What is Shadow Boxing?
Shadow boxing is when a boxer or fighter moves around by himself throwing punches at the air. Shadowboxing is a popular exercise for fighters to hone their fighting techniques, condition their muscles, warm-up or warm down during their workouts, or even to mentally prepare themselves before a fight. Done properly and with the right goals in mind, shadow boxing can improve your boxing technique, stregnth, power, speed, endurance, rhythm, footwork, offense and defense, and overall fighting abilities.
What are the benefits of shadow boxing?
Shadow boxing is incredibly versatile because of its freestyle nature and simplicity. You can practice anything you want without any distraction (of a bag moving around, or an opponent trying to hit you), and take instant feedback from a mirror, coach, or camera. You don’t need any equipment or anybody. Shadowboxing is quite harmless as you aren’t punished for making mistakes. All you need is an imagination and you can practice virtually any movement you want.
The drawback to shadow boxing may be that it isn’t always realistic of a real fight. There is nobody for you to adjust to. Even if you’re fighting an imaginary opponent, there’s a good chance this imaginary opponent is moving the way you would move and with too much predictability. Fighting a real opponent is always harder because he’s unpredictable and requires you to change your thoughts and react on the fly.
Most boxers aren’t shadowboxing enough!
The reason why I say this is because most fighters don’t have good movement. They may have good power and good speed but their movement isn’t natural and isn’t relaxed. As athletically impressive as they may be, it simply doesn’t look coordinated. I see a guy huffing and puffing, sweating and grunting, simply to move his own body.
You should not be getting tired when you shadowbox!
Shadow boxing is all the movement. There are no distractions about having a target in front of you to punch or an opponent in front of you to make you uncomfortable. The main focus of shadow boxing is to get used to boxing movements. Nothing else!
Before you try throwing a thousand punches on the heavy bag, you should first do it in shadow boxing. Your arms need to get used to the movement. There are so many guys with weak back muscles because they’re so used to punching at the heavy bag every day. The thing is the heavy bag bounces you hand back at you so your recovery muscles aren’t being trained. And then when you fight a live opponent, your arms get tired quickly when you miss punches.
I’ve also noticed a lacking of “calmness” from boxers that don’t shadowbox enough. There’s something different about a fighter that shadowboxes regularly. He looks very comfortable moving around and throwing punches, as if that’s his default movement…it’s as natural as breathing for him.
On the other hand, a fighter that doesn’t shadowbox always looks like he has to be “switched on” to fight mode. This is a guy who needs to be pumped up before he gets in the ring. And then he gets in there and he appears to be a bit too much “ON”. He’s moving around too much, he’s all over the place. He’s too excited, too anxious, perhaps even too nervous. It’s clear that it isn’t natural for him to be fighting. And sure enough he eventually gets “switched off” in the ring. He gets tired and he gets beat down and then he goes into panic mode because fighting is fun but it isn’t yet natural for him.
Shadow boxing is the practice of committing repetitive boxing movement to muscle memory. Forget about power, or speed, or endurance, strategy, flashy moves, etc. It’s simply the raw exercise of moving your body like a boxer. You might be too tired to spar or hit the heavy bag but you can always have energy to practice moving. It’s this constant practice of developing this coordination that truly makes you a boxer and makes you a natural. It’s this supreme ability to move your body that develops naturalness, allows you to relax, to be efficient, to be balanced, to feel comfortable in your own body.
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