Whats the etiquette on this? Amateur gyms often only train twice a week and i feel like i should be training a lot more.
Twice a week is pretty lame for boxing training in the gym. Even if you do road work, skip rope, shadow box and hit a heavy bag, you are not getting consistent instruction and could develop some bad habits. If you want more training, change to a gym that offers more days a week and stick it out there if it fits your needs. As for training at different gyms, the only time our group did that was when our coach brought us to another gym to spar with different opponents for a change of pace, but we were under his instruction. Our gym only had about a dozen amateur boxers of varying weight classes and ages, so our sparring usually consisted of the same 2-3 guys. It was nice to go against the larger gyms boxers. At the time, there were a couple dozen amateurs and several local pros that worked out at that gym regularly.
I depends how your main coach views it. Some don't like their lads going else where for various reasons (i.e. fear of transferring or their lads getting abused in sparring). I personally would encourage it. We have 4 relatively small gyms in my town so often clubs work together if sparring is need. I trust the coaches and no they wouldn't allow anyone to get hurt - so no concerns there, and if a lad wants to leave then our club then it is his choice (he needs to be where he is happy).
Take it from someone whose been there before. Multiple coaches pulling you in different directions and having different expectations and goals for you is just a horrible mess. On top of that Boxing coaches are worse than jealous ex-girlfriends when it comes to their fighters. Haha loyalty is important and being guided by one coach who really pays special attention to you is where you'll grow. 2 times a week is ridiculous you should be in the gym training under the supervision of a coach at least four days out of the week for around an hour and a half to two hours.
Wouldn't it be disrespectful to your coach if you were training somewhere else also? Make sure you ask permission and explain your reasons. I guess if you feel you need to train more to progress then so be it We train 4x a week so I'm cool.
Depends on experience more than anything I'd say. If you're only starting out then getting different coaches giving you a load of different information before you have the experience to decipher between good and bad info, then it's probably not wise. If you're more advanced, then it's great because you can get different sparring and a different coach may identify flaws that your coach can't.
How can any serious gym only offer instruction to competitive boxers twice a week? That's nuts. My gym does three times a week. It's not overwhelmingly better - ha ha. (maybe I should get off my soapbox before someone calls me a hypocrite). But my coach has a small team (only about 6 or 7 of us training, and 4 of us competing) and most of us take practice and training seriously, even during the off days (we're still in the gym working on stuff like s&c or technique). Come to think of it, 2 days a week ain't so bad, I think the lack of competent sparring partners is the problem. Cuz otherwise, you should be able to just fill in the gap during the off days.
