Coach Kenny Weldon has been teaching amateur boxing for around 40 years. And if you’re looking for boxing knowledge, you couldn’t ask for a better teacher. If there’s something Kenny Weldon doesn’t know about the fight game, you don’t need to know it either.
This is my review of Kenny Weldon’s three-volume series of boxing instructional DVDs called Becoming a Better Boxer. I found tons of great ideas in these videos and if you’re in the market to learn boxing from the ground up, this is the place to start.
Whether you’re a novice or an experienced boxing coach, here’s how Coach Weldon’s latest videos can help you.
Learn without an in-person coach
Odds are, you want to learn proper punching technique so you can defend yourself, win fights, and stay in shape.
Or maybe you’re a boxing coach and you’re looking for new ways to train your fighters so they learn proper fundamentals. Those are all good motivators.
As a student of boxing, you quickly find out there’s so much more to learning how to punch than simply whacking a heavybag and throwing punches in front of a mirror.
And without a deep knowledge of the fundamentally correct way of fighting – techniques that have been developed of the course of more than a century – you will develop bad habits that limit your ability to ever become a really good boxer.
You won’t make progress without good coaching.
Boxing — Does it take two to tango?
Lots of people will tell you can’t learn to fight from reading articles on the internet or watching instructional videos. While they’re essentially correct, they’re not telling you the whole story.
Yes, it’s true that you need to spar with a partner if you really want to be a well-rounded fighter.
Here’s why. Unless you have a sparring partner:
- You won’t learn bulletproof defense unless you have someone throwing punches at you
- You won’t learn to easily break down an opponent’s defense simply by shadow-boxing
- It is hard to learn how to fight moving backwards
- You’ll have a hard time pushing yourself past your point of exhaustion if you rely only on self-training
So, does all this mean that you should give up your dreams of being tough and in shape, simply because you’re not lucky enough to work with an experienced boxing trainer every day?
I hope you didn’t expect me to answer “yes” to that question.
The truth is, while you’ll be limited in your ability to progress past a certain point, when you get the fundamental knowledge of the “how” and the “why”, you are more than capable of self-coaching all the basic punches and punching combinations.
Plus, you’ll be able to design your own workouts, get yourself in tip-top shape, and condition your body so you’re tougher than you ever were before.
Practice versus self-coaching
There’s a huge difference between practicing by yourself and self-coaching.
Practice is going over things you already know. It’s repetition designed to develop ‘muscle memory‘. And the problem is: if you learn wrong, practice only reinforces your mistakes. Practicing incorrect technique creates more problems than it solves.
But self-coaching is another thing altogether.
With self-coaching:
- You’ll have the knowledge you need to step outside your body and, in essence, view yourself from afar
- You’ll fix problems before they become habits
- Your progress will keep coming until you’re as good in reality as in your mind’s eye.
Boxing knowledge on video
Some boxing trainers are good, and some are lucky. But lots of them simply repeat what they learned long ago when they were young.
Good trainers need a ton of boxing knowledge, and they have to get it somewhere. It’s not enough to just watch boxing on TV, or hang around a boxing gym. There are plenty of tricks, tips, and techniques that some boxing trainers never learn, simply because they’ve never been exposed to a wide variety of styles and training methods.
Kenny Weldon’s Becoming a Better Boxer DVDs are more than just another ‘intro to boxing’ video. They’re the collected wisdom of a man who has trained many thousands of amateur boxers (and some notable professionals too).
In these videos, Coach Weldon doesn’t just teach you the moves. He teaches you the reasons behind the fundamentals. He has a deep understanding of why some styles work better than others, and unlike many boxing trainers, he’s articulate enough to pass this knowledge on to anyone who wants to learn what he calls ‘fundamental boxing correctness’.
Kenny Weldon’s system works
Coach Weldon isn’t just some guy who got lucky and ended up riding the coattails of a world-class athlete. Some boxing coaches are one hit wonders, but not Kenny Weldon. Here are his bona fides:
- Trainer of 26 national amateur boxing champions (14 from scratch)
- Technique coach for Evander Holyfield
- Part of Mike McCallum’s training team under head trainer Lou Duva
- Coached Vinny Pazienza along with Lou Duva
- Coached Sergei Liacholvich
- Trained 3 USA Olympians
- Coaches committee chairman for USA boxing
- Has given numerous sold-out ‘coach’s clinics’ in the US, Canada, and Central America
- Along with his staff, has provided free or low-cost boxing instruction for many thousands of kids in and around Houston, TX.
So if you have a bit of boxing knowledge under your belt, but you really want to dig deeper and learn all about the sweet science, click here to go to Amazon and buy Kenny Weldon’s ‘Becoming a Better Boxer’.
