Using shadowboxing

I have an admission to make - I’m a big fan of shadowboxing.

I haven’t always been but that was largely due to trying to think about what I was doing and trying to put together moves that looked cool. In recent years I have learnt to play while shadowboxing and have begun to see it in a whole new light - as a tool for my own training and as an invaluable aid to coaching.

Many, many people make shadowboxing an external thing, concentrating on (and feeling self-conscious about) how it looks. This is often exacerbated by people being urged to imagine the person they are fighting, adding another external response.

Just say no kids. Shadowboxing is a tool for internal awareness.

When I’m sparring I try to be as consciously unaware of my opponent to maximise the amount I am unconsciouosly aware of them. The less attention I pay to them the more aware I am of myself. Shadowboxing helps me learn this state.

Go inside, feel your balance, your movement, your breathing, your own rhythm.

Just throw things, never plan. Let the punches come out, let the movement come out. Play your own tune. Shadowboxing is your perfect 10 moment, no pressure to hit hard, no energy from an opponent to absorb.

Just you, the floor and your own skills. It's a thing of beauty.

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Check it out

Jeff Rockwell's Blog

There's some great stuff on here. I've only had a quick flick through but it looks solid to me. Enjoy!

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John Will Seminar

What a great day. John is a fantastic and inspirational coach. We've all got a ton of stuff to work on.

We spent the afternoon working on half-guard. John has had a look at what he thinks I should be working on to develop a game that suits me.

This alone is something that we have struggled with as we spent all but a few weekends of the year just trying to work our collective BJJ game without input from outside. So when we have the likes of John and Rodney across it gives us a major boost in our development.



The evening seminar was a mix of things that all linked together. John and I had discussed what we had been working recently and what we thought people might be missing and he planned the session based around that. John took us through some great, hig-percentage moves from closed guard, looking at timings to break people down working to sweep them. After plugging in a batch of sweeps John switched to attacking from here with a great set up for armbars and triangles.



From here we switched to passing the guard looking at breaking down a pass incrementally and waiting for them to give you the energy, space or movement needed to complete the pass - something John calls the Patience Point. A fantastic idea which takes a lot of the ‘battle’ out of passing guard.

As a natural progression John worked us through some knee ride material - at which point Gaz began to wish he'd picked someone lighter to work with. John was emphasising how grips work and how they can be set up before you take the knee ride.

To finish off we looked at setting up the spin choke from here. A great cross-lapel choke that uses rotation to lock it in and feels like a monster. I want to play with that on a lot.

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John Will BJJ Workshop tomorrow

Just got off the phone with John, who is currently down in Coventry with Geoff Thompson, and we're all set for tomorrow night.

Adam, Doug, Gaz and I all trained with John last year in Singapore and are really excited to get the chance to train with him again. John is a walking encyclopaedia of BJJ and he has some fantatsic insights into training from big picture to the tiniest details.

Getting him over to the work with us, as part of a mini tour of the UK, will help us take another step down the path as a developing club. We've come a long way in the past year or so having gone from working pretty much in isolation to having regular contact with some great BJJ coaches like John, Rodney and Revolution's Man in Arizona, Cecil.

Can't wait to see where we go next.

I'll be posting pictures of the workshop.

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