Book Report: Boxing: The American Martial Art by R. Michael Onello (2003)

Book coverThis book is a former library book from Palm Beach County that ended up at ABC Books (from whence I bought it in April). It runs 176 pages, with lots of pictures, but it’s really more of a training plan than an instructional guide. It starts with some conditioning exercises and stretches, and then it goes into punches and combinations, with progressions detailing what you should do in weeks where you work out three or four times a week.

It does talk about combinations using numbers, which is something my dojo has started recently (well, within the last three years), but our dojo’s numbering system differs from the book’s (and our dojo really doesn’t talk about tae kwon do strikes now at all). The book also has a couple of different punches that my dojo does not focus on–a straight right (which is a shorter right than a right cross) and an overhand right, which is a high hard one, like a straight or cross punch but coming kind of down over the opponent’s guard. And the book emphasizes a boxer’s stance, where the lead shoulder is turned more toward the opponent than my school teaches, as that position, although it puts you on a better guard as you can hide behind your lead hand/shoulder and present a smaller target, it pretty much neutralizes your rear arm and leg. Of course, left to my own druthers, I would spar this way all the time.

At any rate, not quite as informative as Boxer’s Start-Up: A Beginner’s Guide to Boxing–remember, that book had a lot of really good illustrations identifying body pivots and angles of motion. But I guess it makes me more of a martial artist that I can sit and read books about the subject when I’m too lazy to go to the dojo.

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