the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

Well i guess most would like to win with a quick knock down/out punch, but isn’t amateur boxing very much geared toward point scoring or have they skipped the headgears and bigger gloves ?

Why do you pull your punches when you shadow box??? For me that's when I can focus on delivering as much power as possible without injuring myself or others and also perfect my technique. Conversely, when I strike the heavy bag I am checking my structure and verifying that that great power is not just a figment of my imagination.

I use both methods frequently, but I too don't own a heavy bag at home. I am of the opinion that too much heavy bag work, at least at full power, is probably not very good for your joints and even bones. I use that training only to check and reinforce. I don't train with pads - partly because I haven't owned any for years - but I find that drills and sparring with gloves and a headguard are more efficient for my style.

Peacedog wrote:The individuals in question said shadow boxing threw off timing, particularly in amateurs, because in shadow boxing you are always pulling your punches. And that interfered with proper power generation in those that didn't have it yet.

Which was their whole point. Basically you had to land the power at full power with proper timing to get everything to work right. People forget that part of throwing a proper full power punch is the object/body on the other end absorbing a lot of the force.

Anything that caused you to pull back from any part of that threw off the rest. Not using full power caused problems, because you can't really hit the air. Messing with a boxers spacing as the distances you moved into with shadow boxing didn't really match a body. All of that contributed to reinforce bad behaviors/mechanics in amateurs.

And yes, sparring was the other thing you needed to do a lot of as well.

Fair enough i guess, there are always going to be different approaches that work. boxing and boxing coaches - particulalarly the older generations have these kind of personal regimes or 'rules' shall we say. A mix of heavy bag and sparring - you would get it all, just in a different package. Footwork drills for example, if used, could be just that and not to be considered shadow boxing.

When it comes to pulling punches, it's a strange one. I am just guessing at this but I think it's more of a disposition that some might be more prone to. It should be a fairly easy fix or change of focus. It's never something i'v had trouble with. To change level of control outside of sparring I never found hard. though it can take a while to dial down your sparring power levels from when you first start. Typically some types just want to rip heads off Some coaches/ gyms have that culture, some don't. I would venture that these days the former is probably in the minority, particularly with all the health issue around head trauma etc.

MaartenSFS wrote:Why do you pull your punches when you shadow box???

To pull your punch can be used to pull your opponent's guard down and expose his head. When your opponent's arm is in your striking path, your punching power will be wasted. You want to make your arm to contact his arm and then pull. Of course you can go around his arm. But his arm can move and interrupt your punch again.

This strategy may not be used in boxing. It's used in CMA all the time. IMO, the difference between boxing and CMA is in

- boxing, a punch is just a punch.
- CMA, a punch can be a punch followed by a pull. It can be a 100% pull without any punching intend too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpi1ETv ... e=youtu.be