Train Like A Professional Boxer – Inside The Daily Regimen Of A Champion

Working hard around the clock may bring you success in technical fields, but it will only result in injuries in boxing. Even professional boxers follow a planned routine that involves intense training, correct diet, and optimal sleep hours to recover the muscles.

While some compete in professional boxing as their passion, others do it just because they’re good at it. The undisputed light-heavyweight champion Artur Beterbiev recently revealed, ‘I’m not a fan of boxing; I only do it as my job.’ Although the statement left many in shock, it perfectly backed the fact that you don’t have to love something to be good at it. A perfect blend of discipline, hard work, and resilience is enough alongside talent to achieve success in boxing, just as Beterbiev has achieved.

Though the undefeated champion from Russia is a unique case, many professional boxers love their profession and follow a specialized training routine to prepare themselves for greatness. Almost every professional boxer has a personalized approach to training, which they follow without sacrificing the conventional training norms. They workout 3 to 5 hours a day, usually six days a week. Professional boxing training involves lots of bag work, strength training, and sparring, which are key in professional bouts. Some professional fighters also incorporate bodybuilding principles, including specific guidelines for how many sets per muscle group for hypertrophy to achieve that perfect blend of muscle mass and explosive power.

The Daily Routine of a Professional Boxer – Essential Training Blocks that Forge a Champion

A professional boxer’s training regimen is defined by exceptional levels of physical fitness, boxing skills, and mental toughness. As they train under guidance from professional coaches and gain experience inside the ring, technique and strategy become a part of their life and are honed each day of work. Let’s discuss the weekly routine of a professional boxer that you can follow to reach the levels legends like Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Robinson did.

Fundamental Training – Daily Grind Driven by Discipline

The ‘Greatest’ Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson used to start their day at 5:30 and 4:00 AM, respectively. Their routine started with stretching sessions, followed by continuous fundamental training drills to get their bodies in shape for the day’s training. This was a part of their daily lives, whether preparing for a fight or not. Here’s are the exercises a professional boxer’s fundamental training includes:

• Wake up early in the morning and start your day with stretching, followed by a sprint. While you can’t run 3 miles on your first day, make it a goal that you’ll achieve eventually.
• Running warms up your whole body and prepares it for the essential strength and training exercises. Start with jumping ropes for 10 to 20 minutes, followed by the following exercises:
  • Planks and core workouts.
  • Close grip bench press and dumbbell rows for upper body strength.
  • Trap bar deadlifts for overall power.
  • Box jumps and dumbbell squat jumps for explosive strength.
  • Ballistic medicine ball throws for explosiveness.
• Perform five three-minute rounds of shadowboxing with a 30 seconds break between each round.

Intense Training Sessions & Match Training

“I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘Don’t quit, suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.”

With an upcoming fight in your cards, you must train with full intent even if you hate it as much as Ali did. After performing the fundamental training exercises, your body will be pumped and ready to develop essential skills. Since you’re training for a match, you must develop a strategy based on your opponent’s known strengths and weaknesses. Coaches play an essential role in this as “great fighters are hallmarks of great coaches.”

A Coach’s Role in Strategizing Training and Fighter’s Development

Supervision is necessary in boxing and training without it may result in improper technique and serious injuries. A good coach helps train in proper form, understand the strengths and weaknesses of your opponent, and help strategize a game plan.

• As you train, your coach will find and correct mistakes with great attention to detail that you might ignore otherwise.
• You will watch any available videos of your opponent’s fights to understand their style and ring work. If there is no footage, you’ll record your own training footage, find loopholes in your technique, and try to fix them.
• Once the coach has analyzed your and the opponent’s strengths and weaknesses, he guides you in developing a solid training strategy and in-ring gameplan which would help you strategically overcome the loopholes in your technique and overcome the opponent’s greatest defenses on the day.

Intense Exercises that Forge Kings of the Ring

As a professional boxer, you must possess great movement speed, physical strength, and a technique that outsmarts others. The following intense training drills ensure you master all three:

• Most professional boxers start their sessions with weighted skipping rope exercises as they target the whole body.
• Perform five 3-minute rounds of shadowboxing with 30 seconds rest between rounds. This helps build focus and develop muscle memory for punches and combinations.
• Shadowboxing is immediately followed by six 3-minute rounds of heavy bag workout with a 30-second break between rounds.
• Once the body is trained to move freely, throw powerful punches, and endure damage, step inside the ring with a training partner and spar to practically implement what you’ve learned.
• Rest for a few minutes to cool down the body and start again with weighted skipping rope and speed bag circuit drills. This will help improve your overall movement and punching speed.
• Atop agility and power, you must be tough enough to endure the opponent’s punches without losing much stamina. For that, perform exercises like bicycle crunches, side planks, Russian twists, plank rows, and landline oblique twists to target the core muscles.

While these are some significant intense exercises you can include in your weekly training routine, some situations may also require calisthenic and bodyweight workouts.

Fueling the Body – Nutrition and Hydration

Recent studies suggest that boxing burns more calories per hour (800) than any other sport. This directly means that a professional boxer must consume a strict diet to keep their body healthy and in perfect condition to compete on the fight day. An ideal diet includes a blend of carbohydrates to fuel high-energy needs, lean proteins to fuel the high-energy needs, and healthy fats to help keep your organs healthy.

During fight camps, professional fighters are guided by experienced dietitians or nutritionists to ensure that your body is fueled correctly. While legends like ‘The Pacman’ Manny Pacquiao stayed disciplined with their diet, all time greats like Mike Tyson and Muhammad Ali were known to eat junk foods occasionally. It didn’t affect them much, considering the intensity of their training.

Importance of Rest and Recovery

Did you know the greatest boxers, including Floyd Mayweather and Roberto Duran, took Sundays off? This explains the importance of rest, as it brings you both physically and mentally to a stable state. Just as it is important to cool down between exercises to avoid exerting too much pressure on the body, taking days off is essential to avoid overtraining and injuring yourself.

Most professional boxers generally train 5 days a week, keeping the 6th day for light recovery and conditioning exercises, and the 7th day to refresh their mind and body through family time or healthy outings. Renowned bodybuilder Jared Feather emphasizes the importance of recovery and progressive overload—principles that boxers can integrate into their routines for long-term success.

The Final Drill – A Professional Boxer’s Daily Grind to Become Champion

Wise people learn from the experiences of others, so if you’re looking to become a professional boxer, choose your idols and follow their footsteps. As time changes, you can always personalize your training routines and exercises to cope with modern challenges. Instead of taking cold showers and massages every day to cool down your muscles, you can adorn a rash guard that aids in quickly recovering your muscles through their compression abilities. Boxing involves a high level of skill, strategy, and finesse beyond mere physical aggression, earning it the name ‘The Sweet Science.’

While consistent training, healthy diets, and ideal rest periods prepare your body for the big stage, only experience makes you a complete professional boxer. As you grow as a professional, you become best friends with your custom boxing gloves that represent your identity and enhance your performance. You have to stay motivated and grind through the tough hours at the gym, injuries, amateur fights, and defeats to eventually achieve the greatness you strive for.