Closing the distance

In last night's boxing class we practiced closing distance on our opponent. This is basically the process of  moving closer to your opponent to be able to hit them. Sounds simple, right? Well, nothing is simple when it involves hitting and avoiding being hit.

Properly closing distance requires you to know what your reach is and what your opponent's reach is. If your reach is longer, than you're in luck. If your opponent's reach is longer, you have a lot more work to do. We practiced closing distance by taking three steps toward our opponent until we reached our firing line. This line marks the spot where we are just out of our range to be able to land punches. From this spot, one more step forward will put us at our set line and from here we can connect with our jab. I was having trouble reaching my firing line, it tended to be too close so that when I stepped to my set line and threw the jab I wasn't able to extend it fully and I had placed myself well within the range of my opponent. This problem can be remedied with practice on the bag.

After class was finished, I continued practing closing distance in the ring with a partner. We drilled the same stuff we had just learned in class. Close distance, fire the jab, step in and to the left and fire the left hook, pivot out and throw the right. Doing it at full speed seemed a little easier than practicing it slow and having my partner punching back really showed the importance of head movement and stepping off line. I need to do some work in front of the mirror to nail this down.

P.S.: I must look silly as I write this at work because I just realized I'm moving my head and shoulders to the left and the right as I think about stepping off line.