I haven’t read the entire post…
…but 6’2" weighing 155 pounds and cutting down for fights?
I cannot picture a 6’2" frame that would thrive at that weight. Why don’t you trying putting on weight…
Unless you have T-Rex arms and tiny little legs and a really long torso making you that tall… I suggest moving up a couple of weight classes and seeing if you feel better.
[quote]zenontheterrible wrote:
The advice already given on this thread is pretty sound. You should eat more, and in my opinion you shouldn’t weight train on the same days, or the day before you do technique training. If you do weight train on the same day, it definitely shouldn’t be before your technique workouts. Since you said you have Friday, Saturday, Sunday off, i would recommend working out on Friday/saturday. Sunday still off.
If your main goal in life is to be an awesome kickboxer then you should follow fighting irish’s advice and stop weight training for now. and eat more.
If you want to continue to do kick boxing but also get bigger and stronger then workout friday/saturday, and eat like a wild starving animal. Since your only working out twice a week (and back to back days) It makes more sense to do a strength training routine that a BB style routine. Probably Lower body on fridays (two days to recover for mondays training). Upper body Saturdays (push and especially pull!).
Finally, as an example of how much more you should be eating at meals, i will compare your breakfast with how much I think you should be eating. Instead of one egg and toast, or a bowl of vector cereal - You should be eating 6 eggs and toast, 4 peices of bacon, and a bowl of vector cereal, and a litre of milk (3%). Every meal should be about this big - especially your meals after your workouts (or bigger). You should start gaining weight and feeling like you have alot more energy during your workouts, if you start gaining fat weight its simple just cut it back a bit and all your kickboxing workouts will easily shed the weight, but dont’ be worried about a little fat, its the sign your actually getting enough calories.
[/quote]
Agree on the general nutrition advice above (if not the composition) and the 1-2 distinction. OP is a teenager and should consume huge amounts of food if this active.
Gonna be restating a few things here as well as adding some of my own advice.
Eat more. Protein and Carbs. As a teenager you will burn through calories like it’s nothing. You should be getting at LEAST your body weight in protein. Because boxing is an endurance sport I recommend a high amount of carbs as well (oatmeal, bread, rice, potatoes, pastas (veggies DO NOT COUNT)). If you start to put on more weight than you like, just dial back the carbs a bit. (Sugars periodically throughout the day can help with energy too, but keep in mind that you will end up crashing and feeling worse after a while).
Foam rolling and other recovery techniques. This is especially helpful if your body physically hurts. Not sure how much this will help you with being tired, but the benefits of recovery can never be understated.
Sleep more. When I was your age I would sleep more than any person ever should. I’m 21 at the moment and I still can’t function with less than 10 hours of sleep. If you really need to, start taking short naps during the day.
On the aspect of weight training. Keep it simple and short. I recommend Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe or some other 5x5 program. You want to keep it simple and focus on compound lifts (Squat, bench, overhead press, deadlift, power cleans)(perform all of these explosively while maintaining good form). While maximal strength is not overly important for boxing, it will help increase power output. On top of that I would recommend specialized power training (medicine ball throws, sledgehammer swingings, plyopushups). These power exercises will teach your body to develop maximal force at the fastest rate possible. Any sort of throwing or plyometrics should be done for no more than 3-5 reps at a time, with sufficient rest periods in between. They will fatigue you even more so don’t go overboard.
A sample work out should go something like this:
Dynamic Warm-up
Medicine ball throws (from fighting stance) with 5lb med ball 5x3
Squat 5x5
Bench Press 3x5
Power Clean 5x3
This should take you no longer than an hour to an hour and a half and should only be done three days a week spaced apart from each other to allow for recovery. You are doing a lot of sport specific training on top of this so you need to keep it short.
Body part training for boxing is a poor idea because:
Lack of compound movements. Compound movements have been shown to cause a release of testosterone and growth hormone, as well as teach the body to work as a unit. This results in increased strength gains.
High volume. With all the other training you do for boxing, there is no way you can recovery. This could be a contributing factor as to why you are so tired all the time.
Higher reps. Body part splits, often pulled from bodybuilding routines, call for higher reps often to induce hypertrophy. You don’t need this. You get more than enough endurance work from your boxing training. When you are lifting you want to focus on lifting heavy for lower reps and maximal force output. Weight training is when you get STRONG, not when you condition for a fight. (Note that even low reps can produce hypertrophy. The only way to stop this is to watch how much you eat, but to be honest, people tend to perform better at a more natural bodyweight so let your body find it’s sweet spot.)
I heard Surge works wonders.
Keep overtraining, but take Surge? I’m planning on getting some myself.
Also, I’m pretty sure you will know if your overtraining or not. It’s not something to worry or think about.
overtraining=lack of food PERIOD.
[quote]kaisermetal wrote:
overtraining=lack of food PERIOD.[/quote]
That’s absolutely not true. It just isn’t.
Maybe at the age of 18 it’s true. But not for the rest of us mortals.
Uh, a lot to address on this thread… I’ll try to get to it while I’m supposed to be ‘working’ tomorrow lol.
I posted this somewhere else, thought it might be applicable. It echos a lot of the same sentiments already stated-
AWESOME POST XEN!!!
really good insight.
[quote]Xen Nova wrote:
Uh, a lot to address on this thread… I’ll try to get to it while I’m supposed to be ‘working’ tomorrow lol.
I posted this somewhere else, thought it might be applicable. It echos a lot of the same sentiments already stated-
[quote]
This is covered in depth by Mark Rippetoe in “Practical Programming for Strength Training”.
It varies for everyone, and every athlete. It depends on YOUR needs. For someone like an MMA athlete, or a Javelin thrower, or another sport that requires equal levels of technique work you don’t need to lift that often.
-LIFTING WEIGHTS IS JUST GENERAL PHYSICAL PREP!-
If your lifting takes away from your skill sessions in ANY WAY then you’re doing too much. Spending more time in your skill sessions will allow you to adapt primarily to your actual sport. Once those skills become ingrained performing the techniques will have very little impact on your CNS. All your training outside of your skill sessions is so that you can do MORE in your skill sessions. You increase your work capacity so that you can make your skill sessions more realistic and even more brutal. THAT is why you’re lifting, THAT is why you’re conditioning. Don’t get caught up in conditioning for conditioning sake… that makes you a crossfitter. Or lifting for lifting sake either… that makes you a body builder/p-lifter/o-lifter.
The reason you may feel “stronger” doing splits is that you’re better rested. For this reason it may be superior for such athletes to use a split. You can adjust better by feel if you didn’t use up as much of your recovery resources. sometimes the “split routine is easier to recover from” thing backfires because people abuse the shit out of it. “Oh i’m just doing upper body today” so they have 30 fucking exercises to complete. No dude. No. If you’re doing more than 4-5 exercises you’re dicking around or you’re a bodybuilder.
IMO, lifting heavy 2x a week is enough for most combat athletes to get achieve their goals. You can do 3 if you have great recovery. Push/Pull, or Upper/Lower, or just 2 full body days. However you want to arrange that. I sincerely don’t think you would need to go past 3 days of lifting per week. And that’s over most of your career… Of course if you’re just a recreational competitor then it’s whatever you want to do for fun, but if you’re training with a serious goal in mind then 2 is fine while you focus on the important shit (ie, actually fighting).
Eventually your body will need more stimulus to reach higher strength levels. This can be achieved by using more intensity (singles, doubles) , increasing volume, and eventually you may need to add an extra session or two. I’ve done a LOT of stupid shit and a LOT of stupid programs that looked good to me on paper… and what I realized is that there are an incredible amount of resources to exhaust with really basic shit before you need to get all whacky and crazy.
Everyone wants to do the P90x + Crossfit + Westside + Rossboxing program and mix this and that while they’re still training MMA 4-5x a week. We get in the gym and assume you need to use some bands and chains, and oh wait I need fatgripz, and I should do kroc rows instead of bent rows, explosive dick-tucks, and blah blah blah… It goes on forever. When in reality you might just need to spend a year putting 5lbs on the bar every week… Which is 260lbs by the way. That’s 305lbs in a year if you started with JUST the bar. It’s pretty easy to argue that if you’ve been lifting for a year and can’t put up 300 on all your lifts, you fucked up. In a year your weight training should be in maintenance mode because you’re probably plenty strong for combat sports already.
And as far as conditioning other than some long distance work and sprints. I’ve yet to see anything that is a worthy substitute for just actual sparring, padwork, bagwork, and live drilling.
As a sidenote:
I will add that I actually don’t believe in “overtraining” anymore. I think people just don’t have their priorities or goals clearly defined and therefore are unaware how to progress in a logical way.
Read this-
http://www.averagebroz.com/ABG/Q_%26_A/Entries/2010/5/28_Central_nervous_system.html
[/quote][/quote]
I agree with all of this.
As I get more and more accustomed to my boxing schedule, I’ve realized that much of this is true.
If you’re an athlete, you don’t need to lift more than twice a week. I’ve made the best progress I’ve ever made doing 5/3/1 with one main lift per session, twice a week - Monday and Friday - and boxing in between.
I’ve had to change my schedule because the upper body days were grinding me down too much for my skillwork, and it made a tremendous difference - the people who say that you can box or do MMA while doing heavy lifting are either superior athletes or are dogging it in one aspect. Lifting on Friday is possible because I’ve acclimated to boxing enough that even the hardest workouts don’t make me “sore” anymore.
And in conditioning, people underestimate the beating pads/sparring/bagwork put on you, and the importance of that endurance.
Excellent post Nova.
Really hits home with me. I just got back from a BJJ tourney in Bangkok and re-evaluated my goals as far as the sport and weight training are concerned. Everything in that post were things that hit me after I got owned by a guy 20lbs lighter than me via gassing.
Got a lot of that focus back now thankfully. You can’t serve two masters.
tips hat
FYI… GSP is a great striker. Not an amazing one. THIS is an amazing striker
[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
If you’re an athlete, you don’t need to lift more than twice a week. I’ve made the best progress I’ve ever made doing 5/3/1 with one main lift per session, twice a week - Monday and Friday - and boxing in between.
[/quote]
But there are four main lifts in 5/3/1, does that mean you’re only hitting every lift every-other week? Please clarify.
My schedule recently shifted, so I’ve been combining 5/3/1 workouts for a 2x a week and a 3x a week version when I can’t make it to the weight room 4x a week.
[quote]Xen Nova wrote:
tips hat
FYI… GSP is a great striker. Not an amazing one. THIS is an amazing striker
[/quote]
Nice!
Also for great strikers… look up Samart Payakaroon (my favorite nakmuay ever) and Saenchai Sor Kingstar
I could just say “eat more”, but you’re 16 and I wish someone told me all this…
Muscle size and punching power
I won’t say much. A lot of it’s been gone over. I will provide you this example. Joe Lauzon v Melvin Guilliard. Rashad said that Melvin benched 315 COLD for 10 reps (which I doubt… but still). Joe Lauzon, though I’m sure he’s stronger now, a couple years ago mentioned that he couldn’t even bench 135.
If you don’t know who they are, google it and enjoy your new levels of recovery as benching has about as much to do with fighting as your hair color.
Take this to heart:
So don’t be a cunt 
** Lifting**
Is that your plan for everyday?
Not a fan bruv. As mentioned you alone need to lift 2 MAYBE 3x per week. Most of your muscle gains will come from eating a metric ton of food everyday. I’ll go over nutrition next but All of your work in the evening I like. As a matter of fact, You can probably just lift on Friday and Sunday. Keep yourself extra fresh for your Thaiboxing. Two muscles per day isn’t very athletic, sounds like a bodybuilding program. And if you aren’t even pushing that hard then you’re just sapping your recovery capacity for no reason.
Without knowing your training history I’d say something like this would work cool…
Mon-Thu
AM:
M/W/F- Shadowbox 30min (straight through, not rounds) , Bagwork 30min (break it into rounds), Stretching 15min
Tu/Th- Shadowbox 30min, distance run or interval sprints. whichever you suck at most.
PM: Thaiboxing 2hrs, light Calisthenics, Skipping, Bagwork (1hr total)
Friday:
-Brief warmup-
Back Squat 5x5
Push Press (3x5) + Weighted Chin (3x8) (superset)
1 arm Snatches (5x3) + Squat jumps (5x5)
Sunday:
-Brief warmup-
Speed DL 10x1
Front Squat 5x5
Incline Press (3x5)+ Bent Rows (3x8)
I kinda posted that^ for everyone else…Truth is that if you’re still doing bodypart splits then this might actually be too much for you right now. And again I’d emphasize that you get the book “starting strenghth” (or just google it, you can kinda put the program together from what’s on the web already).
A word on speed DL, use 70-80% of your max deadlift, RIP IT OFF THE FLOOR, SQUEEZE YOUR GLUTES. Set your stopwatch for 10min, and do a pull on every minute mark. If you’re in good shape do it every 30seconds.
Nutrition
I say this with love: Basically your nutrition sucks
My food log for last monday just so you get an idea how much you should be eating… I’m not even trying to put on muscle, I just have a large workload that I have to eat to ensure I don’t turn into nicole richie.
I can hear some people bitching already- “wow that’s a lot” or “I go to school I don’t have time for that”. Look if I could go back in time I’d beat the shit out of myself for not lifting better and eating more at your age. My development would be so far along I have no idea where I’d be. Definitely not typing to you right now So don’t make excuses. Excuses are for people that don’t want anything badly enough. Excuses are for fucking normal people. And you are not in the pursuit of normal. So figure it out. If you can’t find a way to get in the right nutrition then you better seriously decide what it is you want. Because if you say, “I can’t do that” then obviously you don’t want to be a champion badly enough… Go join a crossfit and dick around. Everyone one of us here would quite literally KILL to be able to go back to 16 with what we know now. There is not one successful person on the planet that did not do some shit they REALLY didn’t want to. Horrible person to use as an example (though he is a success), I heard Pdiddy say something once on a reality show…“I wake up everyday and have to do a whole bunch of shit I’d rather not”. And he’s worth like 500-600million yet he STILL has to hustle.
As stated earlier: Don’t be a cunt.
I do not say this to disparage you, but rather to motivate you. You are in the perfect place in life to achieve something few ever get the chance for. Take advantage of it.
I’d advise you also to read the following:
Yup the best strikers right now are in the “It’s Showtime” Promotion. European League. Check them out. Beastly! You don’t see them move back very often lol.
[quote]Spartiates wrote:
[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote: I’ve made the best progress I’ve ever made doing 5/3/1 with one main lift per session, twice a week
[/quote]
But there are four main lifts in 5/3/1, does that mean you’re only hitting every lift every-other week? Please clarify.
[/quote]
Hope you don’t mind if i answer this but I think he’s doing something like this…This is recommend per J.Wendlers instructions.
Week ONE:
Day 1-
Bench 5/3/1
Assistance work
assistance work
abs
day 2-
Squat 531
Assistance work
assistance work
abs
Week TWO:
Day 1-
Overhead Press 531
Assistance work
assistance work
abs
Day 2-
Deadlift 531
Assistance work
assistance work
abs
… Makes your 531 cycle 6wks long but The advantage is that you don’t have to deload. I love this idea. Get in get out make sure you’re getting stronger.
[quote]Xen Nova wrote:
Hope you don’t mind if i answer this but I think he’s doing something like this…This is recommend per J.Wendlers instructions.
Week ONE:
Day 1-
Bench 5/3/1
Assistance work
assistance work
abs
day 2-
Squat 531
Assistance work
assistance work
abs
Week TWO:
Day 1-
Overhead Press 531
Assistance work
assistance work
abs
Day 2-
Deadlift 531
Assistance work
assistance work
abs
… Makes your 531 cycle 6wks long but The advantage is that you don’t have to deload. I love this idea. Get in get out make sure you’re getting stronger. [/quote]
I see. Thanks. I’m not sure I’m ready to completely change my cycle since this work situation is pretty temporary, but if I get to where it’s only twice a week I can make the weight room, this is what I’ll do.
I like the get in get out. At this point all my lifting days (when I’m doing them 4x a week) I’m in there for about a half-hour max. I’m doing very little accessory work.
My problem is trying to figure out bodyweight. I can do a comfortable cut over a couple weeks from a walk-around weight of 190ish to make 170 (have gone as low as 165 from that weight just fine), then be about 185 for the fight. But with everything I do, and if I listen to body and eat what it wants me to eat, I think I naturally want to be between 200 and 205. But at 5’11 I feel like I’m too small be be a competitive 185er (MMA). Just venting. Getting ready for a fight at 170 now (kickboxing), and it’s on the mind.
yea I agree at 5’11, 185 is on the smaller side. Especially for kickboxing. Tend to be a lot of tall lanky guys that enjoy exploiting that advantage. I’m an inch smaller than you and I could probably make 145 if I was better at cutting.
The cool thing about 531 is that 4x a week is a good ‘off season’ schedule and 2x/wk is great to maintain (if not increase considerably) your strength when you have a fight scheduled. Plus you can implement that same change with little notice (2 wks). So if you’re on the 4 wk program you can boom jump right into 2x/wk. If you’re on the 2 week program wait another week (to get your other 2 lifts in) and you can jump right back into 4x week.
Ok guys… finally get to leave the office!
SPRINTS OUT THE FUCKING DOOR
Xen Nova,
Fantastic to have you back.
If I could add a small 2 cents to the wealth Xen just posted.
This is for the OP and anyone who is still involved in school.
Learn to bench, squat, deadlift, and if possible power clean in a way that does not injure you. The reason I plugged Starting Strength and said to get the DVD’s and book as opposed to merely finding the program/loading parameters is that I think the commercial product does an excellant job of teaching how to perform the lifts in a way that won’t lead to long term problems down the road.
It gets written a lot on this board that fighters/grapplers/boxers/judo players don’t “need” to bench. That is not entirely true. If you are 16 and your football/hockey/wrestling coach is having you bench than I guess you are going to “need” to do it. Additionally, if you are competing in scholastic athletics the bench press is often used as a measuring stick. Probably mistakenly, but it is. This means that being good at that lift in particular has benefits. A lot of wrestlers I have talked to said the power clean was stressed as well. This means that a young athlete is going to be performing these lifts. I would love for all coaches to be teaching the mechanics of lifting, but I would also love to be taller and better looking.
Also, at 16 the desire for beach muscles and the need to “show off” means that I would expect some level of benching to happen. Learn to do these lifts in a way so they build you up instead of beat you up. When you are a teenager it is unlikely that you will notice any damage you are doing, but it is real common as you age that you find out the true costs of training wrong.
Regards,
Robert A
[quote]Xen Nova wrote:
Hope you don’t mind if i answer this but I think he’s doing something like this…This is recommend per J.Wendlers instructions.
Week ONE:
Day 1-
Bench 5/3/1
Assistance work
assistance work
abs
day 2-
Squat 531
Assistance work
assistance work
abs
Week TWO:
Day 1-
Overhead Press 531
Assistance work
assistance work
abs
Day 2-
Deadlift 531
Assistance work
assistance work
abs
… Makes your 531 cycle 6wks long but The advantage is that you don’t have to deload. I love this idea. Get in get out make sure you’re getting stronger. [/quote]
That’s pretty much it, except that I do not bench - it simply destroys my shoulders and I’ve got no fuckin reason to be bothered with it anymore. I’m not trying to impress anyone with my numbers and it just hurts… so it’s been about a year since I even went near a barbell bench press.
In its stead, I’ve inserted bent over rows, and that seems to give me a pretty fair balance.
Because I box three days a week, typically my lifting schedule includes mostly back work - bentover rows, dumbbell rows, band pull aparts, and pullups.
The only pressing I would say that I do is the 5/3/1 military press, and then sets of dumbbell bench press on my rowing day. I also tend to do shitloads of pushups, either because i work them in at the end of a workout or because my boxing coach makes me.
Typically, my schedule is
Monday - 5/3/1 lower body
Tuesday - boxing
Wednesday - boxing
Thursday - boxing
Friday 5/3/1 upper body
Saturday and Sunday I either take off or just do shadowboxing for six or 10 rounds on one of the days. At least one day I rest totally.
I used to lift on Monday and Tuesday and then box the rest of the week, but I found that upper body lifting on Monday devastated my boxing ability, namely, my shoulder endurance. Since I’ve changed it around, my shoulders have been going strong in rounds 12-15, and not fading or gassing early like they had been.
Like Xen said - I don’t deload at the end, I just start up a new cycle and move on. Sometimes I’m feeling beat up and shot, but I tend to get sick when I’m really overtraining/hitting a wall, so I know when to scale back.
Overtraining has been very real for me - sometimes, I lift hard as fuck on those two days, and then push myself to 14 or 15 rounds three days in a row, and I push that for two or three weeks and I feel awesome and I’m a fuckin killer! And then the next week, I simply lose EVERYTHING. My punches lose speed and power, I gas after my warmup of jumping rope and shadowboxing, my shoulders are killing me, I’m sweating much heavier, and I want to fucking burn down the gym.
I scale back for a week, and I start to come out of it. Maybe it’s just the way I am, but remember, there’s a reason why fighters “go to camp” and don’t just train train train all year long - it will burn you out and make you hate life.
My log is here.
[quote]Robert A wrote:
Also, at 16 the desire for beach muscles and the need to “show off” means that I would expect some level of benching to happen. Learn to do these lifts in a way so they build you up instead of beat you up. When you are a teenager it is unlikely that you will notice any damage you are doing, but it is real common as you age that you find out the true costs of training wrong.
Regards,
Robert A
[/quote]
I am absolutely convinced that years of being taught to bench press wrong by my high school football coach has led directly to all of the shoulder problems I now experience. If I could go back in time, I would never, ever touch the barbell bench press. Ever.
[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
[quote]Robert A wrote:
Also, at 16 the desire for beach muscles and the need to “show off” means that I would expect some level of benching to happen. Learn to do these lifts in a way so they build you up instead of beat you up. When you are a teenager it is unlikely that you will notice any damage you are doing, but it is real common as you age that you find out the true costs of training wrong.
Regards,
Robert A
[/quote]
I am absolutely convinced that years of being taught to bench press wrong by my high school football coach has led directly to all of the shoulder problems I now experience. If I could go back in time, I would never, ever touch the barbell bench press. Ever.
[/quote]
Well sure, knowing what you know now. Of course if you could do that you would be writing from your mansion payed for with sports betting. Also that would mean that a high school FightinIrish may have got booted off the football team because the coach/team BENCHES.
Instead I am going with suggestion/plea from on my knees that kids learn to do the lifts properly. That way when the football players grow up and realize that boxing/fighting is a far greater sport than football, and it will stay that way until the DAMN VIKINGS STOP SHOOTING THEMSELVES IN THE FOOT WITH HORRIBLE MANAGEMENT AND BLOWN PLAYS, they can do it with two shoulders.
Also, OP if you are following this listen to Xen and Irish. If you cannot see clear to do that, then at least head my advice.
Regards,
Robert A