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Back Stepping to Keep Your Opponent in Front of You in Boxing

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Striking Coach Vince Salvador goes over some footwork using back steps to keep your opponent in front of you. You can use this footwork in Boxing, Kickboxing or MMA.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

Coach Vince Salvador:
What’s going on guys? This is Coach Vince from The Arena. Today, we’re doing a boxing tip that you can use in footwork. When fighting as a southpaw unorthodox, and my feet are always in the same position, you’re taught when you’re going one direction, you move the foot that’s in that direction, and then you recover. An unorthodox way to keep someone in front of you is to back step. A back step is made popular by a lot of the Cuban boxers because they’ll take their back foot and cut you off by stepping behind themselves. If they’re here and you take a step that way, this foot will come behind me, this one will recover, then I can keep him in front of me and you can do it from both stances.

 

I could go from orthodox and I can make it a drill by going orthodox. I can back step, pivot, then I can switch my feet the same way I showed you earlier by stepping forward. Now, I’m south pole. Using my stance, again taking my back foot, shooting it behind me and recovering. Now, taking a step back, back to orthodox, recover back to center, same thing. When I do that, it opens up my stance.

 

When we’re back stepping, what we need to do is make sure that our foot creates this angle so that when I bring my other foot to trail, I have this angle, right, orthodox. When I’m doing it, I can combine movements. Let’s say my opponent moves this way. I can move my feet here, use this to draw back and I can keep him in front of me. It’s just another way to keep my opponent in front of me so he can’t get away.

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