unorthodox footwork

**intoccabile** · 09-07-2010, 02:45 AM

Originally posted by shezada

so i saw some vids of ryan rhodes,kell brook, naseem hamed, herol graham. i just cant understand how people say they have unorthodox footwork. what makes their footwork different to the fundamental footwork in boxing?im new in boxing so im just wondering as i dont want to mix the 2 up by watching too many vids and getting bad habits lol.

They cross their feet, for one.
The appropriate way to move in boxing is - you move a direction with the foot opposite of where you're going.

left foot takes you right, right foot takes you left, blah blah.

the aforementioned have very odd footwork. Throwing punches while crossing their feet, not keeping their feet in proper position etc.

**shezada** · 09-07-2010, 02:50 AM

^well why do they do that? what advantage do they get? i mean i think they must be doing something right if a random little town of sheffield in England with 1 gym has produced so many pro level fighters?

**ressiagamer** · 09-07-2010, 06:56 AM

naseeemmm! #1 unorthodox!!!

**Biolink** · 09-07-2010, 07:10 AM

Originally posted by shezada

^well why do they do that? what advantage do they get? i mean i think they must be doing something right if a random little town of sheffield in England with 1 gym has produced so many pro level fighters?

I would assume either they reached a level of comfort so as to where they can do that

Or somehow it became a self-learned habit that couldn't be broke so they had to learn how to fight like that.

Ideally you would like to learn the fundamental way, but if being unorthodox somehow works then you just have to go with whatever wins.

**purecyse** · 09-07-2010, 11:54 AM

Originally posted by shezada

^well why do they do that? what advantage do they get? i mean i think they must be doing something right if a random little town of sheffield in England with 1 gym has produced so many pro level fighters?

hamed and graham switch-hit a lot, with hamed having knock-out power in both hands. with his unorthodox/ improper footwork and excellent upper body movement, hamed was able to have full leverage on those counter shots that seemed to come from odd angles.

the problem with this footwork is balance. there were a lot of times where hamed was caught completely off-balance, especially when he began to fight true world-class competition.

the fundamental boxing stance is all about creating and maintaining the proper weight distribution (directly between the feet) to have the leverage to create power.

you should read championship fighting by jack dempsey (livesafely.org/documents/championship_fighting.pdf) to see that many of the things that he felt were being lost in the teaching of boxing then are getting progressively worse.

unorthodox footwork