10 Martial Arts Boxing Tips

Boxing is a highly effective and practical style of unarmed combat, but using boxing on the street requires following these 10 martial arts boxing tips. Boxing is the most effective method of striking with the hands around. Krav Maga borrows heavily from it, and Bruce Lee praised boxing's virtues. But boxing as it is taught in the gym is a sport, so some work is necessary to use it outside the ring.

1. Train without your bag gloves. To be a boxer-martial artist, you need to toughen your hands and wrists. You don't hit guys on the street with a boxing glove, and you should train accordingly. You should still wear your hand wraps, however. You throw hundreds of punches in a workout, whereas in a street fight you might only throw a handful. Hand wraps provide the minimum protection necessary for sustained training.
2. Rely on your jab. The hard truth is that if you throw a power punch, miss the guy's nose or jaw and hit him on the forehead, you will break your hand. Power punches should only be used under no-miss circumstances, which are rare. Instead, pump the jab. You won't knock the other guy out, but you won't expose yourself either. Furthermore, the jab is completely capable of smashing the nose, splitting lips and gashing open eyebrows.
3. Move defensively. Without those plush gloves, covering up and parrying don't work very well. Use side-to-side movement to keep yourself out of danger instead. If the other guy can't reach you, he can't hit you. All of boxing's rules about footwork apply in a street fight, so put them to work.
4. Get dirty. Many of the moves you are taught not to do in boxing gyms work very well in a real fight. One of the best martial arts boxing tips you can adopt is to train to follow straight punches with your elbows, to throw uppercuts to the groin, and then learn how to head butt.
5. Slip off the wall. If someone backs you up against the wall, make them miss and really pay. A key defensive skill for a boxer is slipping/head movement. If you can't move away, make the other guy miss. He will kick or punch the wall instead, and that hurts.
6. 6. Don't clinch. Boxers use clinching to break up the other guy's momentum or to seek safety from hard pot shots. In a street fight, clinching puts you in the best possible place for a grappler to take you to the floor. This is a key tip for coping with other martial arts as a boxer.
7. Don't duck. Slipping is the art of lowering the head by compressing the mid-section. If you duck, you are wide open for a kick. Never duck.
8. Spar, spar spar. One of the singular advantages boxing has over other martial sports is that sparring is at the core of boxing training. Boxers spar more often than anyone outside of competitive MMA, and perhaps even more often than those guys. If you want to learn martial arts boxing, find someone in your gym to work with and practice these tips in sparring.
9. Stay in shape. Boxing emphasizes physical fitness, strength and flexibility. It is as much an exercise program as a martial art. You never know when you will need boxing as a martial art, so don't slack off on the training side.
10. When in doubt, run. The final tip applies to martial arts and boxing equally: you should never fight unless you absolutely must. The other guy could have a mob of friends around the corner, or be packing a knife, sap or gun. Never be afraid of running away. It beats fighting over nothing ever time.