This video will take you through a very basic drill suitable for beginner-to-intermediate boxers to help improve their footwork. Although the boxing footwork drill is very basic, I have seen even some advanced boxers struggle with this footwork when trying it for the first time.
In boxing it is very important to keep moving. If you are always right in front of your opponent, you are always in the best position for him to hit you. An effective position to be in, is around the side of your opponent (looking at the side of his face). This is effective for 2 reasons:
- It gives the opportunity to continue to drive the punch through your opponent, rather than finishing your punch at the target and not being able to continue to generate power out of fear of losing balance
- It gives us an angle where we can attack while having less danger of being hit ourselves
In a real fight when you’re trying to get around the side of your opponent, he’s going to move to make that difficult for you. This is where we have to use creative foot work and punches in order to get the angle.
By performing the drill shown in the video over and over, you will be able to burn in the footwork and punches synchronicity into your muscle memory. It is important to commit the movement to your muscle memory because when it comes time for you to try and create the angle under the pressure and stress of a fight, you do not have time to think about the finer footwork details. It needs to be automatic.
Ricky Hatton was great at using the same footwork to create angles to attack the body. In the Gif we can see Hatton using the footwork to attack with both head and body shots.
The video below (0:51 – 1:03) is an example of Ricky Hatton using a very similar style of footwork to gain a good angle to work the body with hooks on his opponent. Notice that when his opponent eventually does get him back with a clean shot, it is right after Hatton settles his feet directly in front of him.
Ricky uses the angle to work the outside of the body rather than going through to the centre, like what has been shown in the drill. Once this angle has been gained, there are many options for you to attack.