Strength for Boxing

[Turing]

What are some good things for strength for boxing. Things to make punches more powerful and abs better at taking body shots. I'm doing some weightlifting right now so I think that will help power in my punches, but is there anything else for that, like outside of standard lifting. I ramble so much and don't get my question/point across. What are good excersises for taking body shots, and non weight-lifting excersises to help punching power?

[Tom Yum]

Check out the "Muay Thai and Kickboxing" area and the thread called "Holyfld's fighter training prep" It goes over his training cycle to prepare for a bout that is 12 weeks away from the time he was notified. It should give you a brief idea about how to stay in shape. Also check out ringside.com

At all levels of boxing (beginner through professional) power comes from execution of proper technique. This is why I cannot emphasize why having a coach is important. He can tell you what you are doing right and what you need to work on. Before you shadow box, practice your punches slowly, scrutinizing every detail (Am I hitting with the first 2 knuckles? Is my chin tucked? Is my non-punching glove covering my face -elbow covering outside rib? Am I pushing off with my feet? Is my trunk rotating?)

The foundation of any technique (whether boxing or other) is correct technique. Start from there. Buy some instructional boxing videos....at least you'll have some kind of coach

[Xavier_Hungwell]

Well this is my first post here so I guess a brief introduction is in order. I live in Las Cruces New Mexico where I am finishing up my BA and boxing. I took up boxing about 5 months ago, as a way to force myself to quit smoking.

As for strength exercises, I had a pro staying with me for a while while he was sparing with David Rodriguez helping him get ready for his fight on the De La Hoya under card a few months back. He said the most important thing was pushups…and he would do about 500-700 everyday in sets of 50 to 70. His explanation was that the pushups conditioned your body to allow you to keep your guard up and deliver hard blows without fatiguing. He would also do 500 sit-ups in a row.

So for myself I do the 500 sit-ups, 500 pushups, 3 miles of running (I’m very out of shape) and between 25 – 50 pull-ups a day in addition to training at the gym

[terry]

You can, of course, do the old-school thing of doing nothing but massive pushups. Combined with all the speed work that makes up boxing--such as speed bag, top 'n bottom bag, jump rope, sparring, shadow boxing, etc.--you'll probably do okay. Unless, like Hollyfield, you find yourself at the bottom of the heavyweight class up against bigger, stronger opponents with longer reaches.

Hollyfield had a mixture of some speed-strength, some power-endurance, quite a bit of speed and a lot of cardio training. Bear in mind that Hollyfield went from the middle of the cruiserweight weight class to well into the heavyweight division by putting on 30 lbs of muscle. You don't want to do Hollyfield's training workout if you're at the top of your weight division or trying to cut down to make the weight division.

As far as pushups, the biggest benefits I see is that they don't take much if any equipment to do, so you can work a lot of guys at once, and the consequences of failure are minimal. Speed pushups (done explosively) will assist in building power-endurance. This is a different attribute than speed-strength and is trained differently. (Personally, I prefer to use free weights for building speed-strength.) Of the two attributes I mentioned, speed-strength and power-endurance, notice I didn't say that one was necesarily better than the other--it depends on the specific requirements of your sport.

Note: How you do the exercises is as important to the attributes that you build as is the exercises themselves:

First, if you do super slow pushups you'll recruit slow-twitch muscle motor units and build endurance and size. You will also train your nervous system towards slow initiation speed, which isn't good for any combat sport. This training came into vogue with the Natilus equipment and has been used way beyond its useful application. Slow-mo and isometric training are good when done with very heavy weights for cleaning up specific weak/sticking spots in a motion. As they are more commonly used in a health club, as part of a poorly executed bodybuilding routine, they'll slow your neuromuscular coordination and initiation speed.

Second, if you work fast and explosively with medium weights and high reps then you'll get a mixture of slow-twitch and fast-twitch--with more slow-twitch fibers being recruited the more tired you get. In other words, power-endurance. Doing this with bodyweight exercises like pushups is great. Rather than doing 500 flat pushups you may want to vary the incline in an overall program. For example, doing incline pushups will remove the latisimus dorsi from play and focus more intensely on the anterior deltoids. Decline pushups will ease up on the deltoids and focus more on the lats. You may also want to add a bit of resistance to declines to compensate for your greater lifting mechanics as well as the reduced bodyweight distribution at that angle. In addition, narrow grips will focus more on your triceps, which should be well-trained for both strength and endurance for boxing.

Third, if you work super heavy weights for low reps, such as doing pushups with the 100+ bands, you'll build speed-strength, tendon strength and explosiveness, but not muscular endurance. In small doses, this kind of training can be very beneficial for a martial artists, especially grapplers. However, if you were to concentrate exclusively on this kind of training for many years you'll eventually wind up like a dragster, capable of incredible effort for a short burst after which you're spent, and you'll take longer to recover. Of course, you would only want to do that if you wanted to become exclusively speed-strength athlete, which martial artists are not.

Martial artists need a more well-rounded package of speed, endurance and strength. They are basically generalists as athletes, so their supplemental training methods vary. Sometimes they focus on what they are not getting in their normal workouts. Sometimes they'll intensify a specific attribute, such as anaerobic endurance, that they need a strong reserve in. In any case, you probably won't see a good trainer working his guys on the same training program throughout the season or, I would argue, throughout the week. They'll change it up to allow for adaptation and recovery and, of course, to allow for sufficient energy to do the primary activity, fighting. The point is to cycle but also to arrive stronger and more explosive to the next cycle than when you started.

T