Boxing and footwork

[sallearmourer]

My son has to take boxing at the USMA and they stress footwork.

One of the coaches was yelling at my son for having footwork like a fencer. He finally ask if he was a fencer. My son said he was a fencer. The coach called the other coach over and said you know loomis is a fencer. The other coach said that explain the d__n footwork.

Tim

[Catal]

I used to take boxing; fencing footwork is far superior, given that one adopts one of the more mobile fencing techniques. Since I don't know how well your son boxes, I can only say that if using fencing footwork your son manages to knock a few marines on their ***, the gunny won't say ****. I had a conversation with a gunny that used to teach edged weapons tactics, who tried to tell me how use a knife- the guy had never been in a knife fight, let alone practiced actual sparring, not controlled practice. He wouldn't admit that my tactings using fencing were better, but after I showed him why marine edged weapon tactics are inferior, he won't bring up the topic anymore. It's a marine ego thing, you have to kick their *** before they'll believe you.

[MikeHarm]

My fencing training helped me to to have fun at a self defense seminar too. One of the blackbelts wanted to show me his self defense techniques for karate against the knife and handed me a rubber knife for the demonstration. He said stab me, so I did, touche. Ok do it again, stab, right to the heart. Then he concentrated like he was going to really do it right, told me to do it again. When I went to stab him he grabbed my knife hand. I twirled the rubber knife around like it would cut his wrist, he said 'What the?' and let go of my wrist in surprise. I then drew the rubber knife across his throat before he could finish speaking then did a quick stab between the ribs on his right side with the blade sideways so it would of slid between the ribs proper instead of getting caught on the bones. It was probably the only realistic demonstration of what would happen to him in a real knife fight he ever had most likely.

[Catal]

Yeah, that's a common problem with Asian martial arts in this country. It's not that these people are bad at what they do, the problem is so much of what they do is under controlled conditions, and not spontaneous (closer to a real life environment.) It's the same difference between fencers who compete and those that have never competed. How can one know how to truly lunge when one has never had to chase someone around the piste to do so? The same goes for students of Asian martial arts; how do you expect to know how to kick, when you've never had to chase someone around the ring to do so? Se la vi...

[Aoife]

I did Karate for years when I was younger, and got to one before black when personal problems ment I had to stop, but I do think it helped a little when I started fencing. I'm not certain why, I think perhaps just having some familierarity with contact sports helped- things like keeping myself covered and trying to out-think an opponant (like picking up on their style etc). On the other hand, my friend recently started kick-boxing and fencing (within weeks of each other) and she finds she keeps using fencing footwork in kick-boxing by mistake. (as long as she doesn't start kicking people in fencing we should be okay )