As someone whose sporting history has tied in with an education background, I am continuously perplexed by the ubiquitous lack of sports coaching following the standards of scholarly pursuits. In boxing especially, fighters can only be grateful to have coaches who care and who communicate the art well enough –

I recently brought my JO team to spar at another reputable boxing club that had a crop of great talent.  After watching the other kids, ages 9 to 12, I began noticing a problem that I had once believed was a problem solely of competition performance in amateur boxing —

On Winning “Winning over” is sometimes the factor for success in the subjective nature of fighting. Does anyone know what winning a fight means? Even in street fighting, no one knows what winning is unless everyone says what “winning” is or someone gets knocked out. When I was a kid,

Sometimes fighters quit without even knowing they’re quitting. The truest fighters fight back to win in fights they are losing AND fights they should have lost – when they’re hurt or embarrassed or slower or less skilled they still find a way to win. They are supremely disciplined and/or special.

Static stretching.  There is evidence that Dynamic Stretching (movement stretching, such as is the basics of Yoga and Pilates) is the best replacement for static stretching before a workout.  You won’t lose strength and you prevent injury better.Dr. Stuart McGill supported this notion saying, “Static stretching deadens the muscle from

The science behind fight training is jumbled with fitness experts who know all about the body and have weeded-out the poor philosophies form the elite ones that make up the fitness world. Every fitness trainer has his methods for conditioning that he favors (maximal effort, repeated effort, dynamic, post activation

The martial arts are littered with conceptual techniques that are vigorously taught to people who follow format usually without ever testing against it. Then those techniques are reinforced and mastered whether they’re made to fail or made to make their marks. Even if they work, how much do certain moves

I will continue to study the goings-on of mma, but I will not stop complaining about its flaws until change is made. Fedor Emelianenko’s defeat to Dan Henderson was fun to watch on the surface, but it contained the underlying contradictions and drawbacks of the sport. Although this bout did

Coaches get broken. Their hearts become more damaged than anyone may know. Years of promises gone awry. Some of those promises gon’ stray. Boxing, more than any other sport, has an aspect of loyalty – ironic of a one to one sport. And in no other endeavor does it get

There should be a new statistic considered in boxing: the Asterisk. Baseball has argued the idea of adding an asterisk to its record books because of all the alleged steroid use among its players.  The slippery slope might make someone argue that teams’ wins and losses might need asterisks too.