Advanced Shadowboxing For Advanced Skill Sets

THINK YOU'RE A SHADOWBOXING EXPERT? TRY THIS!

By Evan Lee

Shadowboxing is an extremely effective method of training, and it is training that can be done anywhere and without any training partners. 

However, this method of training may seem inferior to pad work or bag work because the same stimulus of a partner or impact on a bag is not there, but it is not inferior. It is a necessary supplement. 

When you are hitting pads or hitting the bag, it is easy to let yourself flail and let how powerful a strike feels tell you whether or not you’re doing a good job. “Blasted the bag with a kick and produced a loud bang. I’m doing awesome!” impact and how you feel is not a good judge. 

When you are shadowboxing, you get a chance to pay attention to your body, how it’s moving, how balanced you are, how smooth everything is, whether your whole body is working together, etc. 

These are all crucial factors in determining how effective of a fighter you are! If you are not completely balanced, you will be exposed for it in a fight. Or at the very least, you will not be fighting to the BEST of your ability, which should be your goal. Your goal is not just to win fights, your goal is to be the best fighter possible. 

Now let’s get into how to use shadowboxing to make you the best fighter you can possibly be. 

5 Advanced Shadow Boxing For Muay Thai Drills

Everything Hangs On Your Balance

Speaking of paying attention to your body, the drills in the above video do just that! They test something very specific, and that is your balance and how you transition from move to move. 

If you’re not balanced, your transitions from move to move will be slow. If you cannot transition quickly from move to move, you will never be as fast of a fighter as you can be. The more balanced you are, the better your transitions. The better your transitions, the faster you will be. Every drill mentioned above and shadowboxing in general will test that for you. 

Besides checking your balance, shadowboxing is also the time to get creative with fighting. The last drill presented may seem a bit wild and unorthodox, but it teaches you about the value of creativity in fighting. 

Saenchai is obviously a fighter who is extremely creative. And everyone needs a bit of mad creativity. 

Being creative allows you to come up with questions that no one else will even know how to answer. If you show someone something they’ve never seen before, odds are that they won’t know how to deal with it. Just think about Andy Ristie and how it was impossible even for the defensive genius, the "Floyd Mayweather of kickboxing," Giorgio Petrosyan to respond to. 

So next time you shadowbox, pay attention to your body and how you’re moving. Pick out the little details that could use some improvement, the slight shifts in your movement that can make your techniques flow effortlessly. And experiment. Be creative. Come up with something no one else has seen before and be the best fighter you could possibly be.