hi guys, i box since 3 years and dont plan to ever compete, still i enjoy being a decent sparring partner for our boxers at the gym. i would like to start again some heavy lifting partly for fun and partly to gain some quality weight, i know this will affect my boxing and would like to minimize it. i cant ask my master as in my gym youd have more simpathy confessing to a murder than to hitting the weights.. anyway some time ago i tried to ease back in the 3 big but stopped as in a matter of weeks i noticed a "bound" feeling that wouldnt allow me to throw well. especially bench press seemed to impair my fluency badly. what kind of stretching sessions would ease this? would moving to single dumbell press help? please guys help me out!
There have been a number of threads on this. Do some searching. In the meantime, I'll try to reiterate a little of what I've said before. 1 - You want to develop athletic ability through weight training. Therefore, focus on moving a big weight through a big range of motion as quickly as possible. Exercises like snatch, cleans, push press, squats, deadlifts, bent over rows and the dozens of barbell and dumbbell olympic lift variants are great for this. Again, big weight, big range of motion and fast. Try to make all of your lifting explosive or ballistic. 2 - The slow feeling. After hitting the weights hard, your muscles will grow. While they are healing up, they will be a bit sore and tight. This causes people to feel sluggish because they're muscles don't respond normally while they are healing. To help alleviate this, limit the number of lifting sessions per week. 2 full body days is pretty common advice around here. Its a good place to start until you are a more experienced lifter. 3 - You have to train your striking/grappling/whatever hard when you are lifting. If you train your boxing half assed because you are sore, you will get half assed results. You might even regress. If you want to get bigger/stronger and stay sharp in the ring you have to train those boxing skills very hard, maybe harder than before the lifting. Things most idiot coaches and morons from the heavyweight forum will says: "That huge powerlifter can't throw hands like Chuck Liddell. It must be because he's huge and lifts weights all the time." ^^ The above example is used to stop people from lifting and training MMA together. It's a retarded example perpetrated by morons who have never spend any time under a bar in their entire lives. The mistake they make is that they assume the huge powerlifting can't throw hands like Chuck because all the lifting makes him slow. That is incorrect. The huge powerlifter can't throw hands like Chuck because he doesn't train to throw hands like Chuck and he doesn't have the natural abilities of Chuck. Lift properly and train your striking hard and you can have both.
Thx for the fast reply, i've read many times olympic lifts are great for a number of reasons but problem is ive never attempted one.. all what ive done are the regular squats, dead, rows, presses, chins etc. so i would go for something like a powerlifting routine, but still ive this strong feeling this will damage my boxing badly.. i know after working out my muscles are supposed to be sore and boxing wouldnt be a good idea but what i meant is after just a month or so of lifting (should i say benching?) my chest feels like bound (even when muscles are rested) and my punching like if i punched through a resistance instead of being smooth. may it be benching not such a good motion range lift? single dumbell press is better in this regard?
Just playing devils advocate Why have you ruled out fighting completely? Has the gym not 'suggested' you fight atleast once to see how you get on with it?
well i started boxing only to learn some effective self defence as i entered the gym for the first time just two days after being beat up by a worthless punk.. it felt a bit of an humiliation to show everyone why i was there but at the same time it worked for me as otherwise i would have never done it. the master asked me if i wanted to try but even though at one point it appeared really intriguing to me the guys who fight must train 5-6 times a week and i never had that much will. anyway he didnt really pushed me he has a lot of boxers to work on and is fine with it as long as i train seriously and spar. so Ian what do you think about topic? i have this big feeling there's something very wrong in benchpressing for boxers.. heeeeelp please :icon_chee
Couldn't help you with that mate, I don't do bench press, haven't done for many many years. Lots of ohp pressing, weighted dips and the normal dl and dl variance (and squats of course). If you're training seriously and have some time in the ring you might find your first fight 'easier' tnen you think. Plus, don't call someone in a boxing gym 'master'. I call our head trainer mr taylor sir, but thats because it annoys him
Your question has already been answered. It doesn't really matter what lift you are talking about. If you move a big weight through a big ROM quickly and train your boxing hard you'll get stronger and keep your striking ability.
If you find that benches give you a tight chest, drop them and do push presses or jerks instead. Or stretch more and do more shoulder mobility work. Ross Enamait and Joe DeFranco (in a boxing/MMA routine posted somewhere on his site) both have bench presses of some sort in their strength routines, so eliminating benches is apparently not necessary.
Stated before, but worth repeatin': When I started liftin', I did the typical wannabe bodybuilder slow motion liftin'. Then I realized that I was slower when I was sparrin'. Changed so I did the concentric portion of the lift as fast as possible, and guess what, I got my speed back and more.
thanks everybody for the replies ill try for some weeks and if i still find benchpress bothers me ill switch to dips. and ill make sure to perform all the lifts explosively and stretch. eheh youre right Ian in english master just doenst sound right for a boxing trainer, but in italian most of them still want to be called like that. as for fighting i think i let my moment elapse.. but really in my gym i can see such a big difference especially in speed and conditioning between fighters and people just training
Just in case you missed it Urban made a massive post about how he has combined lifting and conditioning for fighters. You should definitely check it out covers a lot of issues. http://www.sherdog.net/forums/showthread.php?t=746279
Never seen the use of bench presses in performance for sport. I can only see them as a "vanity" exercise. Work the same muscles only more functionally and efficiently by doing weighted push-ups.
haha To o/p why train for 3 years and not compete? I have been training for 6 months and I am itching to compete I mean you get your head beat in in sparring so you still get brain damage..... might as well get in the ring just my opinion I know there may be other factors i'm just curious why you don't want to compete.
