Beginning Amateur training

You need a lot of sparring and good coach. I'd say atleast 6 months of progressive solid sparring before a fight. There are other factors of course your age, physical abilitiess, mental toughness, etc. that counts.

If you are never sparred or took punch to face, get your nose bleed, hit to floor via body shot. You need to face these things before even consider a real fight. Just go and spar and see how mentally tough you are to be a fighter.

Just work hard and learn the sport and when you feel you are ready and your coach shows green light, you can start to be looking for a fight.

 

You don't need as much sparring as you think. Once a week is good enough if you are constantly drilling. Focus on basics. I can't stress how important those are. Basics wins fight, ask any coach who has any sort of quality pedigree. Most amateurs that I see who don't make it to the elite level lack basics. If you can master those then you are going to have success.

Roadwork is very important. 2-3 miles a few times a week and lots of calisthenics. Just start doing sets of 20 push ups and squats. Don't count the sets just do them until you can't. When the push ups get to much go to your knees and do them. Do calisthenics 3x per week. Non consecutive days. Any kinds of core work is excellent. The harder the better. Wrestlers bridges for your neck are also great. Do a couple sets of those, front and back of neck.

For conditioning aim out of your comfort zone. You should be going as hard as you can on those or else they are useless.

Oh yeah and for bag work just do about 4-5 rds mixing punches up between light and heavy. 2:1 ratio. Don't stand there and only throw one hard punch over and over. 5 rds of shadow boxing keeping a high pace/ extending on your punches. . Don't worry about speed, just technique. Skip rope 3 rds at the start of your workout.

 

No, this is absolutely wrong and can get a guy hurt. Sparring isn't about going hard it's about applying techniques that coach taught you to a practical scenario.

 

to answer your question, when you are almost comfortable but still a little challenged with the beginner classes, is when you ask to move into the competition classes. it gets to be realistic. sounds like your gym has a process where the beginner classes weed out the dreamers from the recreational user, to the ones who really want it. nothing wrong with that. as a coach i hate wasting my time on someone who is all talk when i can spend it with someone who's already invested and earned my time. if you ask too early the coach will see your bullsh*t. if you wait too long he sees someone complacent. keep going to practice and really study the basics. be the best beginner in the class. go home and practice what you learned the day before, and return to the gym even better than you left it. listen to the coaches in the beginner class. ask questions then DO WHAT THEY TELL YOU. show them that you can take the instruction. and when that sweet spot happens between comfort and challenge is when you ask how to move up.

i've been coaching over 25 years and more often than not the big talkers are "in like a lion. out like a lamb" and don't last long.

prove it with your actions.

 

There are two kinds of sparring. Sparring where you go light and just learn the technique of aspects. And then there are sparring where you actually try to memec a real fight. For example it was hard to find sparring partners for Mike Tyson, because they really used sparring like it was a real fight and try to hurt or KTFO the other guy.

Boxing is an art, but its also very brutal sport. You need to be ready to love the sweat, blood and breaking ribs. Or if the other guy is better, be ready to take beatin for yourself! Thats why those guys who win every fight KO1 are smart and hardworkers, they don't want to be too long in the ring and get punched in the head. Thats why Prime Mike Tyson (Pre 1988) is my boxing god who just went to the ring KTFO'd the other guy and went back to the gym to train like a beast, and repeat the same again and again. What a warrior Tyson was!

Best way to learn to fight is actually do fighting itself. James Toney didn't do much cardio, he got it from doing sparring like 20 rounds a day.

But I agree that basics are the key to get you far. It takes millions of repetitions doing shadow boxing, basic drills & combinations, keeping hands in right way etc.

 

I agree with this post.

Thats why I like to say "Less words, more action". I want to be the guy who talks as least as possible, but trains most hard and let the talking after the training.

 

Mike Tyson's sparring is an outlier. All these pros who you hear about having crazy sparring sessions are all outliers. Go into a gym for one day and look, you won't see any pros having "wars".

James Toney is punch drunk as hell now because of all of that sparring. Again, he is an outlier.

Heavy sparring such as broken ribs and noses is unnecessary. Sparring is sparring. There's a reason that sparring sessions are boring compared to actual fights.

 

My philosophy to boxing is always look what the greatest fighters of sport have done. 99% in every sport do it wrong, and only 1% succees. Thats why I named Mike Tyson and James Toney, because they inspire and they did something right because they got to the top.

Most guys in boxing gyms are lazy and doesn't have that 110% focus to do whats neccessery to be champion IMO.

 

The thing you are forgetting is they didn't start doing that until they got to the top. When training for a marathon you wouldn't start off running 26 miles the first day. Same with boxing.

Not saying what they did is wrong, you just have to keep in mind the journey to the end of the road.

 

I wouldn't bother, mate, you won't get anywhere with someone so ignorant. You're responding to Dago, Mr I've never wrong about anything.

BTW, I agree with what you said 100%.

 

There are straight up wars at my gym every Monday and Wednesday. Not every session is a war but it happens a lot. It all depends on the fighters. Certain guys go all out, certain guys practice their defense.

Last week I saw the top SHW prospect at our gym go against a world stage HW, and it was an epic battle.

The main difference is that extra killer instinct of focusing on the KO isn't there, and nobody does anything dirty on the inside.

 

The guy who's asking the question is a novice. The guys you referred to are elite level pro's. I'm not saying that this kind of sparring is bad but for a novice who probably doesn't do things off of reflex that is a recipe for disaster. A guy like Tyson or Toney were fighting for years (amateur+pro) before they started getting into sparring wars. Every single fighter worked up to the pace they are at. One month of training is not long enough.

 

Dude you are out of your depth here. People can get injured from what you are telling them. Worst poster on this forum and you have absolutely 0 boxing experience. I will go with what one of the top amateur coaches in the country teaches rather than some bum from the UK that never laced up the gloves. Go watch some more videos of people training because that is the most boxing you have ever done.