Kell Brook Training Routine

[SandaKicker]

For those who don't know Kell Brook he is a guy who held a version of the welterweight world championship in boxing.

He is scheduled to fight pound for pound talent Terence Crawford later this year.

He has been training with a team at Sheffield Hallam university for several years.

After working with the boxer the team at Sheffield Hallam put out this paper "strength and conditioning recommendations for professional boxing". You can read the paper here;

https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/wk/ssc/2016/00000038/00000003/art00010

Although it sits behind a paywall, youtube video going over some of the paper and the routine here;

 

[gspieler]

So, do you have an opinion on this routine? How about cliffs for those of us who aren't going to spend ~$50 just to critique a routine?

 

[SandaKicker]

Conditioning;

Weeks 12 - 9 out 30 seconds max sprints with 3 minutes 30 seconds passive recovery. 4 - 6 repetitions per session, 2 - 4 sessions per week.

Weeks 8 - 3 out 4 - 8 minutes at 85 - 90% max heart rate. 2 - 4 minutes passive recovery, 4 - 6 repetitions. 2 - 4 times a week for the first three weeks of this block and then 1 - 2 sessions per week for the final 3 weeks.

Weeks 2 - 0 20 seconds all out maximum effort, 10 seconds passive recovery, 4-8 repetitions, 1-2 sets, 5 minutes recovery between sets. 1-2 sessions per week.

Strength and power training;

Weeks 12 - 8 out strength focus 70 - 80% of one rep max 5 - 8 repetitions, 3 - 5 sets.

Weeks 8 - 4 out. Strength speed focus 80 - 90 % of one rep max, 3 - 5 reps. 4 - 6 sets.

Weeks 4 - 0 out. 50 - 65% of one rep max. 2 - 5 repetitions. 2 - 8 sets.

Key lifts - Lower body exercise (e.g. squat variation), Upper body pushing motion, Upper body pulling motion, Lower body unilateral exercise, trunk exercise and a punch specific exercise (e.g landmine punch or medicine ball throw).

They also recommended incorporating plyometrics and dynamic stretching.

Notes;

Although there is some contention in the scientific literature as to the energy demands of professional boxing, they cite a paper that says 77%, 19% and 4% of energy is derived from aerobic, phosphocreatine and anaerobic glycolysis energy pathways respectively in amateur boxing.

My thoughts;

There's a lot of emphasis on high intensity interval training. This training routine will be done in conjunction with boxing training, you could say that the sparring they do will likely also be more interval training at a fairly high intensity. It is normal in most sports to build an aerobic base before going into interval training. They start the training camp with it but it is aimed at a high level athlete. Their basis for the high intensity interval training is also weakly sourced, they base it off untrained people who got benefits from HIIT and endurance athletes who were doing 30% of their routine as HIIT.

I like their attitude to the strength and power training and also the incorporation of dynamic stretching and plyometrics. Skipping is a power endurance exercise that has long been used in boxing that they have done away with here, IMO skipping would be effective if coupled with plyometrics, plyo's are effective for improving the spring in your legs but doing some skipping rounds would increase your ability to do that for 12 rounds.

Getting hyper critical the reps are a bit low on the speed phase from weeks 4 out. I would rather do 8 reps of speed squats at 30% of max weight rather than 2 reps at 50%, by the third or fourth rep I think I'd just be getting into the swing of it and I've seen other routines by strength and conditioning pro's where they pick the rep number up at this point.

 

[thugpoet]

Thanks for the write up:

My response won't be as in-depth as yours, I hope I get points across.

Watching kell fight for a lot of his career he fades in fights. His fight with ggg is an example of this. His hand speed and technical skilled allowed him to hit ggg at will. However once he slowed ( maybe due to ggg) he was a sitting duck. He throws fast balls constantly. Lack of pacing is his biggest flaw imo.

This routine doesn't address this issue imo. While I appreciate a program for boxing, I would be more interested in a program for Kell Brook.

Off the top of my head:

Overall focus would me maximizing his ability to recover during bouts of explosiveness while teaching him to pace himself.


General conditioning: skipping rope, walking, and swimming, WRESTLING.

Strength training: rings training with squats and deadlifts

Specific conditioning: boxing based skill work,

Competitive training: 3 min rounds of sparring working towards a full 12 rounds per session

Rehab: massage, foam rolling, stretching, salt rooms, balance training, ice baths

I won't get into a schedule but these are the items I'd use to train Kell. Focusing on pacing, and volume vs intensity. Grappling is a key tool for this. Learning to control yourself while another human being is on top of you is perfect as a conditioning tool for boxing.

Is my program as sound in science ? Probably not but it's geared towards what I believe Kell needs to be successful.

 

[SandaKicker]

Watching kell fight for a lot of his career he fades in fights. His fight with ggg is an example of this. His hand speed and technical skilled allowed him to hit ggg at will. However once he slowed ( maybe due to ggg) he was a sitting duck. He throws fast balls constantly. Lack of pacing is his biggest flaw imo.

This routine doesn't address this issue imo. While I appreciate a program for boxing, I would be more interested in a program for Kell Brook.

I agree with your points about Brook's skillset.

I've seen people elsewhere on the forum say he was under powered which I found confusing, in my opinion he was rocking GGG worse than Canelo ever did over two fights (and obviously he moved up two weight divisions for the fight).

It's not 100% this was the training routine Brook followed but it's kind of a coincidence that these are the recommendations that the sport science team he was working with put out. So I think he probably followed a similar routine.

IMO Brook has the strength's and weaknesses you would expect from someone following this routine. His power is great but he lacks in stamina over 12 rounds.

What is unique about this paper/routine is that they make the argument that pro boxing predominantly uses the aerobic system for energy. Yet the way they go about training is through a lot of high intensity interval training. Usually it's people who argue that the predominant forms of energy are anaerobic that recommend a lot of intervals, they make an argument that intervals will improve the aerobic system as well but they don't cite any evidence in terms of long term effects in elite level athletes.

I think incorporating more steady state work or longer periods of intervals would help solve his stamina issues, doesn't matter what the form of exercise is whether or not it's running, swimming, whatever as long as he can get his heart rate up to about 70% of it's max for a decent length of time. Adhering to the actual routine and what he's doing between fights are also factors, as well as how easily he makes weight and the style he uses in the fights.

For me once you have said that the aerobic system is the primary energy system used, then you should probably use at least some of the methods that have historically been successful in sports that use that energy system as well such as 800m running or 200m swimming. To use a slightly non scientific analogy training for an aerobic event whilst doing mostly short intervals would be like training for bodybuilding whilst doing nothing but power exercises like one rep max tests, shot put throws and box jumps - the time under tension tends to limit the results that you get.

 

[DoomPatrol]

Conditioning;

Weeks 12 - 9 out 30 seconds max sprints with 3 minutes 30 seconds passive recovery. 4 - 6 repetitions per session, 2 - 4 sessions per week.

Weeks 8 - 3 out 4 - 8 minutes at 85 - 90% max heart rate. 2 - 4 minutes passive recovery, 4 - 6 repetitions. 2 - 4 times a week for the first three weeks of this block and then 1 - 2 sessions per week for the final 3 weeks.

Weeks 2 - 0 20 seconds all out maximum effort, 10 seconds passive recovery, 4-8 repetitions, 1-2 sets, 5 minutes recovery between sets. 1-2 sessions per week.

Strength and power training;

Weeks 12 - 8 out strength focus 70 - 80% of one rep max 5 - 8 repetitions, 3 - 5 sets.

Weeks 8 - 4 out. Strength speed focus 80 - 90 % of one rep max, 3 - 5 reps. 4 - 6 sets.

Weeks 4 - 0 out. 50 - 65% of one rep max. 2 - 5 repetitions. 2 - 8 sets.

Key lifts - Lower body exercise (e.g. squat variation), Upper body pushing motion, Upper body pulling motion, Lower body unilateral exercise, trunk exercise and a punch specific exercise (e.g landmine punch or medicine ball throw).

They also recommended incorporating plyometrics and dynamic stretching.

Notes;

Although there is some contention in the scientific literature as to the energy demands of professional boxing, they cite a paper that says 77%, 19% and 4% of energy is derived from aerobic, phosphocreatine and anaerobic glycolysis energy pathways respectively in amateur boxing.

My thoughts;

There's a lot of emphasis on high intensity interval training. This training routine will be done in conjunction with boxing training, you could say that the sparring they do will likely also be more interval training at a fairly high intensity. It is normal in most sports to build an aerobic base before going into interval training. They start the training camp with it but it is aimed at a high level athlete. Their basis for the high intensity interval training is also weakly sourced, they base it off untrained people who got benefits from HIIT and endurance athletes who were doing 30% of their routine as HIIT.

I like their attitude to the strength and power training and also the incorporation of dynamic stretching and plyometrics. Skipping is a power endurance exercise that has long been used in boxing that they have done away with here, IMO skipping would be effective if coupled with plyometrics, plyo's are effective for improving the spring in your legs but doing some skipping rounds would increase your ability to do that for 12 rounds.

Getting hyper critical the reps are a bit low on the speed phase from weeks 4 out. I would rather do 8 reps of speed squats at 30% of max weight rather than 2 reps at 50%, by the third or fourth rep I think I'd just be getting into the swing of it and I've seen other routines by strength and conditioning pro's where they pick the rep number up at this point.

Who is doing 3 to 5 reps for 4 to 6 sets at 90% of their 1RM?

 

[SandaKicker]

Who is doing 3 to 5 reps for 4 to 6 sets at 90% of their 1RM?

I've just double checked the paper, it says 80-90% of one rep max to be fair.

I am assuming that is too high a percentage of your one rep max?

 

[DoomPatrol]

I've just double checked the paper, it says 80-90% of one rep max to be fair.

I am assuming that is too high a percentage of your one rep max?

Just seems high to me. Maybe down at 80% I could see that, but a true 90% seems like a double or triple for most people. I know there's variation between people's rep/percentage scale, but if you're hitting 5 reps for 6 sets of anything, that shit either ain't 90% or you haven't been strength training.