About

About Me

My name is Fran Sands. I’ve been involved in amateur boxing since 1978, first visiting a boxing gym at the age of 6. I was involved 60 amateur contests, winning regional titles, reaching national semi-finals and finals and representing my country at Under-19 level. When I hung up my gloves at the age of 21 and after a short break from the sport, I moved into a coaching role.

Since 1995 I have coached amateur boxers, helping some amazing young talent to realize their potential. I have worked with numerous national champions and international boxers and enjoy immensely the feeling of working on the technical and tactical development of boxers at all levels, always enjoying very positive feedback from my charges.

About the Site

In creating this site, I am hoping to use my coaching skills to provide a significant resource for those interested in boxing. I intend to present a structured and rigorous method for people to either improve their existing boxing skills or alternatively learn new skills. I guess that people who may find this site useful might include:

Practising boxers or other ‘combat’ sports participants (such as mixed martial arts) who may be interesting in developing certain aspects of their fighting style.
People who would like to become involved in boxing, but who would prefer the confidence boost of understanding some background on the sport before taking the step of visiting a boxing gym.
People who are seeking to keep fit, but who may wish to develop their fitness around a framework of learning a technical discipline. This often helps to maintain an interest in keeping fit.
People who may wish to learn boxing with a partner or friend in the home environment (e.g. in a basement or garage).
People who may be partaking in one of the many charity white collar boxing events that seem to be quite common these days

The basis of the site will be the presentation of the full range of punches, from a jab to a cross, uppercuts, hooks, short/medium and long range work, parries, blocks, slips, ducks and a whole host of other good stuff; go to the Boxing Skills page to learn more. Coupled with this we’ll examine the equipment and fitness methods used to underpin the skills, and you can find more information about this on the Boxing Fitness page. The third piece of the jigsaw will be provision of a series of programs that will take elements of the skills and fitness and combine these to offer a full training regime suited to your requirements, be it skills focused, fitness focused or both!

A principle I am hoping to uphold is that the users of the site will play a significant role in how we should move forward. I will provide an initial ‘learning platform’, based upon a series of short videos along with written guidance articles and e-books. I would hope in the near-future to be able to offer some kind of true ‘coaching’ experience i.e. my being able to review user submitted videos and provide feedback in an on-line workshop environment. This though will be very much dictated by site users.

Having said what I will be delivering through this site, I should also make it clear what I won’t be delivering. I know that these days we have experts all over the place, and not just experts in one area, but experts in all areas, all of the time! I, unfortunately, am a mere mortal. My skills are firmly based the technical elements of boxing and the kind of fitness regimes used to support these elements. I am not a nutritionist, I am not a weight training specialist, I am not a running expert, I am not a sports psychologist nor a sports physiologist nor any other kind of ‘ologist’!

If you as the users of this site decide that we should investigate more fully the areas of nutrition, weight training, running or anything else for that matter, then I’m sure we’ll be able come up with the answers that we seek! In the meantime, I’ll be sticking to what I know best…boxing. If you would like to contact me for any reason at all, please email be at [email protected].

Be advised: Boxing, as with other contact sports, has inherent risks that even the most dimwitted of observers should identify and acknowledge. If you intend to undertake boxing with another person (i.e. hitting each other in the head with punches), this needs to be done in a controlled gym environment with suitably qualified coaching staff present. By reviewing the content of this site, you are doing so as a sensible and free-thinking individual, not a moron. I can’t be held responsible for moronic behaviour, so try to avoid it will ya!