A Constraints-Led Approach to Boxing w/ Adam Haniver

Summary

In a groundbreaking episode of the Combat Learning podcast, boxing coach Adam Haniver reveals his revolutionary insights on moving away from traditional boxing training methods towards a constraints-led approach. He challenges the conventional reliance on repetitive drills, such as pad work and static exercises, which he argues do not prepare fighters for the unpredictable nature of a real match. Instead, he advocates for practices that encourage adaptation and responsiveness, aligning closely with real fight scenarios. This episode is a must-listen for boxing enthusiasts and coaches interested in evolving the sport through innovative teaching methodologies.

Highlights

• Adam Haniver challenges traditional boxing training methods with a constraints-led approach. 🧐
• He explains why pad work might not be as beneficial as traditionally thought. 🥋
• Discover alternative training methods that closely mimic real fight scenarios. 🎯
• Learn how safe sparring can be introduced earlier using smart constraints. 🤼
• Explores the importance of fostering creativity and autonomy in athletes. 🧠

Key Takeaways

• Boxing tradition meets modern innovation with a constraints-led approach 🥊.
• Pad work may not be the magical training tool we always thought it was! 🤔.
• Embrace variability and adaptability for better performance! 🔄.
• Sparring can be introduced much earlier and can be kept safe with smart constraints. 🛡️.
• Transform your training culture by fostering athlete autonomy and creativity! 🌟.

Overview

Boxing has long been cloaked in tradition, but Adam Haniver, a forward-thinking boxing coach from the UK, argues for a revolutionary change. In the Combat Learning podcast, he outlines his shift from traditional methods like repetitive pad work and static exercises to employing a constraints-led approach. His innovative method encourages boxers to adapt in real-time, just as they would in the ring.

Haniver questions the effectiveness of pad work, a staple in boxing training, suggesting it may not adequately prepare fighters for the unpredictability of a match. He emphasizes the need for training practices that enhance adaptability and responsiveness, allowing boxers to tailor their movements dynamically.

Through this approach, Haniver advocates for safe sparring methods introduced early in training. By applying smart constraints, athletes can learn effectively while minimizing the risk of injury. The podcast highlights how adopting such methodologies not only enhances performance but also cultivates a culture of creativity and independence among athletes.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction and Newsletter Promotion In this chapter titled 'Introduction and Newsletter Promotion,' the host, Josh Peacock, introduces the Combat Learning Podcast and encourages listeners to visit combatlearning.com/newsletter. By subscribing, listeners can receive a PDF introduction to motor learning specifically designed for martial arts enthusiasts.
• 01:00 - 02:00: Guest Introduction: Adam Haniver The chapter introduces the guest, Adam Haniver, a boxing coach from the UK and a founding member of "the Box." The host mentions resources available to listeners, such as a newsletter and a learning design cheat sheet to help transform exercises into skill-building activities.
• 02:00 - 04:00: Tradition in Boxing and Martial Arts In this chapter titled 'Tradition in Boxing and Martial Arts,' the focus is on shifting away from traditional training methodologies in boxing towards a constraints-led approach. Adam, a boxing program coach, shares his perspective on this transition. Key points of discussion include the shortcomings of traditional pad work in boxing training, primarily because it mismatches the opportunities for action (affordances) with the intended movements. The chapter concludes with alternative strategies to traditional focus mitts, suggesting more effective ways to enhance boxing training.
• 04:00 - 08:00: Constraints-Led Approach in Boxing The chapter introduces the topic of using a constraints-led approach in boxing, emphasizing the challenges and potential benefits of integrating this method into traditional boxing practices, particularly in England. The discussion highlights resistance to change within the boxing community and the perception of new methodologies as disruptive, symbolized by the reference to 'fancy words' and ideas brought by a newcomer.
• 08:00 - 12:00: Padwork Criticism and Alternatives The chapter discusses the critique of traditional boxing practices, specifically padwork, and suggests that challenging these traditions is often met with resistance. It compares this situation to challenges faced in martial arts communities globally, highlighting that both boxing and wrestling are industries that are highly protective of their traditions.
• 12:00 - 16:00: Challenges in Coaching and Sparring The chapter delves into the differences between traditional martial arts and sports like boxing. It discusses how traditional practices in martial arts, such as karate and taekwondo, differ significantly from the more functional and practical approach seen in boxing. In boxing, sparring is a crucial element, forcing participants to develop a higher degree of functional ability compared to some traditional martial arts.
• 16:00 - 20:00: Safety and Constraints in Sparring The chapter discusses the artificial divide between traditional and modern functional martial arts, with a focus on how boxing, despite being old, doesn't fit neatly into either category. This challenges certain traditional aspects within martial arts like karate. The speaker contemplates the traditions one has to fight against in order to use more practical applications in sparring safely.
• 20:00 - 24:00: Training Philosophies and Adaptation This chapter discusses different training philosophies in boxing and the concept of adaptation. It mentions the common names that frequently come up when talking about boxing legends, such as Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvin Hagler, Thomas Hearns, and Roberto Duran. The chapter raises a question about how these legendary fighters would fare against a modern boxing icon like Floyd Mayweather.
• 24:00 - 28:00: The Role of Shadow Boxing and Bag Work The chapter discusses the nostalgic and romanticized view of older boxing legends compared to modern boxers like Canelo. The author suggests that many people believe that the boxers of the past would outperform today's fighters. This notion often stems from the personal connections and emotional attachments formed while watching these figures as they grew up, leading to a bias favoring past legends over current talent.
• 28:00 - 31:00: Concluding Remarks and Contact Information The concluding section discusses the integration of sports science and modern educational methodologies into the training. It emphasizes the hesitation or resistance from some individuals who may not fully grasp or appreciate these new approaches, contrasting it with traditional practices used by renowned figures who didn't rely on such advancements.

A Constraints-Led Approach to Boxing w/ Adam Haniver Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 [Music] welcome to the combat learning podcast I'm your host Josh peacock if you aren't already please go to combat learning.com newsletter to get my intro to motor learning from martial arts PDF so that
• 00:30 - 01:00 you can get up to speed on the powerful Concepts we're discussing in the show plus you'll never miss an episode and I'll throw in my representative learning design cheat sheet to help you transform your exercises into rapid skill building machines once again that is combat learning.com newsletter today I'm joined by Adam Hanover a boxing coach out of the UK and one of the founding members of the Box
• 01:00 - 01:30 Gathering which is a community of practice for boxing coaches and a highly recommended podcast of the same name in this episode Adam talks to us about how he has moved his boxing program away from the traditional approach toward a constraints Leed approach of particular interest we discussed why padwork is not good training because it pairs the wrong affordances with certain movements and then we discuss what you can do in instead of focus mths to make training
• 01:30 - 02:00 more effective so if you're excited to jump in hit the Subscribe button on your podcatcher and enjoy the [Music] show it's a really really challenging boxing and in England you have to be very careful because um we know we're so we're so cloaked in our Traditions that if you challenge it too much then you'll just seeing this who's this little PCY kid who's coming in bringing all this P these fancy words fancy
• 02:00 - 02:30 science and all that what does he know you know you got to be very quite careful I suppose it's like that all over the world whenever you challenge tradition but um it seems to be quite like you know boxing very much ring fenced it's like we're boxing keep out you know yeah yeah yeah I think that's something that um people inside the martial arts Community don't actually understand about boxing and uh even wrestling um is that uh there is just as
• 02:30 - 03:00 much tradition in those Sports as is a traditional martial art those that that the Divide between the way that you know karate or taekwon o is versus the way boxing is um obviously there's a functional difference in the way that you know boxers Spar more and and um they're they're kind of forced into a greater degree of of functional ability than a lot of um
• 03:00 - 03:30 karate people are but there's the that that divide between what's traditional and what's like modern and functional is like very artificial boxing is old it's been around probably longer than what we think of as traditional martial arts have uh been around with the exception of kung fu right um but yeah that was one of the questions I wanted to ask you was like you know what what are what are some of the Traditions that you kind of have to fight against in order to use a
• 03:30 - 04:00 constraint sled approach to boxing um there's the there's the whole kind of when you speak about boxing and any you speak to any lay about boxing you're always GNA get the same names coming up mamad Ali suine Leonards you know the greats in the 80s the hagglers the Hearns and durans all these people um and then you ask them would they be a Mayweather
• 04:00 - 04:30 would they beat these kind of people would they beat a Canelo all these people nowadays and the answer is nine times out of 10 is yes they would these old people would so they always did it better I think it's a bit of a romantic notion that if I'm honest it's a bit of a romantic notion people love to hold on to that kind of thing because they grew up with these people they you know they romanticized it when they were watching them as a young person with their father and growing up and they think that you know there's no chance in one of these new New Kids on the Block
• 04:30 - 05:00 not the band uh are G to beat them so so um it's so to to to bring in sports science to bring in all this new kind of pedagogy andragogy whatever you want to call it and start applying it and then when people don't really understand what that is what that looks like in a practical sense it's let's keep that at Arms distance because Leonard never needed that turns never
• 05:00 - 05:30 needed that so why do we need that so you know is that dangerous kind of you know if it's not broke don't fix it we you know we've always done it this way kind of approach and we know that we've always done it this way kind of approach it's quite a dangerous thing to say now I'm not saying Josh that that um we need to scrap the get rid of the whole you know the get rid of the the book throw the book away and say we shouldn't do that sort of stuff there's lots of things that are that still will always remain in boxing which I think should always remain in boxing but
• 05:30 - 06:00 I think it's very dangerous to just keep going along this repetitive block practice if I throw a 100 Jabs then the person who throws 200 Jabs is going to be better and I know there's probably some kind of um um some kind of metaphor or quote that will come in there from Bruce Lee I think the man who throws 100 I always forget what that one is you got that I think he the original one is kicks he's like I Don't Fear The Man Who practices a thousand kicks one time the
• 06:00 - 06:30 man who practices one kick a thousand times or something like that like and maybe it's 10,000 somewhere in the you know yeah you know even the 10,000 thing you know the anders Ericson thing and the whole glad stuff whatever you want to say but my point being this if I bring sort bring it back to my point there's still this kind of thing that you have to put the the time and effort in and that means as many repetitions isolated repetition as you
• 06:30 - 07:00 can so I stand there and hit the bag a thousand times and you hit it 2,000 times you're going to be better than me and in some ways there's an element of truth from that but there's not this real understanding of repetition without repetition no real contextualized learning um there's not this whole um understanding of motor learning and and and skill acquisition in general or skill tement whatever you want to call it so we're very much get on the grind get on the grind we've got to get on the
• 07:00 - 07:30 grind and I I just pull my hair out go this grind why do I want to go out in bed and get out get on the grind every day you know it just says to me repetition kind of stumbling full fall forward into what we're doing and I think we just got to wake up a little bit more and and understand the pedagogical side of things and how we learn better um so you know part of why I'm so sort of um attracted to listening to your podcast to listening to Scott CES podcast you know and you know I'm a big fan of all the work that um Ste
• 07:30 - 08:00 Armstrong does I know he's been on your podcast as well so um we just need to wake up a little bit more and and stop being so blockheaded literally blockheaded and block practice in terms of how how we go about let's Embrace some new stuff because it does work is there is proof out there so let's have a look at it and stop being so proud and romantic about our fantastic sport yeah yeah I obviously 100% agree with you it's um there's actually some it's not impressive but there's some work done in
• 08:00 - 08:30 boxing from a constraint sled approach there's a paper on um metastable ranges right where what they the what they came up with out of the study was uh you know hooks and Straits and uppercuts emerge in a stable way predictably within different ranges no du right but the significant finding in that study is that you actually don't necessarily need
• 08:30 - 09:00 to to teach everyone only throw this in this range and and only throw this punch in this range right um because if you let the person's organismic constraints and their their growing Learning Journey sort a lot of those things out uh that most of that'll emerge on its own and if you don't give them these preconceived notions or these limiting beliefs you'll find really unique uses of maybe short range Straits right whereas most people
• 09:00 - 09:30 think the Straits is maybe a little bit of a medium to a longer range um weapon right long range hooks which are pretty common but you know just not limiting the Learners to how they can use a punch let them sort that out in their own practice uh though I think that's even though the the paper kind of on the surface comes to a finding that's like
• 09:30 - 10:00 you didn't have to spend you know $3,000 4,000 however much it cost on that that research it is significant in that there's that self-organization that that ecological people talk about a lot it shows that you don't necessarily need to encumber somebody with all that um intensive coaching on when exactly when and where to to throw all those those punches um
• 10:00 - 10:30 that comes from control though doesn't it it comes from an element of the coach wanting to feel in control wanting to have some form of progression in what they do because if they feel they have got that kind of um quick turnaround in terms of improvement then as a business then they're going to retain the their members their boxers a lot quicker you know a lot of studies do show that block versus random practice you get those initial turnovers quite quicker with block practice initially so people do
• 10:30 - 11:00 see that Improvement and then it starts to kind of tail off doesn't it so to have that kind of approach where I'm going to show you X then I'm going to show you y and that linear approach you know informational process and all that kind of stuff it's it's at false gold isn't it but it does get people through the door and then let's say I'm coaching you twice a week then there's not it's not exactly much time for people to notice this stuff so they forget it Etc so you keep coming back to me and I'm just is going to keep feeding you something a little bit new in a linear
• 11:00 - 11:30 approach then you feel like you're learning so I get I get it I completely guess it but what there isn't that real understanding is you know other elements of learning coming into things like you know like spacing like inter leaving all these kind of other bits and pieces that are so so vital to you know memory retention good acquisition it's just not there unfortunately but because I just want I want the you know to to to say an American thing I want the Kool-Aid quite quickly I don't know what Kool-Aid is but I think I've got an idea of what it
• 11:30 - 12:00 is you see what just a sugary water drink I think so I'll say you just you just open a packet and stick it in the water and it tastes good but it's for kids really and it's instant isn't it and it's instant and it tastes nice and it's sugary it's GNA give you that buzz instantly and that that's what everybody wants but um unfortunately we have a bit more understanding about how learning works it that's not going to get it in the in the long run so I think I think with a constraints based approach it's
• 12:00 - 12:30 it's it's it's quite difficult to get those people tasting the Kool-Aid quickly so you have to be very skilled in it to get that instant retention of of of um of your members so um that's where the that's where the the problem lies so you know and that's where I I find myself stuck sometimes you know I'm I'm very much look I want to go down this constraints based approach eological Dynamics Etc I want the environment to be the teacher all this kind of stuff sometimes I feel myself being not skilled enough and then it's
• 12:30 - 13:00 kind of lost ever so slightly and then so what do you do you slightly fall back on go back on that linear approach a little bit because you know it it's tried its testing it gives you it gives you those results but because I do this all day every day I can start seeing when hold on this boxer is now limited they're making similar mistakes they know the technical stuff but they're trying to throw it in with no idea about when to throw it you know they're falling short with a jab they're trying to throw an upper cut or a hook because
• 13:00 - 13:30 they feel like they should go to that you know they should go to the the table in Vegas and go all my money on red they try and throw the hook they're miles out of range their feet weren't in the right place all this kind of stuff so it's that it's I think a good coach will be able to kind of almost spot when people are gambling if that makes sense yeah yes I 100% agree with you what's what you've done there this is actually I don't think I've ever talked about this before in the podcast when you when you
• 13:30 - 14:00 give students that type of really explicit instruction you almost it acts as like a constraint in in the way that it changes the way they control their movements so in the constraints Le approach you want them to control their movements based on the affordances they see in the environment um but when you give them that explicit advice their atten is no longer on the cues it's on when they're
• 14:00 - 14:30 going to use that that that technique in sequence like where where where can I use it or um in the ca really egregious cases trying to do a specific combination with no contextual you know no idea of when to use it just that this is a really good Tech really good combination you should try it and uh ta one is really bad about that um and I know that that in some boxing gyms they have very elaborate long combinations that you run through
• 14:30 - 15:00 and there's just no there's there's no specifying information as to when to use that um in a way it change it just changes the way they actually control their movements during the exercise which is detrimental absolutely and I think if you look at it from a sort of you know internal versus external focus of of control simply by giving them that solution to the problem without any context what you're saying saying is try this try a one two left hook
• 15:00 - 15:30 whatever whatever it is all you're really doing is focusing inwards you're again you're not looking externally at all those cues you're not thinking about your range manipulation your range control so it just comes into it I'll try it now I'll try it now and there's a million different factors in there which says you won't land that you won't land that but we double down I mean even things like three shots ridiculous I'm going to try and throw three shots Because by the time I'm throwing the jab
• 15:30 - 16:00 the person's moved off to your left so your backhand if I'm an orthodox boxer is not even going to land so the left H is is gone well before there so I always kind of say that it's a bit like trying to log on to your your um your email but your password's changing every two seconds and you go right password one ah password two ah it's not working it keeps it keeps morphing and changing that's what's happening every time but we're teaching people that don't worry every time you log on the password is password one no it's not it's going to
• 16:00 - 16:30 be password two password three 44 five and we don't understand how to deal with that and we get very frustrated coach gets frustrated the boxer gets even more frustrated and even more even worse gets pinged all over the place so um it's a very it's something we have to get hold of right now I think and hence you know the great work you're doing Scott's doing other people in the space we need to be able to put this in a way that is understandable to the kind of
• 16:30 - 17:00 demographics we're talking about because I think if we go a little bit too um what's the word we saying English Pony with it then people aren't really going to understand that so how do we put that across in a way that's that's relatable to people in in and using terminology that's that's relatable we have to know the right stuff ourselves affordances Etc we have to know that stuff but how do we put it across and I think that's that's one of the big challenges I'm having in in the boxing Realm at the moment yeah that that's
• 17:00 - 17:30 what I'm still working on I've been talking to the people in my Silo for almost six years now and it's uh it's difficult because it's more than just a resistant to new research and new ideas it's like um there's like a there's almost like a moral outrage to the idea that that they might be wrong about a tiny amount of things that they do and um there's just there's all kinds of
• 17:30 - 18:00 culturally persistent beliefs that get that really interfere with that process and it's it's I found it's really difficult to make much Headway and you know there's some people that are a little bit more experimental by Nature that I've caught on but I think for the most part people that that are really into my podcast are just already there they're just starving for the more um content on this they just but they were already there like wanting to experiment with with other types of pedagogical
• 18:00 - 18:30 approaches um I don't know if that's I'm sure you've experienced the same thing yeah well you mentioned in one of your podcast recently well I'm not sure it's recently one I was listening to recently you know people do use the whole Matrix analogy you know the waking up from the Matrix choosing the you know the blue or the red pill all that kind of stuff but I just feel in boxing and and potentially you know I can't speak for everyone but in Combat Sports there just seems to be a lot more NEOS waking up now and realize that something is wrong
• 18:30 - 19:00 um whether that be from their own coaching experience for me I knew it from my own competition experience that I would I trained really hard really hard Josh I was there all the time was train did all my runs did um did all my bag work all my shadow got the spiring when I could pads and things like that when I could so I committed but was I a great boxer no I was average I had 45 amateur fights over 10 years one half lost half did all right but
• 19:00 - 19:30 could I got could I been better yeah could have been a hell of a lot better and I kind of there was something in my brain sort of saying something's missing but I couldn't work it out because I just didn't have the understanding so I think I think as you know these Combat Sports people are starting to wake up now and I think that's really really important and people really need to start kicking forward and really challenging what they're doing so like I said the stuff you got and everyone else is starting to do now how can we put
• 19:30 - 20:00 that in a in a in a really palatable way where people can actually take the Reign and start trying this stuff and sharing this kind of stuff so um I think that's kind of part of our responsibility we need to we need to try and be a Morpheus where we can yeah Lawrence fish Scott and I have talked about this before there's there's an ethical element to it once you start to understand opportunity cost and and those sorts of things there there is you do actually have responsibility to try and help people with this as much as
• 20:00 - 20:30 possible because um you know instructors are not intentionally trying to scan people but they what they are they are taking people's money on on loan that they're doing something that they're not they're not doing as good as they could be nearly as good as they could be doing they could be even with recreational um Learners that they could be progressing so much faster and with with retention of knowledge and with
• 20:30 - 21:00 adaptability that is so much higher than it is right now and um it's actually a great segue to my next question that is um with all this talk of representativeness like can you start sparring earlier than than boxing coaches are traditionally comfortable and how do you go about introducing somebody into sparring right this is a really good question really interesting one there there's a few facets around that I think because um basically so we're under
• 21:00 - 21:30 England Boxing rule our national governing body is England Boxing okay so there that's who looks after all the boxers that hopefully progress onto the England Talent pathway then go into the GB program because so we boxes GB in the Olympics Etc right um now because we're constrained by them we're constrained by the Rooks I don't know if constrains the right words you know they so if we want to spar we have to become medical so you can't just walk in off Street and say so Josh peacock walks in the gym said I
• 21:30 - 22:00 want to you know I want to get involved in boxing and so would you know what my my Approach is actually let's Spar from the start great and you know whatever that looks like whatever intensity conditions you put in we're physically not allowed to do it because if you do take a shot there's litigation There's issues like that and and you know essentially you can lose your license so there is that but let's take away that kind of legal side of things let's actually look at it from more of a skilak point point of view then my answer is absolutely absolutely so right from the start I've
• 22:00 - 22:30 seen it for so many years now I mean I've been coaching since sort of 97 early 98 so that 20 20 something years and um the problem is I see so many people perfect at creating these fantastic biomechanical constructs of bang bang bang and I know that I'm doing them the action is now on a podcast people can't really see what I'm doing but um they throw these perfect they throw these perfect um movements and look great when I'm shadow box and I think my technique is perfect is my
• 22:30 - 23:00 skill good not particularly because I don't know how to adapt that b mechanical construct I don't know how to move my feet or my trunk um well enough so because we go along this repetition kind of model repetition repetition repetition that becomes so almost finite that we grow roots when we throw shots literally become trees um so the problem there is um we have no range appreciation now we know as as com
• 23:00 - 23:30 combats what whatever that word might be pugilists let's say that actually the skill is in adapting the range reading the information in front of us being able to tune into the information globally tune into the information not just what the hands are doing what the feet are doing and be able to re react um and dictate this there's so much that that is almost very abstract that you can't can't um you can't see okay so you miss that the moment we say
• 23:30 - 24:00 right this is how you throw a jet you lose that instantly but why can't we just do things like shoulder Taps right from the start we come in we're going to play a game shoulder Taps first to five you've got three lives first one to get rid of the other person's lives things like that and just move their feet and I think it's more important to actually learn how to punch on the Move rather than rather than punch static but a lot of people will listen to this me now say no no no no no no no you've got to start
• 24:00 - 24:30 basic and then build up the complexity I don't think so no because I'm not seen it work probably I think you go the other way I thought you I think you give them context you look at more of a tactical side rather than the technical side get them to understand tactics and context and then work backwards they can all move everyone can move their feet so let's get them doing it let's get him appreciating range right from the start the rule of boxing the rule of any any combat sport hit and don't get hit yeah that's it let's keep this simple hit and
• 24:30 - 25:00 don't get hit so by just teaching them an uncoupled technique often goes along with this hit but where's it where's the not getting hit where's the reading where's it switching on the perceptual system so I just think we need to maybe just give people a little bit more credit before we start you know what I [Music] mean I 100% agree especially when you're talking about it's actually an entirely new skill set you know if you start with the
• 25:00 - 25:30 basics and that's just what you do you don't move it's an entirely new skill set to try and figure out how to hit and not be hit at the same time even even if you're even if we're talking about blocking but blocking rather than um in evasion you have all those tools that at your disposal but all of those things how to hit and move and uh how to move and then hit and how to move while hitting and you know like every different thing you could you could you could find that you might need those are
• 25:30 - 26:00 all their own skills to to uh to grow and you're not even you're not even there when you just set your stance and throw Jabs that almost never happens in any match you you're always jabbing and moving so why do you teach the jab stationary you know because there's the idea that you have to um you have to start with the one and then move up to the other and there's
• 26:00 - 26:30 you know I hear that and I know there's this dissonance between what we're taught academically and then what we kind of know from our experience and you know people who street fight and try to they don't have boxing training but they try to uh copy it those people have no problem hitting and moving they're not particularly good at it but they have no problem doing it right and none of them sat in front of their mirror at home
• 26:30 - 27:00 making themselves throw Jabs and crosses and hooks um in sequence or in blocked practice uh for hours and hours before they moved up to movie to a moving punch um and that's that comes around to the the this like nonlinear concept where you don't have to follow a sequence of of progression for techniques for skills you know whatever is demanded by
• 27:00 - 27:30 the performance environment all of those things are equally important for you to know and you can start learning them at any time as long as it's safe for your your joints right there might be a conditioning element to some things like a jump spinning kick for example but um for most of the things that you for 98% of everything that you use a boxing or Ty one or karate or whatever uh you're able to do that right off the bat as long as you're a relatively uninjured
• 27:30 - 28:00 person and there's no reason why you have to learn a front kick before you learn a s kick or a round kick right there's no reason why you have to learn not even a reason why you necessarily would have to learn a jab before you learned um a straight right or or a backhand straight or whatever you call it and um you know there's probably more utility like 8020 to learn a jack first but um with that nonlinearity you shouldn't expect that learning will be better just because you
• 28:00 - 28:30 follow a sequence in fact I would I would I would venture to say that if you always limit yourself to this linear style of of teaching you're probably going to put your students behind because you have to finish that sequence before you even start getting them into contextual learning first usually that's usually how it works then you got I suppose the other thing to look at as well is was like things like cat types um what are their
• 28:30 - 29:00 movement capabilities anyway some people might have this this fantastic range of athleticism which you are completely taken out of the picture because I want it looking like this this is my mental model of what a jab looks like or a rear hand looks like to a head and it should look like this because this is what I've been told by my fantastic coach do you take away all that athleticism I mean do you remember Nassim hammed was a BRI British boxer Nassim hammed he
• 29:00 - 29:30 boxed berrera um he lost him Barrera in the end um he was back in the in the 90s British boxer called nassie Prince nassie mhammad no I don't call you got to look him up right okay if you watch him throw away you know just throw away the book in terms of what he does but he was powerful he he threw shots from angles he could throw a shot and then change it in flight so he wouldn't just commit to a jab he would then change the position of his hand or his elbow nice and and be able to adapt I me we're talking sort of
• 29:30 - 30:00 skill adaptation in the moment brilliant and he was a world champion multiple world champion Etc you know he had a few troubles towards the end but really really really good now can you imagine if the wrong person got hold of him and said no this is how you do it mate this is how you throw a shot it's gone right it's lost and and to be fair Josh I'm a little bit of a hypocrite because some of the stuff that I know and we we're talking about now I find myself still in some respects going down this kind of linear path now if I'm going to teach
• 30:00 - 30:30 someone a I think you guys call it a cross we say our book says a rear hand to the head right so straight back hand rear hand to the Head cross whatever you say I think that's bastardized terminology on our part but that's a separate discussion it's all the same it's all the same thing is it but um I would one of my first things I would say is right with your rear foot I want you to try and put the cigarette out with your rear foot you know so you imagine that kind of rotation on your back toe on the balls of your toe so that allows
• 30:30 - 31:00 your hip to go and your shoulder to go then you got the extension of your hand Etc very linear approach and there's lots of different um key um key sort of teaching points within that very internal and that's a that's fine you know okay that's that's okay to teach it in that way you're given a few little talks but if you watch any boxing bout any anyone at all and just try and look at the the knees downwards not hardly not once when you see that rear foot rotate or when you see someone throw a left hook will you see that front foot
• 31:00 - 31:30 rotate round like they're trying to put a cigarette out they never do it because actually in reality they're on the move so to suddenly plant their feet set their feet and have this big movement and then they're throwing another shot off the back of it or they're trying to defend there's not enough time so actually the representativeness and the reality of you teaching that isolated static skill doesn't work anymore so that's interesting so we always go static first get it on the
• 31:30 - 32:00 Move progress it very linear but it doesn't look like that in competition so why are we doing it but I found myself the other day still teaching it and it's almost like I've got it's almost like you know someone's asked me to change my skin peel my skin off and change my skin because right I find it hard to do that yeah yeah because there's a lot of things that intuitively make sense about changing up your pedagogy but then there's things that are so deep ingrained that you don't even think about them they're um they're they
• 32:00 - 32:30 dogmas in the true sense of the word that and that they are beliefs that are uh properly basic in a sense right to pull in some philosophy terms it's not dogmatic in the sense of that you have a bad attitude about it or that you're you know terrible about it but that you literally it's just nonnegotiable right cultural there's cultural beliefs that are like that where literally everybody agrees on this this these five beliefs and they're like nobody challenges these
• 32:30 - 33:00 beliefs and they just fight about you know other things and some of those things we've learned from from some and some of it's kind of it also goes along with the mysticism of it right coming from Asian martial arts there's a lot of mysticism to the horse dance holding the horse dance and doing punches that that for me that was a difficult one to let go because that's I Associated that with true traditional martial arts learning like hard style martial arts learning conditioning and mental
• 33:00 - 33:30 toughness until I realized um you know I went through phases of trying to justify why I taught it and you know before I finally was like I'm just not g to teach it anymore for sport tech one because it doesn't make sense you know before I got to that state like the the very last stage of me kind of trying to cope and keep it keep it within my practice was basically saying well it teaches you how to move your hips a certain way right to to transfer power through your hips through a smaller movement than like a
• 33:30 - 34:00 big giant rotation and that could be useful for spa and then as my understanding of transfer and skill acquisition evolved I realized that is not the best way to do that the transfer is unlikely there might be some small transfer but it's the best way to learn how to do that is to get somebody sparring and let them start to sort out how they can put their body weight and rotate in in
• 34:00 - 34:30 the way that works best for them within their within their game right that's another thing right people have their own games and some people are more tactical and some people are more power-based and um you know there's just layers in between of you you you don't have to throw your rear straight as a power shot every time you want to throw a rear straight there might be some other type of context where you don't need to do that um and you might be six rounds into a fight
• 34:30 - 35:00 and you don't need to expend as much energy as you can on a power shot you're you're doing um the uh what they call like exploitation in in the ecological Dynamics where you're reading what's going on with you know the person's movement to toward or away from you the whole context what's there um you know how much gas they have in the tank how's the chin you might not need to throw your shoulder out trying
• 35:00 - 35:30 to knock this guy out because you know that within a range of how powerful you need to throw a shot is likely to get what you want so there's there's a million in one different context and you can't just tell somebody you know two two Jabs in a power shot right or you know every every hook you throw needs to be as powerful as you can make it it's just it doesn't work that way it's bad advice and you're going to end up with
• 35:30 - 36:00 injured shoulders overuse injuries um gassing out too early just you know tactical errors that you wouldn't have made otherwise um you're a you're an actual boxing coach I don't know a ton about boxing so I'm interested in your thoughts on that yeah absolutely um it's it's zero or it's 100 miles an hour and we don't seem to have much acceleration in between or deceleration in between you know that so my example that I often
• 36:00 - 36:30 give is is lomachenko so lenko he will stake out people for the F the first round you watch him well the first 30 seconds were a minute around even longer he won't even throw a shot he's there fainting triggering looking like he's going to throw one shot and he's just trying to gather all this information up about what they do when I do this and so it's a bit like a stake out you know old movies you know you got the two cops with their coffee and their Pizza in the car and they're watching
• 36:30 - 37:00 the I don't know the cracken t or something like that and all the people coming in and out and then right nine o'clock this guy comes in and 10 o'clock this guy came out two guys came in with guns at that time you're just trying to create um a bit of a story in your head about what actually this guy does a boxing is a bit hard in some ways because it's three three minute rounds or if you're a novice is three two minute rounds but pro boxing you're over you know you're doing three three minutes 12 rounds you have the opportunity to do that so it lends itself in some ways a little
• 37:00 - 37:30 bit more to that so if we are just teaching that everything is 100 miles an hour or it's nothing then we miss all that opportunity to you know to perturb people to see what they do to see what their tails are you know to get them to show them your cards so all that kind of perception action which is something that is completely um is is relevant all the time suddenly becomes very not relevant at all because I'm either not GNA throw or I'm gonna throw 100 miles
• 37:30 - 38:00 an hour well why can't I change the pace of that shot well more importantly Josh why can't I change the angle of the shot a little bit like I said prev Nim mammad we teach that if if you put your pad up now so if you were padding me in a we're in a boxing game and you put your your hand out like a stop sign I'm just going to throw a jab or a backand right because I've been I've been grooved into doing that well why can't I actually faint and then throw another shot or why can't I throw like a screw shot with my palm up why can't I move and pivot my
• 38:00 - 38:30 feet around the corner and throw a hook on that pad why does it have to be I want this shot I actually just want I want you to hit the pad that should be the message not I want you to throw the shot that I want you to throw so there's a big difference in the message there so and that's I think we're going to talk about pads a bit later no doubt it's unavoidable but pads is is is a big issue and it's a big problem of L people are let's go ahead and we can yeah we
• 38:30 - 39:00 we'll get back to sparring in a second but because I have one more question about sparring that um M yeah MW work pad work that that is one that I've legitimately gotten myself into trouble with like actually talking to people who I otherwise agree with on on the way that they train and um that's one that just won't I don't think there's no value to it Ty know we use paddles and you know when you want to practice a a devastating head KCK you can't you it's hard to practice on a shield
• 39:00 - 39:30 very hard to practice on a bag so you kind of have to use kick paddle so you there there's use there's use for it but um the problem this is the same between boxing and with paddles with kick paddles with Taw one0 it's all the same problem you are attuning to the wrong [Music] movements you have the wrong movement cues um and a lot of it is in is a coach lit which is is just not how um it works in a in a fight right it's it's in it's
• 39:30 - 40:00 in a sequence um so like what what are your thoughts on mwork I you kind of showed your hand a little bit what are the what are the problems with mittwork um and how can you improve them if you want to continue to do mid work I don't really want to do much pad work but maybe you do so it's again there's this kind of romantic notion that you you know you're he's a good pad man he's a good pad man and that is one of the best
• 40:00 - 40:30 Badges of Honor MH but you've got to ask yourself okay well what is a good pad man in terms of skill acquisition so people who a good padman are held in massive high regard in boxing but I think we just need to ask ourselves kind of why is that so again there's an element of me being a slight hypocrite because I'm going to go straight into my gym and I and I'm going to do certain pads because I'm trying to give them that cool- Aid I'm trying to give them that um that feel good so there is El there are some good parts to it it's feel good there's an There's an opportunity for me and you as
• 40:30 - 41:00 the boxer to bond have feedback talk um talk about tactics and things like that but we tend to go very technical on that okay so here's a few things firstly it's rehearsed it's a rehearsed pattern you know a one two three the more punches that come into that combination the less likely you are to see that happen now a onew left hook is probably the most landed three- punch combination in
• 41:00 - 41:30 boxing a onew left hook or a onew right hook depending on your STS but even still the likelihood that third shot lands becomes diminishes doesn't it um so when you start doing three or four phases of attack one two roll but all this stuff you see people rolling and then doing all these uppercuts and 10 uppercuts and roll and not even looking at the cam you know not even looking at the opponent that becomes a dance so that becomes you're trying to teach me the foxtop you're trying to teach me the tango and to to actually
• 41:30 - 42:00 execute that you have to do a picture perfect so it's it's the most stable um it's the most stable thing there is possible we know that boxing is most random variable unstable possible so why are we actually creating opportunities where um everything is stable and predictable so we don't so the relative the relativity of that the the the relative practice design goes out the window doesn't it when you do pads which is rehearsed if it's one or two punches
• 42:00 - 42:30 there's an element of realism within that I think the other thing as well is that when you land when you throw shots in the pads you land every single time so it's 100% successful and what the coach will do if he thinks you're out of range they'll bring the pad to you slightly so there's your problem solved for you already um the coach will move in straight lines all the time the coach probably won't move like a boxer they'll stand Square walk after you um they won't have a they won't have a guard so you're also
• 42:30 - 43:00 learning not to read real cutes so the whole perception action and coupling your ability to read information goes out the window then if you think about percentages actually how much percent is the boxer attacking and how much is he defending in reality it should be 50/50 I'm trying to hit you you're trying to hit me back it's roughly 5050 give will take 6040 you're lucky but in padwork it's 9010 95 5% isn't it right bang bang bang bang bang bang bang a random shot comes back and that's myel problem as
• 43:00 - 43:30 well so it gets so rehearsed that you might I might say Josh throw a one two at me you throw a one two I push this silly jab at you you learn to slip outside and then come back with your back hand so it's one two sliit backand well what actually happens if I throw that jab at a different time instead back at you you have no idea and I'll hit you every single time with it because you um at that specific time so there's z z adaptation within that so that construct becomes useless and the
• 43:30 - 44:00 problem with that is then when you go into into sparring you lose your confidence because you actually say well my coach is no good because I'm not getting better on getting hit with that shot every time yeah because you threw it you threw that jab at the same time so that becomes useless and I actually did write down a kind of representativeness scale a few years back and I put SP um I put pads originally at a three but now with more knowledge gained I'm putting it more at a one stroke two with five being very
• 44:00 - 44:30 representative like an open Spar or competition and one being something like Shadow Boxing bad work pad work might might progress to a two out of five so that's kind of where I'm going with it and I just think a lot of it falls gold but I'm a hypocrite I'll go into my club and I'll do it again because it's I'm still trying to change the co the culture slightly um so the other part of it is is that there's no choice with the boxer the boxer doesn't make any choices do they it's just stimulus response they become a stimulus response machine um
• 44:30 - 45:00 but how do they actually adapt instead of um instead of reacting to what they should be so I actually think a pad man when they're holding a pad up they're going to do that shouldn't let the boxer hit the pad they should almost swipe it away so if I leave a pad there and you're trying to throw a jab on the pad I'm actually going to swipe your I'm going to Parry it away I'm going to swipe it or move it away I'm going to make you miss I should be making you miss because that's actually what's going to happen but the problem is Josh if I make you miss all the time you get you get your
• 45:00 - 45:30 back Adam's crap Adam's crap why he crap you know and then they throw everything into the shot and they start developing maybe a few elb injuries like well you've G to miss more than half of your shots you're probably lucky to land 20 or 30% of your punch isn't about so I'm not saying you need to learn how to miss but you need to have some kind of skill um or contingency for when you do Miss because you are going to miss a lot so again it goes back to the other question do you need to throw 100% of the time full force well no let's let's
• 45:30 - 46:00 let's knock on the door you know knock knock knock until someone opens then you can throw the power shot when they open the door because they're open now you've manipulated their guard you you you put yourself in the right time range and space that you want to do you've seen that they're not going to throw any shots back because you're Gathering all this information so I just think for me probably a one and a half out of five is how representative it is and you know that obviously the higher the representativeness is the more likely
• 46:00 - 46:30 transfer happens so and I I can just feel it now all these coaches in England who gonna listen to this going shut up Adam because you know but I'm sorry the more I learned about this the more I feel that it's it's it's not what it should be and I think we need to be doing a lot more sparring in a safe controlled manner yeah take take a breath take a breath off my so box now yeah take let the let everyone steam Steam for a second and cool down but yeah but that's that's a
• 46:30 - 47:00 great so let's let's assume that you know the requirements in in England Boxing have been met and you can you can toss your uh Learners into sparring without losing your license or anything like that um at that point what are what are some ways that you try to keep as much representativeness as you can while keeping boxing safe because obviously CTE and all that kind of stuff are are big um big worries sure you know and CTE
• 47:00 - 47:30 is becoming more people are starting to understand it a lot more there's a lot more information out there a guy called TR Dixon just wrot wrote a book called trauma about that I've not only just started reading it myself but there's a lot of information and coaches are really waking up to this sort of thing so in some ways it's forcing our hand to um to think about how can we still keep it um representative without that injury going on so no one way is is the shoulders you go to the shoulder Taps
• 47:30 - 48:00 all right A lot of people don't like it because you you're almost devoid of that instant feedback of pain you know pain let's be honest some ways is is is a great feedback tool I've been hit hit in the chin um but if I hit in the shoulder I'm not really worried about it so one way I do like to do it so just so I'm not getting that kind of repetition of punches to the head I do a lot of shoulder stuff especially in warm-ups do lots and lots of rounds of it but I will make it so you've got lives or the first
• 48:00 - 48:30 you have to get to Five Points or something like that so there's an element of I don't want to get hit because if there's no pain I don't care about getting hit actually I want to beat that so I want first of five maybe me versus you Josh I win 52 great now I'm going to change partner and go with someone else right who's managed to win all the games so there's an element of competition there keeping their attentional focus actually on not getting hit because like I say without the pain that that's initial and is in there so um um now there has to be an
• 48:30 - 49:00 element of agreement as well with the boxers and they have to know what because if you say to a boxer keep the power down keep the power down you know that 30 seconds later you're going to be saying the same thing keep the power down keep the power down bang keep the power down keep the power down it just becomes this pointless thing that you're saying so they need to kind of know what that looks like um so at the start of sessions we almost model that between two sping Partners say what it looks like if we are actually throwing shots to the head to the body Etc um we use the old um we use the old All Blacks
• 49:00 - 49:30 adage and excuse my language no [ __ ] so we say no [ __ ] right at the start and everyone kind of knows that means you don't take advantage of each other because what I actually do is um I I don't just go right you're this way and you're this way so you guys are okay at the spot or you've got similar experience you guys will Spar because I actually want as many different sparing partners for all my boxes as possible because the whole repetition without repetition approach getting the read repetitions in all that kind of stuff so
• 49:30 - 50:00 I don't mind if there's about 10 10 kilos 15 kilos difference because I know that there is an agreement of how they will box and the kind of power that they will use and if they're more experienced they will tone it down Etc um but really I think ultimately then you you start coming into well your constraints is what does it for you so what constraints are you actually going to start putting into the putting into that so you're still actually giv them some kind of um cerebral challenge shall we say problem solving challenge um so no so we don't
• 50:00 - 50:30 need to be wham bam thankk you man and who hits hard it has to be more along the lines of here's a constraint bloody hell that's a really difficult constraint that I mean I'm six fo five Josh I'm really tall so you can imagine my favorite shot was a jab and a backand a one two move away occasionally a little right upper cut as they got close I'd move them feet and I keep that distance all the time but what you know in the the realities of battle people are going to be on my chest and try and M Tyson the hell out so I need to be
• 50:30 - 51:00 able to throw some bent arm shots I need to be able to work on the inside um and deal with that when that happens so you give those kind of constraints to people so it might be like okay Adam all you're allowed is a jab but anything else you throw has to be a bent arm shot so a hook or an uppercut so you're putting those constraints in to kind of put me out of my comfort zone but one of the other thing I kind of like doing with this is my boxers not at my club because I
• 51:00 - 51:30 have my own club called eastborn Boxing Club but my full-time work which is called dice I get them to come up with their own constraints and understand how to put their own constraints into that because I think there's an element of learning to learn if they understand what constraints are important to them suddenly I've maybe got 15 different condition spars going on around the ring and the floor but all of them are using slightly different constraints and if they're using if they're coming up with those constraints then actually it's because they understand what their own needs are and then you still got the
• 51:30 - 52:00 overarching no [ __ ] no power um and people are very respectful each other but we always make sure that they're 're feeding back to each other as well so we we give permission to to call the timeout to call the time out to each other to talk to each other during the spa again I can hear people saying you don't talk to each other during the spa because what happens if you're mouth open you get caught with a shot not having conversations and reading war in peace to each other but if if I kind of know what your your constraint is um and you do something which is positive I
• 52:00 - 52:30 might just give you a nod or say yeah brilliant really good that and you're reinforcing reinforcing or they're not doing they're not committing to what they said then I can pull them on it as well like that and then obviously when the round finishes they can have that more in-depth conversation but actually I want them adapting as it's going on so that there's that kind of um if they understand each other's roles they support each other on it and then they realize that actually this is about learning and it's not about winning because I think a big problem with boxing is that when you Spar you Spar to perform I have to hit Josh more times
• 52:30 - 53:00 than he hits me today otherwise G to go home really deflated I have to have a good Spar did you have a good spa did you have a good Spar why can't we actually go back and say do you know what I got caught quite a few times today because I was trying out a new shot I was trying out a new phase of attack I was trying out a new defense I did get caught with it but then the coach to say do you know what brilliant joshh I love the fact that you were trying to use your trunk defenses today or you're trying to get a little bit closer and use your hand defenses or you're on your back foot and using your
• 53:00 - 53:30 foot defenses brilliant that's absolutely fantastic I want you know so they always say about Muhammad Ali that apparently he looked terrible in sparring because all he used to do is just try and work on his weaknesses all the time and develop that you get caught and things like that so well surely that's a culture that we need to bring across so that's the kind of culture I bring in with the trying to keep it representative and safe just by making sure that do you know what I want you two coach in each other and then to finalize to kind kind
• 53:30 - 54:00 of put the CH on top of what I'm saying now there's you can fall down by knowing each other's um constraints because I now know what you're trying to do so therefore I'm going to quell you I'm going to stop you doing that so when we we start moving towards actually well let's make those constraints more covert and the other person doesn't know them and they have to almost try and find them out so at the end of the round I was say to well what was that person trying to do and if they're like I have no clue well their attention is maybe not in the right place so you might give a clue um but you won't give an answer
• 54:00 - 54:30 and then it's next round oh they were trying to they were trying to step back and then come back with a straight shot okay so what you g to do well I'm going to close them down I'm G to close them down and cut the ring off brilliant show me go that kind of stuff so it becomes a bit more covert so you still got that representative design there because it's I don't know what you got to do in a real match and you just progressing it on a little bit like that so there there's an element of just actually understanding that the both there to learn and how you bring that out as a culture I think is really really important mate yeah which in in turn
• 54:30 - 55:00 reinforces Independence among Learners one of the England things yeah adaptability Independence resilience is at an England pathway standard that's what they want they independent boxers who can think of themselves amazing I love that yeah I love that you said something to me that that that um that I thought was really clever and I I love it and you were talking about Partners giving verbal
• 55:00 - 55:30 reinforcement to each other in the middle of sparring match and uh not only does the reinforcement help with motivation um there's a there's a there's like a there's a psychological thing going on where you actually can't you can't get angry and escalate if you're genuinely complimenting somebody on something they did well like if you got caught and you you got caught right
• 55:30 - 56:00 there's two things that could happen you could be impressed and uh let them know because you're a good teammate hey that was great um or you could get angry because you got C and push push the pace and somebody gets hurt and um that's I'm always interested in little little ways of hacking human cognition to help naturally and organically control the level of
• 56:00 - 56:30 aggression going on inside of the combat um sport instead of just go 50% or keep it down or you know um those those sorts of constant reminders we give that eventually just mean nothing um how can we get how can we pre-frame things which you talked about as well and how can we have some some some inter sparring practices inter practice acts that help to organically keep that down and fostering a community
• 56:30 - 57:00 where people let each other know hey that was great you got me that's a great way to do that because you can't be you can't be like oh great you got me be like I'm gonna get you back you know what I mean like maybe if you're a psychopath but um it changes it changes the way that you Orient yourself in relation to your partner and and uh in many ways it keeps it uh you know that's the sort of thing you'd say to a buddy or to to a child or
• 57:00 - 57:30 to to somebody you really like and it so in a way it keeps them personalized because when you get when you get upset with somebody in a sparring match and you begin to escalate Force there's a level of depersonalization that's going on I think um it's not not not to the level of being a psychopath or anything but you're you're justifying to yourself oh man I'm I'm going to punish this guy because he he did whatever you know what I mean and you're not you're not thinking about other facets of the person as Absolut as
• 57:30 - 58:00 a human being and that keeps you know it uh there it's simple but it's brilliant and I really like it and I hadn't thought of that before you know I've seen it organically happened before but I never thought of fostering a community where people actually say things like that in they of match to each other so I really like that yeah absolutely and I think from what I'm hearing you say as well is that when you do get angry your focus will always go to outcome I've got I'm not
• 58:00 - 58:30 happy with Josh has caught me with a left hook here I'm not happy here so I'm going to do all I can to get him back so it becomes outcome focused rather than process focused rather than if Josh says do not Adam I've caught you a couple of times with my jab now and I've not done anything about it so I'm gonna go right okay well maybe I need to move my head more I need to get bring my hands up whatever it might be so I my focus remains back on the process and then I'm kind of because I'm then doing that you're likely to reinforce the fact that you're giving me feedback so so you have
• 58:30 - 59:00 you got two boxes against each other but you also got two coaches developing each other feeding back to each other because it doesn't matter me standing on the edge of that ring and watching this and shouting out do this do that do that actually that bloke in front of him in front of you has got the best seat in the house yeah he can see all your problems he can see all your strengths and it depends on what you want him to focus on do you want him to focus on pulling you on the problems or pulling you on the strengths or both so there's there's a a structure I use um I don't
• 59:00 - 59:30 know if you heard of a guy called Mark Bennett um is a ex um ex military then he he runs um a company called PDS systems and it's I think it's genius um and what he does he tries to flip the learning right so if you can imagine most um Combat Sports are the coaches the Fountain of all knowledge and he'll be the first person to point out any mistakes etc etc yeah yeah Josh get your hands up Josh you're crossing your feet over Josh hold the center of the Ring Woll you know do this do this do this
• 59:30 - 60:00 what he does he has something called the rul of three where it's actually the other way around so he wants the boxer to know first if the boxer's not doing it not eliciting the behavior you want then your sparring partner needs to pull him on it so you're doing this if the sparring partner is not them pulling them on it or reinforcing something good or pulling something on bad then the coach must step in right so it's rather than going coach first coach last it's you first sparing
• 60:00 - 60:30 partner okay the sparing partner is not seeing it either so then the coach so you flip that Paradigm on its head and then you're making the responsibility go towards the boxer and it's very very simple and there's got millions of different ways that he brings this to life but he also has something called um um his uaes so he'll say well what's unacceptable to start with what does an unacceptable Spa look like for the skill that you're trying to develop what does acceptable look like and what does exceptional look like so in other words
• 60:30 - 61:00 poor good brilliant for example and then you kind of like well this is what it looks like this is what it looks like so you have that structure to work towards you have that framework and we use that all the time so the boxers know if they're slipping into something unacceptable so they know that I'm doing this so they can if they know what it looks like they can change it the partner then goes ah I know what he's trying to do he's he's doing it po calling now so they might give them the nod or say something or a little code word or something to then bring them back into acceptable if it's something
• 61:00 - 61:30 exceptional and Brilliant all the time again they can reinforce and that's brilliant mate that's brilliant or a little nod or a little wink or something like that so what you're doing is you're co-working together to keep yourself acceptable to to exceptional and pushing those barriers all the time meanwhile the coach is trying to make themselves redundant so the only Pro the only the only pressure it puts on the coach is to really make that practice design good at the start rather than because if you not then you're just standing there fighting fires aren't you going do this do this
• 61:30 - 62:00 put your hands up do this and it all goes back to the coach so it's something that's been a game Cher for for me so M MK Ben PDS systems it's just that whole kind of Paradigm of putting it back onto the boxer not onto the coach yeah I I love that I had a I had a similar idea of merging uh a concept called microlearning it's more of like learning devel learning and devel development thing where you get contextual feedback um on the course of learning a job like on the job type of
• 62:00 - 62:30 learning and it's augmented by very short um often like video content to help you you know what with whatever it is that you're learning um as opposed to traditional e-learning content which is like a know 30 minute lecture you know something ridiculous like that microlearning is contextual it only goes comes up when you need it and it's very concise so I I was like you know how could I apply this this to um you know to mile learning and and there's also peer coaching so I I kind of put the two
• 62:30 - 63:00 together and I call it micro coaching where you basically you coach Partners very similar to that and I hadn't thought of that structure before where it starts from the bottom and moves up to the coach and so the the onus is on the person in the department to to um to correct before it falls back onto the coach but the idea was to coach partners and I I experienced this a lot in actually Brazilian jiu-jitsu to um first of all if you have a lot more
• 63:00 - 63:30 skill to try and impromptu or spontaneously design the the the the match that you're in if you locate a problem to keep repeating and coming back around to that problem to give that person rep repetition that repetition and um if they're unable to you know do something slow it down if they still can't do something offer some quick coaching if they still can't do something at the very end of it then you can stop the flow because I I don't want
• 63:30 - 64:00 them to stop the flow of practice then you can stop the flow and give maybe some more remedial instruction like what we prescription is what we would say um but only if all of those those those don't work and I thought um I really like the idea of of having the coach there watching where you know it goes through so many cycles where these makes same mistake three four five six different times and the only time that the coach actually intervenes is that nobody you know the person or his
• 64:00 - 64:30 partner nobody's um I have to put some more thought into that I like that one a lot um it's the same principle isn't it it's the same principle exactly what you're saying is why step in with the answer straight away and St you know and strip them of that struggle to try and find the solution right from the start so you know I think a good coach knows when to shut up and and allow struggle but um you know we all do it don't we occasion we jump in here's the answer feel and especially in the spot where it
• 64:30 - 65:00 can be dangerous um you know they're getting hit in the head all the time you know sometimes we do not stop because actually safety wise it's no good me just going try this try this and being a little bit implicit with it sometimes we need to go right step in but yeah if it's still safe then let's go exactly what you said about giving that information slowly suggesting moving their attentional focus where it may be needs to be and if still it falls on its backside all right I might nearly give you that answer or give you the answer
• 65:00 - 65:30 but it's Last Resort isn't it you know it's last yeah didactic instruction as I like to call it is the remedial option um instruction as in like trying to set up a way an exercise is going to work I think it's fine but um instruction where you're just giving the solution rather than teaching people how the the practice is going to work those are separate things and um you I think you
• 65:30 - 66:00 want to save the prescription for a lack you know as as a almost almost like a motivation saving exercise you're trying to preserve this person's motivation because the frustration is eventually gonna tank their motivation to show up to train um and they're just gonna it's going to be a vicious cycle if you don't if you don't put a stop to it but I think that happen happens less than we think it does I I suspect that with good practice design and good culture that um people
• 66:00 - 66:30 expect some frustration and they'll take it as a catalyst to uh reminisce and to analyze what they're doing more deeply um instead of um thinking well the instruction sucks I'm just not I'm no good at this and I'm going to go home right you know a small group of people might be that neurotic but if if you frame things up front and and inculcate them I dare to say indoctrinate then um
• 66:30 - 67:00 that that should be less of a problem and much of your coaching will be reminding them of the principles of learning more so than than giving them you know the answer to everything oh mate that I mean we you couldn't hit the nail on the head more I think because we just go through the learning process with them and it's something that happens to them rather than something they're immersed in so why why can't they have this underpinning understanding of what we're doing and we share that and they have they understand why you're doing it you know almost
• 67:00 - 67:30 you're creating coaches and boxers at the same time because yeah what the problem is they are having a lot of struggle they are have a lot of struggle they will drop their confidence but they understand that they're struggling but they're getting better because there's constant problems being thrown at them then they're more likely to engage in it and come out the other side you know the whole learning pit thing you know going to that learning pit you come out the other side if you walk through that learning pit and keep going you know it's important that a coach knows how you know when the when the push and prod
• 67:30 - 68:00 you know stretch and the support all that kind of stuff but I think um giving Frameworks to the boxers and them understanding the underpinning reasons of how to learn a bit like we have an understanding itself maybe not as in depth but why you're doing it is is so so important so one framework I will say to someone is that okay so if you rate your success with what you're currently doing whether it's a spar or whatever we're doing if they're saying I'm a nine or a 10 then I'm saying right so you're
• 68:00 - 68:30 Landing your shots at will and you're making them miss it will it's no good for anyone right yeah if you are maybe something like a five and below then you're probably getting pinged all over the place and maybe it's going into a kind of dangerous area and you're getting no success that you're actually your confidence is waning so I'm going well that's no good either so where's that sweet spot so maybe that kind of five to eight 6 to8 let's try and aim for that and if they can objectively say right do you know I'm probably about a
• 68:30 - 69:00 seven at the moment a six at the moment I'm like buzz that's where we want to be that's where we want to be and I'll keep that I won't stretch it and I won't support it anymore anymore but if it's easy I'll stretch if it's too hard I'll support and I'll just you know bring down that information a little bit or constrain someone in a little different way that's it's difficult isn't it especially when you got lots of different people with different goals that are going on I mean when you coach how how many people do you have in in front of you when you're doing an average session um well I'm not teaching right
• 69:00 - 69:30 now I'm opening again in January and I'm gonna artificially keep it down to about a Max of 10 per class I think okay but before that it could be up it could be up to 20 or more I I've I've taught classes of 30 people before yeah yeah and you know it's one so you got a ratio of one to 30 there so you know you're spread thin aren't you you know it's just like trying to put trying to put you know margarine across across some toast it's not going to get across that whole slice of toast so it's very
• 69:30 - 70:00 difficult but what if we take the approach that they understand the learning process they're understanding what you're doing and they can make those adaptations in there and they can actually come back to you and say coach do you mind we do this do you mind if we add this in or something like that everyone's you know self-regulating like you said earlier and managing themselves and you got all these different coaches you have to be on it because you know again we got that element of danger kicking in but I think if you can have people managing themselves wow what a culture you've got of learning there because people have autonomy don't they they have
• 70:00 - 70:30 Independence yeah and and and and you're no longer blanket coaching you're no longer going today we're going to work on the outside slip and then come back with a rear hand to the Head great I'm six' five I don't need to do that I need to move the feet backward you know see what I mean so you get some people well with it but others you miss so the whole differentiation in terms of teaching I think is a big skill so if they have understand the fr work and they understand how to learn to learn and you spend a bit of time on that then the culture just just thrives I feel and you
• 70:30 - 71:00 know and your your behaviors start really coming out as well you're not there just to kind of pass information on you you know you become more of a right you know a transformational coach who who's there to really start driving a learning culture and that's exciting that's a great place to be in if if you can get it right which sometimes it do sometimes it don't yeah yeah you become a coach in the sense that um a business coach is a coach or a life coach is a coach right I don't really
• 71:00 - 71:30 like life coaches but business coaches are cool I think they're effective um you become a coach in in in the fact that you what you're coaching on is uh is um extremely high level and even though it's it's in some ways more abstract it's immensely more valuable than down here where you're you're you're on the minu of biomechanics right it feels sometimes sometimes it feels more valuable to get that biomechanical
• 71:30 - 72:00 instruction but the the truth of the way reality works is that high level instruction that abstraction the understanding methodology understanding um motivation Understanding Psychology understanding um how to learn how to practice is actually immensely more valuable and your perspective as a coach is so much more valuable on that level than it is trying to fine-tune somebody's you know flick on the end of
• 72:00 - 72:30 a jab or something you know something that coaches are silly things that coaches are preoccupied with even coaches on the highest level sometimes are preoccupied with those things um yeah yeah absolutely I think in ecological Dynamics they call this whole process of of working alongside the athlete they call it co- adaptability or or co- adaptation like um which is really great when I first heard that I didn't really understand what it meant but you are
• 72:30 - 73:00 actually you're coaching them on how to learn and this is you're helping them figure things out on their own so that you're guiding them within a certain within a certain range instead of just giving them all the answers um and I think yeah go ahead sorry M I'm s interrupt but remember in one of your podcasts you talked about Stu and Stu said to um said to you one of the the simplest questions I asked in terms of
• 73:00 - 73:30 that co- adaptation is what did you notice what did you notice I was actually listening to that one again today I've listen to it two or three times um and he said the worst case scenario is that they will say I noticed nothing and he says what were you asleep were you asleep during that Spar were you asleep during thatle exactly but it's such a good question what did you notice because as soon as you ask ask a simple question that you then actually almost trying to
• 73:30 - 74:00 jump into their brain and see what's going on so you've got more of an idea about how you can support how you can stretch and support and as to the reasons but and then you you stop it will stop you going into that kind of remedial technical mind frame you're not turning your shots over the reason why you lost that Bel is because you're not turning your jab over really it's nothing to do with psychology it's it's nothing to do with um the fact that our training methods are are just completely hanging on you know technical skill it's got nothing to
• 74:00 - 74:30 do with tactics and decision making and Independence and things like that so little little things like that good questions I think are are really really vital but also making sure that you don't just go good questions show me go on show me show me show me straight away show me not just let S stand around for 30 minutes and talk about all the oh he's really good at questioning that ad really good questions really yeah but show me show me what you're doing so we got to bring that into action very very
• 74:30 - 75:00 quickly because proofs in the pudding you know we can all talk a good game but proofs in the pudding so you need to execute so um I think there there's a there's a part that I went far too much into into good questioning and it's like well the boxes aren't doing anything so actually you add up all the hours and they just stand and R scratching the backside not actually doing anything it mounts up over the year as well so getting to physically show you the solution rather than tell you the solution is part of that as well I think yeah yeah because you're the coach so let give them permission yeah and if and
• 75:00 - 75:30 if do it say just saying go do it then that's what you have to do absolutely do what you have to do um yeah I mean it's like they said when you're working they're resting and when they're resting you're working so when they're doing their session you should be almost resting because you've done your hard work but when they're off and going on sleeping and resting doing their bits and pieces you're now planning and doing your work you know right so I the constraints Le approach is one of the beauties of it is that it's so intensely individual it's responsive to what
• 75:30 - 76:00 students are struggling with right now and so I think that that sessions are supposed to be as responsive as they can but with with that in mind um are there sort of preset constraints-based exercises or or games that you that that really work for just about everyone that you um that you have play those games or engage in those exercises that you use
• 76:00 - 76:30 often because they are very reliable um yeah I think there's certain blanket things that you can do which kind of hits hits some gold for everybody in some way there's some benefits for everyone you know is a blanket way of getting some benefits which are are reliable I mean so for example it could be that everybody um everybody has to throw two shots for example but for Boxer one it's
• 76:30 - 77:00 has to be a straight shot and a bent arm shot so for example a jab and a rear a rearand uppercut right so I know that actually that's going to help me work on moving in behind a straight into range to throw more of a bent arm shot that makes sense but then the other boxer might be okay well I want you the other way I want you have to throw a bent arm first and then a straight arm second so so it's a different problem for that person but there's still sort of elements of perturbations between each other trying to work each other out so I might have to get my feet in a move my
• 77:00 - 77:30 head to throw a hook and then I push away with a jab or I push away with a back hand or something like that or I still throw a straight arm from a red to relatively mid to close range so that there's what you've got there is change in range to actually get your shots off so that you know and that's a and that's a um you know a non sort of changing LW of sport isn't it you've got to adapt your range to be successful so those things always kind of kind of work for me I think a lot of people get lazy and
• 77:30 - 78:00 they to say right the first jab and I'll do this and I will do it again next week as you go right okay Jabs only off you go just to start off with Jabs only you know because it's really safe there's not much information there you know and you know it does work but I think some people kind of yeah fall back on it a little bit um so you know all you say right you got to switch your attack up and down and down and up so boxer one you have to go down to up boxer two you go up to down or you or then you give them a little bit more information now you can
• 78:00 - 78:30 choose you go down or up or you can go up or down yeah so might there might be well actually if I keep going up I'm getting it with a jab so I'm gonna start down so there's an element of decision making going on just because those constraints they're very general and vague but there is decision making going in but then I'll try and go a little bit more specific hence little things like asking them to come up with their own constraints so I do use new's triangle quite a lot you know trying to manipulate either the task the boxer or the environment so um it depends on who I've got in front of me I different boxers at different times absolutely do
• 78:30 - 79:00 a lot of stuff like you know changing the shape and the size of the Ring I might make them you know a rope off a ring to make it a triangle make it like a swimming Lane you like a long rectangle and then see what kind of stuff comes out or or random places and then you know so you might have lots of different triangles over the ring so one Tri triangle might be at a right angle which is okay but then you have might have a really acute triangle like 30 degrees if you get that boxer in that that corner you're laughing because they got nowhere to move at all see what I
• 79:00 - 79:30 mean so so I think all the behaviors start emerging just from from manipulating one of those three things so I always try and use those two things or or time as well so you know you know you might people use say the step you know space time equipment um person you can kind of manipulate those things so time's a really interesting one as well actually I find boxing manipulating time so usually the less time the more intense it gets the more time um the
• 79:30 - 80:00 more safe and lazy it can get but it depends on where you are in terms of building a skill at that moment so are I'm often not sometimes I I won't do like it must be two minute round or three minute round and Bing Bing Bing stop everyone I might let it go for seven minutes if I think that there's learning going on if it's getting sloppy I might stop it so um it really depends on who in front of me really so what about you what sort of things do you do to to sort of um you know manipulate some of those
• 80:00 - 80:30 variables uh certainly ring size practice area if there if I don't have something to to uh limit ring size like tying a belt between two kids tends to keep them because they have a problem with running away often yeah you can manipulate some of the task requirements incentivize them to stay in but um you know that those aren't those aren't perfect they don't don't keep everyone so some of them will run away and just not care just don't want to get hit um so there's there's a lot of things you can do to keep them in RS because they when they're when they hang out too much
• 80:30 - 81:00 um there's there's actually research has been done on it people people Spar in a Range that's longer than they actually um fight in in competition and uh that affects your um your scoring affordances so if you don't practice in the range that you're going to be keeping yourself in subconsciously and and um in a competition you're gonna you're gonna do poor because you're not as familiar with that space so trying to keep um you
• 81:00 - 81:30 know a limited practice space for where it makes sense is helpful with that to keep them kind of force them to be within that range to get better within that range um bars as well or foot foot in at tire that sort of stuff works in some ways depends on the yeah I think that you know Dr Rob gray he he's always warning against over constraining and you know now that was definitely a problem when I first got into the thing that was definitely a problem I had because I thought the extent of the constraint SL approach was
• 81:30 - 82:00 okay we're just gonna work on Jabs just do Jabs um and then you know it's it's in a a rough it's sparring but it's just with Jabs and that's not really the constraint SL approach but over constraining I think is is permissible when you're warming up right it's a lot more safer there's fewer variables going on it's like it's about as it's interesting and weird and there's some uh some Val some value to it not as much as U as a as a an actual robust constraint Le exercise but there's some
• 82:00 - 82:30 value to it and it's usually intrinsically safer so I think I think using those for for warmup is a really great way to Prime you for whatever it is you're going to be working on that day um you know it's it's certainly hell of a lot better than push-ups and running in circles or you know whatever whatever you know Jiu-Jitsu they run in circles and like Le like lemur um and I know that that the boxers do a lot of um do a lot of skip rope and things like that to kind of build the
• 82:30 - 83:00 elasticity in their in their ankles that's another Pandora's Box probably enough Taekwondo people support Taekwondo people um there's a in the history of of Taekwondo Koreans were really good back in like oh I don't know the whole time range but like 60s to the 80s I want to say the Koreans were pretty good at boxing and um there's there's a lot of cross-pollination between uh early Taekwondo people and and boxers so there's a lot of
• 83:00 - 83:30 um there's a lot of the pad work in sport Taekwondo more so than you'll find in maybe karate and then there's a lot of um skip rope you know that Kow people certainly don't do uh there they do they they they skip around on the rope and they um they do some things that are like their boxing esque in terms of preparing for sport type one know um and I I you know there there's some conditioning benefit to
• 83:30 - 84:00 that but there why are you doing it in a skill class where you only have an hour or an hour and a half with somebody for that you know session maybe Max two hours the entire week why would you waste five to 10 minutes of your of your precious class time doing that when they could do that at home yeah when you do the maths you know you do the maths and so you I don't know you warming up for five rounds skipping you know that that's 10 minutes you know plus the break in between so 15 minutes some
• 84:00 - 84:30 sessions might go on for an hour so 15 minutes is a quarter so therefore you can say a quarter of your boxing career is skipping and then when you when you say things then when you go right okay I was skipping when I was fivey old in my school you know in in the playground at the school you know so it just becomes a physical thing and and of course what do you do when you're skipping I remember when I used to skip you're skipping you're skipping all there like are Arsenal playing tonight who are we playing tonight got man united tonight you know and you're just thinking about y so so you know there's nothing
• 84:30 - 85:00 else going on so your arousal level is low for boxing it's but high for whatever else is on your mind that's not it's that and then suddenly right okay you warmed up at him right The Spar and then you you know okay we've not really gone up I mean I remember University back back when I I did a sport Science at University from 97 to 2000 and I remember this guy called oxendine had this kind of taxonomy of arousal I think it was really old like 70s or 80s you
• 85:00 - 85:30 know when this thing came out so it's probably got much legitimacy to it but he said one to five one would be for example like a dart player or an Archer an archer in terms of like mental arousal five would be an American football um a linebacker you know he's there growling ready to smash you and he put he put boxing as a three and I kind of in some ways kind you know I know it's it's individual and everyone works in different ways so it's hard to pigeon
• 85:30 - 86:00 hole but in some ways I kind of thought well that's quite a useful tool because I know that you need to be mentally switched on but if you go the other you know arousal Theory you know you go too far the other way boom in trouble so really what are our warm-ups telling us where should we maybe try and keep that so I think it's quite a useful tool to think maybe my warm-ups need to feel like a three or a four not a one or a too in terms of switching on my switching my brain on you know I don't want to turn my laptop on it takes 20 minutes for my laptop to load up before word and PowerPoint all comes on you
• 86:00 - 86:30 know what I mean bang ready yep yeah I agree so padwork could be useful I think for a warmup even if it's not super useful for perceptual motor learning over constraining could be useful I think in my opinion I don't have any data on it um I just whatever it is is more interesting and you know I'm interested I have you motivation is one of my hobby courses I think it's way funner and more motivating um and you're going to have fewer people showing up late as they do
• 86:30 - 87:00 in Jiu-Jitsu like people they show up closer the time to sparring and they they miss the god- AF warm-up and uh you're not gonna have people missing class time on purpose if everything feels like the sport that they like to do from start to finish um you know if it if they feel like they're getting something out of it they're going to be there um and so I think there's there's an important motivational Factor about making your warm-ups more fun more sport
• 87:00 - 87:30 specific and uh there's not an exact science to it as far as I know but trying is better than not trying trying is better than having one warmup you do every week that you know 20 push-ups 20 squats run in a circle skip rope and then we're gonna you know whatever and and why can't there be learning going on why can't there be learning going on during that warmup you know it is warm up the right words you know should it be activation should it be Energizer whatever preparation or something yeah yeah yeah semantics and some ways is it
• 87:30 - 88:00 but you know um I remember reading um I mean I'm started trying to look a bit more into motivation myself I remember reading one of Daniel Pink's books and he talks about you know like motivation being about purpose uh purpose autonomy and Mastery I think that almost those three things have to be in there so okay well why can't a warm up be purposeful then why can't there be an element of you working towards some sort of Mastery in developing a skill set within there and if you're talking autonomy well okay
• 88:00 - 88:30 well maybe my warmup looks a bit different than yours Josh because actually I need to work on something slightly different let's be honest warm-ups go you got to warm up are you gonna get injured yeah understand that but do we do we really get injured yeah you know do we have to do this for doing this 20 times is it really like what's how much is it actually how much is it actually yeah yeah and that's what we do we know everyone's looking the kids are
• 88:30 - 89:00 looking around the adults are trying to pretend like they're really into it and it's just I don't know I had a coach and I really like the coach he told me one time we do we we used to do the same warm-up and and um you know I tried to be there I didn't try to be disrespectful and show up late but you know one time he's like you know the the warm-ups really looking the warm-ups guys look looking lackluster man you know he this sets the tone for the class I'm like hey dude that's not my fault right that's not my fault this warmup
• 89:00 - 89:30 has nothing to do with the class we do the same thing I'm not I'm adapted to it already so I'm not gaining anything from it um so it's boring it's uninspired I'm not nothing nothing there my arousal level is not being like I'm not getting more interested in it there's no foraste of what's going on in the class um you know it that's not my fault that's the learner I'm not the one that's setting that this that's designing these classes
• 89:30 - 90:00 I think that's one of the ways in which coaches who would if you ask them um you know you know you know who's fault is it if if a student can't they would say oh it's the coach's fault but they'll turn around and they'll push things on the student in that since something that they actually have total control over they could absolutely make way more fun warm-ups you could do a under double underhook game where you you're just fighting for double underhooks relatively safe low likelihood of um of
• 90:00 - 90:30 injury extremely fun definitely going to get you warmed up and has a skill element to it that's transferable to Jiu-Jitsu uh why can't we do things like that warm why do we have to run in circles and do strengths down the you know yeah so other words you know just just you know like your man rob gray would say keep it coupled why can't we coupl things why can't we C why can't be coupl and interesting right yeah I I understand maybe first minute okay maybe
• 90:30 - 91:00 there be a bit of uncoupled stuff you know it could be you know you have a one lap around the gym okay no problem but that's it 20 seconds just to get some sort of blood pumping around your body right now let's couple it right you and you pair up right shoulder spars just tap tap tap tap now you can go to the thighs I'm going to slap to the thighs but okay but you got to change partner let's get our reading reps in with someone different different size different starts fun fun fun right now you're going to keep score if you lose you only one down up or a press up right move change change and suddenly there's
• 91:00 - 91:30 you know that whole learning sort of stuff came in and I want to be part of I want to be in your warmup so I ain't G to be late right want to be there on time so you know everything feeds into this whole picture you know so the warm-ups start start that lesson off at a nine rather than starting it off at a four you know right your mood comes into it I think as well on your motiv so it's all very much linked but that just purely by bringing that rule of perception action into things makes it
• 91:30 - 92:00 look and feel real and brings the sexiness back into what it should be hit and don't get hit right from the start right from the start why not absolutely absolutely um my last question is uh so we talked a lot about representativeness and perception action coupling and all these different Notions of of coaching uh Shadow Boxing and bag work um how do they fit in a constraints slev approach to boxing or do
• 92:00 - 92:30 they okay um right so yeah I mean we have a lot of Shadow Boxing you know within the sport a load of bag work you know and I think there's a lot of physical elements to that you know there there's certain movement patterns that you're trying to repeat you know you can we all know that hitting bags well you can get really fit hit in a bag if you want to hit it hard enough and if you want to move your feet hard enough you know so there is I think it will always be part of the sport um because of that
• 92:30 - 93:00 physicality part I think there's also a little bit of being kind of away in yourself and a little bit of mindfulness and really thinking and a bit of visualization that can go into Shadow Boxing take all the information out but I'm I'm thinking about a southpaw coming at me or whoever I'm boxing on the weekend there's an element of that but ultimately it's again it's you know like your man shaky weights it's uncoupled it's completely uncoupled isn't it so we put a lot of stock in the
• 93:00 - 93:30 fact that the more bag work we do the more Shadow Boxing we do more we get better so what does the practice look like the boxer will throw four or five shots and once they've thrown four or five shot they haven't moved their feet within those four or five shots I know that if I try and hit you Josh you're going to try and move or or you're trying to going to hit you're going to hit me back you I've going to move going to hit me back one of those two things right so by the time I thrown that one shot I know that the next time I throw my shot I would had to have move my feet
• 93:30 - 94:00 or adjusted in some way adapted in some way so again we're just trying to throw out as many different structures or patterns and then we have no idea where in the jigsaw puzzle we put that so that that's a big issue and and again the same with bag work you can lean on a bag you throw shots you throw a one two and a hook well actually a hook is a bent arm shot so if I want to land it I needed to moved my feet into range to throw a left hook but I don't need to because I'm already lying on
• 94:00 - 94:30 that bag nothing's coming back so okay so in terms of a constraints Le approach can we make that a little bit more coupled can we put some constraints in yes I think we can so so for example we can do bag work we take out that whole issue of getting hit so it's almost like you can Spar around the bag so you're still trying to hit the bag but my job is on the other side of the bag is trying to move around and just trying to clip you with a glove and it might be that I'm holding a glove rather than wearing a glove or sometimes you use the
• 94:30 - 95:00 paddles or the the you know the foam sticks and all that it's a little less representative but at least it gets the boxer defending afterwards and it could be all right so if I hit you twice I then become the boxer your job is to stay on that bag as long as possible and attack bang bang bang move don't get hit don't get hit by the other person run around the other side of the bag moment you get hit now I become the Box but you want to stay on that bag being offensive as long as possible so you're just kind of you're coupling things you're putting it under a bit of pressure testing as
• 95:00 - 95:30 well their focus does become on not just hitting a shot it becomes on the defensive aspect as well um so they're reading where the other person's moving granted there's a lot of information that's not maybe pertinent but I think it becomes a bit more representative and there's a bit more and there's a lot more variability in there as well so it becomes a bit more becomes a bit more real and if we're talking Shadow Boxing okay well why don't we just shadow box opposite each other if we're not going to hit each other because it's Shadow well let's just do it at a distance it
• 95:30 - 96:00 might be Josh you're gonna you're going to throw some straight shots I'm going to try and defend them slip block move my feet Adam then you go all right then we change the defense or we change the shot I don't think we should do it open spot like I throw whatever I want because I throw four shots you're throwing four shots at the same time nobody knows if he landed or successful right so that becomes very much n and void but if there's maybe a little bit of information I think it becomes a bit more relevant so yeah do we need to spar in front of a shadow in sh front of a mirror where you don't learn to
• 96:00 - 96:30 anticipate because you know what's coming and then it's at the same time anyway right you know that there's no anticipation or reading um or shall we just pair each other up it's not great but I think it's better as long as you're not throwing three or four punches maybe one or two it's like oh you would have got caught there I would have got caught there I better sort that out so you're still attending to information and learning to read better so I think I think really you constraint would be couple people
• 96:30 - 97:00 up couple people up there would be my response to that what your thoughts mate my thoughts are slightly different I think that there's um there's I'm sure you're aware of the research uh around you know thinking about an activity lighting up that area in your brain that's that lights up when you're when you're practicing and their um the idea of uh reminiscence where you can actually improve while while you're not practicing um but while analyzing and
• 97:00 - 97:30 and coming to a better understanding of a sport obviously you know I'm a const strange blood guy I'm a perception perception action guy so that there's a there's a huge limitation around how far that can bring you but in terms of enhancing your regular practice um I I look at Shadow Boxing as something that you can do when when there's nobody else around um and uh it's a great way to be interactive with that an analysis so instead of sitting on a computer and
• 97:30 - 98:00 just sitting there analyzing it in your head why don't why don't you uh get up in shadow box and imagine yourself in that situation it's not GNA be perfect because it's your imagination but um there is some value to that and and even though the transfer is going to be much lower than than representative practice it's uh it's it's better than just sitting it's better than just watching and it's better than doing nothing um it's a similar sort of thing maybe with like the forms in karate and and taeko that
• 98:00 - 98:30 one's the movements aren't representative of what you'll actually do so there's a little more barrier there and it's scripted so it's different than Shadow Boxing but there's there's some value there in into optimizing your output and in um increasing your your own kinesthetic awareness uh there's some indirect value that obviously doesn't transfer as much um but it's there right and I know that people are going to listen to say oh Josh just defended forms I thought he
• 98:30 - 99:00 hated forms I don't I don't I don't but um I'm trying to get not give people permission to to clog up their classes with that sort of stuff uh and it's bag work for me is one of the only places where you can you know with a if you're practicing the way you you uh the way I was taught that you off to and that's allowing the bag to move into to move around as the bag moves instead of stopping it every time it gets too rowdy yeah um yeah you're allowing yourself
• 99:00 - 99:30 um one of the few opportunities you have to hit full power and to begin to condition your limbs to hit in a way that's going to be useful to you in a real fight that you can't with a regular partner because we're trying not to hurt them yeah yeah that's so you can so you can you can move around and yeah it's self-determined so you kind of have to but there's there's no reason why you can't do deliberate practice on a bag the same that you do in a sparring match where you go in and you say you know you know you know if if I'm you and I'm tall
• 99:30 - 100:00 I'm not tall but if I were you if I were Adam I would um I would get in there and uh I would say you know what why don't I develop my my inshots a little better for people that are that can get past my um you know my my my far jab and my Straits and uh so your constraint is that you're going to try and as the bag moves around and you hit it you're going to stay close in to where you can use your your close shots instead of staying
• 100:00 - 100:30 out and doing everything from from the outside so you're challenging yourself to stay in different ranges relative to the bag and then using those those shots and building not necessarily you're not building your reads um but you you are doing two things that are important that is learning how to throw harder hard shots from that range um and so it's not perfect it's not it's not as representative as a
• 100:30 - 101:00 sparring partner would be but there's there's a couple of things in there that are really useful for you um in using the back and that's another thing that tyo people have done historically too is they've used heavy bags to practice their kicks on condition their knees and their their insteps and things like that um and they usually let the bag the really the old school guys that are really good they let the bag move around so that they can manipulate the space and taring
• 101:00 - 101:30 their kicks to some degree um yeah those are my thoughts those are my thoughts on I I uh I I don't think I would put it in a class unless you know there's a maybe maybe somebody's trying to recover from an injury and so then maybe I would do the shadow sparring kind of thing um sure for me I would would get maybe give a couple quick lessons on how to approach it and then let them sort that out in their own practice and I think
• 101:30 - 102:00 one of you constraints is like you say theming it you know give the bag a name you know your bag is it's Muhammad Ali so the bag is moving it's it's this that and the other so what are you going to do I'm GNA cut cut it off and move my feet in or you know the bag is Mike Tyson so as it's coming towards you you're taking that little step back and keeping the distance and the range and trying to keep it as straight arm as possible y you know you know there's elements of that and that comes down to a lot of your visualization skills and you know you're just putting this kind of a cerebral constraint you know there
• 102:00 - 102:30 almost picture of this uh Shadow there that you've got a box so you know is and it strips away it strips away the fear you know you can feel free to try things out so it's a safe environment to do it try these shots that you wouldn't try inspiring you know is a mindfield isn't it I think bag work is we can stand here for three or four hours and talk about it about how to make it more representative more variable but there's elements of physicality and how good is your you know how good is your visualization and Vis you know imagery
• 102:30 - 103:00 around it so yeah and and let's be honest it's part of the culture it feels good to hit a bag that's not a bad thing it feels good um it feel you makes you feel the part there's an element of of being part of the culture when when you're hitting a bag alongside other people you know I don't think that should be forgotten as well um if I'm looking it from a very sterile skill acquisition point of view I find it hard to make it for it to make you better but
• 103:00 - 103:30 yeah there are ways to bring it up a little bit which we don't maybe don't do do enough you know so for example one thing I was teach is I teach the three e so I was teach entrance execution and exit you know and there's there's bits in between that and it all Loops but you know with with a bag it's it's very difficult to coach a boxer to have a good entrance rather than just coming and going back you know they'll just step in they'll throw a jab about moving the head they go Spa they throw the jab
• 103:30 - 104:00 they get hit so are you moving your head are you moving your feet are you fainting first what are you doing first to get in uh and then your execution is usually the easy part is delivering the shot and then okay well what are you doing about your execution the bags tend to make the the first e and the last e lazy so I would have got you would have got hit and on the way out you would have got hit as well because you throw the shot and you don't you see what I mean so those yeah just stays in the second e but your first e your third e kind of go out the window a little bit
• 104:00 - 104:30 if you don't really put a good constraint in or kind of call it an opponent my thoughts but we could talk all day long on bags and Shadow right I know I know it's late over there but um we should we should do another one we talk about Shadow Boxing in bagber later but um where where can people find you okay um so yeah wear loads of different hats um but something that I run is a kind of a a coaching initiative
• 104:30 - 105:00 called The Box Gathering so we have a website called yeah the Box Gathering you can find us at www.the boox gathering. co.uk we have all the social media platforms as well so Instagram Twitter um and Facebook you know just type in the Box Gathering and either of those three uh and we will come up we're quite um busy on Facebook and the Box GA and um Instagram not so much on Twitter unfortunately but I do I do occasionally log on just to see people like yourself
• 105:00 - 105:30 and other people um to see what they're talking about and doing um but yeah it's free to join the website as well as as a silver member you just to get involved with other boxing coaches and see what their thoughts are because we upload a lot of videos and interviews on there with top coaches top boxers uh top academics you know like you st Armstrongs JP nuran nans um lots of different people like that um and yeah it's just a real interesting way of coaches getting together and sharing a bit like we've done so yeah feel free to
• 105:30 - 106:00 go on there um and and join as a silver member there is a a paid gold membership as well but if you fancy doing that you can as well guys so uh yeah thanks for giving me the uh the time and platform I've really really enjoyed the chat mate I know uh I know everyone says that at the end of a of a podcast thank you very much for inviting me on it's been really enjoyable you know but but we live for this sort of thing don't we mate we live to talk shop about this because it's what lights us up so I really appreciate your time um yeah so thanks for inviting me and keep doing what you're doing mate
• 106:00 - 106:30 because I actually I love what you're doing over there and I think it's so so important thank thank you so much I'm glad that um there are other people who are on this constraints Leed path that found me because I didn't you know I've listened to your podcast uh not not super long maybe maybe for the last eight months uh because I I found I discovered you through St Armstrong so I was like oh cool so some awesome so boxers that are into this stuff um and
• 106:30 - 107:00 uh so I'm glad that that that we've we've all been able to find each other because it really when I first started over a year ago it felt like a really small world felt like a really really small world um so I I the pleasure is mine for sure and um thank you for for coming on and and talking shop with me and answering all these questions sure and of course you mentioned the the podcast I fail to mention it myself so yeah any platform just type in the Box Gathering
• 107:00 - 107:30 podcast it's there on any you know Spotify um anchor all these different things you can find it so yeah go on there and you know rip me rip me the pieces on there that's you know that's that's what we that's what we we're there to be shut down do your try your best absolutely sir absolutely all right man I will let you uh I know it's getting late over there as while you get ready to start settling cheers Josh mate I appreciate it to soon talk to you later bye lat mate byebye byebye thanks so much for listening to the combat
• 107:30 - 108:00 learning podcast if you enjoyed this episode remember to leave us a review on Apple podcast or Google podcast or your podcatcher of choice it really helps us out finally this episode including the intro music is produced by Micah peacock thanks in advance and I'll see you on the next episode [Music]
• 108:00 - 108:30 [Music] this