what does Boxing off the back foot mean to you?

It's a defensive stance because the weight is away from the opponant. His punches are less affective (so are yours), because you have leverage backwards away from the target.

Usually fighting off the back foot is to exploit mistakes made by people moving forward, it can also be a less confrontational way of fighting someone who hits better when youre both standing toe to toe.

 

it means taking a stance that allows easier lateral/backward movement. tyically this means more of a "boxer" style.

conversely, people say "boxing off the front foot" to mean more of a pressure style, forward moving attacker.

 

Off the back foot, not on the back foot... they're talking about having your weight 60-40 on the back foot so that you can move back quickly if you have to....

 

Joker pretty much nailed it in his post, but for me fighting off the back foot means i just took a big shot and i'm hurt and trying to get my head together so i can move forward again. Not something i enjoy very much at all as i'm shite at boxing in retreat, which is what it amounts to in my eyes. I have to be moving forward to get my rhythm going. Ive never been able to box off the back foot as the weight distribution is all wrong for me and i cant get combinations off, so i'm usually in defensive mode off the back foot.

 

The phrase 'boxing off the back foot' as I understand it is a general term rather than one relating to the specifics of stance. So it's the second one. Boxing off the back foot means that rather than pushing forward a lot in your attack you are generally creating space between you and your opponent and hitting them as they fall into it, so it would usually apply to counter-punchers and people who fight going backwards. Basically the flip-side to a come forward pressure fighter. That's not to say that when you're fighting off the back you're not using correct technique and pushing/pulling forward with your punches, it's just that you're using your opponants forward momentum to close the distance, and then moving away. It's a more defensive and less overtly aggressive way to box but doesn't mean you aren't landing more or even working more than your opponent .

 

@wayne. you can have the weight on your front foot and not be off balance

 

I always thought of the term as referring to someone who is trying to stick and move. The classic "boxer" who is trying to pot shot his opponent and retreat, but not in the sense that he is "getting on his bike" because he is hurt and doesn't want to engage.

 

I always thought it meant countering while moving backwards/laterally.

Someone who fights well off the back foot is able expose a pressure fighter and avoid eating big punches.

Good examples: Floyd Mayweather, Bernard Hopkins

Bad examples: Ricky Hatton, Antonio Margarito

 

Wrongly used for fighters that move backwards(and laterally and counter).
When you move backwards you push OFF the front leg, NOT off the back leg. And the opposite when you move forward, you push OFF the back leg.

 

God.. seriously? There's some serious reading comprehension fail here..

Think about it Badr, by your analogy, a pressure fighter who likes to move forward would be better off leaning on their back foot because that's what they push off, rather than having 60% of their weight on the front foot..

You don't put a lot of weight on the foot you push off of..... If you did, you'd be slow and sluggish, think about it.

 

Dirrel always boxes of the back foot, he's far from a defensive boxer just really slick,

 

Now your trying to nitt pick but failing stupidly, you can have the weight on the front foot but be balanced? do you know what balance means? if you mean 60% on front and 40% on back then clearly your not balanced... lol.

Maybe your idea of balance is different to mine.. when i think of balance i think even distribution?? which through good technique should give the ability to move in any direction with the largest variety of movements possible in the fastest way possible conserving as much energy as possible through good bio mechanics, you cannot do this reaching or overly on the front foot.. you lose mobility because of how the boxing stance has your legs positioned, simple. you lose speed if you need to back up, the quad isnt strong enough to push you back with the lead foot when your ontop of it, however boxing stance makes it so if your over the back foot your hamstring can still push off forwards, so it is better to be more on the back than the front in my opinion but better still to be balanced.

when you understand that the process of throwing a punch is prone to have us putting more weight on the front then you realise precautions must be taken when punching or moving to ensure this doesnt happen, this is what i refer to as good technique, rules that you follow when moving or striking that will help keep your weight evenly distributed during the movement.

this is what good technique should be doing for you, almost everything you do in boxing tries to have you on the front foot, as humans we are top heavy and thats the problem. everything from the classic bad posture, chin down style to over lifting heels on pivot and not compensating with knees dropping, it all wants to put us more on the front foot. so i say to people keep all the weight on the back foot because then when you throw the punch even with shoddy technique you will go from all on the back foot to fairly balanced between the two when delivering the punch rather than ending up overly on the front as usual and you will feel for yourself is a much more controlled, faster shot with the ideal leg position for the quad to use leverage and gravity to assist in pushing you back to back up quickly if need be, this is because knowing about the tendancie to lean with bad technique in punching and moving we have compensated for it by ad******g weight more onto the back foot in preperation for the poor strike that will put our weight forward rather than keeping it balanced, instead of compensating through technique at first as a quick fix to show people the benefits without changing their entire technique i say this to them to put all the weight on the back.

Once ive convinced them of the benefits of a balanced punch thats great but obviously our stance should be evenly distributed throughout the fight so we cant ideally keep shifting weight overly on the back in preperation for each strike or movement for numerous reasons, instead we must try to set rules and improve technique as to throw a punch or move in a way that will stop this leaning or over distribution on the front or back foot and keep you evenly distributed throughout, so you can then have a balanced stance to fight from but still stop the uneven distribution caused through punching/moving with bad technique.

Tbh this thread is a bit daft people usually mean different things when they say hes on the back or boxing from the back foot, it depends on the situation and individual person what they usually mean by it when they say it, i think its more of a term used to say that a fighter is counter punching or pot shotting while moving back.