How to Avoid Boxing Injury

The best thing that you can do as a boxer is keep yourself healthy and avoid boxing injury. Injuring yourself will slow down your training and might cause lasting damage to your body that could potentially affect you for years. Like any combat sport, injuries can easily happen if you’re not smart about avoiding them.

Avoid Boxing Injury through Preventative Maintenance

Preventative maintenance is always the best thing that you can do to avoid boxing injuries. This means taking care of your body and doing different stretching and strengthening exercises outside of your usual boxing training. By keeping your body in good shape, you’ll ensure that it can take whatever stress your boxing training will put on it.

Flow & Mobility

I’m a HUGE believer in flowing. Flow is something that I do first thing each morning and is a great way to help avoid boxing injuries. This is a type of dynamic stretching where you “flow” through different stretch positions smoothly instead of holding uncomfortable, static stretches. Dynamic stretching can increase blood flow, help with mobility and increase strength among other benefits. Here’s a great article that covers the differences between static and dynamic stretches a little more in-depth.

Imagine shooting a completely unlubricated firearm – it’s going to be way more prone to jamming, misfires and other issues. Just like oiling a firearm, we need to lubricate the joints in our bodies, and flowing each day will help with that.

Many people don’t even warm their bodies up or move their joints before exercise, let alone on a daily basis to maintain their body’s efficiency. As a boxer, you’re trying to turn your body into a human weapon. This becomes super difficult when you can’t perform to your full potential due to limitations like stiff joints and inflexible muscles. By flowing to get your body warm, you’ll make sure that you keep it in prime operating condition so you’re always ready for whatever fight life throws your way.

Keep in mind that this doesn’t need to take a lot of time and effort – 4-6 minutes of flowing daily will increase your performance and help prevent injury as long as you’re consistent.

Check out my Budo Blueprint Course if you’re interested in the EXACT flow routine I go through every morning. I cover that and everything else you’ll need to know to start boxing like a pro.

CARs

CARs are ‘Controlled Articular Rotations’. These are specific types of exercises that allow your body to increase mobility and prevent injuries, and are performed by rotating your joints. There are tons of resources on YouTube that will give you some examples of rotating your wrists, shoulders, ankles, hips etc.

When you are doing CARs, make sure that you don’t push through pain that you have. If you hit a wall when you are rotating your joints, stop and then go slowly. After a while of doing these each morning, you should notice that you’ll have a larger range of motion with your joints. I noticed a dramatic change within 3 weeks and I’m never going back.

A Different Kind of Strength Training

I recommend strength training in addition to your boxing training to further help to avoid boxing injury. When you hear ‘strength training’, I bet the first thing you think of is lifting heavy at a gym. People often lift weights to strengthen their body, but I recommend using resistance bands. They’re way safer – you’re never going to hear of guys injuring themselves with this sort of thing.

It’s not the most impressive type of strength training and you’re not going to be turning heads at the gym, but resistance bands will provide excellent training for boxing and you’re more likely to avoid injury by using them.

As far as effectiveness goes, this study compared resistance bands vs. traditional weights specifically while doing flyes and reverse flyes. It found that resistance bands were comparably effective to traditional weights and said they would be a reasonable replacement. Resistance bands even helped to stimulate some of the surrounding muscle groups as well!

Avoid Boxing Injury through Diet and Nutrition

Cutting Weight Safely

If you end up wanting to take part in an actual fight, whether amateur or professional, you’re probably going to find yourself in the position of needing to cut weight. Tons of fighters will wait until the last possible minute and then rely on dehydrating themselves. This can be super dangerous and bad for your body.

The best way to cut weight and avoid boxing injury is to start your weight cut at the beginning of your fight camp. Cut the weight slowly over the course of several weeks. Make sure to stay super hydrated during the time you’re training, and only cut back on water intake when you’re a few days away from fighting.

Another great tip is to eat clean. Sure, you can lose weight while eating just small amounts of junk food, but by doing that you’re not providing your body with the nutrition it needs. Eating clean will ensure that you’re fueling your body properly to be able to have energy for your training. Green smoothies are a great way to get a large amount of nutrients in while keeping yourself in a high calorie deficit.

Sodium intake is also something that you should keep low. Sodium will cause you to retain water, which means you’ll weigh more. Keep the salt and processed food to a minimum.

Foods that can Help you Avoid Boxing Injury

There are some specific foods that you should be including in your diet to help you avoid boxing injury, particularly foods that help reduce inflammation. If you do happen to get injured, the anti-inflammatory properties of these foods will help you heal up too!

• Omega-3 fatty acids have been proven to reduce inflammation and are a great thing to include in your diet! You can get Omega-3s from things like walnuts and oily fish.
• Turmeric also has anti-inflammatory properties and can help after a training session. I love to rub a good amount turmeric on my steak before grilling.
• Cilantro is also great as far as an anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory food. I love it in my salads and will often just eat a bunch of it at a time.
• Foods rich in vitamin C are great anti-inflammatories. Citrus fruits, bell peppers, spinach and tomatoes are all good sources of vitamin C. I start every morning with a couple handfuls of spinach in a smoothie, along with fruits and other veggies.

Stay disciplined with your diet and make sure you’re eating the right things. Proper nutrition will help keep your mind, body and spirit sharp in the long run.

Boxing Longevity

If you want to avoid boxing injury and be able to participate in the sport for years to come, you’ll need to take care of yourself as a whole. That doesn’t mean just taking care of your body using the tips I mentioned above, but make sure your mind and spirit are healthy as well. You’re a whole person and all parts of you need to be functioning correctly to become the weapon you want to be.

Body

Everything you do in boxing will strengthen your body but inevitably over time, it will start taking a toll on your muscles, joints and ligaments. It’s important to be smart about your training. Don’t hit the hardest 100% of the time. Your goal isn’t to be stiff and injured by the time you’re in your 30s.

Training smart isn’t always fun or easy, and it definitely takes discipline, but it’s what will allow you to do this for a long time. To train smart, you’ll need to listen to your body and have the discipline to do the things that are necessary. This means stretch when you wake up, even if it’s not part of your workout. Eat clean and eat foods that are high in anti-inflammatory properties.  Keep up with your flow, mobility and strength training with the goal to maintain your body in the long term.

Take care of your body and it will take care of you.

Mind

The mind is arguably the most important part of fighting, that’s why everyone says that boxing is a mental sport. Since head injuries are so common in boxing, it’s important to protect your head as much as possible. Your future depends on it.

It’s cool to knock people out in your 20s, but it’s not cool to have memory and speech issues in your 30s.  

Mind also means mindset. Check your ego, have discipline, don’t let your emotions dictate your training and your future. Like I mentioned above, be smart about your training. Don’t try to progress faster than you should just because you want to ‘look like the best’ and feed your ego.

Spirit

There’s a warrior spirit in you, and that’s why you want to fight, but you can’t let that spirit destroy you. Avoid burning yourself out, over-training and other self-destructive behavior. Make sure that you have balance in your life. Martial arts is all about balance, and peace must be balanced with war.

If you enjoy this blog, have any questions or suggestions for future posts, please don’t hesitate to contact me at budoboxing@gmail.com.