Tell The Coach What You Want To Do

As coach, it's funn how a fighter will tell you what they want to do. They want to hit the pads and skip out on the shadow boxing, bag work and conditioning exercises. They tell you that they will do them later, on their own. Some people are self motivated and you can trust that they will do all those things on their own. But that isn't the case most of the time. Not trying to sound like an old guy (as I can at times), but looking at fight gyms and martial arts in general, a lot of theme don't operate like they should. When I started out training in a boxing gym, the training showed you how to stand, showed you how to move (I think all I did was step slide my first 2 weeks), show you the basic punches, and tell you to some rounds of this and some of that. You did what he said and tell he showed you something else. I respected his experience and knowledge (as I saw a stable of quality fighters). After my workouts, I would watch the pros and noticed that nobody had to tell them what to do. They would warm up and get to it. During sparring, a coach would advise fighters on things to work on and they would have them do some drills to reinforce those things. But for the most part, everybody busted their butt without anybody having to yell at them do work hard. Now a days, guys what to learn the shoulder roll (Floyd Mayweather) and hit the pads (I didn't do pads a lot because I spent my time in the ring with bodies), and they have to be told to do exercises. Commecialism of combat sports and martial arts is good and bad. It's good that men and women can be exposed to the arts. Kickboxing and boxing became classes where you can say you kickbox and box (without ever sparring). So, if you have never trained in a fight gym, make sure to do so.