When you are in your boxing stance, your feet should be shoulder width apart. One in the front and the other back, according to your stance type. You have to stay on the balls of your feet the whole time. These are the basic foot movement that you should always adhere to. To improve your movement inside the ring, you will require more advanced footwork drills.
Advanced Footwork Drills
You can start the drill with a simple warm up. Move forward across the ring, as you would in a fight, parallel to the ropes with your lead foot moving first. The backward movement should be the opposite, back foot first and the lead foot following.Then you need to move diagonally in the ringside to side. Practice these movements at varying speeds to warm up your legs for the drills that come next.
Square Footwork Drills
- You need to mark out a square for this drill.
- A boxing ring should do perfectly but if you don’t have access to one then you can tape out a square in any space and start the drill.
- Take your stance in one corner and move forward diagonally to the opposite corner.
- Now you will move horizontally to the nearest corner, left or right.
- Next, you will move diagonally backward to the other corner. Then horizontally to the nearest corner.
Keep up this pattern and keep the focus on your feet.
Once you are comfortable with the drill and you can get the footwork right, you can do some punch combos while you are completing the drills.
Ball Footwork Drills
- You can use a medicine ball for this drill.
- Get on the training floor or inside the ring and put the medicine ball in the center.
- Step 5-6 steps back from the ball.
- Move forward like you would against an opponent. Lead foot forward, on the balls of your feet.
- After getting close, move right back at an angle. Make sure you don’t move back to the place where you had started from.
- Move forward again. This time, when you get close to the ball, pivot so you are facing the ball from another direction. Move back again at an angle.
Remember the pattern…
Move back once at an angle, next time use the pivot and move back to a different area completely.
Mirror Footwork Drills
This isn’t like shadow boxing. In this drill, you have to mirror the movement of a boxing partner. Get your training partner with you and decide which one of you will be a defensive fighter and which one will be offensive.
- Take your stances a few feet away from each other.
- Make sure that you face each other the whole time.
- The person who is the offensive boxer will move whichever way he/she wants.
- The other boxer will try to mirror the movements.
- After a few rounds of these movements, switch roles with your training partner.
These drills will improve the preciseness of your foot movement and also help with the speed.
You will need to practice them often to see the difference they can make.
Once you get them down, you will be able to move inside and outside, forward and back, pivot in and out, and slip punches like a pro!
