, if you have time and you like just a bit dancing, continue to practice it, and it will be a bonus for your path to improve your footwork in boxing.
8 TRY AND RISK MORE
Last but not for importance advice that I want to give you is to take some risk sometimes on your footwork movements.
If you are learning a new way of getting out of your opponents or watching your favorites boxer or in the gym, somebody makes it, take your time to practice it, and then make it into practice.
Only when you will get out of your comfort zone will you improve on footwork and become the greatest at it.
If, in the beginning, you are not able to replicate a footwork movement with the same speed as you were wishing, do not get in panic or demotivate from it.
Just pushing at taking some risk, I can guarantee that you will reach it if you keep motivated to do what you want.
CONCLUSION
We arrive at the end of this article; I hope that my tips for improving the footwork on boxing were helpful and that you will find the right path to improving on it.
In general and the most important things that a pro boxer makes to improve his footwork is that he, never give up.
I write also about : 14 Tips for Beginners that Want to start Boxing