By now, you probably miss participating in boxing class with your friends at your local Singapore boxing gym. We get you. That feeling of climbing through the ropes and stepping in the ring is amazing, and we can’t wait to get back to training.
Hopefully, though, you haven’t neglected your workouts and are keeping fit at home. The great thing about boxing is that there are loads of training exercises you can perform pretty much anywhere.
Boxing may seem simple on the surface, but it is, in fact, a very complex sport. Fighters spend years learning the basics and fundamentals and eventually develop their own unique fighting style. One such style is pressure fighting.
Pressure fighters aim to overwhelm their opponents with powerful combinations, stalking them across the ring while looking for that fight-ending knockout blow. It’s a viable offensive style, especially for those who want to end fights within the distance.
If you want to become a pressure fighter, there are some things you should know. You have to train hard to develop a few aspects of your game that will put you in a position of victory. Let’s take a look at a few points you may want to consider to develop this particular style.
Today, Evolve Daily shares four keys to becoming a good pressure fighter in boxing.
1) Improve your conditioning
Home Quarantine Boxing Conditioning
WBA Boxing World Champion Drian Francisco from the EVOLVE Fight Team demonstrates a boxing conditioning workout you can do at home! #StayHome
Posted by Evolve MMA on Monday, April 27, 2020
Conditioning plays a major factor in pressure fighting. Your gas tank has to be deep if you plan on being constantly on the attack in your fights and keeping your opponents on the back foot. Because you’re always moving, always throwing combinations with power and knockout intent, your body requires the stamina and endurance to operate at a more demanding capacity.
Pressure fighters work harder than everybody else, training their bodies to be energy-efficient. Their success is predicated on being stronger, faster, and more explosive than their opponents.
As is often the case in boxing, being the more well-conditioned fighter usually puts you in a better position to achieve victory, so improving your overall physicality is important if you want to become a pressure fighter.
Although you will be looking to end matters early, good pressure fighters train as if they expect the fight to go the distance. Always train for a hard, 12-round fight, and you should have enough in the tank to overwhelm and overpower your opponents in the ring.
2) Diversify your combinations
Throw punches in bunches is what old fashioned boxing coaches would often say, and there is wisdom in old truths. Pressure fighters have to be good at doing what they do best, and that’s unleashing multi-punch combinations with the goal of scoring a knockout.
However, a pressure fighter’s offense must be varied in order to be effective. You must diversify your combinations to avoid being a one-dimensional fighter. This means putting together some creative punch sequences to keep your opponents constantly on the defensive, being unable to detect patterns in your offense.
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If you want to become an effective pressure fighter, you have to stop head hunting. Adding a good, strong body attack to your game is a key ingredient to victory. Attacking both the body and the head with volume will make it tougher for your opponents to defend against your combinations.
While it is important to learn the fundamental textbook combinations, good pressure fighters will also develop their own unique combinations to bring into battle.
Remember that effective aggression is one of the scoring criteria in boxing. Keeping your offense varied will force your opponents to become overly defensive, which increases your chances of landing a knockout punch or earning points on the scorecards.
3) Learn how to cut off the ring
A lot of beginner fighters make the mistake of chasing their opponents around the ring, the way a bull stalks a matador in the bull arena. Obviously, this is not the ideal way to approach pressure fighting, as it wastes a lot of unnecessary energy, which could be saved through efficient footwork and ring generalship.
As a pressure fighter, learning how to cut off the ring is essential to your game. It’s also sometimes referred to as cutting the ring in half.
Inexperienced fighters who first adopt the pressure style of fighting fall into the habit of plodding forward flat-footed, without any real purpose in their movement. This leads to defensive fighters being able to maneuver and manipulate their positioning in the ring.
To combat this, pressure fighters have to use lateral movement in anticipation of where their opponents are going, and then move swiftly to block that path. This will effectively corner defensive opponents or get them caught against the ropes, where the pressure fighter will then be in an optimal position to unload combinations.
4) Make the right adjustments
Last but certainly not least, you have to have the ability to make the right adjustments to your strategy and style, either mid-fight or between rounds.
Boxing is a tactical game. Despite the all-out action we see in the ring, experts often like boxing to a physical game of human chess. A lot of strategy goes into fighting, and you need to be able to adjust accordingly to ensure success.
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Sometimes those adjustments can be small and seemingly unimportant, but will have huge ramifications in the eventual result.
Perhaps you need to double up on your jab in order to close the distance on an opponent constantly moving backward. Or maybe you need to throw the overhand if you notice your opponent’s jab flying low. Paying attention to physical cues mid-fight, and getting a good read on your opponent will help you make the right adjustments.
A pressure fighter’s ability to make in-ring adjustments is crucial to success.
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