Secret to Keeping Your HANDS UP in Boxing

Yes, really. Keep your head slightly in front of your shoulders, and your shoulders slightly in front of your hips. You don’t have to learn forward all the way in. You can do just the slightest amount!

If you notice, the more experienced fighters have no issues leaning forward. They love being aggressive and getting into their opponent’s space. They love reaching in with big shots and being psychologically imposing. Their body position is more likely to go forwards and leaning their upper body forward makes it easier to put them in motion and in balance to go FORWARD.

The less experienced fighters tend to do the exact opposite. They like to lean backward and keep their head as far away from their opponent as possible. Unfortunately, this means they’ll be leaning back and usually leads to being pushed even further back, losing balance and losing ground.

And if you’re leaning backwards and don’t want to fall back, guess what happens…something in your body has to go forward to counteract the backwards momentum, since you can’t bring upper body forward (because you don’t want to, or because you’re getting pushed back already) the natural response will be to take your hands off your face and move forward and down to try and rebalance yourself. It’s the same natural instinct of how people flail their arms forward when their chair tilts back suddenly off balance.