Friday, January 6, 2012

How to Maximize Boxing Performance With Strength & Conditioning?


Strength and conditioning for boxing is essential to maximize performance, preventing injury, and deal with the demands of the intense demands of competition. Lower-body and upper-body exercises using various modes of resistance can provide benefit to a boxing program. Exercises for the core provide a stable base and strong foundation for rotating powerfully into punches. Plyometrics, Olympic lifts, and working on strength-endurance with equipment such as kettlebells will also benefit the competitive fighter and boxing enthusiast.
Lower-Body Exercises
Strengthening the lower body is essential to enhancing boxing performance and providing strength and power to punches. Boxers require great strength, endurance and balance out of the legs throughout the duration of a fight. Strengthening the quadriceps, glutes, hamstrings and calves should be stressed. Exercises such as squats, deadlifts, romanian deadlifts, lunges and heel raises should ideally make up the foundation of a basic strength program for a boxer. These exercises will greatly challenge the lower body and provide a huge boost to punching power.
Choosing a load or resistance where fatigue is achieved between eight to 10 repetitions will help to build a good strength base. Resistance and repetitions as well as the number of sets can be adjusted and progressed to focus more on strength, power, muscular endurance, or hypertrophy (increased muscle size) depending on the needs and goals of the athlete.
Challenging the body in various planes of movement is also important, as a boxer has to move efficiently from side to side as well as forward and backward. Exercises such as lunges in various directions and step-ups onto a box or bench, and single-leg versions of the squat and deadlift are just a few examples that will help improve this specific component.
Upper-Body Exercises
A strong upper body including the shoulders, chest and triceps helps to provide extra strength and power to a boxer's punch. The upper back muscles also help to stabilize the shoulder, maintain posture, and provide control while executing punches and combinations.
Pushing exercises such as push-ups, chest presses, shoulder presses and incline presses will challenge the body's pushing and punching muscles. Pulling exercises like rows, and lat pull-downs and pull-ups will help strengthen the upper back. Side raises and front raises for the shoulders can provide more strength and stability to punching techniques as well.
Pushing exercises can be sequenced with pulling exercises in a superset to save on workout time. For example, perform a chest press, immediately followed by a seated row. A balanced program with enough pulling exercises to balance out the pushing exercises is optimal for boxers who tend to overuse the pushing muscles with the great amount of punching done on a regular basis.
Plyometric Exercises
Plyometric training can help provide a quick and explosive punch. This type of training often involves jumping drills such as box jumps, jumping lunges, and jump squats. On a jump squat, for example, the goal is to land efficiently and explode powerfully back into the air as quickly as possible. This can be done with upper-body exercises as well such as a plyometric push-up or medicine chest pass or overhead throw. This mode of activity can help improve punching power.
Olympic Lifts and Kettlebell Exercises
Olympic lifts with barbells can also add to a boxers power and strength. Exercises such as the hang-clean, push-jerk and snatch, can add some extra knockout power to a fighter's punch. Learning these exercises correctly is a must as well as a having a good strength base before attempting them.
Kettlebells also offer a unique mode of strength training and can provide demands very specific to what a boxer goes through in a fight from a physiological stand point. For example, performing the kettlebell clean and press for time intervals can condition the fighter according to the demands of his or her sport. The learning curve for these two modes of exercise is a bit steeper than some of the others mentioned but should not be overlooked do to their major benefits.
Core Exercises
Strong abdominals and lower-back muscles are important to the performance and longevity of a fighter. The amount of rotating on punches can be extreme at times during training, so a strong core is necessary to avoid excess breakdown of tissues in the lower back.
Exercises such as planks and side planks will help add stability and strength. Upper- and lower-body Russian twists will help strengthen the torso including the obliques, and provide strong rotational muscles for punching.
Effective Programming
Overall, combining these methods of training along with your regular boxing routine is tricky but should be done in a way to give your body optimal recovery. Spacing out your strength training days is a must and should ideally be performed on days where your boxing workout is of lower intensity. For example, non-sparring days may be good to add in a strength or power day.
Keeping a balanced strength-and-conditioning program will help elevate the competitive fighter to new levels and provide a stronger and more focused program for the recreational boxer.

 
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