Boxer's train bloody hard!!

Nick,

Recently had the opportunity to do some sessions in a boxing fight gym and now appreciate how hard these guys actually work.

MA trainers might have taken me to hell a few times with their sessions. But these guys take you to hell and give you the full tour!

I realise fighters are training to fight pro and it’s a bloody serious business etc. But do you think in general that MA sessions actually work people hard enough?

Sorry to butt in Nick.

A "professional" boxer is obviously going to train harder than a "recreational" martial artist, isnt he??

Dunno when i did recreational "atheletics" i always worked harder then practically every MA class ive ever been in.....

Makes me larf a bit when seemingly the ultimate expression of MA physical conditioning training is doing lots of pressups when a good track or field coach could torture you so throughly and with many many more tools....

It was like Crossfit before it was invented


Or maybe its because of the MA classes i go to

Will answer these in a few weeks...am without a computer and refuse to try and type on a PDA keyboard.

Training hard is one thing, training smart is another.....

Nick,

About 7 weeks into this new torture and the kilos (pounds) are just falling off by the day.

I don't for a minute put myself into the same category as the 'real fighters' that I train with (ie the pro boxers). But I have to say they are the fittest people I've ever encountered.

Going back to the original question (some time back): Do you think most MAs train hard enough in the fitness aspect??

For what it's worth I don't think they do. Without opening the old "which MA is the best" argument, I think if a specific street fight was close and came down to fitness a boxer would cream someone trained in another discipline.

Would be really interested in your thoughts.

As an aside, can you tell us what the workouts are like?

Mr Nobody,

No magic involved – mainly just harder and more intense sessions than I’ve been used to in the past.

The warm-ups are different in that there is far more stretching, and they are not just the standard series of body rotation exercises that many MA styles use. You actually stretch each body part very thoroughly, and for the first few sessions at least, you pull up stiff as hell, even if you stretch again the day after.

The cardio on stationary bike and rope are long and hard, and by the time you hit the ring you’re a ball of sweat, and in my case the knees are already half way to jelly.

The ring work is intense but interesting, and is followed by bag work, medicine ball drills etc.

At the end of it I’ve usually learned plenty and I’m absolutely stuffed!

Mate,

It's hard to answer because some of the conditioning classes I did in Zen do Kai for example were harder than any I did at boxing training. Other styles I did didn't train nearly as hard but Judo was another system on par with ZDK and boxing.

Re the street argument you have to keep in mind any street fight worth its salt is going to be over in seconds...boxers train so hard on conditioning because they expect to go at least ten rounds.

Ali was training at his camp and I remember reading his trainer used to have him do 3 times the amount of time training as the amount of rounds he was going to fight. In Ali's case that was 15 x 3 min rounds so Angelo would have him do 45 x 3 min on the bag and the same sparring.

Someone like Gary Spiers, who's going to steam in and put down five guys in less than 30 seconds, just doesn't need to train for that duration hence the difference.

Nick

But doesn't that bet everything you have onbeing able to get the job done in 30 seconds? Maybe Gary could. Not sure everyone else will be able to.

In Senshido they also acknowledge the need to get the job done quickly, but do lots of additional conditioning training for both confidence AND to be prepared for that day when the fight goes on and on. Isn't that a better idea?

My fighters do a variety of workouts, for instance when I trained Peter for his Irish title fight against Michael Gomez, some days he would train 3 times while others only once, you can't train at top speed every day, we also had back off weeks where everything was scaled down a little.

The workouts would use progressive overload, too much too soon is not very good for the body.

The workouts themselves did not last for hours on end, the boxing workouts had top priority over everything else.

One workout looked like this:

10 burpees
10 sit ups
10 squats
30 seconds jump rope
9 burpees
9 sit ups
9 squats
30 seconds jump rope

And so on down to 1.

This type of routines is brief yet very effective. But I must say that this routine was used once, I was always changing things around.

Other things used:

Kettle bells
tyres
sledge hammer
car
sand bag
medicine ball
rocks
Body bags

The skill sessions would start with something like a couple of rounds and we would gradually add more has the weeks went on. But say Monday we did 10 rounds (pads and bags) on Wednesday we would do 8 and Friday 6, these would be intense session. Tuesday and Thursday would not be has intense, just some pad work, partner drills and shadow boxing.

Sparring never went above 7 rounds, the rest would be made up on pads or bag. Sparring was done twice a week and was VERY intense, their was always blood. Finishers were also used on certain days, we would use different ones, one session of sparring ended with 10 minutes of bar jumping! They would than come back for another workout later in the evening.
Max strength was worked on once a week.
We not do 1 long distance jog, it was all intervals, hills and sprints.

Hope this helps
Jamie

Bri,

Even if it went beyond thirty seconds I'd sincerely hope it didn't go for ten x three minute rounds What's a long street fight? The longest one I can think of went for about 4 minutes (did seem longer though )

Nick

PS: I'm not saying don't condition yourself...we train to the point where I've had guys throw up but I'm not training my guys to go ten rounds with one man - I'm training them to do one round with ten.

It would be polite of the attackers to stop every three minutes, now wouldn't it?

Jamie Wadman wrote:Other things used:

Kettle bells
tyres
sledge hammer
car
sand bag
medicine ball
rocks
Body bags

????

A bag you wear on the body while someone punches it,
Intense!!!!!

Nick,

Do you place much emphasis on diet to those training under you???

The reason I ask is that until recently, not one person I’ve trained under has ever mentioned it.

Very first class with my current (boxing) trainer and it’s “what do you eat for lunch mate” etc, and 10 weeks later and 8 kilos lighter I’m glad I’m listening to his instructions. Nothing radical. Just more good stuff, less crap, and plenty of sweat!

Has he improved my skills? – definitely. But gee you can move better and for longer when there’s less of you.

One of my early blogs was about "who's killing you?" and mentioned that a lot of the guys over here obsessed with guns, getting off the "X" and defensive living are clearly overweight, smoke, drink and live on junk food.

The point was that you're far more likely to die from a self inflicted heart attack etc than at the hands of some miscreant.

So, to answer your question yes I do mention it but I'm not fastidious about it. Bill Wallace lives on hot dogs and cheeseburgers and was never overweight and a genius at the fight game.

If you're overweight though then yes, dieting is a great idea.

Nick

Just reading some the views i think different boxing gyms train differently. I've trained at a few and my coach at the moment has some very intense sessions, he has background in Gojo Ryu Karate,Professional Kickboxing and unlicensed boxing so been about a bit he has also trained MMA fighters, but his Boxing sessions are hard one the hardest sessions i've had was at Terry Allen Unique Gym in Lincoln under Carl Fox.Very tough produced some top quality amateurs to like scotland international Callum Johnson and former Para Jamie O'Sullivan.
But i have to agree i do find Boxing sessions a lot tougher, think its always been that way.