I have been boxing for a few months now, my punching technique is coming on very well, my defense is improving a lot but my movement around the ring is shite... I always end up crossing my feet and move sluggishly around the ring. Anyone know any good drills I practice to improve my footwork?
Shadowboxing, focus entirely on your footwork, keep practising and it will become natural. I had the same problem, my feet kept crossing and coming together but my footwork has got a lot better now.
It is real simple, and real monotonous, but you do it every day. I would recommend the exercises in the Edwin L Haislet book, either Boxing or On Boxing. Very basic, very easy to follow. You have to learn to keep your feet under you, to maintain balance, and how to be able to punch and move at all times. These exercises will teach you that; jumping rope, will it will strengthen your legs, will not teach you to move like a boxer.
Take entire rounds of shadowboxing just moving, feinting, moving your head. Throw in the jab once that doesn't feel weird. Then move on to throwing other punches, but only after you take an angle. You're moving, feinting, couple jabs, then BAM pivot to an angle and dig in something good....then get out and do it again. I like to just shadowbox in my house, and since I never clean I have things all over the floor to practice footwork by moving around.
What I would do if I were you would be to not throw any punches and just do forward back and side to side footwork for about half an hour then half and hour of circling around the bag. do the footwork nice and slow and just do it perfect then slowly speed up the pace. Once you can do it well and fast start to incorportate moving in all the directions and circling with the jab. Again start this very slow including slow down your footwork and make sure your jab is landing well with the footwork. Finally start to speed that up until it is at full speed and you are still using proper footwork and then start to incorporate your other punches.
That may seem boring, but you will thank yourself you got solid footwork in a few years when you fight kids with great footwork. once you can hit the bag with all your strikes and defensive maneuvers(dont forget to be throwing in alot of defense slips, parrys, ducks, etc) then you should start to incorporate slow pad work(you should incorporate the pad work at the same time you start to add in the heavy bag work, but start slow and progress the same as for the others) and finally light sparring moving concentrating mainly on technicque and your footwork.
