Many beginners ask themselves, “How long does it take to get good at boxing?”
While boxing is one of the easiest sports to pick up, it’s one of the hardest ones to master. There are so many skills to learn, such as power, agility, and coordination.
This article will discuss how much time is needed to get good at boxing if you’re starting as a beginner.
How Long Does It Take To Get Good At Boxing?
To get good at boxing, you need to spend 500 to 1000 hours of consistent and quality training.
Boxing has a low barrier to entry, which is why it’s so popular. It’s not like skiing or football where you have to buy all the equipment and go to a dedicated location. When you start out learning boxing, all you need is your hands and feet (and perhaps a jump rope) to get started.
However, to master boxing, it takes years and thousands of dedicated hours where it seems you’re not making any progress.
A good measure of skill is enough time and training to compete at an intermediate level. When you’re in the ring, you should feel comfortable and not act on pure survival instincts. Beginner boxers look up to you and you can give an advanced boxer a challenge.
To keep things simple, here are the tiers of skill that you can achieve in your boxing training.
- Basic Skills (0 – 100 hours)
- Intermediate Skills (100 – 1000 hours)
- Advanced Skills (1000 – 10000 hours)
As per Malcolm Gladwell, you need 10,000 hours to master any given task. Of course, as you continue your journey, you’ll find that there’s more nuance to this and that the goalposts get pushed back farther and farther.
Basic Skills
Here is where a complete beginner learns boxing basics.
These include the foundational boxing techniques and essential skills such as proper stance, defense, proper punching technique, and using the jump rope.
You can learn these via boxing classes or even just hanging around a boxing gym and copying what you see better boxers do, whether it’s throwing punches or controlling the heavy bag.
You’ll learn about the basics of physical fitness for boxing, such as cardio, shoulder strength, and coordination.
Since there’s such a low barrier of entry and progress at this stage feels rapid, the Dunning-Kruger effect plays heavily here. Beginner boxers are so focused on their new skills that they’re unaware of all the skills they have yet to learn.
If you’re older, you might be using boxing as a launchpad for another martial art such as muay thai or jiu jitsu. There’s also a good chance that you’re self-taught. It’s important to focus on good technique now so that bad habits don’t take root.
Generally speaking, after fifty hours of consistent training, you begin to learn if you have any natural ability for the sport. It’s up to your coach whether or not you can begin to incorporate light sparring into the mix.
Intermediate Skills
After 100 hours of learning boxing, the Dunning-Kruger effect wears off around this time and you humbly begin to learn all the skills you didn’t know as a beginner.
This plateau, where you’ll spend a long period of time without seeing leaps of improvement, is when you’re going to get good.
You’re now a regular at a good boxing gym, helping the beginners and taking notes on the more advanced boxers.
With the novelty of boxing worn off, you can relax in the ring and not operate on survival mode. After taking a bunch of unnecessary shots during sparring, you learn to avoid punches and start training based on your weaknesses. You get a handle on your opponent’s body language and grow your instinct.
Here you’ll continue your physical fitness training and refine your skills, such as how to utilize proper footwork and making sure your head movement is automatic. Muscle memory solidifies at this stage; bad habits accumulated here are extremely hard to undo.
As a beginner you would wail on the heavy bag. As an intermediate you begin to incorporate defense and range, even though you know the heavy bag won’t hit you back. Certain specialized training like the speed bag and double end bag will make more sense.
At this stage, some boxers get bored and try some other martial art or combat sport like Brazilian jiu jitsu or muay thai. Other boxers begin to prepare for their first fight with a good trainer and start to incorporate various types of sparring with the same opponents.
Even though it’s a grind and it feels like you’re not improving day to day, when you look month to month your entire body starts to sync, and you begin to develop your own style.
Advanced Skills
After 1000 hours (and failures), you’re far along on your boxing journey.
At this point, you’ve competed at a state and perhaps even a national level, and you know whether you’ve reached your limit or if you want to keep going and make it pro.
You’ll reach another plateau where you spend time refining slightly different skillsets and staying on top of your weaknesses. You are well aware of your style and are more focused on technical training or more advanced combinations.
Since you’re getting older and in your physical prime, training smart and efficiently under a good boxing coach becomes more important. You’ll customize your training for different skillsets and to suit different opponents.
For professional boxers, consistent scheduled training becomes almost like a job.
A great boxer at this level knows that there’s no way they can master boxing, but they keep on working.
Conclusion
Even if you don’t master boxing, learning it is one of the best decisions you can make for yourself.
Throughout your learning process, you’ll find your limits, make friends, and get physically fit.
If you’re a beginner reading this, don’t underestimate how long it takes to learn boxing and get good at it. Keep with your consistent training at your own pace and only compare your progress to yourself, not to others.
It’s also important to remember that you don’t need to compete in order to learn boxing and get good at it. All you need is to learn proper technique and have a solid grasp of the basics.
If you’re having trouble deciding what boxing equipment to get, check out these articles: