Mobility Training for Boxing
Suffering from a shoulder injury? Have sore lower-back? Or suffer from achilles pain?
Mobility training for Boxing and Combat Athletes is importent because they put their body through excessive training loads, and are prone to picking up injuries during training camp.
In these sports, there is no substitute bench! Athletes need to stay injury free to perform to the best of their ability and progress their career.
DID YOU KNOW THAT 66% OF YOUTH BOXERS EXHIBIT POOR SHOULDER MOBILITY?
These are significant findings that suggest that mobility training should be a CRUCIAL part of a Boxing training programme.
In this article, we will….
- Introduce movement and mobility training
- Share our research and findings
- Show you the important exercises to improve mobility for Boxing
For every athlete that we work with, mobility and movement training will be the very first step on their Boxing Science journey. Before we even lift a weight, we need to ensure that athletes have the foundational movement skills to perform exercises correctly. This makes sure we achieve better results and avoid injury.
However, it’s not just for the beginning of a program – mobility training plays a big role throughout all of our programs as it carries many benefits…
- It allows for better, more fluid and faster rotation through the kinetic chain.
- It allows the lower body to produce more forceduring punching motion, leading to a harder punch.
It can help to reduce and prevent injuryin boxers, which is important for long-term development,
MOBILITY ISSUES IN BOXING
Due to the intense and repetitive nature of Boxing, and sport in general, athletes become tight in certain muscle groups and underactive in others.
This can create muscular imbalances, that can negatively affect performance and even cause injuries.
THE RESEARCH
We tested over 70 England Boxing Youth Athletes over the space of 3 months.
This testing included the OVERHEAD SQUAT.
The overhead squat is a common mobility assessment tool that can tell us a lot about what muscles are under- and over-active in our body. This is a test we often use with the boxers at Boxing Science.
THE RESULTS
Indicates That Boxers Have…
Reduced hip mobility and weak glutes
Weak core stabilisers and overactive lower back muscles
Tight anterior shoulders and weak posterior shoulders, causing restricted overhead shoulder mobility
Reduced ankle mobility
Uni-lateral imbalances in strength and mobility.
HOW DOES THIS AFFECT PERFORMANCE?
The results of this research shows that boxers need to incorporate mobility into their training NOW. Tight and overactive muscles around the shoulder area will restrict rotation and the flow of punches through to the fist.
Tight hips will affect transmission of force from the lower body, and will also increase strain on the lower back during boxing, running and other high-impact activities.
Poor mobility can cause key muscle groups to be under-activated. This causes other muscles and tendons to super-compensate, significantly increasing injury risk.
WHAT DO BOXERS AND COACHES NEED TO DO?
To help prevent yourself and your athletes displaying these common movement errors, we suggest you make movement training a regular and consistent feature of your programme
We integrate movement training in our warm-ups, with boxers doing this anywhere between 5-10 times per week.
These are the exercises we utilise on a daily basis in our warm-ups.
However, we also add exercises bespoke to each athletes movement analysis. Our athletes have seen massive benefits from adding individualised mobility exercises in their training programmes to either rehab minor injuries or reduce the likelihood of injury.
We share these exercises in a range of video workshops in our membership.
- Shoulder: Mobilise, Stabilise, Strengthen
- Achilles: Mobilise, Stabilise, Strengthen
- The Back: Mobilise, Stabilise, Strength
- Rotation for Boxing Performance
Here is a taster of our workshops below.
Want to find out more about strength and conditioning for Boxing?
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