What does a boxer need to improve Punch Resistance?

Stepping into boxing like a game/profession you must know that if you attack you must be strong enough to defend yourself as well. Where you have to exercise and practice your attacking techniques you also need to learn the techniques and strengthen your body for a better defense. Here in this article, we discuss a number of drills and tactics to enhance punch resistance and better absorption of strikes.

Overall Attitude

Apparently, boxing may seem to be an aggressive game but there is a lot more than that. It is about control and composure. You cannot be wildly aggressive. In boxing there can be three types of responses to any kind of situation. Either absorb it all, defend yourself or counter attack. It takes proper training and knowledge to know exactly what you need to do.

Relax

Just as in any mind-boggling situation, the first and foremost thing you need to do is just relax so that you will be able to figure out how you are going to respond to the attack. If you chickened out at any point in the game you would lose the game before it ends. On the contrary, with a relaxed mind one can anticipate a winning move even in the last round.

Eye contact

It is important to know what comes next and to know this you must keep eye contact with your opponent and try not to let go of it. By doing this you will be able to prepare yourself for the next move because ‘The punches you don’t see hurt the most’.

The body shots

Rather than rolling the shoulders and spinning to move your head away from a punch, you should know how to receive the body shots properly. You can minimize the damage by hardening the stomach muscles. This makes a hard shell around the stomach area. You can use a medicine ball to practice take the stomach punches.

Rolling with the punches

Sparring a pro will tell you how difficult it is to punch them hard. This is because they know how to spin their bodies away from the blow. It may be difficult but practice is the key to perfection. Rolling with the punches reduces the impact of your opponent’s offense and causes very little damage because some punches cannot be avoided.

To master this art you need to anticipate and learn the direction in which you have to rotate or move. If you are receiving punches on the head you should know that you need to turn your head away and if the opponent is trying to reach your body you must know how to rotate your body to so that the punch may pass without hitting. For example, if you receive a blow on the left of the body, you’ve got to turn clockwise so that the left hook passes through and if the target of his left hook is your head, you will rotate anti-clockwise to let it pass through.

Some of the boxers, famous for rolling with the punches are Naseem Hamed, the prince; Pernell Whitaker known as Sweet Pea and Floyd Mayweather Jr.

However, various situations may require different techniques.

The Combos

You must learn and practice to take punches from basic combos so that if you take the right hook you will be ready to avoid the next left hook.

Power punches

An experienced boxer usually does not care much for every punch, he knows very well to identify the power punches. The most damaging punch you can take on is the one on the chin. To avoid taking one on the chin one basic thing you can do is block the side punches with your hands and move your head to save yourself from the straight blows.

People with strong chin defense are tougher, stronger and a bit hard to compete in the ring. Others may not be that lucky because if they got your chin they got you.

Keeping your chin tucked in is one of the basic factors of a strong defense. Even after strengthening the neck muscles (mentioned below) you will not be able to outlast your opponent if you leave your chin exposed to be attacked easily. Adding to it, a hard blow on the face causes much less damage than the one on the chin. Keeping the chin tucked in is one of the basic concepts of defense which is taught at beginner’s level.

The best defense against a hit is that you should be able to completely avoid it and if you fail your neck muscles should be strong enough to take the blow.

Strengthening the neck muscles

It takes a lot of time and practice to strengthen your body muscles. It may include isometric training and constant resistance training.

By isometric training, one practices countering the force utilizing natural weight without moving the body such as placing hand in front of the forehead and apply pressure pushing against your hand with both the head and neck. This may be repeated by putting the hand on the sides of the head as well as the back of the head.

Another thing you must practice is holding a tennis ball under your chin while performing other boxing drills. Try to hold the ball in its place. This trains you to keep your chin tucked in which is the best defensive position.

Another exercise which may help strengthening the neck muscles is free-weight resistance exercise. However, it is recommended only under supervision. To give you a brief introduction to the exercise all you need to do is to tie lightweights on the back of your head while laying down and move your head up and down to strengthen your neck muscles. The weights can be tied with the help of a neck strap.

Keynote:

You can master the art of taking punches only with the proper practice and implying the right techniques at the right time. Counter punches are the most damaging. Improve your defense!