williepep - Remember folks this is years ago, but I was considering spending a semester in Ireland.
So I told the boxing coach , who had a lot of amateur coaching experience, that if I went to Ireland for a semester I wanted to work in a gym.
This guy warned me not to, he said "look in Ireland you have these gyms filled with 12 year old kids with flat noses and cauliflower ears, the training is brutal.”
This coach had a fair amount of experience with ammey programs including international, I wonder if he was correct about the Irish boxing gyms?
I've never been to Ireland but I lived in "West Ireland" for a year (Boston).
I read your earlier post about being a short white guy and trying to adjust your training to suit your style. I'm in the same boat, but like I said I spent most of my time either in "West Ireland" or suburban gyms where a lot of guys fit my "demographic" so I never really ran into that problem but I assume you'd find plenty of those guys in Ireland.
And I can't speak from experience but I don't know if EVERY gym in Ireland is a brutal slaughterhouse. There's Thai gyms in Thailand that cater to tourists so I doubt that even in the mecca of thai boxing that every single thai gym has you rattling your shins against trees, I'm sure it's the same way with boxing gyms in ireland.
Good thread! The way I have learned what boxing I know was all one on one instruction and not from a boxing gym for the last few years. I have always heard that they only groom what rises to the top during tough training and that instruction is rare to beginners. It is more hit the bag, hit the double end bag etc. I also guess that I am lucky to have found someone that is able to teach a style that is well suited for my abilities. There seems to be a wide range of approaches to it and none is nessisarily wrong but maybe one gym is better suited than another for everyone.
I mean, it's rare that a boxing instructor with any credibility is just going to completely throw you to the wolves. But speaking from experience some gyms get a lot of posers that walk through the doors not to learn boxing as much as they want to be able to go out on a friday night and tell a bunch of girls at the bar that they're an "Amatuer Boxer".
Also I haven't seen this personally but I can see some boxing instructors not being to keen on someone walking in saying "I want to round out my MMA training with some boxing so I'm going to train here for a while". I came from a wrestling background myself but my focus was on becoming a boxer, which in essence makes me a more well rounded fighter. I'm sure it would be obnoxious as hell if you're a boxing instructor throwing someone how to properly throw a jab and you get some dickhead in the background pipe up and ask you what to do if they shoot for a low single.
I've trained at two very famous boxing gyms and the training was like night and day. Finley's was a legendary place in DC known as the gym for the best pro boxers in DC and it was a shithole. The place was ghetto as fuck and so was the training. It was a me vs the world attitude and you didn't help anybody that wasn't helping you get PAID. and then I trained at Sugar Ray Leonard's gym in Palmer Park and it was the opposite the focus was young fighters so the trainers where there with their top ammateur boxers like show horses. there was lots more focus on conditioning and technical ability.
Ive learned more from instructional dvd's than i have from gyms. Just because the DVD's have some of the most knowledgeable guys in the world, while your local gym probably has a guy who is mediocre at best. Plus you dont always get the personal attention.
I think everyone would benefit from "Freddie Roach's Title Boxing" DVD's
sbjjstreetcop - Good thread! The way I have learned what boxing I know was all one on one instruction and not from a boxing gym for the last few years. I have always heard that they only groom what rises to the top during tough training and that instruction is rare to beginners. It is more hit the bag, hit the double end bag etc. I also guess that I am lucky to have found someone that is able to teach a style that is well suited for my abilities. There seems to be a wide range of approaches to it and none is nessisarily wrong but maybe one gym is better suited than another for everyone.
We could make this thread epic if you just got your coach to agree to work with me. If the stories I heard were true he had a lot of fights in Europe years ago.
Years ago I saw him work a heavy bag and it scared the heck out me, your coach can generate some real power, and he was closing in on near retirement age back in those days.
As you know the first boxing coach I worked with was a student/former fighter of your coach.
His student was a great coach, but the speed and footwork I encountered sparring over at the fair grounds was on another level.
I know in that video Mayweather is helping a bunch of heavy set working people at an MMA gym, but that is still almost as much "teaching" as I have seen in a boxing gym.
I was fortunate enough to learn from an old school Mexican trainer, this was in the late 80's early 90's til his death in 98 and will tell you that defense was STRESSED. At the time I was his only white fighter, the rest were guys that barely spoke English. I would show up to the gym an hour before the rest of his guys got there and he gave me a ton of attention as a 14 year old with a few fights under my belt (not for him).
The one thing he pushed more than anything was head movement. Spending at least an hour in front of the mirror shadowboxing and working my defense like crazy.
It's true that most boxing coaches wont give you a lot of attention at first, but do you blame them ? Why dump a bunch of time into someone that isn't going to fight for your team and take time away from those that really want to fight . Most boxing coaches are volunteers who aren't getting paid, so of course they are going to help the ones who deserve it out , before they help some random new guy.
We have a talented ammy mma fighter at our gym. He has fantastic wrestling, mma and kickboxing coaches. The final coach we brought on board was his boxing coach. The boxing gyms are very different from MMA gyms. It could be a month before they even give you a correction. Your first month may be spent skipping rope and bag work. Maybe by month two a coach will work mitts with you. Sparring….maybe 2-3 months.
The boxing gyms are very old school. That being said I’d have to attribute the biggest improvement with our fighter is from the constant and never ending drills (shadowing, speed and double end bags etc…) I’ve posted a link to a video of our guy training. The first 5 slides are all from his boxing gym. You’ll get a good idea of what goes on in a boxing gym. The last slide is of him “moving” (sparring in boxing parlance). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVvJIPVIHWI
Folks these are all good points, especially about first entering a gym and certainly if you show up acting like you "want to learn a little boxing"
That being said I spent more than 4 years in one gym, often going 4 or 5 days a week.
I must say that in my opinion I did not see a lot of what you would call learning technique and strategy. Not just with me, but even with the guys that were good boxers. The style seemed to be to correct or offer small corrections after sparring.
I agree with williepep. Our guy had all of the fundementals before he started boxing. I've sat there while our guy is training and am completely perplexed how new guys that know nothing.....learn anything.
williepep - Well 16-10 are you saying I should not wear my Tapout shirt and affliction jeans next time?
No, not for your first day anway. The typical routine is to spend about a week and a half there then start wearing shirts that say "Bare Knuckle Boxer" and "KO King". Also look for a nice pair of plated gold boxing gloves you can wear on the end of a necklace and refuse to take it off while working the heavybag or doing anything else sort of actual sparring. When sparring, you are of course expected to wear the necklace until you enter the ring and take it off cerimoniously while mean mugging your sparring partner, who knows damn well that you've only been there for a week.
lol. It's the equivalent of guys on the wrestling team who bought the varsity jackets before they even made the team. Or kids who showed up in Basic training with air force tattoos already on their bodies despite the fact that they had yet to make it through BASIC training
^^^^ man and to think the coolest thing I ever did was at about 13 or 14 one of the Uchi-deshi wrote my name in Japanese on the bottom of my gi, he told me once I got home to stitch it with black thread.
Here I was a Kyokushin student under Shihan Oyama, and now I had my name in Japanese on the bottom of my gi. Needless to say it made me feel like one of the Uchi-deshi, so I tapped my shins with bottles, tried to put calluses on my knuckles, and shadow boxed under trees, every leaf was a target.
That was all really cool, until I learned how to throw a decent jab