Boxing Workouts: A Complete Boxing Training Program

Building the Boxer's Optimal Workout Program: (Skip directly to the 12 week boxing training program, otherwise read where it came from...)

I've done a lot of research into the human body and what makes a good workout.  The most frustrating thing I found is the sheer volume of advice people claiming to be experts have thrown on websites and put in books.  I do not hold a Phd in exercise fitness so I had to seek out the most knowledgeable people in the field in order to make sense of the mountain of notes I took over the last 17 years.  What better person to start with than the guy who trained Evander Holyfield -- Frederick C. Hatfield, Ph.D., FISSA.

Holyfield's training was incredibly scientific and he had the best in their respective disciplines training him including Lee Haney (former Mr. Olympia) and Dr. Hatfield.  Hatfield convinced Holyfield that his conditioning would improve dramatically if he incorporated a variety of training principles based on scientific findings into his workouts.  Being the scientist he was, Hatfield recorded everything and Hollyfield's conditioning 12 weeks later improved dramatically from his start state, not just in one area, but all of them:  agility, strength limits, explosive power, and ability to recover.

I took the principles Hatfield recommended to Holyfield and compared them to other sports disciplines including sprinting, basketball, and football where the kind of anaerobic and explosive power characteristic of boxing is required either for sustained amounts of time or in short bursts.  Most of those sports had already gone high tech, so to speak, and their top athletes follow plyometrics programs, do sport specific workouts, and train in cycles (periodization).  Boxing, on the other hand, still has an abundance of people recommending the same training methods they used fifty years ago.  I compiled a list of boxing training myths.  How many of them are you still following?

The first and foremost principle one can take away from Hatfield's research is the ideas of macro and meso training cycles.  A macrocycle consists of a predetermined period -- 12 weeks is a good one.  The macrocycle is then broken up into equal parts resulting in 4 mesocycles of 3 weeks each.  Each mesocycle concentrates on specific conditioning and sport specific skills and each mesocycle builds on the skills and conditioning learned in the previous one.  As you can see, by the end of 12 weeks, the boxer will be in the best possible shape for that entire macrocycle.  Subsequent macrocycles then have heightened start states resulting in ever increasing end states.

Huh?

All I just said is that the boxing workouts I will show you will be based on 12 week cycles.  Within those 12 weeks, there will be four - 3 week cycles, each one getting progressively harder.  Completing one 12 week cycle will have you in exceptional shape.  Completing more than one will make you one hell of  a fine physical specimen.

Each 3 week cycle will focus on all the facets affecting you as a boxer:  explosive power and strength, endurance, stamina and agility.  By the end of this, you will be in incredible shape.  Obviously some of you are starting at different levels, so individual results will vary (my legal disclaimer...)  But hey, what's good for Evander must be good for us, right?

Before you go any further, I would really appreciate it if you headed on over to your profile page and filled in your starting details and measurements and upload a picture of what you look like now.  You will not recognize yourself after just one cycle.  If you are already in shape and cut, this will rip you apart.  If you have some weight to lose, you'll lose it.  And if you need some more muscle, you're going to get it.