Shadowboxing is the best sports-specific warm-up you can do when boxing. It’s even better than stretching because your muscle fibers are like a rubber band. Stretching a cold muscle will weaken it, cause injury, or a strain. When your muscles are warm, they easily stretch and are pliable. Shadowboxing helps properly warm your muscles up before any stretching or stress occurs and is the best way to work up an initial sweat.
Other benefits of shadowboxing are that it provides time to, mentally and physically, get in “fight mode.” This time alone, in your head, allows you to “get in the zone.” It’s also the perfect way to strictly focus on and perfect your technique. Shadowboxing in a mirror allows you to watch yourself closely and practice every move. It provides time to shut out the noise and distractions for a few minutes and create a perfect atmosphere for practicing visualization. The movements of shadowboxing also help establish repetition and muscle memory. In the absence of contact and impact, and when there’s no pressure and no punches coming back, it is much easier to take on a “relaxed fighting mindset.” If you work on staying focused every second and don’t let your mind wander, you’re building mental toughness through concentration and controlling your thoughts.
Aside from the basic movement, there are also training tools that can be incorporated to make shadowboxing a more difficult exercise. A Shadowboxer uses resistance bands to create additional tension. It makes it harder to fully extend your punches and requires a greater amount of focus on maintaining proper form. Using a
Shadowboxer during your warmup and then adding it back in at the end of your workout, as part of your cool down, is a great way to ensure that you have fully exhausted your muscles.
Even though some fighters just “go through the motions” when shadowboxing because they consider it basic, when done properly, shadowboxing can be very complex. Its use is critical to staying injury free, building a good boxing foundation, and adding value from the first round to the last.
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