The success in any startup depends on the fact how thoroughly we think over our every step and the solution of problems, which we will inevitably face on our way. There are some people that launch their business and solve some or other problems as they go but as rule such problems are prolonged in time and bring no desired effect. The same rules are good for box. So, let’s start. At first the mental training will be much harder than any actual training at gym. But the effect from ten such exercises for many people will be better that one hundred exercises at gym. Let’s start from sparing with one left arm. Your competitor also uses one arm. Start the sparing from your comfortable speed but try in more details to imagine the body position: yours and your competitor’s, create the difficulties for yourself through misses in sparing or missed punches. Try to react to misses as in actual sparing. The effect of this exercise depends of actual insight into sparing; you are to feel the pain and tiredness. As soon as you can spend the sparing for more than three minutes, start turning on the timer per three minutes and, while having a sparing, try to drill a time sense all at once. You’ve already understood how your exercises used to be incomplete without this work, haven’t you? So, we go on and now it’s high time to join the second arm. Change the sparing plan more often; do not do the same things. Change the style of your competitors and change your style, you may have one round as Michael Tyson, and then as Floyd Mayweather and so on. Your main task is to increase the sparing time, sparing speed and hereby to have time to watch for logic and right succession in movement of your body and competitor. The brain knows your abilities and your sparing style, thus, you need to train it to exceed the limits of your abilities. After mental exercises you’ll feel as a more experienced boxer in actual sparing.
We used to build in adversities into sparring and training all the time when I was coaching: I might tell Boxer A before a round, ‘You just broke your right hand. You can only use your left this round.’ That sort of thing.
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We also practiced basics to build in proper habits like going directly to the neutral corner on a knockdown; sometimes I’d say mid-sparring, ‘Stop You’ve just been knocked down.’ Guy would go to the floor, other guy would go to neutral corner; guy on floor would practice rolling over and getting up from his knees (instead of trying to do a sit-up, which can leave you short of breath or unsteady rising from a sitting position), hold his hands up and nod to show ref he was OK — then he would spend the rest of the round trying to alternately hold and move away to recover. We practiced every scenario including walking to the middle of the ring for instructions from the ref and returning to the corner.
