Transcription
So when speaking of the demands for strength and power for boxing, what might come to mind are hip rotational power, power in the legs, power in the arms, elastic energy utilization, change of direction, moving your body from one position to another quickly, and just total strength and power development in the entire body from head to toe, united into your fist.
And I ask you now, in which sport are these highly pronounced and have been rigorously researched for years since the time of the USSR? Look no further than the throwers in the track and field disciplines. We have the shot putters, the javelin throwers, the discus throwers. They have been doing this for years and studying them rigorously. This is their bread and butter.
I am not exaggerating when I am telling you that you could literally copy and paste the strength and power routine of a track and field thrower and you would wipe the floor with pretty much every performance coach out there, every single Bosu ball or Turkish getup enthusiast out there, every single animalistic movement coach, whatever it is that people are doing nowadays.
Track throwers, they are masters of what is called motor unit recruitment. It is that signaling from brain to muscles that enhances power output. This is a sport that involves condensing every single contributing factor to explosive power development into one short moment. It is condensing your self-image, all of your past traumas, all of your life experiences into one short moment. They are the masters of elastic energy utilization. They do plyometric exercises. They are masters of transferring impulse from one part of the body to another, putting their life into hip rotational movement to the fullest extent. You tell me, are these useful attributes for strength and power development in the context of boxing? It should be obvious.
And what is an example of a modern-day boxer that trains strikingly similar to a track and field thrower? And the answer to that is Arur Betterf. And he coincidentally happens to be one of the hardest punchers in boxing history, probably when adjusted for body weight. Am I suggesting that he is powerful because of his strength and conditioning routine? Absolutely not. This is just one piece of the clockwork of power development. This man is an elite boxer in world championship level and he has mastered boxing technique. He has mastered skill and all of that stuff. So, putting that aside and going to the topic of this video which is his strength and power intervention. I am saying that he does a tremendously good job in that and because of this he just gets one step closer to this genetic potential which he presumably already has a head start in. That is my point.
And who is his strength and conditioning coach? Well, it happens to be a national Olympic weightlifting coach Andre Kulisha. And he has trained various athletes including track athletes, throwers, just about any athlete you can think of. He has 50 years of experience in addition to being a professor of sport science. He has coached various athletes of various sports into international medals, Olympic medals. He has coached swimmers, track athletes, boxers, tennis players, all of it.
My point with this video is that the evidence is right in front of us and it has been there for years. During the USSR, sports was state sponsored because it was tied to national pride. And one thing they also did was cross-disciplinary collaborations. For example, they would analyze movements from different sports, including, for example, track and field throwers or even jumpers, and try to transfer them into sports like boxing. And this is a defunct state from many years ago. How often do you hear of such cross-disciplinary collaborations in modern boxing, strength and conditioning or any sport for that matter? We have to remove this tunnel vision and start seeing things in a broader manner. There is a lot of lessons to be learned from every sport. Every sport has its sort of moat that has been time-tested and battleproven. And that is probably the very reason this sport is alive today.
Even shotputters and javelin throwers, they are masters of raw power production. Strongmen, they are masters of raw force production. Ballerinas are masters of fluid movement and grace. Track and field jumpers and sprinters, they are masters of speed and elastic energy utilization. And you should scrutinize a sport for the very thing that they are masters in.
Now let's go through a typical training routine for a track and field thrower in a nutshell. They will spend their time training maximum strength, high velocity strength and maximal velocity. Maximal strength which is your capacity to produce high amounts of force independent of time that is regardless of the speed is done by heavy compound lifts that is bench presses, deadlifts, back squats and things of this nature. High velocity strength can be thought of as a midpoint between maximal speed and maximum strength. And this is done typically by Olympic weightlifting variations or ballistic training. An example of a ballistic exercise is the jumping squat. The point is to maximize the acceleration phase that is. And the final component is maximal velocity. Here the resistance has to be none or very minimal because you have to produce as much speed as you possibly can. Typical exercises include plyometrics, sprinting, medicine ball throws, and things of this nature.
Now, for the programming, I have made many videos in the past. Check them out if you want to. But the key here is quality over quantity. Five quality repetitions on each of those formats is better than 10 crappy repetitions. And what do I mean by quality here? I am referring to motor unit recruitment. Once again, we are training for explosive power, which means that you have to produce explosive power. And once again, throwers, they are masters of this. It doesn't happen by accident. They have practiced. If you watch them perform a bench press, a power clean, a power snatch, they produce ridiculous amounts of velocities into the barbell. And obviously, this transfers over to their throwing performance.
Now my question is for you as a boxer performing essentially the same movement. Why do you believe that you cannot improve your boxing power by these training interventions? If there is a training intervention to throw a ball further, why do you think this will not transfer over to throwing a harder punch? The fundamental movement pattern of both of these movements are essentially the same. Hey.