Martial Arts: My Struggles with the Sweet Science

I have been working on my boxing as of late and I should say my skills are well .... wanting. It is hard work to develop a decent skill set, especially in your late 30's. I certainly don't expect to get very good, but I would like to be smoother. I feel like I am a mess.

Yesterday, I showed up to class an hour early as my daughter and wife go to swim class and there is some overlap so I get some free practice time, good for me. So far my time back training had been dedicated to catching up on old techniques; however, now I feel that I can start expanding on my training. So, once I arrived I spent 20 minutes going over some things from last class which left 35 minutes give or take for other things. I decided that I needed to so some bag work (I still feel like I need to do some bag work).

I wrapped my hands and placed an extra rolled wrap under my chin, to help me to keep my head down. Everything started off well enough with some basic drills (jab, cross ... jab, cross, parry, hook ... jab, cross, uppercut). I felt like I was doing well enough moving and staying up on my toes (one of my issues is that I can be a bit flat footed as a fighter). After about 10 minutes the wheels started to come off. First, I started to drop my wrap that is supposed to stay under my chin. It just kept falling. Which means that I was not keeping my head up (which means my world would be rocked by another fighter). I can take a hit but if you put your chin out there, well good luck to you. Anyway, I must have dropped the thing like 15 times in like 5 minutes. I was getting so frustrated with myself.

The other thing that bothered me was that once I started to spice things up my flow fell apart on me. I like to engage with elbows and knees in my workouts; it is a preference, that's all. I am not training for the ring so I can do what I want to. I would line up and do my combinations - jab, cross, elbow, elbow, uppercut or jab, elbow, knee, elbow. This was fine for a couple of times but then as I was trying to position based on the bag, which was moving much more freely with the added power of knees and elbows flying into it, I was having a hard time. My foot work was all off and I felt like I was falling over myself. I had also reverted to being more flat footed. I need to work on that.

So what was positive? The positive was that I was able to do about 30 minutes on the bag and was still fresh for class. Nothing like 25 mile weeks to help your wind. I was able to put some combinations together and keep my feet working the angles for the most part. Even though I did drop the wrap a number of times, I also was able to keep my head down for a good portion of the session. The best thing was that I hit the bag for a solid 30 minutes without hurting myself, sometimes I get a stinger on an off angle strike. I still need a ton more work (my respect for boxers goes up daily) but it is a start and there will be more time on Wednesday to work on things.