Louis Sargeant Retires from Professional Boxing

After his recent re-match against Ralph "Junior" Moar, Louis "Chocolate Thunder" Sargeant has announced his retirement from the professional boxing world. The match took place on Friday, Mar. 27, 2009.

Here is a video of the first two rounds of the fight:



I am glad to have been there for his last fight. It was long and exciting (it went the full 7 rounds) and Louis was clearly the favourite. Alas, the decision went to Moar. Having watched the fight, I believe that Moar was the stronger "boxer" in this particular fight, but Louis was a better "fighter".

Moar was taller by at least half a foot, 10 years younger and boxed for points quite successfully. Louis, on the other hand, fought to land hard hits rather than lots of lighter shots for points (as he always does). Moreover, he took some solid shots and stayed standing, not once going to an eight-count.

After the fight, the crowd roared its appreciation. It was the fight of the night. People cheered on Moar, the victor, but they cheered just as much for Louis, if not more when he took his bow.

Louis told me at his post-fight celebration that he was happy with the fight. Of course he would have preferred the win, but he felt that he fought the good fight. He took the hard hits to the head, he bled, and his face got marred (a first in his career he told me), but he went the distance and put on a good show. He said that he was happy to step down and now focus on my fight career.

Louis Sargeant is a great man with a big heart and a passion for what he does. I'm proud to have the opportunity to train under him.

A Little Girl Shows Us What Boxing Form Is About

I stumbled across this video on YouTube recently and am completely amazed by it. This little girl who doesn't look any older than 6 shows us great boxing form on the pads. Her speed and reaction time is very impressive. Makes me wish I had taken up boxing as a kid. Enjoy!

Welcoming B.O.B. to the Dojo

I am happy to announce a new addition to the dojo. B.O.B. has come to us to take our physical abuse without complaint and give us the chance to practice our striking.

I've always loved working with B.O.B. (or "Body Opponent Bag"). I acquired him during a recent Century Martial Arts sale. Training with B.O.B. is a great way to practice striking on target, improving distance, and more. B.O.B. can also be used to practice various neck restraints and submissions, as well as ground and pound.

There are 2 versions of B.O.B., one with just a torso and one that is longer and has the top half of the legs. I got the latter so it can be used to practice leg kicks and groin strikes.

There are some complaints that he knocks over too easily, but I find that when he's filled with sand and struck at the proper distance he stays up just fine. Remember, when you stand too close to your target when striking, your strikes become more like a push and have less impact on the body. If you want to work with a bag with the purpose of building your striking muscles, a traditional heavy bag is better, but for technical development and targeting improvement, the B.O.B. is an excellent tool.

Here's one guy doing a striking workout with B.O.B.:



Here's another that shows a wide variety of ways to work with B.O.B.:



I hope my students don't get to used to having him around though. My intention is to move him to my basement in the long term when I get around to buying a house. But for now, he can play with my students. And who knows? By then I might be able to get a second one. :)

What It Takes to Get "Heavy Hands"

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How to Do Shadow Boxing Effectively

My MMA coach was away on holiday last week, so I met up with my Vancouver personal trainer friend Louis Sargeant (also a professional boxer and martial artist) a few times to keep my training up. We worked exclusively on my striking form and strategy. We did pad work mostly, but he also had me doing shadow boxing as part of my workouts.

Shadow boxing is more than just a warm-up drill, though it is an effective, sport-specific way of warming-up the muscles. It also helps you develop and apply your striking skills. If you shadow box in front of a mirror, you can watch your form and technique to ensure you're striking properly.

Shadow boxing without a mirror is just as important, if not more so. All the best fighters, practice visualizing their opponent when they do shadow boxing. They throw punches and kicks, imagining the reaction of an invisible opponent, then react accordingly themselves. The best shadow boxers look like they're actually fighting someone. Check out Fedor Emelianenko as he does a shadow boxing workout:



Louis tells me that he does a lot of shadow boxing when preparing for a fight. He loves doing it and often does it for as much as 30 minutes. He tells me that if he or my coach isn't available to hold pads for me, that's what I should be doing to practice. I'll definitely be taking that advice on board.

A Bad Idea: Teaching Martial Arts to Criminal Elements

There are some martial arts schools in the greater Vancouver area that will teach anyone who walks in their doors with cash in hand. A number of gang members take interest in the martial arts (especially MMA) to learn fighting skills for obvious reasons and end up at schools that aren't too stringent about their screening process. This is short-sighted and can result in street violence being associated with these schools.

Yesterday, a male in his 20s, a gang associate, was victim to a fatal shooting outside World Extreme Fighting gym, an MMA school in Abbotsford, BC. See the complete news article.

I know that some MMA and boxing school owners have to deal with this sort of thing regularly. Some of them include the question on their waivers: "Have you ever been convicted of a criminal offense?" Not that people can't just lie, but by actively discouraging criminals from training with them, it sets the tone of the school. I know one school that actively advertises that police officers rent their facilities for training, hoping to discourage gang members etc from training there.

I'm lucky, because criminal types are generally pretty macho and really have no interest in learning from a woman so I don't have to deal with dodgy types looking to join my dojo. The only types of people I seem to get in any numbers are cops and doctors :).

Increasing Your Cardio Workout When Skipping

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Chocolate Thunder Successfully Defends His Boxing Title

Over the weekend, I went to see super middleweight boxer Louis "Chocolate Thunder" Sargeant fight in a boxing match to defend his title as Northwest champion. Louis frequents the gym where I do my MMA training. He has often provided me with suggestions and advice on my strategy and has even holds pads for me on occasion.

What's really interesting about Louis is that he is a martial artist, not just a boxer. He originally trained in and taught Taekwondo, achieving the rank of third degree black belt. After he moved from Alberta to BC, he took up boxing. He didn't bother with amateur fighting, going straight into the professional arena.

He is a consummate athlete, dedicated to his craft. And when you watch him fight, it shows. Here's a video clip of the second half of the first round of his recent fight:



After watching Louis fight, it was hard not to feel motivated about my own training. Louis is a classic example of hard work paying off. And he constantly tries to impart this knowledge as a Richmond BC personal trainer.

How to Use a Speed Bag Properly

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Leaning into Punches to Increase Reach

I did some boxing training today. I've been avoiding grappling and ground work to let my injured hip flexor heal. The boxer that was training me is a shorter fellow, only 5'6", but he's pretty well built and therefore heavier. As a result, he fights in the super middle weight category. This means he often ends up fighting people significantly taller than himself. With this in mind, he has been helping me increase my range, which would be useful for minimizing the reach advantage taller people have, as well as giving myself a reach advantage over people my own height.

The trick is, when you're doing jabs and crosses, to lean in slightly at the hips, while simultaneously taking a slight shuffle forward with the front foot. The lean creates extra reach and the footwork keeps my balanced centred. It's a little hard to describe, but it works.

At first, it seemed unnatural, but once I got the hang of it, I found it gave me a significant increase in reach. I'm actually quite looking forward to sparring with it and trying it out.

What You Learn from a Punch to the Face

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Picky, Picky: My Approach to Teaching Novice Students

When I get new students, I pay very close attention to their form and technique for the first few months. I constantly make corrections to the point where it can be frustrating for them. There are a few ways in which I try to minimize this frustration, however.

Strategic Corrections. I don't correct every single mistake they make or offer as many suggestions for improvement as I can think of. This would be overwhelming, making the learning process appear insurmountable to the novice. Instead, I focus on the most important form points first. When teaching boxing punches, for example, I focus on punching with a straight wrist in order to prevent wrist injury, keeping hands up in guard, etc. Then, once they've mastered the initial points, I focus on new form points like proper footwork, use of hip to increase power, breathing, etc. Then after students have been training with me awhile and have mastered all the basic form points, I'll focus on higher level form points like how twist into punches to further increase power, etc. By taking things one step at a time, students learn more effectively and therefore get less frustrated.

Credit Where Credit is Due. Just because I'm picky about form, does not mean that I don't offer praise when it is deserved. Proper encouragement and reinforcement is a vital part of teaching. It helps students stay motivated with a positive outlook towards their learning.

Being picky with my novices' form always pays off in the long run. When they have a strong foundation of basics, everything else they learn later on is easier and takes less time for them to learn.

The Importance of Breathing in the Martial Arts

Over a year ago, I had an argument with Slan, a guy I used to work with who had once been a Kempo instructor. The argument was about when to breathe when striking or being struck.

I had argued that you should breathe out when you strike and at the point of impact when you're being struck. He had argued that you're at your weakest during your out-breath and should therefore avoid breathing out when being hit.

In reality, we were both right.

According to my MMA coach, you should breathe out when you strike so as not to tire over the course of a fight, whether it's boxing, MMA, or any other ring-style fight form. He did, however, add the caveat that you should not breathe out on every single strike but once every three strikes. The reason for this is that you are most vulnerable at the very end of your out-breath. If you breathe out on every strike, a smart opponent will see the pattern and hit you just as you finish breathing out, causing a very strong winding effect. But, if you breathe every three strikes, your opponent will not be able to track the pattern in the hectic environment of a fight.

My co-worker had not gone into this much detail, but if he had, I'm would have agreed with him. I do remember times when I was hit at the end of an out-breath and found the hit affected me more than at other points of my breath cycle.

As for being hit, if you start your out-breath at the point of impact, you're better able to steel yourself for the hit. Anyone who has done the standing abdominal drop exercise with a medicine ball will know exactly what I'm taking about. It must be timed exactly right though because, as my coach said, if you take that hit as you finish your breath, it has quite the opposite effect.

Outside of the ring-fighting arena, most martial arts teach you to breathe out while you strike, not only because it helps keep you from tiring, but also because it helps harness your power and focus your energy (ki or chi, if you want it in traditional terms). A kiai, the shout often used in martial arts training, is an extension of this logic, with more powerful effects.

Having been laid off a couple of months back, I no longer see Slan on a regular basis. I have to say, I truly miss our regular martial arts discussions, whether they were diplomatic or argumentative in nature. :P

Beware of Patterned Bobbing and Weaving

I was recently told to move my head more while I spar. I've always taught ducking and slipping specifically to get the head out of the line of fire of a strike. That being said, by bobbing and weaving more as you move, not just when being attacked, it makes it harder for my opponent to target the head. One of my sparring partners was applying this theory against me on the weekend with unfortunate results.

My partner was a man about 20-30 lbs. heavier than me. He mentioned that his ground game was much stronger than his stand-up game, so I suggested we do some stand-up sparring without takedowns or grappling so he could work on it.

Due to a minor leg injury I sustained recently, I had been taking it easy on the grappling, focusing more on stand-up, particularly on boxing/ stand-up skills. It quickly became clear that this intense focus had paid off.

My partner was trying to keep his head moving in an attempt to make it harder for me to strike his head. The problem was, he was moving his head in predictable patterns that I was able to pick up on, though I tried not to exploit this overly. At one point, I was targeting his ribs with a roundhouse kick as he slipped to his side, essentially moving into my kick (He had a tendency to flare his elbows out too much in his guard, making it easy for me to target his ribs.) Unfortunately, he decided to add a ducking movement to his slip that time causing him to thrust his face directly into my incoming kick.

My kick landed square on the nose with force. His tear ducts immediately emptied. We stopped the round to wait until the pain subsided and to make sure it wasn't going to develop into a nose bleed. It was at this time that I suggested he randomize his movements more.

So the morale of the story is keeping your head moving while sparring is a good thing, just make sure you don't do it in predictable patterns. And definitely don't bob or weave straight into a strike. :P

Revisiting the Turtle Block

The other night I was training with my coach and was made to do several rounds of boxing sparring with him. Going into the ring, one of the other coaches told me to keep my hands up and against my head at all times in what we call in my style a "turtle block." Not knowing what was coming my way, I didn't feel the need to use the turtle block as my guard against Mark. I was soon disabused of any such notion.

My coach is a former pro-boxer, as some of you already know. And he decided that night it was time to put more pressure on me. Without hitting me hard enough to cause injury (though hard enough to cause real discomfort), he proceeded to lay the beats on me for three rounds.

At first, when I stayed in a more traditional, more open guard, Mark just punched right through my guard, landing blows to my head with his own fists or simply by punching MY fists into my own face. After a minute of this, I buckled down and put my hands up into my turtle block position so I could absorb all his blows and throw a few of my own punches when the opportunity presented itself.

In this kind of boxing, there is really no blocking at all. It's pretty much just either absorbing the blows with a solid guard or damage control (i.e. keeping the chin low and actively taking the blows on the forehead where the head is strongest). All the more reason to train yourself to fight the flinch.

I was later told though that I can keep my lead arm out a bit more so that I can snap out my jab more easily as long as I keep the arm quite firm so that my opponent's blows to punch through my guard or cause me to hit myself in the face. I practiced this a bit later on and found it an effective alternative to simply maintaining the turtled position. And as far as MMA goes, I found that this firm guard allows me to absorb blows more effectively when entering an opponent's space for throws and takedowns.

Fighting Fatigued

This picture represents my point of view while sparring my students last night. Never had I been punched so many times in the face by them. Five times I took hits in the face. This is completely unheard of for me. This is the result of fighting fatigued.

Last night, I conducted an impromptu experiment. I completely tired myself out before teaching my class (1.5 hours training with my MMA coach, followed by 30 minutes of sparring with a skilled sparring partner that outweighs me by 40 lbs). I then sparred with each one of my students after their warm-up.

I had very little energy left by the time I started sparring my students. I was amazed to see how much this affected my ability to fight. My hands kept dipping in my guard. My attacks were clumsier. My accuracy and precision were inexistent. As a result, my students kept clocking me. I felt powerless against people I usually out-manoeuvre or at least hold my own against. My students were having a field day with me.

This serves as further reminder of the importance of conditioning. No matter how good your technique is, if you get tired, it all goes to pot.

Skipping: the Ultimate Cardio Work-out

I've always used skipping as my main form of cardio training. Not only does it develop your coordination in addition to your cardio (especially if you do it like this guy does), but it's just more fun than running or other more repetitive forms of cardio training. It is one of the most effective cardio work-outs there is. There is a reason it has traditionally been included in the standard boxing conditioning program.

As part of my training for MMA, 3-4 times a week, I do a skipping work-out. I do three 5-minute sets with a 1-minute break in between. This is the standard time of rounds in pro MMA. I try to vary my footwork and and practice a variety of skipping skills for the first 4 minutes and 20 seconds of each round. Then for the last 40 seconds I do double jumps (rope rotates twice around per jump) while jack-knifing my legs. This simulates an intense burst, providing extra anaerobic conditioning.

Finding the Eye of the Storm

In my last post, I discussed the importance of teaching women to harness their anger in self-defense classes. The other night, I had the privilege of seeing a woman reaching a level of development in her training in which she accomplished the complete opposite. She found what I call the 'eye of the storm.'

I went to an amateur boxing match on Saturday night to watch a girl named Gina fight. She's an amateur boxer who trains with my MMA trainer and has aspirations of going pro. In all her previous fights, she had used anger to summon up the fight in her, which she would unleash on her opponents. This had worked very well for her in the past. But Saturday's fight was different. Leading up to the fight, she commented to me that she was worried because she felt calm... too calm.

Gina was worried that she wasn't going to be able to summon up the anger she needed to fight in the ring. Mark, our coach, insisted that it was good thing, that her confidence had overridden her need for anger. But fighters are a superstitious lot. When a routine is working for them, any change in it, whether or not it's for the better, tends to make them nervous.

Mark proved correct in his assessment of Gina's state of mind. When she went into the ring, she fought in the eye of the storm. While punches flew at her and from her, she stayed calm and relied more on technique to best her opponent. And best her she did. Gina did so well, that they stopped the fight after the second round because she was 20 points ahead and there was no chance the other girl could bridge the gap in the 3rd round.

As I said in my last post, anger is a great way of teaching untrained individuals to summon up the courage and energy to defend themselves against an attack. But as students progress in their training, they should learn to rely more on their skill and technique to get the job done. Anger, when unleashed, consumes more energy and usually trashes your technical performance. Plus, it can prevent you from being more strategic in your attack and/ or defense. Applying anger to your martial arts is like lighting a powder keg. It will go off and has the potential to do a lot of damage, but not necessarily when and where you need it.

When you have learned to perform in the eye of the storm, it is a sign that your training has settled into your mind and your body and you'll be able to achieve greater things than you have ever done prior to reaching that level.

Getting Out of the Strike Zone

I teach my Jiu-jitsu classes out of a mixed martial arts school and one of the instructors has offered to give me extra training outside my classes. This is great for me since I don't always get to push myself very hard when I'm focused on teaching my students. We've started out my training with some boxing.

In my style of Jiu-jtsu (Can-ryu), we incorporate boxing punches, stances and blocks to some degree in our training, so boxing is not unfamiliar to me. My instructor, a former professional boxer, knows this and is working on my already well-established base.

In my private class on Sunday, we did some general sparring then focused on getting out of the strike zone after doing an attack. I've always taught this in my classes, but my instructor showed me that, against a trained boxer like himself, I need to get even further out of reach if I'm going straight back, or I should exit more on an angle. Otherwise, he can use his reach or his speed to immediately launch a counter-attack. We did drills whereby I would enter the strike zone, do a combination of punches, then back out of the strike zone quickly, usually departing with a jab. We also did another variation of this theory that had me exiting while circling behind my opponent.

This exercise is also useful in self-defense, my main interest in martial arts training. After doing these boxing drills, I incorporated the theory into one of my Jiu-jitsu classes. In our style of Jiu-jitsu we focus on aggressively attacking the attacker, making sure he or she is immobilized, then getting away, while ensuring there are no other threats. So the next time we did striking exercises (both boxing and open-handed strikes) on the heavy bags in my class, I had the students focus on doing a combination of strikes, ending with a jab or similar parting shot as they exit the strike zone back and on an angle. The only change I added, was to have my students look over their shoulders while exiting to, in theory, ensure there are no other attackers. Though if I noticed someone wasn't really looking while they backed out, I went and attacked them with a striking pad from behind to make my point. In competition boxing, of course, you wouldn't want to do this since you'd be taking your focus off your opponent.