So I guess we were right about Floyd Mayweather winning... And why wouldn't we be? The instinct of some to pick "he has good power for his size" over near-flawless defense and phenomenal handspeed and accuracy is based on romantic notions versus logic and boxing common sense.
The problem is, that same thinking can easily pervade your workouts.
Boxing can, at stretches, be a boring sport for sure. When you have been boxing for 5 years or more, and probably even just 8 months or more, there are days when the thought of hitting a heavy bag or doing 6 rounds of hard sparring just about wants to make you gouge your eyes out. However, what you CAN NOT do is allow that thinking to make you turn to the latest fad, or neglect the fundamentals, in your training.
There are really two factors, as we usually see them, at play in these scenarios:
1) The tendency to always look for the "next big thing"/"secret weapon"/"quick fix" in training programs, and
2) boredom.
Number one above is more dangerous than number two, as it is borne of laziness. There are coaches and boxers who never quite put together a good enough string of fundamental training, just because they are hoping that maybe by shadowboxing with a belt that has rubber bands attached to the feet and hands they won't have to spar as much, or that if they do some plyometrics with a weighted belt on they won't have to jump rope.
These folks need to be reminded that while a good coach keeps a sharp eye on innovation and science, in many sports the fundamentals are, in fact, "the fundamentals" for a reason. When you look at the greatest athletes in any sport, they are invariably gym rats. And when you look at those gym rats, are they doing crazy stuff? No. Michael Jordan is out shooting. Floyd Mayweather is hitting the mitts and sparring. Peyton Manning is out doing throwing drills. If you have coaches or boxers who don't understand this at your gym, help them understand. If, after a while, you determine they truly are lazy and just won't put the work in, write them off. That sounds harsh, but in an individual sport where every punch counts, you can't have dead weight dragging down the atmosphere of your team or your gym.
There is absolutely a time and a place for isokinetics in the pool, jumping onto plyometric boxes, and pretending to punch with kettlebells, but NOT as the basis for your training when you have an actual sport to train for; remember, SPECIFICITY IS KING.
The folks affected by #2 above have an easier fix; they already know they need to preserve the fundamentals, and they are willing to put in the work; they are just sick of it, or sometimes it has quit working. Change it up enough to make things fresh, but not so much that you lose focus. It is OK for a boxer to replace one 'regular' gym workout a week with a workout of shadowboxing only, where he alternates rounds of wearing 3# hand weights with rounds of wearing nothing on the hands. It is also OK to do one workout a week where, when you hit the heavy bag, before every single combination you throw you have to jab/spin/back out, back up two steps, and then come forward two steps and circle towards the imaginary opponent's lead hand / closed side and then throw.
The trick is this: keep working the fundamentals in slightly altered form, and alter them in such a way as to target *other* primary areas of need. The heavy bag example above is a perfect illustration; you can get some heavy bag work in, but also increase the movement and footwork component of that work greatly, which is sorely lacking in a lot of boxers. The best of both worlds.
The graphic below was used by the USA Boxing performance staff to illustrate what the important areas in long-term development of a boxer are, and I think it is also a good graphical representation of how time during a workout should be allocated. Take it, and run wild...
