When it comes to boxing, everyone is well aware of the fact that the sport involves landing more punches on your opponent than they land on you. As far as boxing for fitness, you just take the aforementioned concept and translate it to striking a heavy bag, with the luxury of not having the punching bag hit you back.

But the “sweet science” of boxing is about so much more than hitting someone (or something). Rather, it’s about all those subtle movements that allow you to set up your punches in the most effective way, and move out of the way of your opponent’s strikes.

However, even if you have no intention of stepping foot in the ring, incorporating lateral movement training is an invaluable part of your boxing training overall. Incorporating lateral movement exercises and drills will not only help you increase your agility, but also decrease your chances of suffering an injury while training.

Let’s take a closer look at the importance of lateral training drills, and what drills you can use to become a more well-rounded contender.

Using Lateral Movement Drills To Warm Up Before Working Out

Generally speaking, we use warm up exercises to gradually increase your heart rate, in order to increase your body's blood circulation such that it's pumping more blood through all the muscles of your body. That, in turn, will loosen up your muscles and your joints, allowing you to train them.

Going from a completely idle state to one where you’re suddenly and quickly incorporating rapid, muscle-taxing movements can very likely result in strains of some of your body’s soft tissue muscles (like your hamstring or your groin), but can also result in injuries that manifest later on since your body wasn’t necessarily prepared for the movements that took place.

But don’t worry: you don’t have to suddenly make your warm-ups a long and complicated routine that ends up taking away from your main workout. Even your basic low-impact cardiovascular exercises can prepare your circulatory and respiratory systems for both the endurance-based or high-impact workouts that will follow.

To that end, because lateral movement drills are focused on mostly focused on working the largest muscle groups in your body, they’re all very useful exercises with which you can start out your workout. Below, Gloveworx Coach Rumesh Balendran shows four lateral movement drills to enhance your training.

Movement Prep

This is one of our favorite lateral agility drills which you can use to elevate your heart rate at the beginning of your workout. It’s basically your standard side or lateral shuffle, but with a twist: because of the constant tension applied by the resistance band across your things, it’ll actually give everything from your hip flexors to your glutes to your quadriceps a tremendous workout, without you really even noticing it (at least at first!)

• Place a resistance band around your legs, resting just above where your thigh and your knee meet each other.
• Stand up, but with your knees slightly bent, and legs just slightly more than shoulder-width apart. Your toes should also be pointing outwards and away from each other.
• Lower your torso straight down as if you're doing a squat or a sumo squat, but only go about three-quarters of the way down into your squat; make sure that your back remains straight and perpendicular to the ground.
• Pick one leg up more more than 2-3 inches off the ground, move it away from your body, and place it back down on the ground; you should be in a wider squat stance, after the movement.
• Bring your other leg in towards your body, such that you're resuming the original squat stance you were in before you moved your first leg; after this movement, you should have moved slightly in the direction of the leg you first moved.
• Repeat these two movements, shuffling all the way from where you are to the opposite wall.

Using Lateral Movement Drills to Improve Strength and Endurance

If you want to use the previous movement lateral movement drill discussed above and add some resistance-training elements into it, in order to use these workouts to further develop the muscles needed for lateral movements, try out some of the following exercises.

Movement Prep With Goblet Squats

Goblet squats are virtually the same as your standard squat, but instead of holding the weight behind your neck or at your side, you hold one weight right in front of your face, as if you’re holding a large goblet. Between holding up the weight, then doing the squat along with the side-to-side movements, you’ll work everything from your quads to your calves, glutes, core muscles, arms and even the muscles in your wrists.

• Place a resistance band around your legs, resting just above where your thigh and your knee meet each other.
• Stand up, but with your knees slightly bent, and legs just slightly more than shoulder-width apart. Your toes should also be pointing outwards and away from each other.
• Take your dumbbell or weight of preference (like a dumbbell or kettlebell), and hold it up right in front of your face.
• While holding the weight, lower your body as if you’re performing a squat, getting down low enough to where your thighs are parallel to the ground; again, make sure that your back remains straight and perpendicular to the ground.
• Repeat the same movement as the lateral movement drill: pick one leg up more more than 2-3 inches off the ground, move it away from your body, and place it back down on the ground; you should be in a wider squat stance, after the movement.
• Bring your other leg in toward your body, such that you're resuming the original squat stance you were in before you moved your first leg. After this movement, you should have moved slightly in the direction of the leg you first moved.
• However, instead of repeating the movement, stand straight up, assuming the same position you were originally in.
• Now, repeat the entire process: perform a squat, move one foot out, move the next foot in, then stand up.

Lateral Lunges

Lateral lunges are another exercise we strongly recommend for working the smaller, stabilizing muscles your body uses for lateral movements.

While they often get overlooked in most traditional workout routines, these are the muscles that support the sharp movements made by the larger muscle groups. Because of that, they're not only important in preventing any muscle-related injuries, but also the most susceptible to smaller, nagging injuries if overlooked.

Lateral lunges are particularly useful in strengthening the muscles in your knees. Studies have shown that lateral lunges are are among the best exercises for treating injuries to ligaments in the knees, and strengthening such of that they prevent any injuries.

Incorporating weights into this exercise only enhances the benefits, but be careful not to use weights that are uncomfortably heavy.

• Start by standing upright, with your feet somewhat close together, no further than shoulder-width apart.
• Take your weight of preference (we recommend kettlebells as they put a little less stress on your back in this exercise), and hold it in one hand by your side.
• With the same leg matching the hand that's holding the weight, take a big step outward to the side, and then bend the knee of the leg that's stepped outwards, lowering your upper body onto that knee.
• Using your muscles in the bent leg, and driving downwards through the heel of your bent leg, raise your upper body back up until you're in back in a standing position.
• Take the weight, and put it in the opposite hand, then repeat the lunging process with the opposite leg.

Single Lateral Hops Using The Agility Pro

One of our favorite tools for performing lateral movement exercises is the Agility Trainer. It builds on a familiar concept for anyone who's done footwork drills through tires while practicing for other sports (like football), but the smaller and flatter nature of the Agility Trainer allows for quicker and sharper movements which can greatly enhance your lateral training needs.

• With your Agility Trainer placed on the ground, stand up straight with your legs shoulder-width apart, and one foot squarely within the Agility Trainer (and the other foot outside of it).
• Bend your knees slightly; in this exercise, it's ok to tilt your torso slightly forward after bending your knees.
• Hop laterally across the Agility Trainer, towards the direction of the foot that's in it, aiming to "switch" the foot that started inside of the Trainer.
• After completing the movement, your body should be on the other side of the trainer, and your other foot should be inside of it.
• Repeat that movement back and forth. Feel free to swing your arms up and down while hopping, to help facilitate that motion.

One Of The Oldest Adages In Boxing: Stick And Move

As you’ll undoubtedly read on any post on the Gloveworx blog, the most important parts of boxing have much more to do with your footwork and movement than anything related to your hands, arms, and shoulders.

The majority of the power you generate for your punches, and the ability to maneuver yourself such that you either set up your punches or move out of the way of your opponent striking you, are all a function of the way you move your feet and your body.

That’s why every Gloveworx training session places such a premium on using many different types of lateral movement exercises -- because we want to provide the most realistic boxing and impactful workout experience to each and every contender who walks through our doors.

We don’t want you to become just a better boxer, but a better Contender overall.