A few times a week if possible, but mostly technical (light) sparring to work on skills, or body sparring for fitness. You only need to open spar at full throttle every so often. A few rounds at a time is probably enough for most Ams. 6 or 7 at the max.
depends on your trainer, your sparring partners and how close you are to competition. Some trainers want you to spar more than others. Some sparring partners can't understand the difference between sparring and fighting. There are a couple of exercises you can do that will help and aren't as dangerous as sparring. Semi sparring: your trainer has a hand pad on one hand, a boxing glove on the other and a body protector on. You have your headgear on, foul cup on, mouth piece in, gloves on and hands wrapped. The trainer will throw certain punches at you full speed and you will defend / counter / react to that punch full power by hitting the hand pad or body protector. Predetermine what punch you will be working against and what punch you will use to counter it and just work against that specific punch---probably setting a timer for a minute. For example, the coach and you agree on working against a jab with a right cross. The trainer throws a full speed jab at you, you slip inside the jab while simultaneously throwing the right cross over the jab and hitting the hand pad. You might want to giver yourself a break after that and "replay it" in your mind visualizing it. Then after your break, work answering a jab with a lag punch or wide right to the body ( you see this all the time in boxing matches ) slip your head inside the jab a split second before throwing the right hand to the body. Work up around what you do best and you'll start seeing your style develop. If you don't have a coach, start slow and break down your techniques before actually going into the drill 100%. You can add different punches into the drill e.g. answering a straight right with a left hook to the body. Keep it very basic at first and after you get proficient with your skills then you can start combining defending against various punches that aren't predetermined. Once you get that down, you can start adding footwork to it and increasing the amount of time you are doing the drill. The second drill is jump rope tag. You'll need a partner to do this one. Put on your head gear, put in your mouth piece, wear your foul cup. You wear one boxing glove, your partner wears one boxing glove. You hold one jump rope handle and your partner holds the other. Start with the jump rope stretched out to full length between you. Like you two are about to do a one handed tug of war against each other. It doesn't really matter what hand anybody has the glove on. You can be mirror image or not. Set a timer for one minute. One of the partners will be "it" trying to tag the other. The other will be on defense. Take your boxing stances, use your boxing footwork and for one minute, the partner who is "it" will use his gloved hand to try to tag the defensive partner in an appropriate boxing area, i.e. above the belt, not in the back etc. Nobody can let go of the jump rope handle. The partner on offense doesn't throw real punches, just punches that would land with about as much force as a slap. The defensive partner doesn't throw any counter punches, he's pure defense. The defensive partner will keep his hands up like he's boxing and he will practice his defensive skills; parry, block, angled back step, slip, duck, catch. After the minute is up, switch. The defensive partner becomes the offensive partner and vice versa. Keep your technique as true to good boxing as you can without injuring each other. This drill is good for making you good defensively and since you're holding the rope without letting go, you'll be forced to use more defensive skills instead of just "running". A couple of quick words of advice, if your boxing gear is from a retail store, it's probably crap. It's better to get your gear from a specialty provider like title or ringside. Furthermore, if you don't have a coach go ahead and get some instructional dvds. I haven't seen all of Freddy Roach's instructional series but they would probably be worth taking a look at. Also ringside has an instructional series by John Brown, who is a very good trainer himself ( he has trained quite few famous fighters like Tommy Morrison for the Foreman fight ). You'll probably find out that trainers don't do everything exactly the same. The techniques are usually variations on the same principles. You can even find quite a bit of good stuff on you tube. Train smart B.C.
