Teaching old dogs new tricks by Tony Riddle A.K.A @theprepdoctor

by Tony Riddle, Gloves Club founder

I once took a course with the ABA ASDAN award, when the course was set up to offer local kids the opportunity to acquire credits towards their GCSE in boxing. It was a great incentive for young kids who were having trouble with their education to gain an extra qualification. 

The ABA course tutor was called Quiton Shillingford (Managing Director Boxing Awards), Q for short. Q is a well respected individual with a great teaching method and with all courses you hope to come away with a real pearl of wisdom on how to improve. On this occasion I was not disappointed - the pearl was something very valuable indeed as importantly, I learnt what not to do.

You see, Q had a great story of his first experience with boxing. Q began to explain that he was a real Jack the lad, always in out and of trouble, and so on this particular occasion Q and his three friends decided they should take up boxing and pay a visit to their local boxing club. They got as far as the door and bailed out, ran away and hid behind a wall. Q, bold as brass, decides it's his moment and poking his head in the door, he approached the owner.  “Excuse me Mister”, Q begins to say, and it was at this point that stupidity and big testicles won the day. Q found himself thrown in the ring, with absolutely no understanding of boxing, and it was obvious what the outcome would be. Q wasn’t to win and it was only stupidity that allowed him to go back again and again.

Gloves members sparring under the watchful eye of Coach Tony

This lesson that stuck with me and it is one of the reasons at Gloves we have a system in place that will ensure you will never have to go through that initial humiliation/annihilation that so many have had to endure when being educated in the sweet science. 

The method of chucking someone in the ring with your best middleweight is great for assessing raw talent and humiliating the poor not-so-talented contender, but think of how much talent is being missed and where we would be if we were all coached in the fundamentals of movement at grass roots. For me 80% of boxing is footwork, then you have to learn to throw the ten punches, move in four directions and then finally the defence of those ten punches before you enter the ring. For some this journey will seem like an eternity, but for me it is essential. When in fight or flight mode you will be amazed what knee jerk reactions can and will be applied.

My memory of learning the ten punches meant a jolly to Pasedena Texas with my cousin, Lee Saxby, to train with the great Kenny Weldon. Kenny, the world's best balance and technique coach, had a great system in his gym - a huge warehouse where you would carry out drills for days on end until he felt you were ready to even hit hand pads. The hierarchy for Kenny was footwork and being a purist he knew his stuff. Some of the terminology was a little strange, but as it turned out, we all spoke the same language. 

I remember a conversation I had with Lee whilst walking back from Kenny's about predictability and it is something that stuck with me. If you had an apple on a table and you pick that apple up, your mind will have made a picture, a mental map. If you were to keep placing the apple in what you perceive as the same area and keep repeating the process, your mind will have already predicated its next move, based on the preservation of energy and minimising the risk of injury. There would be tiny little adjustments that you would have no idea had even occurred. If you then add a lion into the equation (Roar!), the movement pattern would be grossly affected, unless of course someone had coached in the fundamental movement patterns on how to slay the ferocious beast. It’s a very simple process - if you haven’t been given the tools to deal with the job in hand, you are being dealt a handicap and I don’t know about you, but I would much prefer to learn how to slay than be slayed.

Kenny teaching boxing fundamentals

This is what we shall refer to as our default and a default is something you will keep drawing upon unless it has been thoroughly coached out. If Q for instance became the guy cowering in the corner, then that would have been his first memory of the sweet - or in this case - not so sweet science. His survival brain would have made a mental picture of that event and the moment that he stepped into the ring again, he would expect to have a rise in blood pressure, heart rate, tension and unfortunately the same knee jerk cowering. If we had nurtured Q from an early age, made every experience a positive and gave him the footwork, the arsenal of weapons and more importantly, the defence to deal with his slayer he would have a completely different default to fall back on.

You don’t want your initial reaction when under pressure to be to wave your arms around like a human windmill or to cower in the corner. It is the survival brain that will be making all the decisions at this stage and it is my belief that neither are good skills to draw upon in the ring. You need to remain calm under pressure; trembling in your boots or turning into a bag of rage are not the best attributes a boxer can obtain. You might have heard of the term you can’t teach an old dog new tricks...For me it is simply a default model that has become a mental map of the past and will have an astounding influence on the predictability of any future movements. It is the same with the selection of the strength and conditioning exercises you prescribe which should overlap into the discipline, the same care and time conditioning should be coached for the emotional experience.


Slay or be slayed!