PUT UP YOUR DUKES

SHOULD YOU SUPPLEMENT YOUR MARTIAL ARTS SKILLS WITH BOXING? HERE ARE THE PROS AND CONS!

Background: I boxed when I was 16, 17 and 18 and did very well. At one point, however, I decided not to go professional, so I got into martial arts-specifically, uechi-ryu karate. Uechi-ryu is a traditional style that focuses on hand strikes and kicks. The kicks are mostly low and there was a tremendous amount of body conditioning, making it a very powerful art.

Transition: Boxing did not translate well to uechi-ryu. The art was too rigid. But I immediately realized that I would benefit from the hand speed I'd learned in boxing. That's all we did in our boxing workouts. We learned three major punches-the jab, the right punch and the hook-and we practiced them every day.

Many people think of the "big four" - the jab, cross, hook and uppercut when they think of boxing, but we learned just three main punches. The uppercut is like a hook punch or a straight punch.

I ended up changing the hook punch I learned in boxing. When you lift your arm high the way they taught us, all the power comes from your pec. Instead, I would bring my elbow close to my body and then come in so my whole body moved into the hook.

Even though I thought that made the hook better, it didn't fit into uechi-ryu because when we trained, we didn't do self-defense. Most of the class was conditioning, and then we practiced forms. When I say "conditioning," I mean that we would stand there and hit each other with roundhouse kicks. That's the way we trained back then.