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Strength training helped Crawford reach a new level... which workouts should you do to improve your boxing performance?
Strength and conditioning coaches are a relatively fresh concept in boxing, according to Terence Crawford’s S&C maestro Chet Fortune.
“Most fighters don’t have dedicated strength and conditioning coaches – it’s a new thing,” he tells me. “Floyd [Mayweather] didn’t have a strength coach until he fought Manny Pacquiao.”
Where professional sport goes, amateur and recreational sport often follows. Most people wanting to improve their ability in the ring realise some degree of strength training can help, but knowing where to start is a different matter.
To help in your endeavours, boxing strength and conditioning specialist Dr Rhys Morris shares his insights on what boxers should do in the gym to elevate their performance. This includes a sample workout for developing the attributes needed to succeed.
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The most important thing to do in the gym to improve your boxing
According to Morris, there is one trait that underpins all performance metrics: strength. If your body is not strong enough to perform dynamic movements quickly and powerfully, you are not going to get very far as an athlete.
Terence Crawford is a prime example of this – ahead of the fighter’s clash with Canelo, Morris witnessed him pull a deadlift of more than 200kg, which is almost triple his fighting weight.
Strength can be developed through multi-muscle exercises like the squat and deadlift – this is where amateur athletes should start. Morris also recommends prioritising lower limb strength because “your relationship with the floor is paramount” when generating power for a punch.
However, before you lift heavy weights, he stresses that you must learn to perform each exercise competently.
“If it looks ugly, don’t do it; if it looks painful, don’t do it,” he says. “We need to master the movement before we can go anywhere near loading that structural system.”
Performing an exercise incorrectly reinforces poor movement patterns and can contribute to increased injury rates – a silver bullet for any aspiring athlete.
Only when movement competency is achieved can you add weight and introduce more nuanced exercise variations with bonus benefits.
“Once we establish bilateral strength, we can look at using unilateral exercises,” Morris explains. These include any single-limb move such as the Bulgarian split squat, single-leg Romanian deadlift or landmine press.
“Now we are getting more specific to the sport of boxing,” he adds. “In other words, our legs are split, mimicking an orthodox or southpaw stance. We can build strength in these movements and positions.
“Then we might add lateral movements and exercises working across multiple planes of motion. A boxer needs to be able to navigate the fight and throw punches by moving in different directions.”
Jeff Bottari/TKO Worldwide LLC via Getty Images
Goals in the gym as a boxer
The first attribute a boxer should target in the gym is strength endurance – developing tolerance in tissues such as your muscles, ligaments and tendons. This ensures they can withstand the rigours of the sport without hampering your performance or succumbing to injury.
For this goal, performing sets with higher reps and lighter weights is a good place to start, allowing you to practice each exercise plenty of times while giving your joints greater exposure to the movement patterns.
Hypertrophy, or muscle growth, may be another area to consider, depending on your goals – sets of eight to 12, taken to failure, will achieve this. Strength, meanwhile, can be targeted through high-weight, low-rep sets.
Strength training workout for boxers
Warm-up:
- Foam roll your thoracic spine, glutes, quadriceps, and lats for 30 seconds each
- Dynamic mobility: World’s greatest stretch x4 each side
- Activation: Mini-band lateral walks x15 sets each side, then band pull apart x10
- Movement prep: bodyweight squat to reach x8, press-up to downward facing dog x8, light med ball slam x5
Main session:
Perform the eighth exercises below as a series of four supersets – a pair of exercises performed back to back with no rest in between. Exercise one in each superset has been labelled as ‘A’, and exercise two has been labelled as ‘B’.
Superset one:
1A) Back squat (or front squat)
Sets: 4 Reps: 4-6 Tempo: 3-1-X-1 Rest: - Intent: Heavy, controlled eccentric, explode up
1B) Weighted pull up (or lat pulldown)
Sets: 4 Reps: 5-6 Tempo: 2-0-X-1 Rest: 2min Intent: Drive elbows down fast
Superset two:
2A) Trap bar deadlift
Sets: 3 Reps: 3-4 Tempo: 2-1-X-1 Rest: - Intent: Heavy weight, crisp lockout
2B) Bodyweight jump squat
Sets: 3 Reps: 5 Tempo: X Rest: 3min Intent: Max height and speed
Superset three:
3A) Dumbbell bench press
Sets: 3 Reps: 6-8 Tempo: 2-0-X-1 Rest: - Intent: Drive powerfully when lifting, lower the weights under control
3B) Med ball rotational throw (into wall)
Sets: 3 Reps: 6 (each side) Tempo: X Rest: 90sec Intent: Explosive rotation of the hips and torso
Superset four:
4A) Single-leg Romanian deadlift
Sets: 3 Reps: 8 (on each leg) Tempo: 3-1-X-1 Rest: - Intent: Focus on balance and engaging the glutes
4B) Pallof press (using cables or resistance bands)
Sets: 3 Reps: 12-15 second hold Tempo: - Rest: 2min Intent: Resist rotation
Cool-down:
- Box breathing x5 cycles (inhale for four seconds, exhale for six seconds)
- Hip and shoulder stretches
- Optional 2-3 minutes of shadow boxing for movement integration
Benefits of this boxing workout
A boxer does not need to be as strong as a dedicated strength athlete such as a powerlifter. Athletes only need to be “strong enough” to meet the requirements of the sport, Morris says.
“We need good ground reaction forces and the ability to effectively transfer force from core to extremity,” he explains. “We also need to be able to produce fast, explosive movements to evade and strike our opponent.
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“We develop this through ballistic exercises, and ensuring we can create enough stiffness to generate force and knock an opponent out. Those are the bucket list capacities we would want to develop.”
In the workout above, heavy compound exercises like the squat, trap bar deadlift, pull-up and dumbbell bench press recruit multiple muscles to build foundational full-body strength. They may also add some muscle to your frame, when paired with an appropriate diet – high in protein and containing sufficient calories to fuel training adaptations.
The Pallof press develops the stiffness in your core essential for landing – and taking – a punch successfully, then the explosive squat jumps and med ball rotational throws improve power across multiple planes of motion.
The result? If you train like this consistently, you can build a strong, athletic body capable of supporting your performance in the ring.
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