What is pad work?

I put on focus mitts or Thai pads and you hit them, round after round, while I move, feed and correct. That is pad work, and it is the heart of a striking session.

Why it beats a bag: a bag hangs there. A pad moves. It comes back at you, it turns up at a height that punishes lazy feet, and if your hand drops it taps you on the ear. If you are reaching, the pad drifts and you feel yourself fall short before I have said a word. You learn distance because a person is holding the other end of it.

The feedback is immediate, which is the real argument. You throw a hook with a loose wrist and I feel it before you do, so it gets fixed on the next rep instead of six weeks later when your wrist is sore. That is the difference between somebody holding pads for you and a class of thirty taking turns.

It is also the conditioning. Three rounds on Thai pads asks more of you than most gym sessions and it does not feel like exercise, which is how people who hate cardio end up doing it twice a week.

What it is not: sparring. Nothing hits you back. You can do this for years and never take a shot, and plenty of people do exactly that.

Most of a beginner’s pad rounds are built around one punch, and it is the least glamorous one, because the jab sets the range and the pad tells you straight away whether you found it: why everything starts with the jab.

I bring the mitts, the Thai pads, the gloves and the mats, so you buy nothing to start: what gear I bring. When you do buy gloves, pad work is what you buy for first, and it is not the glove you would spar in: what gloves to buy. A bag can wait until the technique is honest: whether to buy a heavy bag for home.