Keywords: patterns, laterality, boxing, motor preference, exercises.
Introduction
Boxing is a combat sport classified as an opposition sport. Its practice demands not only a high level
of physical fitness but also a deep tactical understanding of the fight, where every movement must
serve a defensive or offensive purpose.
Boxing comprehensively stimulates both physical (strength, endurance, speed) and coordinative
(orientation, balance, reaction) abilities, making it an effective means for the athlete's multifaceted
development, especially at a young age. Based on Rather and Morales (2019), we can say that proper
technical training from the earliest stages of learning is essential to ensure safe and effective
progression. For this reason, factors such as guard position, functional laterality, and motor
organization play a fundamental role in training design.Laterality, understood as the functional
preference for one side of the body over the other, has a direct influence on how boxing technique is
learned and executed, contributing to optimized athletic training. This preference encompasses not
only the dominant hand, but also the eye, foot, and spatial orientation of the body, forming a
laterality profile that can be homogeneous (all segments are dominant on the same side) or crossed
(different parts of the body have opposite dominance).
Laterality allows for orientation in space and time, resulting from the ordered distribution of
functions between the two cerebral hemispheres and the way in which they process information.
Currently, its study and definition are highly relevant and novel, especially in the field of combat
sports. (Iglesias-Soler et al., 2018; Guan et al., 2021; Dopico et al., 2019; Izquierdo and Morales,
2022).
In boxing, handedness primarily determines the choice of stance: right-handed boxers typically adopt
an orthodox stance (left hand forward and right hand back), while left-handed boxers use a reverse
stance. This decision influences the types of combinations taught, how the opponent is read, and how
the boxer moves within the ring. When handedness is mixed, for example, with a dominant right
hand but a dominant left eye, challenges can arise in spatial awareness and movement timing,
requiring methodological adjustments during training.
In this sense, García et al. (2022) consider that one way to optimize the preparation of athletes in
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