SHADOWBOXING is great for a number of reasons. It’s the perfect way to warm-up your specific muscles before you do your boxing session. You will be moving around. Use your legs, move your head, relax the shoulders, throw some punches. Shake your limbs out. Repeat! Breathe and put some purpose into your movements. You should be breaking a sweat.
It’s great to work on technique – it’s great to work on certain offensive or defensive moves, you can take your time, and check out your form in your mirror. Instead of working on the entire movement, maybe you can pick out one or two key points to focus on. Once that part feels right, you can move on to another detail or try the movement in its entirety. Repetition is important but only after you know for sure that you’re practising the right thing. Practice makes permanent so make sure you’re doing it right or you will quickly pick up bad habits. This is where having a coach helps.
Most pro fighters use shadow for gameplans. Shadowboxing is perfect for working on key strategic moments before a fight. Maybe you’re boxing an opponent who always drops his lead hand after throwing a punch, if you know this you can work on a gameplan of countering the jab with an overhand right. Or if you’re fighting a southpaw you can visualise the southpaw stance infront of you while you’re moving around shadowboxing.
Every now and then after a hard session, we can use shadowboxing to warm-down. Move slowly, relax, breathe. Reflect on the session that you just have just done. Think about different techniques or movement strategies that could have helped you and work on them. You’ve already done the hard work for the day. Help remove all the lactic acid out of your body, while you shaking it out, burning them last few calories, keeping the sweat coming out of your body before you shower and get weighed.
Check out my video with five reasons why we shadowbox:
