Coach Study: The Joe Louis Story (Patreon)

• LMA Curriculum

Introduction

The Joe Louis Story is a 1953 American movie starring Coley Wallace as Joe Louis, James Edwards as Jack "Chappie" Blackburn, and Shorty Linton (Louis's first trainer) as himself. Wallace himself was an accomplished pro boxer who once beat Rocky Marciano as an amateur.

What's remarkable about this dramatized training is its accuracy. It captures very real coaching wisdom of the time. The scenes with Linton are also unscripted. It's a short video, but there's so much to cover because the footage is pure gold.

I can't think of one boxing expert or historian who thinks modern boxers are better than their counterparts from the past. Boxing in the US is the inverse of other sports. While other sports have become more popular, boxing has declined in popularity.

Many of today's sports stars are better than their past counterparts because they're bigger, more athletic, and have had more play time. In boxing, however, since the peak was the past, fighters of the past had more fights and more experience. Since boxing also has weight divisions, size isn't relevant. In addition, there was more money in boxing relative to other sports, which meant they had better training and better athletes.

One thing you won't see in most old boxing movies, even from the 80s, is pad work. You won't see it in The Joe Louis Story. You probably won't see it in any of the training footage of the top ten greatest pound-for-pound boxers of all time.

What you will see in The Joe Louis Story is shadowboxing drills with the coach watching and giving feedback, then designing new drills to get a desired behavior. Also a lot of training situations for theory. Every moment is teachable.

A lot of coaching is about watching. It's also about developing an embodied fighter who understands how their body moves through air. Constantly hitting things doesn't let you know if you would have lost your balance if you didn't run into something. Learning to crash into things to hold yourself up is how you'll crash into your opponent's punches.

Even when hitting the bag, the coach will watch to see if you're disembodied. With the feedback from the coach and gravity, the fighter develops not only balance but a sense of themselves, including their reach.

The coach watches or teaches. It's all single tasks, rather than multitasking teaching, watching, and holding pads. The latter is too much for the coach and the fighter to process. As a result, the coach can't properly provide feedback, and the fighter can't properly embody the feedback. Moreover, half the work in pad work is done by the coach. Perhaps even more because they're the ones who have to do all the thinking and adapting. It's like a math tutor who does the work for you. Sure, you'll feel like you're getting a better service, but is this making you better at math?

Bringing the target to the participant is like giving the answer to the math student. It bypasses the learning process and skips to the result. It makes you believe hitting a target is boxing.

Pad work is a magic pill that skips over the work and gives you the desired results. Except what is it the math student desires: getting answers to math questions the tutor designed or getting better at math? Is the desire to get better at a pad work game the pad holder designed or to get better at boxing? Pad work is often bait-and-switch. Since it's hard to get good at boxing, your goal gets switched to an easier task, getting good at pad work, because even a beginner can get good at it after one session.

Things that make you better should be fun, but not everything fun makes you better. If the goal is fun, do the fun stuff only. Pad work is a real-life video game where the coach acts as the VR simulation. It's fun. But if you want to get better, do the things that make you better and try to make them fun without going so far as detaching them from their original purpose. If it's only about fun, there are other activities way more fun than pad work. We ultimately want to improve our craft, not just pad work.

The emphasis in the past was teaching, watching, and feedback. Watching allows the coach to think about the behaviors they want to improve over the long term. The priority wasn't hitting targets but improving technique, stance, and balance. It was about the sweet science of boxing and making you a good scientist rather than just hitting stuff. You can hit stuff all day and not know any boxing science. Boxing is rules, principles, and strategies you can adapt on the fly, not memorizing a pad work sequence.

Much of the change in training is a product of capitalism. Training itself has become a spectator sport. It has to be interesting for others to watch and look good on video because capitalism always has you thinking about the consumer. Pad work provides a consumer experience.

But if training is about improving you, then it should be confusing and unwatchable for others because it's so highly personalized.

Something you won't hear in this training footage is "hit harder" or "more power." Instead, you'll hear "balance" and "the left hand." There's a deliberate order to the training. Not all things are equal, and power is not a priority. It's all about boxing, and that starts with stance.

Breakdown

In the first scene, you'll see Linton adjusting Wallace's stance. Wallace is hinging like he's sitting on a high stool, which we covered in Position Zero. Rather than having his hands close to his chin in high guard, his hands are in position zero. Now they're occupying the lane for straight punches, blocking his opponent's while delivering his own.

When Linton demonstrates, his hands are in perfect position zero with the rear hand in front of his chin and his weight loaded in the back. When he shows the jab, he's not "throwing" the jab, he's extending his hand (with no rotation) and pushing off his back foot to drive his weight forward. The power doesn't come from his arm but rather the physics of his fist traveling quickly in a straight line with his body weight behind it. A straight line turns the arm into a stick.

Getting poked with something stiff, even lightly, has more impact than getting forcefully poked with something soft. The soft thing also takes longer to arrive because it needs more space to achieve power. The stiff thing can arrive twice in that same time. Stiffness plus speed protects the hand while dealing more damage.

When Linton demonstrates the jab, notice how straight his arm is. He's also keeping enough distance to fully extend his jab. Only when his arm is straight is it stiff.

The jab is a short punch from position zero to the target to position zero. That's what Linton means by snapping the punches. Imagine slapping a wall. How would you make the loudest pop? It wouldn't be just smacking it and leaving your hand there. It would be hitting the wall and quickly pulling your hand away to make a loud pop. You're making the air between your hand and the wall snap. Likewise, think about a whip. For you to get a nice snap sound, the end of the whip has to be pulling back as soon as you make contact. This also stings more because you're not pushing an object but tearing in and out of it.

Snapping is about staying relaxed, tensing as you make contact and pull away, then relaxing again. Like a whip, it's only tense at the end. Or like water, there's surface tension when you hit water quickly, then it relaxes.

You can also use a jab to push an opponent, where you keep driving the punch into them. But if you want to damage your opponent by snapping the jab, you must recoil your punch just as quickly as you released it. Think about a spring recoiling back into place. This quick recoil or snap is critical for how Linton wants Wallace to throw the left-right.

Timing is another essential element Linton goes over. Rather than power, what matters more is timing. Even by "speed," Linton means timing—that Wallace is behind on tempo. Rather than the typical two-count rhythm, like two beats on a metronome, Linton wants the right to land on a half-beat. So rather than snap-pause-snap, he wants snap-snap. He wants the right to land where the pause should be. You can also think about the difference between clicking a mouse two times (click-pause-click) vs. a double-click (click-click). Snapping a punch means pressing a button quickly. Which means pressing and releasing quickly. If you don't release it, you're just holding it down.

For an example of rhythm and tempo, watch basketball players get past a defender. It's about misdirecting your opponent's reaction, so the defender is either too early or too late but never on time. I'll explain this more in the future.

Snapping the jab gives your rear straight time to arrive half a beat early (double-click). The jab and the rear straight should be falling on top of each other—consecutive. You can't play with tempo when you overrotate your punches (hold the button down).

The other thing Linton says is to stick the jab. It means the jab should move straight like a stick. "Stick it like you mean it." Extend the jab. Again, it goes back to stiffness. Stiffness is alignment, trajectory, plus speed. It's something achieved rather than a physical state. Being a stiff fighter would be very bad. It's about keeping your knuckles, wrist, and elbow in alignment, like a stick, then stabbing straight where your whole arm becomes a stick at the point of contact.

Stick the jab. Stick is a verb. Turn your arm into a stick at the end of your jab.

Sticking your jab also means sticking your opponent in place and blocking their vision so they can't see your follow-up.

Sticking the jab means making contact. If you miss, keep poking your opponent with the stick until you make contact. Eventually, the head has nowhere to go, and it's stuck. Once you stick your opponent, throw the second spear right after. But make sure to stick your opponent first. Keep trying until you do. But since you're recoiling your jab, the straight has to arrive on time. You can leave the jab there longer, but that would be a different tempo.

Linton says to stick the hand out. Don't overthink it. If you tell someone to throw a punch, it's slow and crooked. If you tell them to stick their hand out, it's smooth, quick, and straight. Just stick it out. I often tell people to reach for an apple or a can. Their arm extends straighter and smoother than telling them to jab or punch.

How would you make a perfect hole with a stick? You have to poke it straight in and out. Now that's your target for the straight. You're replacing fists. Where you're left was, your right replaces. When you're done, it should still be the same perfect hole because the two punches came in and out the same way.

These are straight punches, that's why the analogies are about straightness. If your arm is a stick, then your elbow to your wrist to the side of your fist should be a straight line. This is sometimes called the "power line." When your arm is extended, your whole arm should be straight. Imagine you're wearing a cast. Punching from too close or having a hitch in your punch is like punching with a broken cast. You'll lose force, stability, and cushion.

If water moves fast enough, it gains stiffness. When you slap water, it feels dense (surface tension). This goes back to snapping. To drive through the water, you're often moving slower than when your slapping it. Slapping or snapping is faster than pushing.

Think about doing a cannonball into the water from five feet above the pool vs. 500 feet. The speed will turn what was soft into something as hard as pavement. When you have actual pavement, you don't need to go nearly as fast to achieve the same damage. Likewise, when the fist, wrist, and elbow align, you don't need speed to do damage. But if you're snapping (speed) and extending your punch in a straight line (shortest path), it's that much more devastating. This is why straight punches are prioritized, particularly the jab.

When Linton watches Wallace, he tells him to double up on the jab. Now that Wallace understands tempo, rather than landing the right on the half-beat, he can also stick two jabs with the same rhythm (double-click). The idea is to get the fighter used to lots of jabbing, then allowing the jab to feed into the next punch and that punch feeding into the next. No wasted motion. Each movement is scaffolding for the next. This is what makes boxing a sweet science.

Then Linton invites Wallace to "see if you can bring the hook right after that right hand." He's not telling him, he's asking. This is important because he's giving Wallace the autonomy to try and implement something on his own. Coaching means instructing, but it also means trust. Linton guided Wallace to the point where he could take the next step without assistance. That's coaching.

Linton doesn't tell Wallace to "throw" the hook, he asks him if he can "bring the hook right after that right hand." It's like sticking the hand out. Don't overthink it. It's just A to B tasks. After you bring your right, bring the left hook. Linton doesn't even tell him where to hook. Wallace decides to bring the hook to the body since he's already served the head multiple times. That's the sort of adaptation you hope to see as a coach.

Rather than "throwing punches," which is nebulous, this is about simple delivery tasks and the order in which to deliver them. Go straight here, keep going left, then go right, then see if you can make that left turn.

Since Wallace is used to twisting, snapping, tempo, and returning to position zero, he was going to twist back to position zero anyway after the right, but now he's bringing a left hook with him.

The teaching is simple and elegant and requires no equipment. Equipment would only get in the way of these first principles because it would make it about the target rather than the technique.

Something else you'll notice from Wallace is how he turns his head when he punches. With the left hook, he turns both ways. This ensures his whole body turns with the punch as one unit but also that his head isn't there for a counter.

Now that Wallace has learned stance and jab, Linton brings in a training partner. Wallace jabs, and his opponent parries. The job of the rear hand is to protect the chin from straight punches.

Linton tells the other boxer to counter the jab with a right hand after the parry. The right punch is the natural counter to the left jab. Why? This goes back to Stance Theory, but since your limbs are both offense and defense, if you attack with your left, it means your left defense is down. My right attacks your left side. So you're open whether it's my right punch or kick.

In general, you counter to the same side you were attacked. If you were attacked to your right side, counter with your right. If you were attacked to your left, counter with your left. Again, it's about straight lines. If they're open to your right, the quickest path is your right. If they're open to your left, your quickest, most direct attack is the left.

Then Linton explains timing again, that if you counter too soon, you stuff your own attack. The training partner has to wait until Wallace withdraws his punch. So rather than countering on the half-beat, he has to wait for the next beat. Parry-wait-counter, not parry-counter.

Since Wallace was a good heavyweight, he instinctively occupied his opponent's right hand so he couldn't counter him. I mentioned earlier how you can sometimes leave your jab there longer (pressing down on the button) and how that affects tempo, this is an example. Occupying the opponent's hand is known as hand fighting, which also exists in grappling. In other striking arts, this is sometimes referred to as sticking hands and trapping.

You'll hear Linton criticize the training partner for "muffing the punch." A muff is a hand warmer that joins two hands together. Linton was saying their hands were stuck together in a muff, which Wallace wants as the defender but not what the opponent wants as the attacker.

Then Linton explains to Wallace the importance of the lead hand position as a natural obstacle for the right hand. Rather than dropping your hand after the jab, recoil. If you're dropping your lead, it's moving circularly rather than straight. If you bring it straight back, it not only arrives quicker, you can lift the lead hand into a high block.

In the next scene, we see Louis, played by Wallace, meeting Blackburn, played by Edwards. Edwards explains to Wallace the fundamental importance of symmetry and balance. Do everything on both sides, which we mentioned from the outset of LMA. Edwards also notes how being pulled to one side makes you counterbalance the other way. Remove the bag, and your balance will be all wrong. Old-time trainers didn't like weights because they thought weights would strengthen the wrong muscles and disrupt a fighter's balance and symmetry. They believed a body developed with weights would weigh you down in the wrong areas, upsetting your balance.

Developing your balance on the pads means your balance is upset once you remove the pads. It's like learning to push into a wall, remove the wall and your balance will favor falling forward (into their punch).

This is why shadowboxing and shadowboxing drills were prioritized because it's about you working only with your own body. It's embodiment rather than binding yourself to a target. Unfortunately today, shadowboxing is last on the priorities, if it's done at all. In the past, boxers would shadowbox even while running.

In the next scene, Edwards goes over balance. This is why you stand staggered in the L-stance. Edwards tells Wallace to stand staggered all of the time and emphasizes the rear leg. It's harder to be knocked down if you have a post behind you and your weight is distributed.

Think of a tent. A narrow tent with the stakes close to the center pole will easily collapse. A tent with the stakes further from the center provides greater coverage and balance. That's why if someone stands very tall, they say a light wind can knock them down. They're like a tall narrow tent. Muhammad Ali was once supposed to fight Wilt Chamberlain. In the press conference, Ali yelled, "Timber!" Chamberlain called off the fight. The secret of a great fighter really is balance, and the 7' 1" Chamberlain recognized that.

You know you have good stance and balance if someone pushes you and you don't budge. In pad work, it's the pad holder who develops good balance because you're pushing into them. (The pad holder is also the one who develops the habit of keeping their hands up.)

But since you can't be balanced in all directions, only for direct force, you always have to keep your opponent directly in front of you. Conversely, since you should constantly keep your eyes on your opponent and face them, you should set your balance staggered to absorb straight-on force. Watch for their forward movements and direct attacks. Since they're directly in front of you, attack with straight shots. Mostly.

What's the only feedback Edwards gives Wallace during sparring? "Balance!"

What does Edwards have Wallace do on the speed bag? Throw unlimited circular punches? No. Just straight jabs. Not only to improve timing but also sharpness. Edwards stands right there (which I wouldn't recommend) because if the jab is straight and true, the bag will whiz past his face.

Now that Wallace has a solid jab, it's time to learn to slip the jab because the jab will also be the primary weapon for his opponents. A slip isn't side-bending like the peekaboo, it's twisting. Edwards wants Wallace to slip into him to close the distance. This removes the space needed to adjust the jab to still hit him. It also hides him behind the left arm, where the right can't reach.

What punches did Wallace learn? The jab and right straight. What is he now learning to defend? The jab and right straight. Is defending every punch equally important? No. Is learning to slip to both sides equally important? No. There is an order of importance.

Every move leads to the next. What's the third punch Wallace knows? The left hook to the body. What's the punch that threw Wallace off balance during sparring? A left punch to the head. Don't "throw" a hook. Set it up, then hook. "Throwing" a punch only throws you off balance.

Now that Wallace has closed the distance by slipping the jab, what punch is open? A hook to the body. Linton talked to Wallace about the lead hand position. Now Edwards is explaining the rear hand position.

Rather than keeping your rear hand to the side of your face, which is how many now learn, the classical position was to keep it in front of your chin. "Keep your right hand up, so you don't get hit with the right." What did Linton teach that Edwards is now reinforcing? The side you hit with is the side you are open. This is why boxing is a sweet science. It's sweet because there's room to make boxing your own, but it's a science because the fundamental rules are universal. You can have different kinds of planes, but they all have to obey the same laws of aerodynamics.

Even with this movie footage, the training is sequential. First, Wallace learned stance and hand positioning, then he had it reinforced by a new trainer. Next, he learned the importance of the lead hand, and now he's learning about the rear. The rear hand is the last line of defense for the chin. Protect your chin, not the side of your chin.

Edwards is teaching Wallace to defend while attacking, throwing the body hook while protecting his chin. Next is countering the counter.

Since Edwards is countering with his right, that side of his body is open. Now Wallace finds an open shot to the head and doesn't throw himself off balance. Timing!

There's a connective tissue to boxing, and by following it, Wallace got to an advanced level of boxing, countering counters, all very simply.

Wallace has yet to learn the right hook or the right uppercut because those aren't as important as stance, hand position, balance, jab, straight, left hook, timing, defending the jab-straight while closing the distance, and countering the counter. The primary steps make learning everything else that much easier. However, what sets the primary steps apart is that you can be a world-class boxer with just these tools alone.

There is an order to Edwards and Linton's teaching. Edwards also starts by observing Wallace's stance and making corrections while explaining stance theory. Then, Edwards watches Wallace spar to see what else he needs. Observation before feedback. Then he puts him in front of the speed bag to improve his jab. He doesn't give him feedback. Instead, he creates a training condition to naturally improve the jab. Then it's jab, defense, and setting up the left hook to the head without losing your balance. Go low, then go high. This was a lesson also in Fighter's Brew with regards to kicks. Same principle. If they attack to your left, your left attacks are open. If you attack low, their head will open. You can mix and match these concepts of left-right and high-low.

Next is the heavy bag. To work what? Jabs and left hooks. Along with balance, there's the old boxing adage popularized by the manga Hajime no Ippo, "He who rules with his left rules the world." If every move was equally important, it makes sense to learn thousands of moves. But if you know they aren't all equal, learn the important moves first, along with every boxing principle that makes them important.

If everyone knew this, wouldn't it be a stalemate? That's why there were so many rivalries and stalemates in the past. Everyone knew the same things. Then it was truly about who was the best. Now information is much more asymmetrical, along with everything else. Capitalism has made combat sports more about knowing lots of moves rather than a few moves and every principle. There's less emphasis on theory because theory would contradict the consumer value proposition of knowing a million moves.

Since information and knowledge are no longer equally distributed or regarded, the ones who know the old theories do best. The old ways have become secrets not because of secrecy but capitalist neglect.

On the bag, Wallace learns to vary targets, tempo, and power. What is he working on? The combination he just learned. This combination builds off the work started by Linton. Everything is scaffolding for the next thing. Connective tissue. It's not memorization but boxing lessons.

The combination is jab, jab, body, head, but Wallace decides tempo and intensity. Notice Wallace is not falling into the bag. Everything is at the end of his reach. His weight is supported by his feet. He maintains range. Remove the bag, and nothing will change because he first learned to punch into the air. He doesn't need the bag for balance. The bag is a bonus.

When Wallace hits the bag, he's not turning his hand over. He keeps his hand neutral. This allows him to attack multiple times from the same side and with power because all that's changing is trajectory.

Put your arms to your side. Which way do your palms face? Into your body. That is the neutral alignment of your hands and wrist. Now turn the palms to face behind you and your thumbs into you. How does that feel? Awkward. Strained.

What you're feeling in your shoulders is your rotator cuffs being exposed. As a result, your shoulders are unstable and out of alignment. You've broken the kinetic chain from your arms to the rest of your body.

Make a fist with your left hand and hold it in your right palm. Most likely, your thumbs are facing up, and your palms are facing your torso. This is neutral. Try smacking your knuckles together. Most likely, your palms will face your body. Try putting on tight dishwashing gloves, and you'll find the same behavior. Trying hugging a big medicine ball to your body. Thumbs will point up. Why do we do this, especially when dealing with load? For stability, alignment, and muscle recruitment.

When your wrist is neutral, your arm is straight, and you're staggered, even if someone pushes your fist, you're not going anywhere because their energy is going to travel through your arm to your shoulder down your body to your rear foot to the ground. Balance. Stiffness. Kinetic chain. Safety. Power.

When you shake hands, what grip do you use? Neutral. If you wanted to squeeze their hand as hard as possible, would you stay neutral or palm-down? Neutral. Not only are you strongest in this position, but you can put your weight behind your grip—just as you can for a punch.

What would you do if you didn't want a squeezing contest? Reach out with your palm facing down. (They'll slap your hand if you do palm-up.)

However, the palm-up person still has a grip advantage in a strength contest. Even with a grip trainer, you're strongest with a neutral or palm-up grip. This also applies to boxing. How we do one thing is how we do all things. Boxing is a science, and science is universal.

Put boxing gloves on and hold a push-up on your knuckles with your thumbs facing each other. Does it feel stable? How long can you hold this?

Do it again with neutral wrists and the inside of your gloves facing each other. Does this feel more stable? Can you hold it longer? If you do push-ups this way, people will say you're cheating because it's easier and less painful. Why is it easier? Because it's more stable, makes your arms more rigid, and uses more muscles, including your core, rather than isolating your chest and arms.

If you expose your rotator cuffs, and your core and glutes aren't engaged, the load can't travel to your feet to the ground. (This is why foot position and foot strength are also important.) If your kinetic chain breaks, the load doesn't distribute and stays isolated, which means for a punch, the force remains in your knuckles and wrist, increasing the likelihood of injury. Additional injuries can occur to your biceps and shoulder.

Isolation, disembodiment, and putting yourself at a disadvantage might make sense for bodybuilding but makes no sense for athletic performance and injury prevention.

Try swinging your arms with the backs of your hands facing up while running. It'll throw you off. You run with neutral wrists for a reason.

Neutral means your forearm (wrist flexors) is protecting your wrist. When you turn your palm down, your wrist is protected by the back of your forearm (wrist extensors), which weakens your wrist and grip, and makes your alignment less structurally sound. That doesn't mean never turning your hand over in a punch; it just means be aware of the trade-off.

Try throwing multiple left hooks while turning your hand over. It's slow and uncomfortable. It's like locking and unlocking a door rather than pressing a button. The turning and unturning of your punch disrupt your recoil. This also wears out your shoulder (rotator cuff) and hinders your ability to put weight behind your punch.

Moreover, how you throw multiple punches from the same side will differ from single shots and left-right combinations.

Next, Wallace is back at sparring to test his improvements. Observe, research, and test. It's the sweet science method. Wallace is now slipping and fighting behind the jab while keeping his feet underneath him.

What feedback does Edwards give Wallace at the speed bag? The importance of the left hand.

At skipping rope, where is Edwards looking? At Wallace's feet. What's Wallace doing? He's doing the footwork Ali popularized, the shuffle. It's not about tricks or speed but keeping a tempo and developing the legs. Steady and consistent.

Then we have Edwards holding a medicine ball. What's Wallace working on? Jab and left hook. He snaps the jab into the air and hooks the ball. Hooking is like the name implies, you're hooking or twisting your body. This exercise is about hooking off the jab and rotating your body, not the punch.

After learning the three primary punches (jab, right straight, left hook), Wallace has been stringing his attacks together (connective tissue), especially off the jab. It's one thing to learn to execute them in isolation. However, learning to put them together is boxing. Hitting and punching alone are not boxing.

The final feedback Edwards gives Wallace is that he has a "real sharp left now." The first punch Wallace learned was the jab, and that's still the punch he's mastering.

Combat sports and martial arts theory is nebulous and confusing if you believe all moves are weighted equally. If you know they are not, it removes a lot of the guesswork. Since you can learn a few moves quickly, then the rest of your time should be spent learning the theory behind these moves so you can adapt them to all situations. Scaffolding, theory, application, repeat. This is the sweet science of LMA.

– Sam