my coach makes everybody in the gym use the exact same style and stance, and I just cant use it. he wants us to keep our hands at our eye brow level, elbows tight against the body, and knees bent. I know thats the basic boxing stance, but I'm just not comfortable with it. Im 5'9 130 and I like standing tall. I keep my hands at my chin and when punches are being thrown at me I use a philly shell defense, Im a counter puncher and it works great for me. when I spar using my coaches style i get tagged, but when I switch to what I'm comfortable with, I cant be touched, and I can tag my sparring partners all night. but when I do that i get yelled at and he makes me go back to his style. I have my first fight coming up soon, and I dont know what to do. what do you guys think?
Hands at eyebrow level is a bit much. Knees have to be bent for at least 7 million reasons. Straight knees is a HUGE no no. Boxing rarely feels natural to start with. That is the toughest part. Making your body not flinch, not crossing your legs, not wanting to pull back, not keeping your chin up in the air etc **** fighters can't touch you when you fight tall. A good fighter would eat you up. He'd throw you around on the inside, boss you around the ring, snap your head back cos of your high head, you won't keep him honest cos you aren't sitting down on your punches etc etc At the very least, you've got to bend your knees or forget good footwork, defence, offence, you name it. It all starts with the legs so bend your knees!
That'd be perfect if you're fighting midgets! LOL! But seriously, he might just be trying to get everyone to get used to bending their knees by over-compensating.
When it comes to the knees it's probably better to over-compensate. I guess the thread starter is frustrated that he isn't as light on his feet when he does this.
what about that staggered stance achilles? can you explain it [the best you can on a board..] where you drop your strong shoulder down a bit in order to raise your lead shoulder to guard the chin. Your right [orthodox] covers the front of the chin..Bernard Hopkins was featured in a video explaining the style but i cant find it.
You have not even had your first fight, and you can't fight in a conventional stance? Yet, you think you know more than the coach? That "philly shell" stuff is not for beginners. Even if you are comfortable with it, it's bad to not be able to box from the standard stance. You say you can tag your sparring partners all night, but, so what. There's more out there than just your partners. And really, if a fresh newbie who has yet to fight is beating on all his sparring partners... you need better sparring partners. The basics are the basics, because they are what works best in the most amount of situations. Learn and master the basics, then you can think about different "styles".
You have to listen to your trainer or switch gyms. He's the boss in that scenario or the relationship won't work.
Thank you, I was going to say the same thing. Just learn the classic style and after your good with that you can start to incorporate some of that stuff and slowly morph your style to whatever actually suites you and not your ego.
You can slip slide and roll away from punches but your feet are still in punching range. As opposed to bobbing and leaning forward where your feet can become too far away to land anything meaningful. Or you have to step back in before punching... meaning you're one step behind and probably end up off balance anyway.
