Boxing And Weight Lifting – The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly
Nothing screams boxing more than Rocky Balboa jogging upstairs in a grey tracksuit. We see lots of skipping, sparring, and jumping in his training montage but not much weight lifting. Do boxers not lift weights, or has a critical part of boxing been missed in the movie?
The answer isn’t as black and white because it depends on your definition of lifting, your weight group, and your boxing style. However, the core can be summarized as this:
Boxers should weight train for overall fitness and injury prevention; however, it isn’t an effective training method to improve boxing skill and technique. It’s imperative to use modern weight-lifting workouts; otherwise, you risk being slower in the ring.
Is Weight Lifting Good For Boxers
Traditional boxing trainers say to avoid weight lifting. They aren’t right, but they aren’t wrong. They say this as their idea of weight lifting is what’s currently known as bodybuilding – bulky, broad, and heavy athletes.
Bodybuilding is a complete no-no for boxing, but what about casual weight lifting?
Weight training is advantageous for boxers when it’s tailored to enhance boxing technique. For example, being lighter on their toes, improving fitness, or increasing explosiveness. This increases their speed and agility; making them better at striking and dodging punches.
Every boxer has different needs when it comes to lifting; to understand the balance, we’ve added this graph.
The key is to train for speed by minimizing weight and maximizing intensity. This massively improves your boxing ability as you’re way quicker to react during a fight. Here’s why:
Speed training uses fast twitch muscles. This makes them more explosive but also fastens neuron response links in your brain. As a result, you’re more sharp during head movement or punching through an open guard.
A good example is shadowboxing with dumbbells. Using a low force (weight), but high velocity quickens your punch but won’t make you bulky.
An additional benefit of weight lifting is it helps prevent boxers from getting injured. This is because it conditions their ligaments, cartilage, and tendons to withstand high amounts of isolated pressure. Therefore, they become more resilient to punches or being in awkward defensive positions.
Summary: So yes, the right kind of weight training is very beneficial to boxers – it makes them faster, tougher, and think faster.
Is Bodybuilding Bad For Boxers
We’ve established that light and fast weight lifting helps boxing ability. So why is bodybuilding so detrimental for boxers?
Bodybuilding or powerlifting works against you in the ring. Traditional high-weight, low-repetition exercise makes boxers too stiff to keep up with the intensity of a fight. For example, their mobility is reduced, slower to move around their opponent, and the excess mass rapidly becomes exhausting to carry.
Bodybuilding focuses on muscle size and aesthetics – which doesn’t fit the needs of a good boxer. Here are a few comparisons:
- Bodybuilders exercise with slow reps to optimize their ‘time under tension‘. This increases muscle hypertrophy to make them bigger. However, this enhances slow twitch muscle fibers – which reduces the boxer’s speed and agility.
- Bodybuilders isolate muscles to maximize contraction. On the other hand, boxing is a full-body workout, so they want to do as many compound exercises as possible.
- Bodybuilders work towards absolute strength, but boxers want high relative strength. While bodybuilders achieve this through a high-calorie intake and muscle-building training, boxers aim to maximize their strength but be as light as possible.
- Boxers must have immense endurance to get through numerous rounds of fighting, so incorporate a lot of long-distance running, skipping, and HITT exercises into their training camp. However, bodybuilders tend to stay away from cardiovascular exercises.
To conclude, bodybuilding isn’t an effective training method for boxers.
Does Lifting Weights Increase Punching Power
If you want to punch harder, one of the first solutions we think of is to hit the gym and lift weights – but exactly how effective is this method?
Unfortunately, lifting weights won’t guarantee you a harder punch. Punching power comes from the legs, core, and momentum; so the added muscle won’t necessarily translate into more power – in fact, in some cases, it slows you down.
You need hours of practice to develop the striking technique and skill for it to work in your favor. For example:
- If you’re a beginner hoping to get a knock-out punch, no amount of weight training will grant you this. Even if you can lift 10x the amount you previously could, you must learn the details of a punch motion, swing, direction, etc, before it’s effective.
- Let’s say you’ve been professionally boxing for five years – the chances are you know the technique inside out. In this case, certain types of weight training will strengthen your punch, as you should be familiar with directing your strength into punching power.
Once again, this is dependent on the ‘lifting‘ exercises you do. It must be the kind that improves speed, power, and agility – rather than size, looks, and absolute strength.
The power of a boxer’s punch relies on how good it ‘snaps‘ i.e. hitting as hard as possible in the shortest amount of time. Plus, the extent of it’s damage is also determined by where you punch. So, if you want to increase punching power, focus on improving your snapping motion and accuracy.
The Bottom Line: Focus on improving your technique to increase punching power, before incoporating weight training.
Can You Weight Train And Box On The Same Day
Weight lifting in the A.M. and boxing in the P.M. anyone? Sounds tough, but is it effective?
Yes, you can have weight training and boxing sessions on the same day – moderately exercising both is totally safe and improves your fitness. However, just because you can doesn’t mean you should; there are more effective training drills that benefit your boxing ability more.
Why do we say you can, but you shouldn’t?
Well, beginners benefit from spending the bulk of their time boxing rather than lifting weights. For example, someone who boxes 9 hours a week is way more likely to be a better boxer than someone boxing 4 and lifting weights 3 hours a week.
So, while it’s safe to do so, you’re better off having two boxing sessions on the same day!
Nevertheless, if you choose to lift weight and box on the same day, try to avoid doing it consecutively. Otherwise, you could exhaust your body, which affects your sparring – making it a lot more likely to get punched in the face! Your body always tells you what it needs – all you have to do is listen…
Beginners should only weight train once a week; the rest of their sessions should consist of boxing drills and sparring. Professionals, on the other hand, can train a little bit more frequently – especially if they’re trying to make weight for a fight.
To close, it’s fine weight training and boxing in the same day, but this won’t gurantee to make you a better boxer.
Best Weight Lifting Exercises For Boxing
Before we talk specifics, it’s imperative to know that not all weight lifting is good for boxing, but it isn’t all bad either. Below is a checklist of what weight lifting should consist of for boxers:
- Incorporate joint strength and injury prevention.
- Aim to improve power, speed, and explosiveness.
- Involve agility and a change of direction.
- Hit the anaerobic threshold.
- Use familiar movements or boxing drills.
In addition to this, you should also remember the weight class you fight in. Let’s bring this graph back again:
As mentioned, most weight classes target their exercises near the far right side of the graph – low force and high velocity.
However, heavy weights incorporate a slightly different style of training. They’re closer to the strength-speed part of the graph. This is because they need to keep their agility, but at the same time, want to have enough strength to knock out their opponent.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the most rewarding weight-lifting exercises for boxers.
Landmine Punches
Landmine punches are a perfect example of incorporating weight lifting into a boxing drill. It helps mimic a high jab, but there is the added resistance (up to 90lb). In addition, it’s a compound movement; helping to build your upper body strength – rather than an isolated muscle group.
Don’t overload it too much; remember, it’s meant to be a fast and snappy movement.
Weighted Shadown Punches
Holding a pair of light dumbbells while shadow boxing is an excellent way to accelerate your punches and build endurance in your deltoids; stopping you from dropping your guard in a ring.
There are numerous ways to incorporate these into your workout, such as training until failure, using hooks only, or keeping stationary.
Weighted Jump Rope
All boxers jump rope to stay bouncy throughout the fight. By adding weight to the skipping rope, not only do you improve your calves‘ explosiveness, but you also strengthen your deltoids.
If you find this difficult, use a normal skipping rope, but wear ankle weights. This takes the tension away from your deltoids and puts it on your legs (mostly your calves, quadriceps, glutes, and hamstring.)
Whichever you choose, it’s a great way to incorporate a full-body strength workout and cardio at the same time.
Russian Twists
Russian twists are one of the best exercises to strengthen your core and obliques. This helps keep you stable and balanced during a fight; in addition, it burns lots of calories; improving your strength–to-weight ratio.
Parachute Sprints
We were contemplating whether or not this is a ‘weight’ training exercise. But since you use air resistance against you, we decided to include it!
Parachute Sprints are a good way for boxers to build explosiveness in their legs, as well as improve their endurance. This helps your footwork when counter-attacking your opponent, especially when you drive into them.
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