Common mistakes when hitting
We have already mentioned in a few articles how you can improve your hitting power and also mentioned a few mistakes that some people make when hitting. Today we want to analyse the biggest hitting mistakes and help you to know what to look out for next time.
Lifting the feet
Many people lift their feet off the ground when hitting. This is particularly common among beginners. When you lift your feet off the ground, you reduce the weight of your body, which contributes to the power of the stroke.
Reaching your opponent
Overextending is not the trick to hitting your opponent in the best and most effective way. More often than not, you will only lose your balance and be open to your opponent's counterattack. Overextending limits you to a single strike at most. However, if you are firmly on your feet and keep your balance, you will be able to execute several punches.
Forgetting the jab
If you don't throw your jab, you'll never land the big hits in boxing. Use the jab! It's fast, powerful and sets up the big punches by briefly stunning or distracting your opponent. So the jab is a very important thing.
Punches that are too fast
If you get too excited and just blindly go for it, firing off too many punches quickly and unnecessarily, you are literally throwing the power from your arms out the window, and quite quickly at that. Of course, you have enough energy and it feels like they are hard blows, but most of the blows are aimed at the opponent's guard and don't have that much effect. What's more, your arms are getting heavier and heavier and you have no strength left to deliver hard punches that are really effective.
Telegraphing
Don't pull your hand back to gain more momentum until you have thrown the punch. Many boxers make this mistake and let their punches be predictable. Learn to stand very still in front of a punching bag and hit the bag on command. This does not necessarily have to be in front of a punching bag, it can also be practised in shadow boxing. Don't twitch your hands and shoulders too much so that your opponent can't recognise the rhythm of your punches.
Stay away from the heavy weights
If you think you can improve your punching power with the bench press, it's like pushing heavy weights with your legs to break the sprint record. Although there are many conflicting articles that argue back and forth about whether lifting weights will help your stroke, the science is pretty simple: lifting weights will make your body stronger, but moving it will make it slower.
The punch is a fast movement. Lifting weights will only make you stronger in certain muscle groups and restrict your movement, as well as build unnatural muscles that will decay faster than natural muscles.
Comments (0)