The most basic boxing balance and footwork drills. Essential for all fighters!

Are you a beginner boxer trying to develop your fighting footwork, or an advanced fighter just trying to your footwork super rock-solid?

Here are a few absolutely fundamental drills that I think all fighters must know! Very simple, but can actually be challenging even for experienced fighters or really athletic folks.

DRILL #1 – blocking from static position

So simple and yet so amusingly challenging for even the more athletic and “experienced” fighters. It tests your #1 most basic footwork ability, which is not your ability to move but rather “the ability to NOT move”. Before you can even punch, block, or move with balance/control, you need to have a rock-solid stance! This little drill reveals whether or not you know how to stand properly.

How to practice static-blocking:

• Stand in your boxing stance. Relaxed, calm, breathing, fists unclenched.
• Have someone throw one punch at a time. (Start with an open-hand slap to your shoulders from both sides, and then lower to the elbows.) You’d be surprised how many people tip over off balance at this point.
• Then have them throw more realistic punches. Straight jabs/crosses, hooks, uppercuts, both to the head and body and you have to block all of them.
• Don’t go crazy…it’s not a defense drill. Throw these punches one at a time. Start with one every 5 seconds. Once you get comfortable, can be one every 3 seconds and you can even reposition and reset yourself as if you’re in a live fight.
• Once you’re comfortable to just blocking from your neutral stance, do the harder version: throw any punch but hold that arm out and have your assistant slap you anywhere on your body. (Shoulder, arm, etc).
• The goal is test your balance, not your defense! Have them throw at obvious places and fully telegraphing so you can where the shot is going.

Tips for standing and static-blocking better:

• Have your weight at 55:45 weight distribution between the front and back leg.
• Legs almost straight but knees relaxed. Think to be tall, but your head/chin down. Don’t crouch.
• Don’t stand so sideways. Your back foot should have a clear line of sight to your opponent’s head.
• Use an explosive push-back in both your breath (exhale sharply when blocking) and your body (tensing a tiny bit during impact) to repel the punch and prevent it from pushing you over.
• The trick to pushing back is to transfer the punch impact to your legs and floor, don’t push back from your upper body (since that would only make you lose balance even more).

Maybe some of you think you’ve had fantastic footwork all this time and don’t even need this drill. But actually, you DON’T have good footwork. You just have good athleticism and move well, but still lacking balance. Poor stability means you won’t be able to punch to your fullest potential, also requiring more energy to move, and also not able to block and move with maximum balance and agility.

DRILL #2 – jumping rope

So you finally got good at NOT moving? Ok, ok…now is time to actually start moving. And this is a super simple but probably the best boxing footwork drill of all for beginners. I’ve already said it a thousand times before and also made an article on it (why jumping rope is the #1 boxing footwork drill for beginners).

It develops your efficiency more than anything and without developing a basic level of efficiency, coordination, and rhythm within your body, you won’t be a very effective boxer at all. Literally every movement you make will take more energy and make you so tired that you won’t get to do as much in the ring.

How to jump rope:

• Get a jump rope
• Jump for 15 minutes straight (no breaks)
• Getting tired or keep tripping? It doesn’t matter, just reset and keep going until the time is up.
• Do this everyday, until it’s super super easy.

Tips for the skipping rope:

• Breathe out of your nose.
• Don’t worry about being good. Just focus on keeping your body moving (and not taking breaks).
• Use a proper-length rope and don’t jump too high.

DRILL #3 – step-drag (in INCHES)

Ahhhh, the classic step-drag. It’s the basic footwork drill that all coaches make beginners do to keep their feet on the ground. The nuance here is that I want you to focus only on moving a few inches at a time. Think like 2-3 inches.

How to practice the step-drag:

• Step with one foot (a few inches) in any direction, and then reset the other foot quickly to recover your boxing stance on the new position.
• Reach with your toes with the stepping foot. And push off with your toes on the dragging foot. (The common problem is when fighters rock back off their front heel when going back.)
• Be quick but RELAXED (not too explosive or too stiff).
• Resist the urge to step far, that’s not the point of this drill!
• Don’t jump! Keep your weight down.

Tips for the micro step-drag:

• I have different visualizations on each step I make. Sometimes it’s a micro-reach (with the stepping foot), other times it’s like a micro-push (with the drag foot), and other times I think of it like a micro-freefall with both feet moving at the same time. Sometimes I also feel like it’s a micro-jump but with only my upper body and not my lower body. Mix it up!
• Can throw some punches to help you find some fluidity between punches and footwork. It’s possible to do both at the same time.
• Don’t drag your feet too hard. It’s about keeping your hips down and not popped up in the air.
• Try throwing a quick little punch (sharply) after some of your movements. This will really test if you were really able to get to the new position quickly.
• Stay relaxed. Don’t think speed or explosive at all! Think smooth sometimes, and slightly fidgety other times.

DRILL #4 – small pivots

I have yet another simplified drill for you…this time, just making small pivots. You’re going to practice doing small pivots, swinging the back leg in both directions (clockwise and counter-clockwise). And you’re going to do it SLOWER, and VERY RELAXED!

Again, this is one of those simple drills that beginners can’t help but turn it into something else. You show them a simple pivot one minute, and next thing you know they’re jumping around and trying to do fancy stance-switches. Cut that out and do it right, so you develop the right skill with this!

How to practice small-pivots:

• Stand relaxed and start with really small pivots (only 10-15 degrees) at a time.
• Mix it up with the step-drags. Move linear sometimes, then throw in a pivot.
• Here and there, you throw in a bigger pivot…like 45-90 degrees.
• Practice doing it super relaxed and arriving into a perfect solid stance.
• Now practice throw punches RIGHT after you pivot. This is where that relaxed stability really matters. Many fighters try to move too quick or too far, and they end up taking too long to re-stabilize for throwing punches.

Tips for the micro-pivot:

• Sometimes I think of pivots as a PIVOT, but other times I think of them as just a QUICK STEP with my back foot. Like my back foot simply “steps” straight over instead of “pivoting” (and swinging) over. You get it?
• Don’t try to swing the whole upper body. Instead, maybe a small turn of the shoulders is all you need. For some pivots, you don’t even have to move the upper body.
• Don’t lift your head or chin when you pivot. Try to end up in the same neutral position instead of more tilted or weight shifted to the back foot.
• Don’t try to pivot so much! Think SMALL PIVOT, ok?! Yes, the smaller..the better! (Just enough to be a pivot, and no more than that.)

DRILL #5 – relaxed shadowboxing (making relaxed direction changes)

Ok, now time to combine everything you just learned.

• Solid stance (and being able to block without getting pushed back off balance).
• Jump rope coordination and endurance.
• Small drag-steps.
• Small Pivots.

Do it all while shadowboxing. A couple quick foot movements here and there. Mix in some punches. Mix in some head movements.

PRACTICE FLOW-TRANSITIONS

• Try to flow from one movement to the next.
• Using the momentum of your punches, head movement, and footwork to transition back and forth between all of them.
• Make it all fluid! AND SMOOTH!
• This is to develop your smooth fighting style; lots of finesse and calmness.

PRACTICE STOP-TRANSITIONS

• Then also try making a clear separate movements. Basically adding a very quick “stop” after every movement.
• Like a step, then a very slightly momentary pause, and then a punch.
• Basically like a fidget/herky-jerky style BUT CLEAN!
• This is to develop your quick-feint fighting style; lots of suddenness and quick directional changes.

What makes a good boxing footwork drill?

The best boxing footwork drills develop agility, finesse and stability,
not speed, range and explosiveness.

I think there has been great misunderstanding that boxing footwork needs to be fast and explosive, and cover lots of ground. I keep seeing more and more flashy footwork drills being shared on the internet now. Facebook and Instagram are full of gimmicky footwork drills that only teach you how to lose your balance faster. Gone are the nuances on finesse, and smooth agility. Too much focus on erratic and “hard” movements, and drills that appear exciting.

Basketball, football, and soccer are sports that cover lots of ground.
Boxing is a sport with a 20-foot ring.

The differences go beyond that as well. Like those other sports being able to rotate out players and getting rest time whereas in boxing, you better not gas out before your opponent. Ultimately, my point is that their footwork strategy is very different from boxing. In boxing, yes…you have to move but it’s not a game to see who can cover more ground. It’s a game of who can move just enough to be evasive, but still be connected to the ground to deliver hard shots.

The #1 footwork problem with beginner fighters nowadays:
no balance and no endurance.

Beginners move too much and get tired fast. And it has a lot to do with their mentality! They think “more movement” is better! And they’re actually half right.

The best footwork mentality in boxing:
to move a lot within a small amount of space.

This way, with only 4-5 feet of open canvas around me…I can make 10-20 different attacks and evasive maneuvers!

But what about beginners? Hahaha, you give them only 4-5 feet of space…

• And right away, they jump all the way back onto the ropes with just one step.
• And then wiggle around stuck in the corner (taking many punches).
• Then they run out of the corner.
• But now they’re too far from their opponent. So they have to jump back in.
• But since their opponent is on the attack, they crash into their opponent and swinging wild.
• Two fighters standing too close to each other, one will fall back off-balance or even both.
• And now they’re tired already.

Please, everyone….make lots of movements, but using as little movement as possible. You get it?! [Of course, you do. That’s why I love talking to you guys.]

Skipping rope is absolutely the BEST boxing footwork drill for beginner fighters!

There’s no way to get around it. I get beginners trying to argue and reason with me all the damn time, asking if there are other good boxing footwork drills for beginners. NOPE! Sorry. There are no other alternatives. Nothing else comes close. Not running. Not swimming. Not cone drills.

And here’s why…

“Do I really HAVE to do it?” [jumping rope]

Yes, you do.

I’m sorry [not really] that it makes you feel weak and pathetic. Or that you feel emasculated doing “exercises for 6-year-old girls”.

No, “other” footwork drills cannot substitute for it.

I don’t know what it is. The more I tell people to jump rope, they more they argue with me and find excuses for it. And it’s always the most uncoordinated dudes that argue with me the most. They’ll insist on doing anything else but that. They’d rather do flashy ladder drills from soccer/football, or cone drills from basketball, or whatever other silly gimmicky nonsense being shared on Facebook/Instagram these days.

“But WHYYYYYY?!!“

The jump rope teaches you footwork efficiency!

The reality is this: skipping rope teaches you footwork efficiency. And BEGINNERS especially, need this more than anything else. Because beginners have horrible efficiency. They get tired even doing nothing at all. Want proof? Haha…(just ask a beginner to skip rope).

Without learning how to move your body efficiently (even if just simple jumping up-and-down), whatever fancy footwork technique you learn will only make your legs tired as hell and cause you to move SLOWER, not faster.

So don’t argue with me. Get your ass on that jump rope. And if you suck that bad at it, and it hurts that much, and you hate it THAT much…that only goes to show how much you need it.

If you can’t even bounce up and down for 15 minutes, you don’t get to do flashy footwork. You clearly don’t have the energy to keep it up.

If the jump rope is so frustrating physically exhausting to you, I can’t imagine how long you’d last in a real fight. You’ll be exhausted once we add in the punches and the stress of facing a live opponent. Skipping rope is like literally the most basic footwork move ever. If you can’t even do this…what chance do you have doing any other kind of footwork?

And BELIEVE me, I totally understand. It’s so tiring. It’s so mentally defeating. It’s boring. It’s painful. It’s this and that. Guys, c’mon…you wanna be fighters and you’re getting your ego smashed by a jump rope? Just get to work. I didn’t even ask you to be good at it. You just have to do it.

The good news:

Yes! There IS good news.

The good news is that learning how to jump rope takes so much less time than you think.

I recommend you do it for 1-2 hours straight your very first time. Please, just listen to me!!! I know it sounds extreme but believe me, you WILL get it. Don’t quit at the 10-15 minute mark. Go straight for at least an hour. I promise within a few days or even 2 weeks at mots, you will find it so comfortable and natural!

It’s like learning how to ride a bike. You’re freaken awful the first couple times and then suddenly a pro like you’ve been doing it your whole life. It’s not only going to be easy, it’ll actually be FUN. Not only that but your boxing footwork and overall movement ability, rhythm, coordination, and endurance will shoot through the roof. It’s like you leveled up a hundred times and you’ll wonder how you could’ve ever done it without the jump rope. (Next, you’ll become and advocate for the jump rope and tell everybody you know they need to do it!)

Real stories of boxers who finally learned how to jump rope (names have been changed to protect the lazy):

BILL:

• Bill has 6 months of boxing experience training alone in his home. He doesn’t go to any gym but he’s read every boxing book and watched every Youtube boxing tutorial there was.
• Bill kept asking for alternatives to skipping rope and when pressed, he revealed he wasn’t good at it and felt confident other drills could improve his footwork better (and probably faster).
• After I told him that literally all legit gyms make you jump rope, he forced himself to do it and quickly realized how easy it is if you keep doing it everyday. He went from tripping over the rope every other jump to skipping like a pro to the beat of his music. Now he’s a believer.

NATHAN:

• Nathan is overweight and felt he shouldn’t have to jump rope because it’s hard on his knees and joints. Also, it makes him so tired so fast and he can barely do a minute of it.
• I told him to just breathe through his nose, stay calm, and keep jumping (even if it means resetting after every 2-3 jumps).
• Nathan wrote back after month beaming how he went from barely doing 10 jumps in a row without messing up to nearly 10 minutes in a row without messing up. Not only that but everything got so incredibly easy once he “figured out the rhythm”. He now loves skipping rope and thinks it’s much easier on his knees than even other footwork exercises.

ZACK:

• Zack says he’s incredibly athletic but really awkward/uncoordinated at the jump rope. He’s got explosive footwork, speed, and stamina already so he doesn’t see the point of the jump rope anyway.
• I tell him the jump rope really improves your body’s overall coordination, smoothness, and finesse. It’s not only that you have explosive energy and stamina but you can tie in together all so much more effortless. Moving in a more subtle, sneaky way, and with incredible timing on all your movements (whether for footwork or punching).
• Zack was jumping like a pro after a week. He can easily jump for an hour straight and not feel tired at all. Despite already being athletic, he now sees how essential skipping rope is. He also said my tip about going for an hour straight really helps. That your body actually finds the efficient rhythm when you’re tired. It just lets go and does what is natural.

Ready to un-tuck your tail and try the jump-rope again? Read these:

• Boxing Jump Rope Training Guide
• Boxing Jump Rope Tricks

What’s the secret to having great balance?

It’s time to unload some secrets. Honestly, this is what gives me knockout power, incredible balance, and swift footwork. The ability to push guys around that outweigh me by 40lbs. I can spin, twirl, jump around, and slice the floor with catlike agility because of this knowledge. And just as it did for me, I hope that this opens the door to ruthless balance and power for all of you.

If there was ever one day in your life that you had to close your ego and open your mind, please let this day be it. Some of what I’m about to say may sound straight up crazy. I don’t want you to argue or counter my points with some knowledge you learned from somewhere else. I just want you to think critically—skepticism is ok! But most importantly: listen carefully and try what I say.

These balance secrets are truly advanced, so I’m not going to babysit anybody and explain every detail. Either you are on that level of understanding or you are not. This is for all the advanced guys who have been dedicated to reading my site…and I know you’re all sick of seeing beginner tutorials…

…Well, I love you guys. This one’s for you.

The Actual Straight-Line

When one of the keys to great balance has to do with axis awareness, it’s important to talk about what we think the axis actually is. To be “perfectly straight” does not mean the same thing to a professional ballet dancer as it would to an average person. And to the average person, “to stand straight and balanced” simply means to pull up your head as high as possible, chest up, and lock the knees.

While this isn’t wrong, there’s so much more to a straight line body posture. And believe it or not, there are actually several conflicting standards on how the body-awareness experts define a straight body posture. They may agree on the main points overall but will debate incessantly over the tiniest details. (Not too far off from boxing technique discussions, right? )

I’ll do my best to share my own personal secrets that I feel can be easily visualized, understood, and most benefiting to the average person.

1. Hips over the arch

Keep your hips over the arch of your foot. Sounds simple, right? In reality, this small detail can require a whole new world of awareness and constant effort to maintain. Try this: get up and walk around your room. It’s best if you walk in a straight line. And as you do so, try to feel if your weight is more over the balls of your feet (the front) or if your weight is more over your heels (the back).

In my opinion, the hips should be over the arch of your foot, and more specifically, the BACK of your arch. Because NO DUH—that’s how your bone structure is built. Some might tell you the hips belong over the heels…well that’s for you to decide later once you play around and develop the sensitivity to feel where is best for you.

I feel that in people with lazy or collapsed postures (shoulders sagging forward, head dropping forward), their hips tend to be slightly forward. This can cause many problems in your axis. Because once your hips are off their intended position (over your arch), they are actually already falling forward or moving forward. And if you DON’T want your body to fall forward, then you’ll have to do something to compensate such as leaning the upper body back, or collapsing it to counter the forward hip position. So now what you have is the shoulders or chest back and hips forward. From here, it’s really hard to balance and you can be pushed or pulled forwards or backwards off-balance pretty easily.

There are many moments in movement where, during a spin, or a push, or a step, or any movement really…you will see fighters [mistakenly] let their hips collapse forward. It’s a major power leak and hard to become aware of at first. But once you learn how to detect it, feel it, see it, it’s very easy to fix. The hard part is becoming aware of the leak because in fighting, many times your legs are all over the place so it’s not easy to know if your hips are too forward or not.

2. Sternum in front of the hips

Keep your sternum always at least a tiny bit in front of your hips. This is a common problem found in beginners or those less kinesthetically aware. When many people try to “straighten up” what they do is pull their chest way high and then back. They’ll try to stack their chest in a straight line over their hips. And while this might seem correct, it’s actually not. There’s a good chance that when your chest is right over your hips, what it means is your upper torso is actually slightly tilted back (falling back) which then means your hips will have to come forward to balance out this off-position. (Basically you’d be re-creating the same problem in tip #1 except from a different angle.)

Again, I advise you guys to stand up and play around with this. Try alternating your sternum and hips between all the possible positions:

• both sternum and hips forward – weight collapsed into knees and metatarsals
• sternum forward and hips back – proper posture range allowing you to bend all the way down while balanced
• sternum back and hips forward – looks like an awkward yoga stretch, or bad push-up posture
• or if you can, try both sternum and hips back – should be impossible because of the way your body is built, or no balance/mobility since you’re on the edge of your heels

The most ideal for me would be to have the sternum about half-an-inch or a full inch in front of your hips. You basically want to stand as straight as you can and have the slightest shift of your sternum in front of your hips. Now you have to be CAREFUL and not to over-do it to the point that your shoulders go all the way back, and your back has an arch, or you’re leaning forward, or that your sternum is sticking out. Don’t try to puff your chest out (that will take your spine off alignment). Keep your sternum inside your chest and don’t strain your upper-body anywhere.

Now from here, you also want to suck in your belly button, more accurately, the area about 2 inches below your belly button. But you do it relaxed, and not actually holding in your stomach using muscle tension but with awareness. If you do it right and in a relaxed manner, this can make you crazy heavy and grounded—like a freaken tree.

3. Feel your all your joints in each step

Most people need more bone engagement in general. There has been a recent trend and shift of focus away from bone engagement and over to muscle engagement in modern body movement techniques. Nowadays we keep hearing this talk and this focus on the muscles, and what the muscles should do, and how to train the muscles, and the best ways to develop the muscles. The debates and discussions are all about the muscles and so little is said about the bones.

As I’ve mentioned before, movement technique is really about bone positioning more so than it is about muscle contraction. And the reason why is because your bones are what transfer the power. Your bones are what hold you up. Your bones are what is being felt when you hit an opponent. Your bones are infinitely stronger than your muscles.

Imagine me standing straight up and using the perfect position of my leg bones to keep myself upright. I could do it for hours even while holding a heavy object and there would be very little fatigue. But what if I was to bend my knees just SLIGHTLY? This seemingly tiny adjustment would in fact take away so much leverage from my bones that now my muscles have to do so much work. And how long can my muscles last? I’m not even asking you to squat, I’m asking you to stand and walk around with your knees slightly more bent than usual. You would tire very quickly and not be able to hold anywhere near as much weight as when your legs are straight. This right here is the reason why I feel that people do not engage the bones enough.

Muscle and bone engagement must be even.
Quite often, there is too little focus on the bones.

The imbalance of bone engagement vs muscle engagement has been caused by many things. The biggest cause, I think, has to do with poor technique. Good technique is not as common nowadays and there are many inaccurate teachings passed on by those with poor technique. Imagine if you didn’t know how to put your bone in the ABSOLUTE correct position, you would lose tons of leverage off all your movements, punching power, etc. And from here, you’ve got two choices:

1. Either refine/improve your technique and fix that bone position. – Develop that tiny little adjustment, that tiny little 1-degree angle adjustment that doubles your power because of perfect leverage.
2. Or go straight to focusing on your muscles. – More strength & conditioning, more lifting weights, more ideas to do anything but fix the power leak caused from your lack of proper leverage.

Guess what most people are doing nowadays. Guess where most athletes are focusing their training efforts nowadays. And can you blame them? Without being able to feel what’s going on in your body, I guess all you can really do is just count reps in training and tell yourself that being able to do more reps means you’re improving.

I want to say something:

No amount of muscle conditioning can ever fix your lack of technique. It doesn’t matter how much stronger you get. If you’re pushing the wrong part of an object, it’s not going to move.

Engaging the muscle and bone together.

It’s time to backtrack and focus on what we can do. I feel many fighters are too busy thinking about their muscles and how their muscles feel. When they jump up and down, they are thinking about activating and feeling their leg muscles. When they throw a punch, they are thinking about activating and feeling their arm muscles, core muscles, etc.

It’s not a problem to have muscle awareness, it’s a problem to overlook your bone awareness. What ends up happening is that many athletes start taking the bone awareness out of all their movements. So for example, because they like feeling the power in their quads and calves while jumping around, they start SLIGHTLY shifting their technique (their bone positioning) so that they can feel more of their muscles. Almost like becoming addicted to their power. Well this has many consequences.

What I find is that many athletes will start to remove their bones from the line of power. They tweak their form and position ever so slightly so that now only the muscles can apply force and not the bones. They may FEEL (and maybe even APPEAR) more powerful this way, but they are actually not. (It’s like that comparison earlier of straight knees vs bent knees.) Just because you FEEL like you’re exerting more force doesn’t mean you actually are!

There is also another reason for decreased bone engagement: it’s the act of “cushioning the joints”. Many fighters don’t like to feel the stress on their joints and so they’ll purposely take their joints and bones out of position so the muscles can do all the work. I have many things to say about this complicated matter:

• If your bones and joints are out of position to support you, it is a weak position and can’t transfer much power.
• If your bones and joints are out of position, you actually still might be stressing the joints even if you don’t feel like the shock impact is going through them. They could be twisted or otherwise in an anatomically incorrect position. Bones and muscles are connected, it’s kind of impossible to stress the muscles without stressing the bones/joints.
• If you feel the need to cushion the impact from your bones and joints, there is a good chance that you are not in the proper position to transfer that much power.
• More movement and high power transfer are not necessarily a positive correlation. You should be focusing on less movement and more stability if you want high power transfer. And if you want more movement, then you shouldn’t be in positions that require so much power transfer. (That would make it inefficient, right?)

Muscles are for movement.
Bones are for power.

I believe that energy either stays within you or is transferred outwards (and that a combination of the two is not going to have a meaningful effect). If your body is moving at the moment of impact (such as pushing off the ground), it is because your energy is staying inside of you. And that if your body is not moving at the moment of impact (such as during a punch), it is because your energy is being transferred to something else. Kind of like how when you play pool, the white ball will stay still when it transfers all of its energy to another ball.

One might think that lots of movement equates to lots of power and I don’t think so. Even when you look at a punch, yes there may be a lot of movement, but at the moment of impact, something has to hold stable (such as the feet and hips and overall axis balance) in order for the power to transfer.

And the best stability comes from your bone engagement. I think many athletes try to imagine this moment of stability as coming from the muscle and so that may be another reason why they focus less on their bones and more on their muscles.

How to raise your bone engagement awareness

I have a simple drill you can apply to just about any movement, whether footwork, or slipping, or punching. Try walking around. And with each step you take, try to feel all your bones and joints as having shared the impact with the ground. You should feel like on each step, there is a contributing impact in your spine, your sternum, your hips, and your knees, just as you feel the impact in your foot.

Now do the same thing but while bending your knees a lot or leaning your torso too far forward or too far backward. Basically do something so that you can feel part of your body is not contributing to the shock absorption and that one part of your body whether joint or muscle is unfairly taking all of the impact. Can you feel how there is a cut in energy flow when your entire body is not able to contribute to the impact? You will notice that the more your joints are bent (such as the knees), the harder it is to keep your body perfectly balanced and have every joint working together.

Now let’s go back to doing it properly. Stand up straight and try to relax more and more of your muscle as you walk around so that your bones can really do all the work. Walk softly and calmly, don’t try to exaggerate the thud. All you need is a small and clear thud that echos through every bone and joint in your body. THIS is a body in proper alignment.

You can apply these principles to punching movements as well. Throw punches using very minimal muscle effort and try to focus on a synchronized contribution from all the joints in your body. Notice how your punches are so much more efficient/effective when you think about the bones. Now what happens when you start to focus more on maximum muscle exertion with every punch? There’s this noise now that you feel in your body. This imbalance and distraction away from what you really need to feel…which are your bones (the leverage). What does a truly powerful punch feel like? I would say it feels like an effortless harmony of relaxed bone leverage rather than a total-body muscle strain.

*** FREE POWER PUNCHING SECRET: I imagine there are many people out there who are trying to mimic Bruce Lee’s one-inch punch without much success. My guess is they’re busy thinking about synchronizing all the muscle contractions in the body, rather than synchronizing all the bone impacts in the body. ***

Preventing the Collapse

There are many ways that our bodies collapse in their positions especially as we go through complicated athletic movements. Part of the problem is not being in the right position in the first place, and the other part is not being aware when your body has collapsed (whether during a position or during a movement).

Collapses in body position make it hard to balance, to move, and to transfer power. And the biggest cause of the collapse? Trying to get to a position in an improper way or unknowingly relaxing a critical structural point in your body at the moment of impact.

4. Hang your weight at the sternum level

Be as heavy as possible,
from as high as possible.

You want to be as heavy as possible from as high as possible. There are some misconceptions that I have to address before finally getting to my explanation.

First let’s begin with the 3 models of balance…

Illustration A is what most people think they’re doing:

• being grounded means being heavy
• being heavy means going down
• and that going down means being low
• and therefore ultimately, being grounded means being low

Many people try to ground themselves by becoming something like a fat rock, low to the ground, with more emphasis on being wide than tall. By creating a wide base and staying low to the ground, like a wrestler, it makes them harder to be pushed over, and is therefore considered more stable. I can tell you right now that I totally disagree with this concept because it isn’t what really happens. Read on to find out why.

Illustration B is what I think most people are actually doing when they try to be A:

• too much emphasis on going down
• their body is collapsed so much that their weight is laying on the ground
• so now the body is low but without any weight and no strength behind their movements
• the position is not only weak and collapsed, it’s also exhausting to be in this position

The legs, and spine, and back muscles work so much harder when everything is out of alignment. Even if you do bend your knees in the proper way, your legs will still be tired and less able to move from this position. Unless you plan on jumping a lot, it is not a good position to be in.

As you can see from this image, when people try to get low, they actually become lighter because all the weight in their body has fallen to the ground (meaning that their weight is no longer hanging from them). They are actually far less grounded, less powerful, less mobile, and much easier to push over because they actually have no weight in this position.

Illustration C is what I think is the most ideal position for optimum balance:

• body is tall and erect, aligned in natural posture allowing for efficient and stable position
• the core is strong and supported allowing for the body’s weight to hang off the body rather than collapse to the floor
• the body has grounded weight allowing for balance and power
• legs are straighter allowing for more mobility and energy efficiency in footwork

This illustration is not only more realistic to the way our bodies are actually shaped, but also far more balanced and not only that but way WAYYYY more mobile! But why is Illustration C so much more realistic and ideal?

The human body is built to resist the ground. (Vertical position)

Your body is built to be upright. All your bones, muscles, and organs are meant to be functioning from the upright position. It is physically most efficient (meaning the least tiring) for you to be standing up a lot. Perhaps it’s a bit much to be standing in one spot, but you’re definitely made to be standing, walking, running, and otherwise be in an upright position a lot.

Our bodies are not made for us to be sitting down for hours (lots of health consequences), or standing with our knees bent (incredibly tiring), or laying down (obviously). Your body is far less stable, mobile, and energy-efficient when you are not upright.

Now comes the tricky part. You have to resist the ground to have weight. Either your body is carrying the weight or the ground is carrying the weight. So if you’re laying down and none of your body is resisting gravity and everything is just relaxed and falling down, you are actually not heavy anywhere now. And if you’re standing up straight with every part of your body in alignment, then your whole body is essentially resisting the ground and you get to feel the entire weight of your body, which means you are maximally heavy. In other words, every part of your body is either working to make you heavy or working to make you light.

Now here comes the REALLY tricky part. Your body has to work in order to carry the weight rather than to have the ground carry the weight. BUT you can’t carry the weight if the weight doesn’t “drop”. The way for you to “drop” the weight is to be relaxed. And here we arrive at the hardest part of posture and position——every part of your body has to be working in order to carry the weight and not let it collapse to the ground, but at the same time…every part of your body must be relaxed so that the weight can drop freely.

Typically, we arrive at three common problem scenarios. The first is too much tension and you’re tired, and stiff, and not heavy (because your tension makes you fall over), and you burn a lot of energy when not doing anything. The second is too relaxed and your body is lazy and collapsed, some muscles get tired or sore easily and also it’s harder for you to move. The third is you’re relaxed in some places and too tense in other places and you end up burning a lot of energy working against yourself.

You have to be tall, but relaxed, to be heavy.

So it’s like everything in your body is relaxed and weighing down at the ground, and at the same time every part of your body is spending just the right effort to push upwards against gravity to keep you upright. The guys with the best balance and mobility can feel exactly in their bodies what parts have to be controlled and what parts can be free. They spend only 1% effort to stay upright and the rest of their body is entirely relaxed and free to move. The most balanced athletes will tell you that all of their body goes up as all of its weight goes down. Their body is going up AND down at the same time.

What is the main cause of being “too low”?

The reason why many fighters are in such horrible positions for balance and mobility is because they think good balance means not being easily pushed over. And so they try to dig themselves low to the ground like wrestlers. They think they need to win a pushing battle. And the moment you think like this, all your mind wants to do is put you in a position to push. You’re going to position yourself as if you’re pushing a car. What’s even worse is when the fighter’s punching techniques are built around pushing punches rather than snapping punches.

The number #1 reason people are “too low”
(bad balance position):
is because they think
good balance means not getting pushed over.

The first way to fix your visualization is to go back to remembering that your body is most efficient at standing upright. Using your body to push force back down at the ground is the best angle at which you can apply force. And that when you push a car, what you’re actually trying to do is push a car by pushing the ground. And that when you’re punching an opponent, you’re actually trying to convert the force of pushing the ground into a punch.

If you visualize yourself as always pushing horizontally, your body will always want to get low…because that’s the only position it can be in and have horizontal pushing capability. However, if you visualize yourself as always pushing vertically (far more powerful and anatomically-effective), you will find that your body can always push vertically from any position and especially from the tall upright position. You will also notice that very few parts of your body can push horizontally whereas just about every part of your body can push vertically.

And so when you’re trying to push an opponent off you, you do it by pushing upwards (lifting him) rather than pushing directly at him (horizontal force). Even better: you win a pushing battle by redirecting your opponent’s push so that all his effort goes against the ground and his body is lifted up using his own energy. And then when’s he’s lifted, that gives you the opportunity to tip him over). Anyways, that’s another topic…another secret for another day.

Where is your center-of-gravity?

This is a really complicated subject. If you look it up online or talk to people, martial artists, or other “body experts”, they will tell you the center of gravity is somewhere around your belly button or pelvis area. They’ll say something that it’s about 2 inches below your belly button. And that you should focus on that area. And that if you stretch or stack that area properly, you will be well-balanced and grounded. And that whenever you move your body, you must move that area or move from that area. You might have even heard things such as if you focus or become mindful of that area, you will sleep better, be at peace with the universe, and grow magical wings. (Haha, ok, maybe not that last part.)

Well, I’m not here to dispute any of that but I want to add to it. This is purely my own interpretation from all the time that I’ve done these kinds of athletic and spiritual endeavors and I want to share what has helped me greatly.

1. I believe that to be heavy, your weight must be felt hanging from throughout your entire body. If you are not properly upright enough that the weight is not picked up off the ground, you will have no weight and therefore not be heavy. Also, if you are not properly relaxed enough that the weight can hang freely, you will also have no weight and not be heavy.
2. I believe the more you can go up, the heavier you can be. It also makes sense since the more upright you are, the more relaxed you can be.
3. I believe your center-of-gravity can be manipulated to be higher or lower depending on how you engage your body, how much you tense or relax, or otherwise manipulate the way your body is balanced.
4. I believe that your “weight” hangs from your sternum. I believe your weight, your core, your center-of-gravity, whatever you want to call it, hangs from your sternum. And furthermore, I believe there is a “CORE RANGE” from which your weight or center-of-gravity hangs from. The highest point is the sternum. And the lowest hanging point is your pelvic floor. And so it’s like your entire weight is hanging from and supported by your sternum all the way down to the pelvic floor.

I would say that you have this thin narrow vertical chamber inside your body that goes from your sternum down to your pelvic floor. And that your weight, your core, your center-of-gravity is hanging from within that chamber.

Knowing that you have this chamber, you have to be careful to keep it strong and relaxed to allow the weight to drop straight through. The top end of this core chamber is support by your chest and breathing. You have to have a strong presence and balance in that torso area to keep the top of the chamber supported. And then the bottom end of the core chamber is supported by your pelvic wall as well as your breathing. And the middle is supported by your spine and back posture. Basically, the whole chamber has to be supported.

You can bend your knees or twist or turn or move your body in whatever way that you want but try to keep this chamber strong and supported. You may start to adjust your range and way of movement to allow yourself more freedom and support within this chamber. It is better to find freedom within the limited but powerful range of a supported chamber rather than to try and find freedom from outside the confinements of a supported chamber. Your favorite fighters are more upright more often than you think!

5. Sit on your legs

Relax your hips over your femur. It’s kind of a weird thing to tell someone to sit on their legs but I really don’t know how else to explain it in layman’s terms. As you’ve already learned from the previous point, it’s important to distinguish the difference between relaxing and collapsing. And so we want to relax our hips over the femur without collapsing the rest of the upper body onto it.

Generally speaking, your hips are naturally always over your femur EXCEPT for when your stick your hips forward. In which case they are no longer over the femur. To give you something to visualize, I want you to imagine this:

• Imagine that you are sitting on the edge of a really high bar stool and that your legs are dangling off while your butt is just barely on the stool. So it looks like you’re standing straight but you’re actually still sitting on something. And there is a force under your butt as if you were sitting on something.
• If this is hard for you to visualize, try actually sitting down (with good back posture) on a hard flat surface and notice how the surface actually applies upwards force on your sit bones.
• Now try standing up WITHOUT losing the sensation of something applying force against your sit bones. (NOTE: It’s hard for your body to “sit” on your sit bones if your hip/leg muscles are tense and not letting the hips relax onto the sit bones.)
• Try walking around with this feeling of sitting on your femur bones. It should feel like each butt muscle is sitting on the top of a stick (your leg bones) as you walk around with a clear and strong thud in each step.

You will notice that if you bend over and stick your butt out behind you, it’s easy to feel the force on your sit bones. But the moment you stand up TOO STRAIGHT or your stick your hips forward rather than keeping them back, you will lose that sitting feeling. (Again, it helps to keep your sternum in front of your hips.)

This is what my dance instructors taught me to visualize:

1) That you are always VERY slightly bending forward at the hips.

Think of like when you bend over to tie your shoelaces and your upper body folds over at the hip. Well do the very smallest amount of that. So like I said, try to stand straight like you normally do but keep that like infinitesimally small bend in your hips. Some dance instructors call this “the hip break”, or also “the hip bite” because your side profile makes it look like the line of your torso and upper thighs are biting on something at the hip level. Quite often when athletes lose balance, it’s because they fail to maintain this hip bite and the hips end up too far forward.

2) That you are always VERY slightly bending your knees.

Same concept applies here. Straighten your legs but keep your knees bent in the smallest degree possible. So it looks straight but you’re actually very VERY slightly bent. Maintaining this very slight bend in the knees also helps you keep that very slight bend in your hips. And like I said…try not to make the bend noticeable. Everything should appear straight to the untrained eye.

Always maintain the very slightest bend
at the hips and knees.

Another way to help you visualize keeping both the hips and knees slightly bent is to imagine that your hips are always behind at least one knee at all times. If your hips are in front of both knees, you are in trouble. Obviously…it’s hard to keep track of this when you do complicated footwork maneuvers and so it’s up to you to interpret what falls within the guidelines and overall principles of what I’m trying to teach.

If you’ve gotten this far and done this tip correctly, you should feel incredibly grounded and balanced when you walk around. You can even try doing some ballet spins. Your spins will be better when you maintain that slight hip bite. Enjoy your new-found magical balance, and yes, you’re very welcome.

6. Point knees and feet in the same direction

Prevent power leaks through the front or back of your hips. Most people don’t know what the ideal foot and leg positioning is for their bodies. So I’ll start you off with some basic tips to help you figure out how to position your legs and how to detect a power leak. This is incredibly important because so much power is lost (up to half your maximum potential power or more) when the core areas in your body are not maintaining integrity during moments of power transfer.

Try these exercises to establish your IDEAL leg positioning:

1. Stand with your feet together. Toes and heels touching. Apply all the previous body positioning tips you learned. Try to maintain the perfect body position when you do the following steps.
2. Keeping your heels together, start turning out your feet so that your feet are forming a 90-degree angle. Play around with the angle, turning them in to decrease the angle or turning them out more to increase the angle. WITHOUT straining your hip muscles, pay attention to the threshold point when your feet are turned out so much that your hips are starting to cave in or collapse forwards from the back and that you feel your hips might be tucking under or sticking forward. You may notice that it’s harder to relax your hip muscles when your feet are turned out too wide.
3. Now we do the opposite. While keeping your toes together, start turning out your heels to find the moment that your hips start to cave in and collapse at the front. And that a lot of your energy is leaking through the back.

You will notice that your hips have a greater degree of turnout before leaking power than they do for a turn-in. ANY turn-in is generally terrible for balance and structural integrity. As for determining the ideal turnout, this varies from person to person. Some people will feel best with their toes together, some will feel better with their toes at the 10 and 2 o’clock positions. Some ballet dancers can go even beyond 180-degrees (it’s crazy, I know!).

I would say that for the average male, their best performing range is somewhere between both feet being perfectly straight at the 12 o’clock position, and slightly turned out at the 11 and 1 o’clock positions. And for this reason, I tell everyone to keep their knees and feet in the same directions at all times. (But like I said, every individual is different. Please experiment to find YOUR range.)

Keeping your knees and feet pointed
in the same direction,
is an easy way to prevent power leaks through the hips.

Now it’s time to play around with different positions. Try jumping in and out. Or stepping forward and then pushing yourself back at an angle. Try throwing a power punch where you pivot your feet and hold the position with the arm extended. You will notice that in certain cases, your entire lower body is stronger, more balanced, and more mobile when you angle your feet a certain way. You may also notice that your more dominant leg (or your tighter and more tensed leg) will often pull on your hip more and rotate the other leg out of position.

Of course, this advice may seem like common sense. But the difference here is for you to really experiment and find that EXACT degree of turnout that gives you maximum power. It might be only one degree more, or one degree less, but it makes that big of a difference. In my observations, many fighters are a little too turned out when they are standing around or trying to use explosive footwork and the power leaks through the front. And then when they throw punches, many of them pivot one foot too much there is a turn-in that causes a huge power leak through the back. These power leaks make you less balanced, less powerful, less mobile, and less energy efficient.

Many fighters are too turned-out during footwork,
and too turned-in when throwing punches.

The knees must point in the same direction as the feet.

Another common problem I’ve noticed is that fighters are not aware of their knees. For example their feet might be pointing straight forward but their knees are caving in towards each other (as if they’re holding in their urine). This is a very common occurrence that happens when fighters are very busy thinking about their feet position and calf muscles but neglect to think about their knee positions. It can be very dangerous and lead to future knee injuries if you keep trying to transfer power through your calves while letting your knees come out of alignment. This is a big stress on the knees. I typically see this when fighters try to move powerfully and they let their knees dip down to the ground instead of keeping the knees up.

There is also the very opposite problem where a fighter’s feet is pointing straight forwards but the knees are pointing outwards away from each other. In this case the power is leaking through the hips and you will see that his hips will collapse forward every time he moves forward or throws a punch.

Sometimes, these problems can be fixed by simply becoming aware of your knee position. Other times it is because your feet need to be turned in or out slightly more. It could also be that you are bending your knees too much and because there is nowhere comfortable for them to be, they have no choice but to collapse to the inside or the outside.

The real focus is actually on the hips and not so much the feet and knees. It has to do with your hip flexibility more than anything. And if you are not careful, your feet and knee positioning will stress your hip in a way that causes a power leak.

7. Expand the air in your lungs in all directions.

The shape of your breath impacts the shape of your body. The way you visualize breathing has a great impact on the way you carry your body. Most people think of breathing in as going up and then breathing out as relaxing and going down. Well, this wouldn’t be so bad if people didn’t collapse when they went down. Usually what people will do during the exhale is just let go of all the muscles in their upper body and “relax” into a lazy collapsed body position.

The shape of your breath
impacts the shape of your body.

While it’s true that you should relax when breathing, it’s going to be a problem if you collapse every time you “relax”. So what’s the answer…should you stop relaxing? The answer is no. I don’t want you to stop relaxing but I also don’t want you to collapse your posture. This root problem goes way back to how you were holding your body in the first place. If you were holding an incorrect posture in the first place, you will use the wrong muscles. And when you use the wrong muscles, it’s more exhausting and you feel more tension. And then you when you breathe to relax, you let go of the tension (and with it, your posture).

The first fix is to hold your body the proper way in the first place. The next thing is to change the way you visualize breathing. Let’s start with this:

1. When you INHALE, imagine your lungs and rib-cage stretching vertically along your spine, and also horizontally as if to shoot out through the sides of your rib cages. Imagine every single one of your ribs is projecting out sideways during this inhale.
2. Now when you EXHALE, continue to stretch your lungs vertically and horizontally as they deflate. This is absolutely key. So you’re always inhaling into shape and exhaling into shape. You never “give up” this shape, so to speak.

Keep stretching your lungs and rib cage
vertically and horizontally as you
inhale AND exhale.

Your lungs are always in posture even when they deflate. It goes back to that theory when I said to imagine a weight hanging inside a vertical tunnel within the center of your body. Think of your lungs as shaping this very vertical and narrow tunnel. I think this is a better visualization than imagining that with every breath, your chest expands outwards like a balloon. Another useful thing I’ve heard before is to carry the air in your chest rather than your stomach. I’ll let you explore this concept for yourself and see how it changes your balance and grounded-ness.

Most people lack horizontal expansion

Breathing should no longer be “up and down” for you. Breathing should ALWAYS be both simultaneously up and down, and also out to the sides. I would say the problem with most people is that they collapse downwards during the exhale. And also that they are never thinking about horizontal expansion. You will notice that your body (especially your upper body) will have a whole new sense of presence and stability when you start to expand horizontally. Try to always keep your ribs expanding sideways—as if you’re always trying to grow bigger wings that extend from your back and then spreading out to the sides.

You may start to notice that some of your punching positions or defensive positions will compromise your upper body stability because of collapsed positions. Obviously, we can’t always be in a perfectly straight line but at least you are more aware of what is going on in your body and can refine your movements knowing that.

Movement Visualization

The way you visualize your body movements can decide which parts of your body you will focus on and how you use your body. I’ve developed many different helpful visualizations over the years and here I share the simple ones that I think can make the most difference in the shortest time.

8. Strengthen the outside BOOT LINE

Fortify the outside edge of your shin and foot. I call it the “boot line” because I’m referring to the part of your leg that is covered when you wear boots—-everything from the knee and down, which is your lower leg, ankle, and foot. And when I say OUTSIDE boot line, I am referring to the outside of your calf and your foot (as opposed to the inside parts of your calves and feet that touch each other).

So there are many steps involved in this. I’ll briefly list them now and then explain piece-by-piece after.

• Unify the entire lower leg.
• Keep the knees in the line. (Preventing knee collapse.)
• Use the the outside boot line to move.

So the first step is to unify your lower leg, which means keeping everything from the knee and down as a solid unit. This will include the KNEE, LOWER LEG, ANKLE, and FOOT. So from here on out, I want you to never think of moving only the foot. You are moving the knee, AND calf, AND ankle, AND foot. Everything all together. Imagine you are wearing a stiff boot that keeps everything strong and supported together.

You can even try it now: move yourself around doing all your footwork but instead of thinking that you are pushing off the ground using only your foot, you are using your entire lower leg. Imagine everything from your knees on down as being part of your foot. It should feel much more supported. It should feel like you have so much more grip control over the ground now because so many more things are activated.

Engaging the boot line (entire lower leg) with every step,
gives you more support and control.

The second step is to keep your knees in alignment with your body at all times. As I’ve said earlier, it’s common for the knees to buckle to the inside or to the outside when under stress. Obviously, your balance support and power transfer will suffer greatly when your knees go out of alignment. Not to mention it’s bad for your knees in the long run; you can twist, or tear, or get some other kind of knee injury.

The biggest problem occurs when a fighter is INTENTIONALLY taking his knees out of alignment. This is especially common because of a fighter visualizing a punching or footwork technique in an improper way, or because he wants to cushion the impact from his joints and let his muscles do all the work.

It’s especially important that you do not take your knees out of alignment. There are three common ways to make this mistake: 1) letting the knees collapse to the inside, 2) letting the knees collapse to the outside, 3) bending the knees too much. All 3 mistakes will cause tremendous power leaks, affect your balance greatly because as your knee comes off axis other parts of your body will also come off axis to compensate, and all this puts tremendous stress on your joints.

My advice is for you to find ways to engage your knees in every step. Try to use your knee to support every move. (It’s no different from how you put your elbow behind every punch to support it.) So try moving around again and this time, not only activating your calf muscles but also to try and push off the floor using your knees. Try to push off the floor with your knees as much as you as push with your calves.

Some of you may notice that this last tip creates tremendous stress in your knees. Maybe even a little painful, perhaps? Well, this will bring us to the next realization—that your positions or movements are probably improper, or at the very least, very anatomically ineffective positions for balance and support. My guess is that many of you are probably bending your knees too much and that you are so far out of position for alignment that you have to disengage your knees from your movements. Please watch my video below where I demonstrate how to bend your knees properly. (It’s a seemingly basic concept, I know. But you need to know it.)

It is harder to keep your knees in alignment,
when your knees bend a lot.

Most of you will have to move with straighter knees and not bend down as much. My easy takeaway tips are to try and feel the thud of the ground in your knees just as much as you feel the thud of the ground in your feet. Try and push off your knees with each step as you push off the ground with your feet. If you feel lots of engagement in your calves and very little impact in your knees, you are probably not doing it right. (Please do not be an idiot and take my advice to mean that you should lock your knees and pound the ground so hard that your knees hurt.)

Some of you may find it confusing as to HOW to use your knees to support each step. This will take us to the last and final step of strengthening your outside boot line. To begin with, let’s talk about the possible directions that your knees can articulate towards. Many people think of the knee as only being able to go forwards (bending) or backwards (straightening)—basically only 2 directions.

In my opinion, the knee has 4 directions! Not only can it go forwards (bending) and backwards (straightening), it can also go towards the inside (caving inwards), or towards the outside (caving outwards). The ultimate magic secret for me is that most boxing footwork maneuvers are best support when you keep your knee outwards—which is what I like to call the OUTSIDE LINE. Your knee is so much stronger and supported from this position. It doesn’t matter if you bend your knee or straighten your knee, keep it on the outside line and you will be much more powerful this way. And of course, the opposite is true: the worst thing you can do is let your knee cave inwards. Caving inwards and letting your knees fall to the inside will decrease your stability, power transfer, and also increase the likelihood of knee injury.

Don’t roll over the outside of your foot or turn-out too much

*** Please do not confuse “keeping the knee on the outside line” as meaning to have your body weight only on the outside of your feet or meaning to bend your knees outwards or meaning to have a big turn-out. ***

Your feet are still planted flat and both the insides AND outsides of your knees are working together.

What I want you to do now is to try moving around while keeping your knee on the outside line. Try to see how much more stable your knee can be when you prevent it from collapsing to the inside during certain movements. You may also notice that some of your favorite flashy footwork maneuvers can no longer be done because the knee is not as free to move around (I think this is a good thing). You might notice another new sensation…that when you try to keep your knee on the outside, it feels as though you might roll over the outside of your foot (as opposed to rolling over the inside of your foot like when your knee caves inwards).

This now takes us to absolute final discussion of the outside boot line: you have to unify the OUTSIDE OF YOUR KNEE with the OUTSIDE OF YOUR FOOT. So now when you step and move around, imagine yourself supporting and powering off with the outside of your foot and outside of your knee. Or better yet, the entire outside of your lower leg. This right here is basically what I mean when I say the “outside boot line”. You should feel a billion times more stable and powerful when moving around. This visualization works especially well for fighting because fighters are often in a more diagonal and somewhat sideways stance meaning most of their footwork will be some what of a side step and so they will need more support on the sides of their legs. Otherwise, they will collapse to the inside or outside.

Using the OUTSIDE BOOT LINE
means to use the outside of your knee and foot.

It’s isn’t really so much about using the outside line as it is to use your entire leg and foot. Most people use only the insides of the feet (and forget about the outside part) and then they let their knees cave to the inside.

All this explanation I’ve given about keeping the knees on the outside and using the outside of the foot, and keeping the lower leg unified, is really just to help you maintain alignment and integrity in the entire leg. And it’s especially hard to do this when you unknowingly disengage many parts of your body that are closest to the ground. Imagine how much harder it would be to bench press if you kept letting your elbows bend in an unsupported direction and also only grabbed the bar with the first two fingers instead of all five.

9. Keep your body on the BACK LINE

Never break the forward line with any part of your body. I refer to the “backline” as being the rear line of your body, where your spine is. And that you should always be on this backline and base your movements around it. You are always “BACK”. This is a really strange topic to think about because many people will do this correctly for the most part. It is only in select moments that people will break this rule and compromise their axis integrity.

The problem is that fighters are more focused with the front of their body than they are with the back of their body. (Think of “the front” as being the surface of your chest and “the back” as being the surface of your back.) And that when most fighters move, they only bring the front of their body (trying to pull their chest forward) and not so much trying to bring the back of their body (their spine). Basically, they are breaking their body into 2 pieces and only moving the front and not the back. Or they might move their body in a way that compromises the integrity of their backline. And this is a problem because your body is really where your backline is.

The body always stays in one piece. It’s funny to imagine that it’s even possible to move the front of your body without moving the back. I think the real matter has to do with visualization. If you don’t realize that your movements come from your backline, you might do something like try to go forward by pushing and pulling from the front of your body (like your chest) rather than trying to push and pull from the back of your body (your spine). I imagine that if you visualize all footwork and head movement and even punch maneuvers as a movement of the spine, you should notice an improvement in strength, speed, and coordination.

Pretend that you do not have a “front”.

I think the tendency to focus on the frontline comes from the defensive mindset in fighting. All attacks come from the front and so you’re so busy covering yourself that you want to cover your face, your chest, and your stomach. You’re visualizing that you are protecting the front of your body rather than the protecting the back of your body. What you don’t realize is that you’re actually protecting both. You have to protect your front surface from taking damage but also protect the back from losing balance. Maybe the next time you block a punch, imagine that the front of your body doesn’t exist, and that you are protecting your spine and the back of your ribs from taking damage. See if this visualization helps you. You will position yourself differently, move differently, and have better balance.

Pretend you are fighting from behind a shield,
and that you never leave the backline.

Pretend you are fighting from behind an imaginary wall. Or like you are a medieval spearman fighting from behind a shield and that you never let your body go past the shield. When you go forward, that shield comes forward, but you don’t extend past it. When you reach forward, reach with the back of your body. Try not to reach forward with the front of your body. (Of course, nothing is ever a permanent rule. You can totally “extend forward beyond the safety of your shield” as long as you have a strategic reason and intended purpose.)

Remember that your spine is at the back of your body, attached at the back of your torso and the back of your hips. If you try to fight using the FRONT of your body, you are essentially leaving your spine and “leaving your back line”, at which your muscles will strain (with unnecessary tension) and you will lose balance and power, it’s that simple.

10. Zoom out your vision

Visualize that your eyes are further back and seeing the whole body. This is a tip that I would use for any situation, not only for balance but for punching, counter-punching, fighting, everything in general. The problem happens when a fighter is staring too closely and his eyes are too focused in on only one area, such as the opponent’s face.

Instead I want you to imagine that your eyes are like the lens of a camera and that you zoom all the way out. So that you can see and have full awareness of your opponent’s entire body. You have to know that people naturally mirror each other. So if you only focus on your opponent’s head or upper body then you will only be aware of your own head and upper body. But if you are aware of your entire opponent’s body, then you will also be more aware of your entire body.

This full body awareness makes you that much more responsive. You can read his feints better because you can see that it’s only an arm commitment rather than a full body commitment. You can see him tilt his spine and it’s easier to tell when he’s about to slip or come in on you with an attack. Instead of seeing his punches come one at a time, you start to see his entire combination, and how the punches flow, his rhythm, and his overall intention behind the combination.

Becoming aware of your opponent’s entire body,
makes you aware of your own entire body.

Focusing too much on your hands can affect your awareness level.

I am in NO WAY directly advocating for boxers to drop their hands, but I have noticed that guys who tend to drop their hands are a bit more aware of their bodies in general. They have better balance, footwork, reaction time, and overall fighting and counter-punching ability. This is a case of the chicken or the egg, which one comes first? Lowering the hands or developing the skills that allows you to lower the hands (without consequences)?

I do feel the more athletic and naturally-gifted you are as a fighter the more comfortably you can drop your hands without getting caught. And I don’t feel that telling beginners to drop their hands will magically raise their fighting skills and reaction ability.

However I do notice that, again, many people naturally operate in terms of a mirror. And because they put so much focus on their hand positioning, they are only aware of the level around and above their hands. For example, there are beginners who are taught to keep their hands all the way up to the chin. All they focus on is from the chin level and up. It’s potentially harder for them to become aware of body shots and even harder for them to be aware of footwork and balance (whether their own or their opponents’).

But if you allow the same beginner to relax his hands a little bit, maybe spread them a little or drop them a tiny bit. Their center of gravity and also awareness seems to spread more throughout their entire body. They’re not so “UP” anymore in terms of awareness. It’s like they can see everything instead of only at the face level.

It’s up to you on how you want to interpret this advice. I’m not saying it’s good to drop your hands. I’m simply saying that you have to figure out a way to hold your hands that doesn’t limit your awareness to only the upper body.

High hands = upper level awareness
SLIGHTLY Lower hands = full body awareness

Connecting the Upper and Lower Body

Become one piece, not two pieces (upper & lower)

One the most natural and yet the hardest things to do is to connect your upper and lower body together in all movements. You have one body, and it functions as one piece. It is not “an upper part” AND “a lower part”; it is not two pieces. If you see it as two pieces, it will take you forever to learn how to move effectively since your mind has to be in two places at once and the moment you slack off in one area, your entire movement loses its effect.

When you walk, do you have to tell your legs to step forward and your arms to swing back and forth? I’m guessing you don’t because it’s so natural that you body moves together as one piece. All your boxing moves will have to become just as that natural “one-piece movement” if you want that amazing footwork and effortless punching power.

Never think upper and lower,
there is only one piece.

When I say “one piece”, it does not mean to move both upper and lower (everything) at the same time, it is one piece (one thing) at the same time. So you really have to act as though your body is only one piece. Remember that your weight hangs from your upper body. So you really can’t move the bottom without figuring what to do with your upper body while you do so.

This is part of the reason why I like to imagine my core as starting from the sternum level and everything hangs off of there. It’s help me visualize moving everything at the same time. I find that when I visualize my core as starting from that belly button area, it feels too much like an upper vs lower body and I feel like I have more things to think about.

Connecting the upper and lower body in a way that makes you more balanced, grounded, and powerfully mobile

Some visualization tips:

• Think of your upper body as having to form a strong frame on which to hang the weight of your body. The frame has to stay aligned so that you can relax while releasing this weight.
• Think of your lower body as having to hang in alignment from your upper body. And that your lower body is in perfect alignment when all joints are sitting on top of each other to maintain connection with the ground throughout your entire body.
• Your upper body’s contribution to your whole body is to stretch out and relax in order to let the weight of your body hang downwards.
• Your lower body’s contribution to your whole body is to connect to the ground by hanging downwards in alignment.
• Your upper body draws your entire body upwards to create the perfect hanging post out of your entire body.
• Your lower body draws your entire body downwards in alignment to connect with the ground.
• Your upper body needs to create the perfect hanging angle.
• Your lower body simply hangs.

The upper body needs to stretch upwards
while staying relaxed.
The lower body needs to hang straight and sit.

The delicate balance objectives for the entire body:

• The body must align without tensing.
• The body must relax without collapsing.
• The body must align without losing balance or mobility.
• The body must move without leaving alignment.

The origin of foot speed – WEIGHTLESS vs POWER

Why is foot speed a whole different world of its own?

Foot-speed is something I didn’t talk about very much in this article because it’s almost an entirely different world of technique from “balance and footwork”. I would dare say that it is an art in itself and not well understood.

When we talk about “balance and footwork”, we are talking about the axis and manipulating the axis of the body, center-of-gravity, and other balance-related terminology. But when we talk about foot-speed, we are talking only about the raw speed of how fast you can move your feet.

Becoming WEIGHTLESS vs Becoming POWERFUL

Many athletes nowadays think of foot-speed as being another method of moving the body. And the focus nowadays (as with many other aspects of body movement) is to become stronger and more powerful. I’m going to pick at the modern tendency to lift weights. Want to punch harder? Lift weights. Want to move faster? Lift weights. Resistance training is so often regarded as the cure to all problems that we never really get to see the many other methods out there.

One method of movement I want to talk about is the art of becoming weightless—the art of decreasing density. It is almost lost, forgotten, and abandoned in the search to become stronger and more powerful. Now this art isn’t about becoming stronger but boy, does it accomplish the same result if not even more so.

If you want to make something move faster, you have two choices: 1) become stronger, or 2) decrease the weight of that “thing”. The tendency nowadays is the first option. But the problem with this is that no matter how much more powerful you become, you will never be able to move that object as fast as if it weighed nothing. Some of you will then argue at this point, “But then why not do both?” And my answer is that if the object weighed nothing, then you will not need strength to move it.

Increasing foot speed requires
becoming more weightless, not more powerful.

I will leave you be to figure out this secret on your own. See if you can apply it to all your other movements. And perhaps in another time and place, I can revisit this topic and do a write-up that will make the legends proud.

The genetic freaks of nature.

To be truly comprehensive on the subject of balance and footwork, I have to talk about those with a natural balance advantage. Being that we are now studying the sources of good balance, I can’t help but come to the matter of genetic advantage. What is it that gives them such incredible balance?

Foot size

I’m in the camp that believes bigger, stronger feet, will give better balance and more freakish footwork ability. One of the guys with the best balance I’ve ever seen in the world has a freakishly BIG big-toe. His big toe is like twice the size of a normal person’s big toe (probably more). And not surprisingly, he can do 10 spins and many other kinds of footwork tricks. There is nobody else like him dead or alive that I have ever seen. And his foot speed is something you would have to see in person to truly appreciate.

I too, have very big and wide feet for my frame, and have been told before by some “body specialists” that it’s probably where all my punching power comes from (especially considering that I have a thin frame). Take it for what it’s worth.

Bone structure and hip turnout

People with more flexible hips (think of the ability to do the side splits) and can turn out their feet (like a ballet dancer) tend to have better balance and lower body mobility compared to those who don’t. I can’t explain the anatomical reasons behind it but basically having more turn-out and flexibility in your hips allows for a greater range of body positions and body mobility without losing structural integrity. It’s no surprise that many ballet and yoga exercises will target your hip flexibility.

Of course there is also the matter of bone structure. The way your spine is shaped. The way your knees are shaped. The more your bones and joints are in line with each other, the better your ability to balance and move will be.

Postural health (lifestyle) and body symmetry

The way that you live your life and your daily posture will greatly affect your body’s overall balance and mobility. Someone living in an active society, with lots of walking and physical exercise every day (like an agricultural society) will have a far better natural body posture compared to someone living in a more sedentary industrial society with less exercise built around their daily activities.

This is why somebody living in a developed nation can still exercise everyday and still not be as fit as someone growing up on a farm. What’s my advice for those living in developed nations? Stop sitting down so much, try to spend more time on your feet if you can. Be in positions that require an active body. If you have to sit down a lot for work, get up and stretch and move around often. Jump around, swing your limbs around, do weird movements with your body.

Moving your body in a wider variety of motions helps greatly to maintain overall body health and keep your muscles relaxed. It’s when you let your muscles fall into habitual patterns of movement or stay in the same positions for too long that you start to develop tension and muscular imbalances throughout your body. You may notice that those with the best body mobility tend to have more body symmetry.

Body awareness/sensitivity & technique

Those with heightened senses will have a major advantage in balance and body movement over those who do not. Quite often, we fall off balance because we do not realize when we start to fall off balance. Imagine if you were to stand straight up and slowly tilt to one side until you fall. An average person might requires a few degrees of imbalance and tense muscles before they realize they are off balance. A person with more heightened senses might actually be able to sense IMMEDIATELY as soon as their axis starts to leave it’s ideal position. They can feel the tension in their own body much sooner and they react quicker to prevent the imbalance.

Great technique and sensitivity go together hand-in-hand. Because great technique requires great sensitivity. You can only affect what you are aware of. And when you are aware of more, you can do more. It’s not only about knowing the right way but also knowing many ways to readjust your body and bring it back into alignment. Your body can fall off balance in many ways and with that, you will need to have many ways of realigning your body to regain balance.

Like in all things, great technique can overcome many advantages that your opponent might have. His legs may be stronger but your superior technique can render his leg strength useless. He might have great balance but you might know how to find the weakest joint in his body and take him off balance. He might even be heavier than you but you’ll know how to make him feel as though you are heavier than him.

You have to know that balance is always being tested. Having great balance means you know how to stay balanced when your axis is under pressure. Maybe your body is moving in many places or your opponent is pushing you from many angles. You need to have the sensitivity to know where to apply a counter-force to prevent yourself from falling over.

Things that DO NOT matter in balance and footwork

What are some things that surprisingly do not help balance and footwork? Explosive leg muscles. Seriously—being able to squat a thousand pounds is not going to help your balance or balance sensitivity. Or being bottom-heavy vs being top-heavy. You could have chicken legs and still have great balance, even though the opposite would probably be more preferred.

Being fat, or stocky, or short is also another overrated quality. I’ve seen many tall, skinny, or lanky guys with incredible balance. Sometimes I wonder if being tall is more of a balance advantage than we realize.

Balance Secrets from the future

To those who are ambitious enough to think beyond and look for more secrets to balance and body movement on their own. Here are a few concepts I will toss out there. Maybe this will get you started on thinking more on how to manipulate your own balance and movement.

• The Invisible Core – changing the density of your core to make yourself easier or harder to move, making yourself lighter or heavier as needed.
• The Imaginary Walls – we often try to move ourselves by pushing off the ground. What if we could create walls around us to help push ourselves off of?
• CoG manipulation – raise or lower your body’s center of gravity. Bring it to one side or the other. Give yourself new angles from which to move your body or PREVENT your body from being moved.
• The Mud vs the Tightrope – allow your body to become a heavy sludge connecting into the ground, or a strong beam solid above the ground. This is a leg tension strategy.
• The Airwalk –  the art of changing weight in the air. Most people change weight when the free foot hits the ground. What if you were to change weight before that?
• The Pendulum and Reverse Pendulum – your body either swings from a fixed point at the top or a fixed point at the bottom. Using this seemingly simple idea, create unlimited ways to move your feet or move your head.
• The Late Flash – something needs to happen before your feet can move incredibly fast. So if your feet are the last to move, figure out what has to happen first.

I really appreciate you guys reading this. It’s been a really long and painful journey to get to this point and I’m really proud of the experiences and suffering I had to go through to acquire this knowledge. Even though I’m far from the best, I think there are so few people in the world who are on this level of body awareness and can articulate it in a way that can change anyone’s life. This article is my best stab at the matter. If you are really interested in reaching a higher and more superhuman level of balance and footwork, I urge you to take a look my course — Dancer’s Footwork for Fighters.

Muhammad Ali was one of boxing’s greatest footwork skill-sets ever on display.

“Float like a butterfly and sting like a bee” was the mantra of boxing’s self-proclaimed “The Greatest”. And float he did. The legendary Ali bounced, shuffled, jumped, dashed, slid, pivoted, cut, and ran his way into the boxing hall-of-fame with his graceful footwork. Very few could move as effortlessly and poetically as he did.

But Ali’s footwork was more than just aesthetic flash, there was also substance. Beyond the flowing grace and elegance of his movements, with the incredible balance, power, speed, and stability. Imagine the power of a battleship combined with the precision of a figure-skater. It was indeed repeated again and again that his footwork was the best in history.

What does it take to develop Ali’s amazing footwork?

How were his footwork techniques different from everyone else? And more importantly, how does changing the way you look at footwork change your fighting technique overall?

Muhammad Ali footwork technique

It goes without saying that Muhammad Ali’s boxing footwork was quite different from the average boxer. He was a one-of-a-kind, but he also wasn’t the only one to move that way and certainly not the only one to have that ability. I’ve seen many other fighters move that way, too…even at the amateur level.

I myself had a lot of natural footwork ability but it wasn’t until I had some ballet training that I was able to understand how I did it and to be able to teach others how to do it.

Let’s go over some basic principles behind Ali’s graceful footwork:

STRAIGHTER legs vs BENT legs

This is the first and foremost distinction in differentiating Ali’s footwork technique from most boxers. The typical boxer will bend his knees more (and in my opinion, have TOO MUCH knee bending) whereas Muhammad Ali has relatively straight legs.

The difference, and sometimes very small difference, in these positions impacts greatly on the way you stand and move. In short, your body moves far more effectively and efficiently with straighter legs. The body is simply built this way and it is the way that your body was made to hold itself and to move itself.

But why?…

Let’s do some anatomical analysis. Think of the times when you’ve stood around waiting for the bus. Generally, you stood on relatively straight legs, right? Sure you relaxed your knees rather than locking them but you didn’t stand with bent knees. If you’ve ever done any physical exercise or martial arts poses where the knees are bent, you will remember that it’s very difficult to stand for an extended period of time with the knees bent. It’s not only incredibly tiring but it’s also hard to walk around casually when your knees are bent. The reason it’s tiring for you is because you’re using muscles to hold yourself up rather than your bones. Never forget that your bones are exponentially stronger when they are straight. You can either find a way to relax on a straight bone, or otherwise blow a lot of energy to try and duplicate the same strength and stability using muscle. It’s your choice.

Straighter legs (but NOT straight or locked)
move more efficiently than bent legs.

Is it really that simple? Should we all be using our bones rather than our muscles?

If you want to be more powerful and energy-efficient, YES. Use your bones and joints to transfer and deliver strength. Muscles are to help you move, bones deliver that strength and solid stability. If you use muscle to do what your bones should have done, you will be less athletic overall. Too many athletes place themselves into positions where they use their muscle because it FEELS stronger. Of course, we now know that it isn’t true and at best, it’s only feeding their ego.

Making your muscles work harder
doesn’t guarantee you’ll actually DELIVER more force.

So now we have to ask ourselves:

1) If knee-bending is so bad, why do we do it?

Well, the point of bending the knee is to either help you drop down OR to help prepare your body to shoot upwards. Like a basketball player bending his knees before a jump shot. The thing is boxing, you don’t really need to go up and down. I mean there’s always going to be a tiny bit of up and down, but the ‘up and down’ that you do in boxing is more like what you do on the jump rope (which requires very little knee bending), rather than what you do in basketball (lots of knee bending).

And so the problem is that many boxers bend their knees way too much. And once you’ve lowered yourself, you know have to spend energy to get yourself out of the bend before you can move again. It’s a huge waste of energy but sure…it’ll make you feel powerful…at least until your legs super tired not long after. In boxing, all you really need are forward, backward, and sideways movements…up and down isn’t necessary. If you watch all the guys with the best footwork in boxing, they rarely bend their knees when they move around the ring. And they don’t make giant up and down movements.

NOTE: I am aware of the flashy explosive guys moving their heads up and down or leaping in at times with what looks like a lot of up and down movement…but it’s not their hips and knees that do so much up and down, it’s their head movement that makes them look like that. I should also add clarify that using the knees is good for GOING DOWN quickly, but it’s not good for going up and down quickly.

The boxers with the best footwork
rarely bend their knees when they move around the ring.

FURTHER NOTE: I am not saying that fighters should never bend their knees or that the good fighters never ever bend their knees. Please…do not take advice too literally. There are an infinite number of reasons why bending your knees could be a good idea in certain situations (such as when they roll under punches, or dig into the ground a little deeper for offensive purposes). The situations I’m referring to are the moments when many fighters bend their knees but don’t really have to.

2) But then WHY are the guys with less skillful footwork are bending their knees so often?

…this brings us to our second distinction in Ali’s footwork versus the average fighter’s footwork.

PUSHING technique vs PULLING/SWINGING technique

Generally speaking, many types of body movements in fighting such a punch, a slip, or a footwork maneuver, can be categorized as “pushing technique” or “pulling technique”. Some moves such as a jab can only be seen as a “pushing technique” because of the straight-direction nature of it’s form. But other moves such as a left hook can be done in a both a “pushing” manner as well as a “pulling” manner. But which is better…pushing or pulling? And why? And how?

I like to think of all maneuvers that move in a straight direction as “pushing” moves. And all maneuvers that move in a circular direction as “pulling” moves. The simplest logic I could come up with is that: Straight moves typically exert force straight away from you…which means you can only push them out. And that circular moves have to be pulled in a centripetal manner from a grounded center point, because it’s kind of impossible to push in a circular manner without throwing/twisting yourself off balance.

PUSHING technique is best for linear movements.
PULLING technique is best for circular movements.

So what does all this “pushing” and “pulling” have to do with footwork technique?
Well, it has to do with the way you move your body. If you are always trying to push your way through movements such as in punching technique, that attitude will be reflected in your footwork and you will have a “PUSHING” type of footwork. Whereas if you’re more accustomed to incorporating pulling techniques in your punches and other body movements, your footwork will also likely have more of a “PULLING” quality to it.

So which is better? Pushing technique or Pulling technique?

It depends. It’s tough for me to go out on a limb and generalize this for ALL movements. But for sure, pulling technique requires more skill than pushing technique. And that in situations where you can push AND pull, the pulling version will probably be the more powerful one.

Pulling is technically harder (and possibly more physically exhausting) than pushing because you need to have more balance and axis awareness skills in order to pull. Imagine yourself swinging a bat versus swinging and leaning back against an Olympic hammer throw. Both are circular movements but with the bat, you just muscle through it whereas with the Olympic hammer throw, you have to be extremely mindful of your balance. With pushing, you can do it from anywhere, any position…you don’t have to have perfect balance. You are always ready to “push” at any moment. But with pulling, you’ll fall right away if you’re not precisely in position. Then again with pulling, you have the advantage of being able to use more body-weight effectively into the movement to generate more power. Pulling could also be seen as being more exhausting at times but that is because it gives you the ability to apply more power. Overall, pulling is easily more energy efficient technique than pushing technique.

I think there’s also a connection between pulling technique and snapping technique. I find it far easier to have snapping punches when you visualize them as pulling technique (rather than pushing technique). It’s as though you’re pulling your hand back already except it’s passing through an outwards point where it strikes your opponent. Whereas if you visualize a punch as a pushing motion, you’ll have to generate 2 separate forces, one to send the punch out and the other to recover it. Utilizing pulling technique makes it easier to snap the punch because the pulling helps to circulate the momentum of that hand back to you.

Pushing technique does have it’s advantages. It doesn’t require as much skill or perfect positioning. You could be in an off-balance position or weird position and still have some ability to push (although not very powerfully). It can allow for faster movements at times. It can allow for many more movements that cannot be done in a pulling manner and/or do not need the power generation of pulling technique (e.g. feints, trick moves).

Pulling technique is more powerful
and energy-efficient than pushing technique.

And now FINALLY….the distinction between “pushing footwork” vs “pulling footwork”…

PUSHING footwork vs PULLING footwork

HIPS/FEET Line vs KNEES/QUADS Line

The biggest difference in pushing footwork vs pulling footwork, aside from the way it looks, is the difference in muscles used and the manner in which they are used. A fighter using “pushing footwork” is most likely going to bend his knees more because it loads up his muscles more and gives him the feeling of having more explosive potential. And once the fighter bends his knees, the force will go to his knee joint and quads. And that is what gives him the up and down aesthetic when he moves. Kind of hoppy, a bit like a frog or kangaroo.

On the other side, you have the guys with the “pulling footwork” who stand with straight legs. Because they’re not pushing themselves around (which they can’t since their knees aren’t loaded up), they typically have a pulling or swinging effect to their movements. Instead of their body weight being loaded onto their knees and quad muscles and being pushed around, they have their body weight generally pretty high. Their body weight will be more in their hips (and even upper body). And their body forms a stronger line to the ground with the weight supported by the hips and feet rather than the knees.

When you have a strong presence throughout your entire body, your upper body carries your weight higher, which then allows your to swing your legs underneath you easily. It’s kind of like when you walk, you feel the efficient momentum of swinging your legs underneath you because the leg is almost straight and your body is more upright. In boxing, the fighters stay high in order to do the same. Sometimes the legs are being swung in a linear fashion, other times in a more circular fashion. Now on the other hand, if you collapse your body weight into your knees too much, you will find that it’s easy to collapse your presence up top as well and the upper body caves in. In a sense, the axis in your upper body is now melted and makes it hard for you to move from one place to another.

The muscles used by fighters with “pulling footwork” are usually the hip muscles, adductors, as well as the calves. And what you’ll typically get is a more consistent slight bounce with lots of swinging-pendulum type of maneuvers. They have more of a relaxed floaty bounce rather than an exhausting heavy-loaded bounce. Because their weight is higher up, it’s easy for them to swing their legs around…whereas the “pushers” have their weight so low that they have to keep lifting their center of gravity in order to be able to move.

One funny thing to note is that many people think that the guys who bend their knees will get to use their calves more but this isn’t the case at all. Your calves work best when your knees are relatively straight. Once your knees are bent, you can’t really use your calves at all. You can try it right now and see for yourself. Bend your knees and then see if you’re able to use your calves to elevate your hips away from the ground, while still keeping your knees at the same bent angle.

Good footwork works the hips, calves, and feet muscles
more so than the quad muscles and knee joint.

Gripping the ground VS leaving the ground

Another thing I’ve noticed with pulling footwork vs pushing footwork, is that the guys who pull tend to have more traction and connection with the ground. It’s interesting because even though they seem to be bouncing or jumping a lot, they still grip the ground and use it a lot to move themselves around. Whereas the “pushers” are using their legs to jump themselves off the ground and they seem to disconnect with the ground a lot when they move.

Reusing the momentum

You will find that the guys with the best footwork will move a lot. It’s because they’ve found a way for their body to move easily. It’s not because they love wasting energy or have so much cardio. Their body is already naturally in motion and if anything, it takes more energy for them to stop and so it’s easier for them to keep floating around the ring.

On the flip side, the fighters with inferior footwork ability will find it exhausting to move and so they don’t move much and every time that they do want to move, they have to generate a new energy for it. They never get to recycle the momentum from their last movement. This is the reason why they don’t move as much and yet, they still get as tired.

You will know when you’ve found the right way to move your body when it’s effortless to move. It’s like jump-roping technique. You’ll know when you’re doing it right because you can last for hours on minimal effort. Fighting footwork technique is the same.

The fighters with great footwork move a lot
because it’s so easy for them to do
and it takes more energy for them to stop.

How to Move like Muhammad Ali

How do you train for “pulling footwork”?

Unfortunately, most of the footwork training in boxing is inadequate for developing “pulling footwork” skills. This isn’t to say that all boxing footwork training is ineffective or that all boxers have terrible footwork skills. Not at all. My point is that the general knowledge and technical theory behind how boxers should be taught to move their body is lacking and perhaps even misunderstood. I almost wanted to say “primitive” but this wouldn’t make sense because I feel the guys in the old days moved better. A lot of the classic knowledge is lost and people nowadays are coming up with new ways of training that although provide new benefits, have not yet fully eclipsed all the benefits of the old methods just yet.

Much of today’s athletes are left to their own talents. That is, many of the guys with the best footwork are able to move that way simply because they are talented or naturally move a certain way. It’s not because they were taught to move that way. And many of the guys that don’t have this natural footwork are not taught how to use their bodies in this more effective manner, and so they just live on assuming they will never develop that style of movement.

Good footwork ability found nowadays is often more so
the result of natural talent rather than structured training.

What type of pulling footwork drills should you train?

I wish I had names for the exercises that I do (and teach to my fighters) but they don’t exist in the boxing world. Nobody does them and there are no universal names for them. I’ve made a video training program for it but it isn’t free and so to help those who don’t have the money, I suggest these tips below.

To develop “pulling footwork” techniques:

• try bending the knees less when you move around
• try activating your hips and feet more rather than your quads…if anything, instead of thinking “activate” (which could cause some to be too tense), focus on the “awareness” of your hips and feet
• instead of doing so much jumping and squatting type moves (that resemble basketball plyometrics or weightlifting), try doing ballet type of exercises that work a lot of calf lifts (calf/foot strenth), or leg swings (hip muscles)

Something else you need to understand is how to really use the core. And how to really create a core presence. This is something is almost completely misunderstood in the fight world, and even personal trainer world. It’s hard to explain and even harder to understand. My simple advice to you is to work on developing a core awareness that allows you to hold a higher center of gravity without disconnecting from the ground. That’s my magical secret that I can give you today and I hope it leads you in the direction of finding that new level of balance & power.

Find a way to develop a core awareness
that allows you to hold a higher center of gravity
without a disconnecting from the ground.

How long will it take to develop pulling footwork?

Nobody’s actually asked me this question but I felt it was important to address this. As with all techniques, such as snapping punches, the more skillful the technique the longer it will take for you to develop the skill. It’s important to mention this because many fighters will disregard a technique as being useless or ineffective simply because they do not yet know how to do it properly. Obviously, no technique will work if you cannot do it properly.

It takes time to develop advanced skills

Pulling footwork requires far more skill to use because you’re learning how to really use your body. How to find your balance, how to create natural momentum through your body weight, and how to do it all with minimal effort. It’s not as easy as simply having strong muscles and then contracting those muscles. You really have to understand how to move your body. Think of it as coordination skills, like a dance. Sure you can use muscle, but that alone won’t make it effective and graceful.

It takes time to develop a more functional body

The other part of developing pulling footwork is your body development. As I’ve said before, it takes more skills and awareness to utilize “pulling footwork”. And to further add upon that, you need a better designed body to use these skills…which is not something the average person is equipped with.

The average person lacks not only an inadequately designed body for graceful footwork but also the wrong mindset to achieve it. You can see why this combination would make it difficult for you even if you did manage to get the technique right. If you wanted to design your body more for pulling/swinging movements rather than pushing movements, you would probably develop your body to be something more like a golf club rather than a spring. I would say many of today’s fighters are geared towards that pushing mentality and have trained their muscles to activate and fire in that way for so long that it will take them a while to be able to step out of that mindset and develop new coordinations for their muscles.

And so back to how long it will take. My guess is about AT LEAST a year’s worth of training. Added on and/or subtituted in place of what you’re already doing. Every individual is different. It is because of this tremendous commitment that many fighters will never make the leap from “average footwork” to “great footwork”. Instead, the “average guys” will simply improve upon their pushing technique and leave it at that. And the “natural guys” will simply rely on their natural body aesthetic and talent rather than to really hone that ability.

Check out my premium footwork training program for fighters

If you’re really serious about developing a better skillset for athletic footwork, check out my Dancer’s Footwork for Fighters. It’s really an incredible program packed full of drills I have never seen in fighter’s footwork training anywhere. I simply cannot truthfully recommend a better form of footwork training and balance awareness training that is developed for fighters, it has not yet existed in the boxing world in any standardized manner. Dancers do it best.

If money is a problem or you think it’s just silly, well…I suggest you keep exploring and finding new ways to move. The ultimate lesson is to not bend your knees so much, try to swing more rather than push more.

Other guides on boxing footwork:

• 10 Boxing Footwork Tips
• Boxing Bounce Steps – Footwork Technique
• Balance Secrets from a Dancer
• 10 Advanced Secrets to Balance and Footwork
• Best Boxing Shoes Review

Learn how to bounce in-and-out like a REAL BOXER!

You would think everyone would know how to bounce-step just from watching Muhammad Ali, but things don’t work that way. Like any other skill in boxing, it’s harder than it looks!

• Do you get tired easily when bouncing around?
• Is it hard for you to get in-and-out of your opponent’s range?
• Is it hard for you to stay balanced when moving?
• Is it hard for you to throw punches when moving?

If you answered “YES” to any of the questions above, there’s a good chance your bounce-step could be a lot better. The REAL boxer’s bounce-step is relaxed, subtle, grounded, and slick!

What is the Boxing Bounce Step?

The bounce-step is a commonly used fighting footwork technique typically used in boxing as well as in other kinds of fighting styles. Unlike the basic “step-drag” which is taught to beginners to help them stay grounded and save energy, the bounce step allows the fighter to change directions quicker and can also be used to cover more distance, at the cost of using more energy.

Executing the bounce-step requires a bit more skill as a fighter could easily exhaust himself if he lacks the ability to bounce efficiently, with good coordination and rhythm. The bounce-step could be certainly considered in some ways a similar skill to skipping rope. While a novice could easily get tired within a few jumps, a skilled fighter could easily bounce for many rounds without using much energy.

How to do the Bounce-Step

1. Try to “bounce” with both feet.

The common mistake is to jump from one leg to the other, passing your body weight back and forth. The reason why this isn’t recommended is because it easily wears out your legs. It’s better to jump off both legs and land with both legs which would require you to keep your body weight relatively even between both legs. As you jump back and forth, the skill is to keep the weight distributions between the legs around 55/45 rather than 80/20 or even worse—100/0.

Allowing both legs to share the stress of jumping AND landing would not only make the move far more energy-efficient but also allow you to change directions faster.

Using both legs to bounce and land,
increases speed and saves energy.

2. Bounce downwards, not upwards.

The common mistake is to bounce upwards, which wastes leg energy pushing your hips upwards in a direction you don’t need to move, and then wasting more leg energy when your body impacts the ground again. As you can see, jumping UP will unnecessarily tax your legs twice because you’re moving your body up & down when what you really needed is to go BACK & FORTH (or IN & OUT). The other problem with jumping up and lifting your hips off the ground is that your body spends more time in the air disconnected from the ground and unable to throw punches with power.

Bouncing with the intent to go “downwards” will keep your hips down and be more grounded, allowing you to change directions quicker faster and throw punches with more power, and also save energy in the process. And by bouncing “downwards”, I don’t mean that you try to lower your stance or bend your knees more…I mean for you to simply project the momentum of your body more downwards rather than upwards.

The trick has to do with being able to relax your body to move, rather than to create tension. And in case you don’t know how to relax your body to move, I highly recommend for you to skip rope everyday. Do it for 10-15 minutes every single day as a warm-up. That is the best way to teach your body how to bounce efficiently. Do that exercise everyday and watch your boxing footwork jump to a whole other level.

Bouncing downwards keeps your hips grounded allowing you to
change directions quicker and throw punches with more power.

3. Keep it small.

The common mistake is to make big bounces, which wastes leg energy because you’re moving more than you have to. It takes more energy to bounce higher and farther, and then to land, and then to change directions and bounce again. Keeping your bounces small is what makes it easier to bounce with both feet, bounce downwards, and save energy.

Many beginners usually make big bounces because they haven’t yet developed a refined sense of range. And so they end up jumping large distances to get in and out of range. This movement is completely unnecessarily and only wastes energy and slows them down. You won’t need to be so fast and cover so much ground once you find the line between out-of-range and in-range.

The best tip I can you is to stay at the edge of your opponent’s reach. Place yourself just outside his range and this way, you will only need a small bounce to get in and a small bounce to get out. At the end of the day, the bounce footwork is to get you in and out. And the closer you stay to the edge-of-range, the less effort it will take you to go IN-&-OUT. It’s not about being fast or flashy. You move in, attack, and get out. That’s all there is to it. The less effort it takes you, the better.

Using smaller bounces from the edge of range,
allows you to go IN-&-OUT with more speed and less effort.

When to use Bounce-steps

1. When you need to change directions quickly

The bounce-step is the perfect move for changing directions quickly. This is useful in fighting when you want to quickly go in-&-out for hit-and-run tactics. It’s also useful for going side-to-side when you’re trying to use lateral movement to run away from a chasing opponent.

Bounce steps would be unnecessary if you were trying to go only in one direction, such as going straight back or straight forward, or only to one side. If you’re only going in one direction, you may find more energy-efficiency or balance with other footwork techniques such as: the step-drag, or the shuffle, or even simply walking.

2. When you’re at the edge of range

The bounce-step is best used when you’re at the edge of your opponent’s range. The ability (and energy required) to change directions quickly is perhaps most important when you are within range of your opponent’s punches. Being able to go change directions quickly gives you the most strategic benefit when you use it to go into range, land punches, and then quickly get out.

Changing directions when you’re out of range doesn’t make any sense because you’re not in danger of getting attacked and you don’t need to use more energy than necessary. On the flip side, changing directions quickly when you’re up close on the inside also doesn’t make any sense because you’re so close that you won’t be able to move fast enough. If you’re fighting on the inside, I recommend fast head movement over fast footwork.

Tips for the boxer’s bounce footwork

Learn how to get a real boxer’s bounce, a very skillful movement and often very misunderstood. The boxer’s bounce-step is a great fighting footwork movement that can be easily used throughout an entire fight if you know how to do it correctly. While many people think it’s all about bouncing up and down and back and forth using explosive leg power, this couldn’t be further from the truth. The real boxer’s bounce is actually very relaxed, subtle, stays low to the ground, very slick, and very fast!

The REAL boxer’s bounce is
relaxed, subtle, grounded, and slick!

1. Use your body’s natural twist (contralateral movement)

Let your body twist back and forth with each bounce. It’s similar to walking where your arms move in the opposite direction of your legs (watch the video to get a visual on this). When you bounce with this kind of movement in mind, your body is more relaxed and moves better as your upper body balances out the lower body.

The problem with not using contralateral movement is that your upper body remains stiff instead of relaxing. This causes you to end up shifting your weight from leg to leg as you bounce back and forth. As explained up above, this wears out your legs as your body weight shifts entirely to one leg on every bounce.

By understanding the secret of using contralateral movement with your bounce-steps, you’ll find it much easier to relax and bounce off both your legs simultaneously. The important detail is to know that your body doesn’t have to LOOK like the upper body is moving on every bounce but to know that the body is relaxing in that way on the inside. Being able to relax and twist your body on the inside allows you to move much easier.

Your body doesn’t have to look like it’s twisting,
as long as it’s relaxing and moving on the inside.

2. Keep your body weight at center.

Once you’ve mastered the bounce-step using contralateral movement, you’ll find it’s much easier to stay balanced and keep your body weight at center as you jump back and forth. The ability to stay balanced using the upper body twist will allow you to jump off the center and land at the center. Again, this helps to improve the speed of your bounce-steps and save leg strength since both legs are doing the work simultaneously.

Staying centered when you land and jump,
saves energy by distributing the work between both legs.

3. Keep your body down.

Learning how to use the contralateral twist will not only balance out your body and allow you to relax, but also make it much easier to keep your hips (and body) grounded. Being able to stay down while jumping can be one of the hardest things to master but it definitely helps you to stay down so that you can throw punches or change directions again when you need. The goal is to keep your hips and body down even when you “jump”. It’s even possible to keep your feet lightly touching the ground as you bounce back and forth.

One of my favorite tips is to tell people to relax downwards as they jump. Try to feel like you’re relaxing as you bounce DOWN THE STAIRS, instead of using tension and muscle to bounce UP THE STAIRS.

Using the bounce-step with a contralateral twist
allows you to stay balanced and grounded.

Other guides on boxing footwork:

• 10 Boxing Footwork Tips
• Muhammad Ali Boxing Footwork Technique
• Balance Secrets from a Dancer
• 10 Advanced Secrets to Balance and Footwork
• Best Boxing Shoes Review

10 DAYS OF INTENSE FOOTWORK TRAINING

Develop a slick explosive footwork for fighting. Hold your ground and throw punches with more power than ever before. Move with catlike agility and razor-sharp quickness. Develop rock hard muscles in your legs and core. Out move all your opponents!

I and my brother Brian (dance champion), share the secrets to dancers footwork training in this special 10-day intensive training program. 4 hours of instructional video and a 24-page workbook to improve your footwork skills.

Learn OVER 100 special footwork drills dancers use to develop core and leg strength, improve balance awareness, and move their feet with blinding speed, power, and precision!

Want amazing balance and slick footwork?

• CATLIKE BALANCE – hold your ground with superior technique and stronger leg muscles!
• FASTER FOOTWORK – attack and escape with blinding speed!
• INCREASED PUNCHING POWER – stronger muscles and improved movement technique increases punching power!

Why would a fighter want to train like a dancer?

Dancers have the best balance and footwork of ANY ATHLETE in the world. They train 10 hours a day doing nothing but balance and footwork. Imagine a typical ballet dancer trained from the age of 4 for absolute perfection. By the time he is 18, he is leaping through the air, spinning on one foot, and making it look easy. Hours of stretching, brutal exercises, intense footwork drills, and superhuman displays of speed and power.

You may be shocked to know great boxers such as Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Robinson, and today’s Vasyl Lomachenko had a dance background. Mike Silver (boxing historian and author), mentioned in his popular book “The Arc of Boxing“, that the perfect body for a boxer was that of a dancer’s, with long smooth toned muscle. As a fighter, you might not care to wear tights and spin 10 times in a row, but you might want to know how dancers trained. What techniques did dancers use for such great balance? How did they develop those huge calves? What special footwork drills did they do all those years in training?

It’s no secret that classical dance training can be the hardest type of physical training in the world. A dancer’s body is completely sculpted from head to toe for smooth, powerful, and seemingly effortless movement.

Watch some videos of my former dance teachers:

• Ivan Terrazas – old video of his INCREDIBLE foot strength
• Gabriel Misse – INSANE foot speed and precision
• Brian Nguyen – watch my brother FREESTYLE on the street
• there are dozens more I haven’t listed…

The PROBLEM with typical boxing footwork drills

The footwork drills you see in boxing gyms and MMA gyms today are flat out ineffective. The majority of them are too easy or simply not organized in any logical manner. Where are the drills for stretching? Where are the drills for developing balance awareness? And finally, where are the drills for developing muscle conditioning and coordination?

All you see now is shadowboxing, jump rope, ladder drills, cone drills, and maybe some hip-twisting running exercises and that’s it. Footwork drills nowadays are too simple, too boring, and STILL don’t teach fighters how to balance and move their bodies. There is no systematic way to develop and challenge their bodies to move better.

Today’s footwork drills are still missing:

• Awareness drills – how to develop great balance awareness and control of your neutral axis.
• Complete conditioning of the legs – not just calve muscles and agility drills (missing internal leg muscles)
• Lack of slow motion work – to increase control and coordination, rather than simply raw speed & power
• Do not target “footwork muscles” effectively

What’s in the “Dancer’s Footwork for Fighters” training program?

You’ll get access to a comprehensive 10-day training program with 4 hours of video. You’ll learn many new footwork techniques, exercises and drills each day to completely transform your lower body and improve your fighting footwork! This is a proven training routine used by dancers for generations.

Think THICKER, STRONGER, FASTER legs.

You’ll finally have completely developed leg muscles for increased leg strength, coordination, and control throughout a wider range of motion. You’ll get access to an advanced training routine for superior balance awareness and rapid footwork skill development. You’ll develop a stronger and MORE FUNCTIONAL core to generate MORE POWER IN ALL BODY MOVEMENTS.

You’ll stand heavier, move faster, and punch harder!

Access to a dance champion’s knowledge

You will get access to one of the greatest resources in footwork training through my brother, Brian Nguyen, the USA TANGO CHAMPION. He has trained with the best in the world and won numerous dance competitions with his footwork skill and ability. He is a highly-regarded tango dancer and performer around the world. He charges over $100/hr for private lessons and is always booked in every city that he visits.

And Brian Nguyen will be sharing his secret drills and training methods in this special course. You will learn…NOT 10…NOT 20…but OVER 100 FOOTWORK DRILLS. Brian and I will start you off slow with the fundamental techniques and basic exercises (Days 1,2,3). Then work our way up to the more intense exercises (Days 4,5,6,7). And finally, we’ll finish with the impossible exercises (Days 7,8,9,10). You will get technical demonstrations and theoretical explanations every day.

*** See my brother Brian Nguyen’s dance performances – VIDEO 1 – VIDEO 2 ***

This special footwork training is HARD.

The drills and exercises are ridiculously hard, and painful. This course is not intended for the casual fighter. If you don’t even like jumping rope, this course is not for you! I recommend this training only for serious athletes or people with a rabid curiosity.

The average person won’t even get past DAY 5. If you’re looking for a challenge and really want to take your footwork to the next level, this will give you the best footwork in the gym!

The 100+ footwork drills range from simple, to complicated, to hard, to painful, to the impossible. Many of you reading this will NEVER be able to do all of them. But nonetheless, your footwork speed, precision, and agility will improve tremendously if you put in the work.

If you can survive these workouts,
fighting footwork will be easy.

Here’s what you get…

INTRO – equipment and warm-up

• a rundown about OPTIONAL helpful equipment
• how to use a stick and resistance bands for footwork training
• how to maintain your body with a foam roller, stretching, foot massage ball

Day 1 – developing axis awareness

• how to stand straight and find your neutral axis
• increase core presence using hip & leg position
• using the calves to connect to the ground
• increase leg strength, sharpness, and coordination
• strengthening the core while in movement
• breathing technique for body movement
• becoming heavy for balance

Day 2 – developing axis control

• warming up the hips and calf muscles
• moving your axis with balance
• exercises for calf strengthening and feet coordination
• holding the core while in the air (jumping exercises)
• how to develop “active feet”
• 2 simple tips to develop balance awareness (throughout your day / when you’re not training / outside of the gym)

Day 3 – basic body movement and feet activation

• slow movement footwork techniques (increase body awareness)
• using the heels to increase grounding and step strength
• using the toes to increase control, changing direction and speed
• how to turn the body with control, power, and relaxation
• using the upper body to help the lower body

Day 4 – leg strengthening and hip stabilization

• advanced slow movement footwork technique (increase strength & balance)
• moving in geometric patterns (maintaining balance while pivoting)
• staying heavy in movement
• controlling weight change (to prevent falling)
• stabilizing the hip during movements

Day 5 – feet and core strengthening

• strengthening the “gripping muscles”
• how to “lift” the body up and down (without losing the core)
• footwork drills stressing the core
• coordination jumping drills
• using the core to move and stabilize your body

Day 6 – foot speed and explosive footwork

• advanced footwork drills (speed, power, precision, core control)
• raw speed drills (maximum speed footwork exercises)
• explosive footwork drills (speed and power)
• painful calf footwork exercises (working all sides of the calves)

Day 7 – leg strengthening, balance and coordination

• one-legged footwork drills (strengthening the standing leg)
• one-legged pivot drills (core and foot strengthening)
• two-legged pivots (balance and coordination)

Day 8 – core strengthening, speed, and power

• advanced pivoting drills (controlling the free leg during pivots)
• slow pivoting drills (increase strength and control)
• core-twisting exercises (insane core strength, speed, and power)
• understanding how to use the core twist
• the best kinds of core exercises

Day 9  – advanced balance and coordination

• advanced core drills
• advanced spinning drills

Day 10 – really REALLY HARD STUFF

• THE IMPOSSIBLE!

PS: Got questions about this footwork guide? Leave a comment below or send me an email and I’ll answer it right away.

The average fighter has terrible footwork. And I’m not talking about the guy in the corner that’s only been boxing for 2 months, I’m talking about the AVERAGE AMATEUR-LEVEL COMPETING BOXER. Unfortunately, this might mean you.

And it’s NOT your fault. It’s not because you didn’t train hard enough. It’s simply a lack of understanding basic human anatomy. I’d love to write guides on fancy footwork one day, but right now 99% of you don’t even know these:

10 HUGE fighting footwork tips!

Watch my video for better demonstrations of boxing footwork technique.

 1. Wear Boxing Shoes

C’mon now, guys. This is boxing! You shouldn’t be complaining about having bad footwork in the ring if you’re wearing tennis shoes in there. It’s like wearing a sweater into the swimming pool and complaining that you can’t move your arms. Really…it’s the same thing.

Boxing shoes are thinner allowing for more power transfer.

If you’ve ever put on a pair of boxing shoes, you’ll be amazed at how they feel more like a sock than a shoe. (A very durable sock, if you will.) Assuming you got a quality brand and not a $25 pair of boxing shoes, you’ll feel like a ninja in the ring. The thin soles allow your feet to feel and grip the ground like a panther pushing, pulling, and changing directions all over the canvas.

The problem with NON-boxing shoes, even other athletic shoes, is that their sole is too thick. This is because they’re built for shock absorption which means they DECREASE the amount of power transferred from the ground. The sole is so thick  sometimes even so curved, that you can’t plant your feet firmly into the ground.

Even without a single footwork drill, you will feel much more slick and agile in the ring simply by buying a pair of shoes. This is boxing, so please get the proper gear. Having the right equipment is the bare minimum for achieving higher performance.

Your boxing footwork will be instantly better,
simply by wearing boxing shoes.

Boxing shoes prevent sliding BUT allow pivoting.

That’s the beauty of boxing shoes. They don’t let your feet slide BUT THEY DO let your feet pivot easily. You need the non-sliding feature to keep your body anchored to the ground, and then you need to be able to pivot so you can throw deadly punches with full body rotation.

The problem with NON-boxing shoes is that they either have too much grip or too little grip. If they have TOO LITTLE GRIP, you slide all over the place and can’t ground yourself. If they have TOO MUCH GRIP, you won’t slide but now you can’t pivot either without decreasing weight on the pivoting foot (which affects your punching power and ability to change directions).

Boxing shoes can exert more force to the ground WITHOUT SLIPPING,
resulting in better balance, footwork, and punching power!

Want to buy the same boxing shoes as me?

I use the Nike Lo Pro Boxing shoe. Some of you may prefer the hi-top version for more ankle support. I like the low ankle for more agility and also because I feel I already have strong ankles. I prefer Nike because of better comfort and feels. If I had to use any other brand, it would only be Adidas and probably nothing else.

2. Jump Rope More

For those of you that don’t even jump rope in the first place, this would be a good time to start. Jumping rope is one of the greatest exercises for boxing. It improves your balance, footwork, punching power (YES, THIS), muscle endurance, breathing efficiency, muscle conditioning, and several more things. Basically, it’s a GREAT EXERCISE FOR BOXING! It’s like an all-in-one exercise that works out several things simultaneously and is pretty fun once you learn some tricks.

Jumping rope improves your leg conditioning.

If I had to choose an exercise that best mimics leg use in boxing, it’s the jump rope. The reason is because your legs are always contracting in tiny bursts–not only when you bounce in the ring but also when you punch. Jumping rope builds that leg muscle so you can have that powerful leg burst throughout an entire fight. Doing squats will never be as good because squats aren’t done fast enough and never get to hundreds of repetitions. The jump rope is fast and constant which is very similar to how you would use your legs during a fight.

Most importantly, the jump rope teaches you how to use your legs EFFICIENTLY. Many fighters don’t do the jump rope because it’s too tiring. Well if you keep it up, you will learn how to relax (using technique and breathing) so you can do hundreds of jumps without getting tired. This ability will allow you to throw hundreds of powerful punches without getting tired. This is something other leg exercises can NEVER teach you.

The jump rope will make you
a more powerful AND energy-efficient fighter!

I can actually watch fighters in the ring and based on how they move, I can tell if they jump rope or not. The guys that do jump rope have a nice relaxed bounce and move with a calm slickness. The guys that DON’T jump rope are never as graceful and typically move with big heavy energy-wasting steps. Spend some time watching fighters in your gym and you will see what I mean.

Jumping rope improves your foot coordination.

Unlike running or squats and other similar exercises, the jump rope improves your foot coordination. You have to pay attention to the rope and clear the rope with your feet. You can’t just drop your feet all over the place like a lazy running step, you have to have sharp feet when you’re jumping rope. This results in improved quickness and footwork agility!

3. Straighten Your Spine

The spine was made to hold you straight up.

This is actually a very basic observation about human anatomy that many people still don’t understand. Your spine is what holds you upright to make you stand tall and balanced on 2 legs. A straight spine is our body’s MOST NATURAL and MOST EFFICIENT POSITION! Once you understand your body’s natural position, your ability to move it will improve.

The straighter spine has better balance.

Having a straight spine is the easiest way to be perfectly balanced. This is because your body is perfectly stacked requiring minimal energy to stand. Your body is divided in half perfectly down the center, easily distributing your weight between both feet. The moment you tilt your spine in any direction, you will naturally be more inclined to fall in that direction and less able to move in the opposite direction. Even if you DO manage to balance yourself with a tilted spine, this is not a “true balance” because it requires you to offset more of your body to one side and easily comes off balance as you move even the slightest amount.

Having a straight spine is the easiest way to have your body perfectly balanced from top to bottom, allowing you to move or spin effortlessly without having to re-balance yourself!

A straighter spine moves and pivots easier,
WITHOUT losing balance after movement.

The straighter spine is easier to move/pivot.

One thing I like to teach to my fighters is “spine awareness”. You have to be aware of your spine because it’s your axis of movement. If you want to move, you have to move the spine. If you want to pivot, you have to pivot the spine. This doesn’t mean the spine generates movement; I mean that the spine is your POINT OF MOVEMENT or AXIS OF MOVEMENT.

Suppose I want to throw a powerful punch. If I maintain a spine awareness and focus on rotating from my spine, the punch will be well-balanced and easily powerful. If I put too much focus on my punching hand, I will naturally have more weight on that side of the body and end up being off-balanced.

Suppose I want to move around the ring like Muhammad Ali. Watch footage of him and you’ll see that he has a very straight and tall spine when he bounces around the ring. This is what allows him to jump around and throw deadly punches. Many fighters with good footwork will have a straight spine when they move.

Now this doesn’t mean my spine ALWAYS has to be straight.

Not at all, look at Pernell Whitaker. When he grounds his feet his spine tilts all over the place. The important thing is to understand the relationship between your spine and your ability to move. You might straighten your spine to move into range, then plant your feet and tilt your spine for punches/slipping, and then straighten again to move away.

A straight spine is for foot movement.
A (minimally) tilted spine is for head movement.

4. Relax Your Upper Body

There is no such thing as “lower body movement”,
there is only “body movement”.

Your upper body and lower body (should not) move independently.

This is another one of those things that people don’t understand. The lower body is not a separate entity from your upper body. These can be EXPLAINED and DESCRIBED as two separate things…but it has to be moved as one. Once you understand how body movement works, you will see why there is no “upper body” or “lower body”—there is simply one “body”.

All (powerful) movement is generated from the core. Let’s say I wanted to type a comment on a YouTube video or scratch my nose; well, no power needed therefore no core is needed (meaning I can do these things without disturbing my lower body). Now what if I wanted to run fast or throw a punch? Well NOW my core is needed. I cannot run without using my arms, and I cannot punch without using my legs.

The core is required in all powerful movements because powerful movements are usually a PUSHING or PULLING force generated from your body. And the core is needed to “ground” your body (usually against the ground) to give you a foundation to push or pull from.

This then makes all your extremities (arms & hands, legs & feet) AN EXTENSION OF YOUR CORE. Which then means…that you cannot move one without the other! Get it? You cannot move your legs POWERFULLY without moving your arms. And vice versa, you cannot move your arms POWERFULLY without moving your legs. Likewise, you cannot GENERATE POWER with one and not the other and you cannot RELAX one without relaxing the other. This is why having good footwork WILL INCREASE YOUR PUNCHING POWER.

You cannot (POWERFULLY) move one part of your body
without moving the rest.

A stiff upper body restricts lower body movement.

This might be a big “AHA” moment for some of you. For everyone else, try this:

• Try walking a couple steps just as you normally would. (Notice how your arms naturally sway to counter-balance your lower body.)
• Now try doing the same thing BUT HOLD YOUR ARMS in a rigid position like down by your side, as if your upper body was stuck in a frame. (See how stiff and awkward you feel?)

I can use the same principle with boxing footwork! Here I relax my upper body as I move, allowing my upper body to “move” with my lower body (letting my arms swing slightly as though I’m walking). It’s not about dropping the hands, it’s about letting your upper body move and counter-balance naturally with your lower body movement.

Or you can do it like this. See how when I make a stiff upper body, my body wobbles awkwardly off balance. Holding tension only makes you tired and waste energy; and you won’t move very well either. Many of you look like this, maybe not to the degree of my exaggerated demonstration above, but you do. It makes me laugh to see fighters wobble around like this.

Imagine trying to be agile when you’re carrying a 20-pound bag of groceries. It’s the same way with your upper body tension. It’s hard to move when your upper body is stiff.

Stop trying to hold a frame and let your WHOLE body move!

It’s impossible (or very difficult) to move the upper body or lower body without moving the other. And it’s impossible to hold tension in one while relaxing the other. Stop worrying so much about keeping a perfect defensive position. (Besides, good defense comes from defensive movement, not “defensive position”.)

Boxing is about movement first,
position second.

5. The BALLS OF YOUR FEET are the FIRST ON and OFF the ground

Always land or push off
using the balls of your feet.

When going forward, land the BALL OF YOUR FOOT FIRST.

See how the ball of my foot touches the ground first? This is what looks slick. It allows me to quickly have 2 power points on the ground which can be used to push or pull me again, or ground me for punching. I can also use that front ball of the foot to return backwards for faster in-&-out type of footwork.

Do NOT step forward with your heel.

BADDDDDD! Terrible.Terrible.Terrible. Your footwork has the grace of a dictionary when you move like this. It’s like your foot is a giant ugly book going *KA-LOMP!* all over the place. Stepping with the heel first has far less control because you can’t ground or apply force in any direction until the ball of your foot hits the ground.

Naturally, heel-stepping makes you a slower mover because your forward step has 2 sequences of movement (heel step & toe step) compared to someone who steps with the ball first (toe step). You also pay a price for being less grounded; you fall off balance when pushed and can’t throw punches as powerfully when your heel plants first.

When going backward, PUSH OFF THE BALL of your foot.

Reverse the rule when you foot leaves the ground. When your foot is leaving the ground, PUSH yourself using the ball of your foot. This makes the ball of the foot the last to break contact with the ground, AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, moves your body away more powerfully from its original position.

Do NOT fall back off your heel.

This is SO BAD! SOOOOO UGLY! I hate seeing this. The reason why this happens is usually either A) you were running scared and forgot about technique or B) you don’t know how to move correctly. The reason why fighters step off with the heel is because they were falling towards the other leg, instead of pushing themselves towards the other leg. When you want to go backwards powerfully and with more control, push off with the ball of your foot.

Toe-stepping means you’re stepping properly.
Heel-stepping means you’re falling.

Stepping ON and OFF the metatarsals increases control, power, agility.

You have to remember this rule when you shadowbox and do footwork drills. When you leave the ground, push with the ball of the foot. When you land on the ground, reach with the ball of the foot first.

It’s not about being on the balls of your feet all the time,
it’s about USING the balls of your feet all the time.

The reason why we avoid using the heels is because the heels have no muscle so it can’t give you any control. The more you use the balls of your feet, the more balance, control, and power you will have. Even when your feet are flat on the ground, you should still have your weight on the ball of the foot!

Footwork is one of those things that looks plain ugly when you do it wrong. Stepping on and off your heels makes your footwork look amateurish and ungraceful. Watch how cats move so powerfully and gracefully; they step with the FRONT of their feet for grip and control, not the back.

6. Narrow Your Stance

Narrow stances can take bigger steps and pivot easier

Try standing in a both narrow and wide stance and see which stance steps farther and pivots wider. See how easy it is for a narrow stance to take bigger steps and make big pivots? Having your feet closer together gives you more room to move and makes it easier to pivot.

Wide stances uses more energy and offers less range of motion.

If you’ve read my other guides on boxing stance, then you know: the wide stance is definitely harder to take long steps and pivot. Sure you CAN take long steps but you’ll most likely end up jumping which uses more energy. You CAN do a wide pivot but that requires you to have more weight on the front leg and be off-balance.

Aside from making it harder for you to move, a wide stance will make it harder for you to stand. A wide stance will have your legs splayed out to the side which requires you to spend more energy just to hold yourself up (because the legs are exerting some horizontal force against each other). So if you ever want to take a break, put your feet closer under you and see hip much more relaxing it is on your thighs and hip muscles. This is why tired fighters end up walking, but the narrower position allows them to rest their legs.

You KNOW your stance is too wide
when it’s tiring to stand still.

Develop your boxing footwork using a narrower stance.

This isn’t a rule to tell you that wide stances are bad or that you can never fight with a wide stance. This isn’t true at all. Many pros and olympic amateurs will use a wide stance from time to time. But for a beginner, using a narrower stance will help you do certain things easier (like pivoting and taking big steps).

It’s not about whether a narrow stance is better than a wide stance. It’s about WHY you use a wide stance. Many beginners ARE FORCED to use a wide stance because they don’t know how to ground their weight properly. You don’t use a narrow stance because they don’t know how. In their case, having a wider stance won’t improve their balance, it only prevents them from falling—BUT THEY ARE STILL OFF-BALANCE!

A wide stance doesn’t improve bad balance,
it only hides it.

Remember my tip up above about the straighter spine? Many fighters stand with a tilted spine when they use a wide stance (especially when they mimic Floyd Mayweather’s shoulder roll). Some of them argue with me and say, “What do you mean I’m not balanced?! Look at me, I’m not falling over!” Well just because you’re not falling over doesn’t mean you’re balanced.

LEARNING how to fight with a narrower stance teaches you, or better yet, FORCES YOU to develop your balance awareness. It’s like taking the training wheels off your bicycle and forcing yourself to stay up using good balance as opposed to having your feet so wide that you can’t fall.

*** QUICK TIP: some of the slickest footwork is easiest from a narrower stance. Watch Muhammad Ali, Pernell Whitaker, etc.

7. Smaller Steps

This is another of those things I have to keep yelling at beginners. Just about EVERY BEGINNER is guilty of taking over-sized steps. Actually, I would even say that you are NO LONGER A BEGINNER the moment you learn how to take smaller steps.

A typical beginner is overly anxious to cause damage so he’ll jump far deeper into range than he needs to be. Then he’ll realize the danger he’s in and jump FAR outside of range in panic. Now using anxiousness as excitement, he jumps back into range again and repeats. Beginners have no concept of reach and think of footwork as nothing more than IN-AND-OUT! (Watch my video above to see my demonstration of smaller steps.)

It’s not about going IN AND OUT.
It’s about going (barely) IN and (barely) OUT.

Great boxing footwork uses the SMALLEST distance possible.

The goal is not to cover as much distance as you can. Distance is a game you will never win. In fact, you CAN’T win the game of distance. Because the game of boxing is punching for points, not running for distance. The more time you spend moving your feet, the less time you spend moving your hands.

Stay within the edge of range, instead of wasting energy to go unnecessarily far beyond the line. Use your entire reach! Extending your arm an extra inch requires much less energy than moving your body an inch.

Bigger steps always requires more energy and more time. It doesn’t matter how athletic you are, you will NEVER be as quick as your opponent if he is taking smaller steps than you are! This isn’t a matter of skill or conditioning, it’s simply a matter of who is doing more work. Smaller steps require less energy and will be easier to control. You can make many directional changes and tricky cuts and pivots with small steps. A bigger step will only leave you vulnerable to punches. Better opponents fight very well at range and will counter you easily if you jump in too far. In fact: the better your opponent, the smaller and quicker controlled steps you will need.

You will never be quick enough
if your goal is to step farther.

8. Learn to Walk

I know many boxing coaches will yell at their fighters to “STOP WALKING! Do the step-drag!” but I think it’s important for non-beginners to grow beyond that. Walking is one of the body’s most natural forms of movement. When done properly in the ring, walking is one of the most skillful ways to stalk an opponent or even evade an opponent. The greatest benefit of walking is that it uses very little energy.

Here, I pretend to “walk” around an imaginary opponent (away from his power hand).

Notice how this isn’t the same walk we use on the sidewalk (with our arms down by the side). It’s simply me walking around with my legs AND relaxing my upperbody to counter-balance with the lower body as I “walk” around the ring. Many pro fighters will use the same move to escape out the side when they don’t feel like using side-steps. (Please watch my video for a better demonstration.)

Walking saves energy!

The first benefit of walking is that it saves energy. By having your hips more under you and not jumping around, you can move and twist and turn in all sorts of ways quickly using very little energy. No more jumping around on one-leg or two-legs, just go for a walk. When you’re out of range, walk. Or lets say an opponent as attacking you; there’s no need to jump backwards, you can simply walk backwards which takes the steam off his punches because you’re not giving him a solid target. Walking is a great way to save energy AND keep you relatively grounded for punching, defending, or pushing purposes (like in a clinch).

Walking is slick!

Yes, walking makes you really slick. Jumping around and darting back and forth looks impressive because it’s so athletic but walking is one of those things the pros do really well. You KNOW you’re facing a legit fighter when you see him walking you down and calmly slipping and rolling under your shots. It will be scary at first to try and fight without jumping but you will eventually develop these footwork skills without enough practice.

Watch the most slickest fighters and you’ll see that they’re usually walking and not jumping. I don’t want to write a guide ont his awesome art of fighting footwork so you’ll have to experiment and watch videos for yourself. The best walkers of the modern era are probably James Toney, Pernell Whitaker, those type of guys.

The fighters with the slickest footwork,
are incredibly skilled at walking!

9. Pivot Your Feet

The direction your feet are pointing
is the direction that is easiest for you to move.

Naturally, everyone’s feet is usually pointing forward so moving forward is easy. The hard part comes when you try to move backward.

Moving backwards WITHOUT pivoting the feet.

This is the most basic way to move. You simply push yourself back. It’s not wrong but it’s not the fastest way to move back.

Moving backwards WHILE pivoting the feet.

Now here instead of pushing myself straight back, I pivot my feet first. Now I know it seems like I’m adding an extra step and making it slower but actually this is much faster than trying to push myself backward. The reason is because the moment I pivot my feet, my body BEGINS to fall in the direction of the foot. And so even though it’s 2 movements (pivot, then step) instead of a single push, it will actually take much less effort.

The body naturally falls in the direction of your feet.
This is why your feet are in FRONT of you, to prevent the fall.

Wherever your feet point, is where your body will go!

It’s really a simple fact of human anatomy. The trick is to point your feet in the direction you want to go. And if you want to change directions, then simply pivot your feet in the new direction. Once you understand how your feet work, you will see that it’s easier to go IN-AND-OUT movement simply by pointing your feet forwards and backwards and then “relaxing” in the direction you want to go. If you point the feet correctly, you no longer need to push yourself back and forth.

To go IN & OUT quickly,
simply pivot your feet back and forth and “release your body”.

10. Lower Your Hands (ADVANCED TIP)

Here goes another pro tip. And this is NOT RECOMMEND FOR BEGINNERS! Read on…

You must lower your center of gravity to have better footwork.

The lower your center of gravity, the easier you can move around in all directions without losing balance. The real challenge in developing good footwork is actually managing the upper body! Developing the lower body is the easy part, you can do conditioning and drills and all that stuff but the problem is your upper body. The upper body makes you feel like a tower and always seems to fall over when you use fast footwork. Even if you manage to spread your feet out wide (to lower your center), your upper body might STILL be easily pushed off balance.

Keeping the upper body balanced
is what makes boxing footwork so difficult.

The trick to managing the upper body is to LOWER ITS CENTER.

The more tension and more energy you carry in your upper body, the easier you fall off balance. And the bigger your upper body, the easier you fall off balance. The reason is simple, the upper body is a “weight” that sits high above your center of gravity. The “heavier” your upper body weight, the harder it is for you to move without getting off-balance. So how can we lower the upper body without tilting the spine and coming off balance?

Instead of using a high guard which raises your center of gravity and makes your head & shoulders area really heavy. Having your hands really high also magnifies the tilted spine effect when you slip and makes it harder for you to slip without losing balance and wasting energy.

Try dropping the hands a little bit like this! Now you don’t have to drop your hands all the way down, but maybe you can drop them to chin level instead of forehead level. This also makes it easier for you to protect your body since your elbows are down.

Lowering your hands lowers your body weight and allows you to move around easier. You may have seen pro fighters fight with their hands down at the sides especially when they’re trying to dart around the ring. The reason is because they are using their hands to counter-balance their head movement and quick foot movements. You can use your arms for balance the same way a cat uses its tail for balance.

Lowering your hands helps you stay balanced,
so you can move your head and body more.

Other guides on boxing footwork:

• Muhammad Ali Boxing Footwork Technique
• 10 Advanced Secrets to Balance and Footwork
• Balance Secrets from a Dancer
• Best Boxing Shoes Review
• Basic Boxing Footwork Strategy

If you’re looking for more serious boxing footwork techniques and exercises, check out my: Dancer’s Footwork for Fighters.