SPRINT WORKOUT FOR BOXING

Throughout my work with Boxers, I have found that a 100 meter sprint repeated for multiple sets is a tremendous supplement to improve their power endurance necessary for the demands of the sport.  This type of workout is also very effective at increasing your metabolism and reducing body fat while maintaining lean muscle mass.  The 100 meter sprint workout should be introduced after you have already done some moderate running for a few weeks (i.e. 2-3 mile runs at a steady pace, 2-3 times a week).  This will create an aerobic base so that you can get the most out of these workouts and recover adequately from the training.  Before starting an intense routine like this, it is best to start off with dynamic stretching (Light jog, High knees, Butt kickers) to prime your muscles for work.  Save the static stretching for after your workout, as it will reduce their ability to contract quickly and impair you from gaining the maximum benefit from your workout.

THE WORKOUT

The 100 meter sprint workout consists of simply sprinting the straight of a track and walking the curve.  To start off, you should run the first 100 meter sprint at about 70 percent of your max effort, walk the curve and then the next 100 meters, try to hit as hard as you can.  A great tool to have is a stopwatch or a phone to time your sprints.  If you were not a track athlete, your goal should be to run the first all-out effort 100 meter in about 13-15 seconds.  If you can go even faster than that, great!  Including your warm up set at 70 percent your max effort, you should perform 5-6 X 100 meter sprints your first workout.  Do your absolute best to make every single one as fast as your first max effort sprint, getting them all as close as you can to 13-15 seconds.  After you complete the 5-6 sets then cool down with a light jog, a walk and some static stretching.  

PROGRESSION & FREQUENCY

Your first week of this routine should consist of 2 workouts, spaced 2-3 days apart.  

Week 1: 5-6 100 meter sprints a workout trying to match your first max effort time for each.

Week 2:  add 1-2 100 meter sprints to the workouts, again trying your best to match the time of your first max effort.  2 workouts a week.

Week 3:  Add 1-2 100 meter sprints to the existing workload 2x a week.

Week 4:  Add 1-2 100 meter sprints to the existing workload 2x a week.

Week 5:  Try to maintain your current number of 100 meter sprints for 2x that week.  You should be doing somewhere in the range of 9-13 100 meter sprints in your workout.

Week 6:  After this initial ramp up, depending on how your body is doing (sprints can take a toll on your joints), pull back down to week 2 numbers of 6 to 8 sprints either once or twice that week.  If you are feeling extremely fatigued, depending on your initial conditioning level when you started this routine, you can even use this week as a recovery to just do some light running.  After you feel recovered, go back to ramping it up again and build up to the volume achieved in week 5.  During your workouts, focus on improving your times on your sprints and maintaining your times through the workout.  If you are really doing your best max effort, don’t be surprised if your 100 meter times drop off from time to time or falls off towards the end of a hard workout from accumulated fatigue.  This is to be expected. What is important is that you do your best.  

THE FINAL BELL

Be sure to listen to your body!  Make sure after a couple cycles, no matter how you feel, to back off for a week or 2 from sprinting completely or even cycle into another workout for a little while before getting back to it.  Too much of anything at a high intensity can be bad for your body and your mind and make your workouts stale, at the very least, and at the worst lead to injury.  If you give this routine a try you will find out it is very time efficient and very beneficial in helping you achieve the performance and body you want!

4 PRINCIPLES FOR SUCCESS IN BOXING AND LIFE

Here is a list of the four key components for massive success. Out of all the sports out there Boxing is the closest to real life. You don't metaphorically get knocked down or have your back up against the ropes or are backed up into a corner and have to fight your way out. In Boxing that is the actual situation you can find yourself in! Therefore the lessons learned in the squared circle, the lessons I have learned there as well, can be perfectly applied to success at anything in life. I hope this article inspires you to make a change for the better and gives you not only the knowledge, but the drive to do it. Let's become a Champion. 

1. Extreme Preparation

In order to be a success in the extremely painful, challenging and rewarding sport of Boxing or Life you need extreme preparation.  Amateur Boxers train hours a day, week after week just to do six to nine minutes of work in a fight.  The ability to discipline yourself and put in the important and more often than not mundane work is the wall you must climb in order to raise your arms in victory.  

Many people who are not in the hustle of boxing or life, that live as spectators believe the stories the media sells of overnight successes.  And yes there are people who have better strategies and better mind sets that achieve what took one person 10 years and they do it in 1 year.  The difference is oftentimes the person that succeeds at something in one year eliminated all the unimportant things, broke down their life or their goal into the most essential parts and did only the things needed for success. They stayed disciplined, consistent and persistent in their actions.  

If you want to succeed in ring or in Life it doesn't matter what you do every now and then or what you do for a week or a month.  It's what you do year in and year out that compounds your skill and your ability, which in turn feeds your confidence so that you can push yourself harder, take larger risks and achieve higher success.  You are rewarded a Championship Belt only after you have practiced for years in private, away from the lights and away from all the glory.  Top Boxers and Top Achievers in all areas of life might receive millions of dollars for mere minutes of work, but what they are really being paid for is for their thousands of hours that provided no guarantee, no assurance they would ever receive any notoriety or reward, it required great faith that the work they were doing would reap what they sowed.

2.  Focus

Everyone knows when you lose focus in boxing or in life is when you can get caught and put on the canvas. This is very true and that's why you've heard it so much, but once you decide to commit to extreme preparation in order to achieve success in the Ring or in life, just being focused isn't enough.  Because what you focus on is what you get.  

When I was boxing I experienced this and all these lessons first hand.  I could always take a great punch before I had a career ending injury, but from one simple thought that I let invade my brain it changed everything.  After sparring I was getting a little pain behind my eyes and on the front of my forehead, this worried me and I began to have thoughts of "am I getting damaged?", "Is that my brain hurting?".  Once these thoughts got created in my mind they started to grow like weeds.  What the result was once they grew was me being hesitant about getting hit and honestly feeling like shots that hit me rocked me more and were harder than before.  That thought affected my aggression which was one of my best quality as a boxer and that lead me to getting hit more because I was only focused on not getting hit.

I came to my Father with the problem who was my coach and is also a PHD in neuroscience, he told me, "Son, it's your sinuses, you can't feel the brain really hurting.  As long as you aren't getting dizzy or weak and the pain is behind the eyes like that it's just your sinuses''.  Once I heard the truth of why I had some pain I was able to change my focus from, " I'm getting hurt" to "I'm going to give the hurt".  I have seen this as a coach.  One of my boxers sees a guy knock someone out in one round and therefore believes that boxer is a big puncher.  Then my boxer ends up fighting that boxer and my guy is overly hesitant, overly fearful and expects to get hit with shots that will feel like bricks.  That very same boxer has fought people who are knockout artists in the past, but they hadn’t seen that opponent fight before and therefore had no belief that they were going to be hit by big punches.  My boxer walked through that opponent’s punches to victory because he believed he could.

Same thing in Life, if you overly focus on the failures of the past and the possible failures of the future you will unknowingly steer yourself right into oncoming punches.  Now, obviously the complete opposite isn't true either.  If you know you have a hard opponent to fight in life or in the ring and ignore what needs to be done to properly prepare you are going to fail.  The ideal focus in the ring and in life is to see the problems for exactly what they are, not worse than they are, then focus on how to beat the problem.  You've heard, "Where there is a will there's a way." and if you focus on the way and are willing to constantly change your approach if necessary to make a way, you will achieve tremendous success.

3.  Have a Good Corner

In order to succeed in the ring and in life you've got to have a good corner.  In boxing a corner is comprised of your coach and possibly a cutman and one other person to help put the stool in and lend a hand.  Your Coach is your guide and in many ways your mentor.  They are the person that knows how to get you to where you want to be.  In the ring and in life we need someone like this.  Getting the right person or persons to give you advise, guide you and call you out on what you're ignoring is essential for success.  The right coach or mentor can save you decades of trial and error that could of been minimized with their guidance.  

You need the right people in your corner of life and Boxing to push you and inspire you.  It's been said that 95% of our success in life can be determined by who we spend our time with.  If you're a fighter and you spend your time with a bunch or losers you will adopt their psychology and actions and become, if even by just a little bit, a loser.  Small things if ignored over time compound upon each other and in the short term you don't notice them, but years down the road you will be shocked by their impact on your life.  

You have to have a good team even if it is just one other person.  A fighter in life and in the ring needs that outside perspective and that is often the most accurate.  You ever listen to a person talk about an issue they are having and you think, "That's an easy problem to solve just do this….. " ?  You were able to do that because you weren't in the middle of their battle and therefore you were able to have a better view of the whole picture and not just the issue that person feels is unchangeable. Looking at problems from only the inside often leads to overlooked answers.

4.  Be a Good Finisher

Every truly great Champion in boxing could last a whole fight and fight as hard, if not harder in the last round as they did in the first.  Almost anyone with a little time can show up for 60 secs in a fight or 60 days at a new endeavor and look like a champ.  The real deal people can start hard and finish hard.  Have you ever known someone who is guns blazing when they start a project, they talk and act like they are going to conquer the world with it, but after a short time the flame fizzles and they go back to doing the same dead end activities they were doing before?  I know so many people like this and I have been this person…  we all have.  But where true success in the ring and in life comes is not how you fight in the 1st round, but how you fight deep in the fight, in what is called the championship rounds, the 11th and 12th.  If you have any lacking in your preparation, this is where it can be seen.  If you have any lapses in proper focus, this is where it shows up and if you have been spending time with the wrong people and have the wrong corner, these rounds are the rounds that will do you in.   

Every Champion in the ring and in life felt the fatigue you can feel in the last rounds before your reach your goal.  When you feel the strain and pain of fatigue as you grind out the final rounds to achieve what ever it is you want, remind yourself that you are at that very moment on the frontier that all great people have been.  This frontier is where some get slaughtered and others find Gold.  Keep this ever present in your mind when you think of quitting because you are tired or everything seems to be going wrong, remember that you are now, finally, on the precipice of greatness!

The Final Bell

The greatest fighter in the history of combat sports is Sugar Ray Robinson.  At one time he was 127 wins and 1 loss and that one loss he avenged successfully 5 times.  He said, "A champion is someone who believes in themselves when nobody else does".   In order to do anything great you have to believe in you.  Very few people will believe in you when you start an endeavor and some will criticize you for even trying.  When they do that they are really only talking about their own failures and disappointments, about how they feel about themselves or they are trying to justify why they haven't done anything.  They aren't truly talking about you.  In order to make it through all the challenges of success it requires real confidence and belief that you are not only capable, but worthy.  

Now don't just read this and then go back to doing the same old same old that has brought you to where you are now.  Create an objective, make a plan to achieve it and begin taking massive action to get it and become a Champion in your own life.  

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win!"

  -Gandhi

4 REASONS WHY YOU’RE MISSING OUT

1) The Best Stress Reliever

No other exercise helps you to get rid of unwanted frustration or anger, that you may have accumulated during a stressful day at work, more than boxing.  Punching a bag or pad for 45 minutes to an hour insures that tension is released from your body.  Boxing teaches you to always stay relaxed – the most important trait of a boxer.  All the negative energy you may have built up during the day, can be expressed in a positive way with a great boxing workout.  It helps you overcome any fears, build deep confidence through learning punch techniques, have better accuracy, and a great defense.  After a boxing workout you feel a high that cannot be experienced with any other type of workout.  You feel phenomenal.

2) It’s Never Boring

At a high-quality boxing facility, a workout never gets mundane.  You are constantly learning and improving your punches, movement, and defensive techniques.  In the right cardio classes, there is a never-ending process of improvement and learning that challenges your body and mind.  Mitt work and bag routines force your brain to achieve greater neuroplasticity by challenging your ability to recall a combination sequence and think on the fly.  The amount of neural and physical activity that occurs during a high-quality boxing workout is second to none.  One more thing that's so great is that sometimes you forget how much you're physically exerting yourself in a workout because the mind is focused on recalling a combination and getting it right, and not focused on the burn of the workout.

3) Boxing Burns More Calories in Less Time

You will burn hundreds upon hundreds of calories, sometimes 900 to 1,000 calories depending on how hard you exert yourself.  Interval-style exercises with 30 seconds to 1 minute of recovery allows your body to work harder than it would in a steady-state cardio-style training session and it creates better all-around conditioning than a pure strength training workout.   An amazing benefit of boxing is the number of calories you burn after you leave the gym, an exercise phenomenon known is EPOC – excess post-exercise oxygen consumption.  It leaves you burning calories hours after you're done with your boxing workout; you don't get this benefit from pounding the pavement or running on a treadmill.

4) Boxing Is Better Than Running

While running is a great exercise and a great form of cardio, it can wreak havoc on your feet, ankles, knees, and hips, with oftentimes little that you can do about it to make it better.  For some people, it may be pretty hard to maintain a consistent running schedule during winter or bad weather.  Plus, running for close to an hour just be plain boring.  
In a boxing workout, you experience a limited amount of stress on the joints, especially on the legs. Though boxing still works the legs extremely effectively, you don’t get any shin splints, knee, or hip problems. Similarly, a coach will show you strategies for protecting your knuckles correctly.  Rather than just merely having your hand in a glove and wrapping the hand, there are many techniques that can keep your hands safe and still allow you to beat a bag as hard as you can!  Boxing provides constant excitement and challenges that make you grow physically and mentally!

THE FINAL BELL

If you have not tried a real quality boxing workout you need to do so as soon as possible to experience these awesome benefits that can only be found in this type of training.  Don't merely challenge your body in physical exercise, challenge your mind!  Constant challenge and learning is how you make your mind sharp and keep it sharper than your opponent’s, no matter what your life’s opponent is.  With a high-quality boxing class like the ones only offered at Keppner Boxing Training Center you will be able to truly Unleash Your Potential!