The King's 3-month Crunch. (Boxing)

[Sinister]

So as many people up here who interact with me know in March of 2006 I plan to head out to Vegas to throw my hand-in at beginning a Pro Career in Boxing. I been busting ass all year this year and some of last year to get into the best conditioning I've ever been in. Lately I been REALLY noticing the results. This is a good sign for me because being older it's tough to just be beginning in a World like Boxing. So, that being said I'm giving myself from now until the third week of March to get all the way down to a nicely sliced 154lbs, which is the weight division I will be fighting in. And just for shits and giggles, I thought I'd log it beginning today, the day after my Birthday.

Age: 27
Height: 5'10"
Weight: 162lbs.
BF%: 11

Goals:

To reach 154lbs (which is what I weighed when I was like 9 or 10 years-old), but be cut, establish the textbook Boxer build, defined arms, 6-pack, developed shoulders, strong legs, etc. To have INSANE, cyborg-like stamina. To have BAFFLING movement and accuracy to couple with my natrually apt punching power.

Gear:

75lb heavybag, double-end bag, speed-bag, 1 set of Pro Style 16oz Gloves, 1 weighted jump-rope, 1 ab-wheel, 1 set of 20lb dumbbells (Boxers competing in lighter weight-classes don't much lift weights), 1 set of push-up bars (in my routine you'll see why I use these), 1 road lol, 1 elliptical bike, 1 set of focus mitts, 1 training partner twice my size (260lbs roughly) three days per week.

 

[Sinister]

12/23/05


15 minutes mixed-stretching. I do a lot of plyometric stretches here like you see Boxers do warming up for fights. I do some extensive leg-stretching as well like splits, v-sit-and-reach, and a little Wu Shu jibengong stuff because I believe strong legs help in the ring a lot.

3 minute rope-skip to warm-up. Mixing jump-rope sprints in as well.

7.64 mile run.

Heavy Bag Rounds 101 (http://www.sherdog.net/forums/showthread.php?t=270665)

Only went to round 5 though.

4 rounds double-end bag (here is my double-end routine for future reference):

The Double-end bag - My double-end bag has dual purposes. One is obviously learning to slip punches, but I also use it to train accuracy at hitting a moving target by varying what punches I hit it with and at what pace. But there's varying exercises you can do to use it to help you know how to move in and not be afraid of defending a counter. The first round I do on the double-end bag is just punch, slip slip, punch, slip slip, puch, circle, punch punch, slip circle, etc. Slower-paced, and working mostly on slipping and footwork. Second round on the bag I switch it up. I throw this combination drill repeatedly:

jab, jab, jab, jab, cross, jab, cross, jab

Getting faster and faster with it as time goes on. I also circle while I throw this. Why? So I can be comfortable throwing an extensive combination at full-speed, on a moving taget, going either backward or foreward. I do my best not to stop for the entire 3 minutes, some days I do some I don't. What makes this drill hard is the circling part. Because as you circle the double-end bag will start to respond all jerky and whatnot. Plus, this drill will help you understand that a jab has to CONTROL where your opponent is. The four jabs you'll find have a lot of effect on whether or not your crosses accomplish anything.

My third round on the double-end is pretty odd as well. What I do is I throw a punch. Let's just say my jab. Now the bag comes RIGHT back, correct? What I do is I jab, and when by the time the bag comes back I have my arm up to keep it from popping me in the face, glove near the ear. It'll bounce back off your glove when you do this, when it retracts from my deflect I throw a counter-cross. This emulates countering a counter. And you have to be wicked accurate to do this with any kind of rythm, timing, or consistency. Especially because for all basic purposes your blind as to where the bag is on the second retract. Your glove being up to deflect may block you from seeing it for a second. I do the same thing with the cross. Throw the cross, pull the hand tight to deflect the bag's counter-punch, then when it bounces off from being deflected, boom, hook.

Fourth round on the double-end bag is spent throwing hooks off the jab, cross, and 1-2 combo. Because a lot of guys have a good 1-2 and really don't know what punch to follow it up with. A good hook or uppercut will do the trick (duh). But, they hesitate because they think they won't land the hook, that they'll get countered. Hooking on the double-end will send it all over the place and really stress your accuracy. And you might get popped once or twice in training up the KO punch, so your confidence in eating a punch to land the KO should be fine.

7 minutes continuous speed-bag (my speed-bag is on a free-moving swivel ball as well. Meaning when you hit it, if you don't hit it right it moves in circles and fucks you up. Some guys now use ones that just go back and forth, not full-range, which I feel is cheating).

10 pull-ups (I do them on the rafters in my little gym-room)

20 push-ups, 10 with the bars facing horizontal to my view, 10 with them facing vertical to my view.

Tidbits: I carry a grip-strengthener with me, which I must have squeezed about a thousand times at work. I just do it mainly to keep from hurting people. lol I also subconsciously Shadowbox every chance I get.

 

[graedy]

Push up bars are nice. If i do normal pushups i get a numb right shoulder afterwards (it kind of hardens up). But if i use the pushup bars ---> no problem. The increased ROM make this exercise a whole anohter story than normal push ups. You can also try reverse grip push ups on the bars (palms facing out). If you go all the way down, they are pretty hard on the region arround your neck.
Well, im lookin forward to see more of your work outs. Its interesting to see someone work to go Pro.

 

[Sinister]

Push up bars are nice. If i do normal pushups i get a numb right shoulder afterwards (it kind of hardens up). But if i use the pushup bars ---> no problem. The increased ROM make this exercise a whole anohter story than normal push ups. You can also try reverse grip push ups on the bars (palms facing out). If you go all the way down, they are pretty hard on the region arround your neck.
Well, im lookin forward to see more of your work outs. Its interesting to see someone work to go Pro.

Yeah, I like the bars because they isolate muscle groups really well, as well as dips do (since I have no apparatus to do dips on). And doing inverted push-ups with them is absolute MURDER.

Today:

20 minute stretch

4 minute rope-skip

6.87 mile run

Heavy Bag Rounds 101

3 rounds double-end bag

3 rounds speed-bag (I was about as coordinated as a newborn giraffe trying to walk today)

10 pull-ups

2 rounds Shadowboxing

Weights:

Standing dumbbell curls: (what I do here is curl up, and as I push the curled arm down I begin curling the other arm midway, so the full motion resembles the 1-2 punch combo)
- 4 sets of 10 (counting every other rep as one)

Seated dumbbell curl:
- 3 sets of 20 per arm

Overhead tricep hammer-curl:
- 3 sets of 20 per arm

Tricep kickbacks:
- 2 sets of 20 per arm

Weighted shoulder shrugs:
- 2 sets of 20 rotating forward
- 2 sets of 20 rotating backward
(alternating)

Frontwards raises: (focusing on trap and lat flexes)
- 4 sets of 10 counting every other rep as one

20 push-ups, 10 with the bars facing horizontal to my view, 10 with them facing vertical to my view.

The End.

(To think I gotta get cleaned up and get to work soon, luckily it's not a full day of work.)

 

[Sinister]

Christmas Schmistmas. Put them sweets down and get your lazy ass to training:

15 minute stretch.

3 minute rope-skip.

5.25 mile run (I lessened the time today because I incorporated a 3-minute stint of only back-pedaling, which sucks.)

Heavy Bag Rounds 101
(I was hitting like a bitch today.)

4 rounds double-end bag.

4 rounds speed bag.

2 rounds Shadowboxing.

10 rafter pull-ups.

40 push-ups. 20 horizontal bar-placing, 20 vertical.

8 inverted push-ups. Here's how you do an inverted push-up:

what you do is a hand-stand near a wall, so that you tip forward and can bend your knees and touch your toes to the wall for balance. You're up on the palms of your hands basically in hand-stand position, and you do your push-ups like that. Of course the advanced level of this is actual hand-stand push-ups...no wall.

That is all.

 

[Brando]

Hey KK, interesting log. Sort of inspiring to see another boxer lurking around here. I'm also fighting at 154, and I'm 6'0.

You mentioned you wanted powerful legs and cyborg-esque stamina, I'd really suggest burpees. Nothing fancy, just bodyweight burpees with a full push-up and tuck-jump, or if you HAVE to weigh them down do Medicine ball burpees. No matter the variation, make sure you're keeping a fast and explosive pace. These not only toast your legs but are a great form of GPP. You probably know all of this, but hey, just saying, throw them into a circuit, some shadowboxing/burpees intervals, or as active rest and you'll thank me (once the hatred and burning subside...)

Good luck

p.s. the "Heavybag Rounds 101" routine is pretty damned good. I follow a rudimentary heavybag routine (4-8 rounds with punch-out drills to punctuate each round, or the 10x10/5x20 drills) and I find that "heavybag rounds 101" is great to throw in atleast twice a week because of the isolated punches and the uber-emphasis on form. Fucking grade A stuff

 

[Sinister]

You mentioned you wanted powerful legs and cyborg-esque stamina, I'd really suggest burpees. Nothing fancy, just bodyweight burpees with a full push-up and tuck-jump, or if you HAVE to weigh them down do Medicine ball burpees. No matter the variation, make sure you're keeping a fast and explosive pace. These not only toast your legs but are a great form of GPP. You probably know all of this, but hey, just saying, throw them into a circuit, some shadowboxing/burpees intervals, or as active rest and you'll thank me (once the hatred and burning subside...)

I haven't gotten to leg-day yet bro. Heh heh. When I used to train Arts that used my legs, burpees was one of my staple-exercises. Here was my routine for building strength in legs:

1) Squat kicks - Stand in your stance and squat bending only at the knees. When you rise completely, pop a teep kick. Repeat. Then after a while switch sides and work on the other leg. You can also do this with your feet even and your hands up, alternating legs. Squat, stand, left kick, squat, stand, right kick, etc. If you can have someone hold a blocking pad for you, you can work on accuracy and follow-through. You can also do this for side-kicks and back-kicks, and it will give you strength and balance enough to kick people so hard in the gut they have to pee.

2) Squat Thrust (a.k.a. "Burpees") kicks - This one SUCKS, but works like a charm. Perform a squat thrust. Stand with feet together, arms at your sides. Squat all the way down bending at the knees and slightly at the waist, hands flat to the floor, thrust out your back legs keeping them straight and together (so that you end up in push-up position), and then pull in the legs back to the squat position, shoot back up into standing position, and pop a teep or round-kick, repeat, and on the next one alternate legs. The trick is to do this all in one fluid motion. You might fall over the first couple of times you do it but you'll get used to it. This one is also fun with a target, blocking pads work best.

3) Frog Jumps - Hands behind your head, squat down as far as you can, then spring up and jump, landing back and flowing down back into the squat positon, repeat. Your ass and hamstrings will get solid REAL fast with this one.

4) Machine-gun kicking drills - I actually stole this from my TKD classes when I was little but man does it help with kicking power and speed. On your heavy bag (I assume you have one, if not GET ONE, they're a Muay Thai fighter's BEST friend), do your kicks in succession as fast and hard as you can for like 50 straight kicks. 25 with each leg. Increase as it gets easier and faster. So that this is how it goes: Left <Pow> Right <POW> Left <POW> Right <POW>, as if you're walking down your opponent with your kicks.

I don't so much kick now because of Boxing, but I haven't abandoned them. Just my leg-day hasn't come in the log yet. It'll be Wednesday and you'll see what I do nowadays.

 

[Sinister]

Rest.

 

[Chad Hamilton]

It's about time you coughed up some secrets.

I'm sure viewing this will be a humbling experience for me.
What the hell am I saying, it already has, I feel like a...well...an amateur.
Hmm?

I'm gonna go sit under a big tree and think.
Be back in a few weeks.

 

[Sinister]

It's about time you coughed up some secrets.

I'm sure viewing this will be a humbling experience for me.
What the hell am I saying, it already has, I feel like a...well...an amateur.
Hmm?

I'm gonna go sit under a big tree and think.
Be back in a few weeks.

You'll be Pro in no time man. I have a feeling...rather an intuition, that when you get back to civilization in full-force from your training you're going to be Chad version 2.0, the Upgrade.

 

[Sinister]

Alright bitches, let's do dis here.

15 minute stretch

3 minute skip-rope.

5.75 mile run (another 2 and a half minutes of back-pedaling, also did a couple 1 minute stints of sprints.)

**Had to stop and eat some ginger here because I was about to hork.

Heavy Bag Rounds 101

3 rounds double-end bag.

3 rounds speed-bag.

2 rounds Shadowboxing.

Weights/strength:

10 rafter pull-ups.

Dumbbell flies (I do all flies with my feet up and crossed at the ankles, no cheating):
- 3 sets of 20

Dumbbell flies with twist up to isolate lower-pecs:
- 3 sets of 20

Saxon side-bends (using dumbbells of course):
- 2 sets of 30 per side
(alternating)

Leg-lifts (the way I do these is lying flat on my back, holding part of the wall overhead, keeping legs straight lift until my toes touch the wall. On the last rep of each set I pull all the way until I'm basically standing on my nec, perpendicular with the wall, then I bend my knees until they touch my forhead, lift back up and lower legs slowly):
- 2 sets of 20
- 1 set of 10
(I tried to do 10 more but the lower guts weren't having it today).

100 reps on the ab-roller (isolating upper-guts)

50 reps on the ab-roller pushing directly to each side (100 total - 50 left, 50 right)

Ross Enamait ab-rollouts:
I can do ONE. Two failed attempts. Hip-flexors need strengthening.

Dragon Cross (helps with ability to clinch even in Boxing)
10 reps lunging with each leg forward, 20 total.

Here's how that exercise is done for future reference:

Take two dumbbells of moderate weigh. Stand with your feet together and extend your arms outward, palms up, dumbbells gripped in-hands. Step forward and lunge, as you lunge turn the dummbells from horizontal to vertical, and as your rear knee gets closer to the ground bring the dumbbells together in front of your body in the fly motion. Hold the bottom positon as long as you can, then slowly rise by stepping forward and pulling your rear-leg forward as you stand back upright, slowly lower your arms until they are at your sides (this should resemble the fast yank you do when pulling someone off their feet for a single or double-leg takedown). The exercise ends when you're back in standing position but now with your hands at your sides and a couple feet forward from where you began, repeat.

20 push-ups, 10 with the bars facing horizontal to my view, 10 with them facing vertical to my view.

Tidbits: It was cool this morning. Normally training down here blows because the humidity is so high. But right now the air is thin and crisp and the temperature is cold by comparison, so my wind was better than normal. Though I felt weak through most of the routine. Climate change will do that. What tickles me though is now I'll go to work and listen to folk bitch all morning about how tired they are and they didn't do shit but wake up and get ready to go wherever they had to go. Fuckin' slackers. I just can't wait until I get paid to do this and don't have to do it, put so much energy into it, then get dressed up and be someone's monkey for 7 hours out of my day.

 

[Marvin Covar]

what are your midsection excercises? i've always been curious, because I've been trying to get into that textbook fighter's body that you talked about. I do about two sets of raised leg situps 50 each set, side crunches the same and that thing where you kind of sit and bend your legs towards you also the same.

 

[Sinister]

what are your midsection excercises? i've always been curious, because I've been trying to get into that textbook fighter's body that you talked about. I do about two sets of raised leg situps 50 each set, side crunches the same and that thing where you kind of sit and bend your legs towards you also the same.

Those are my staple-stomach workouts. But remember, the key to a 6-pack is your eating/burning of bodyfat. You can strengthen the stomach muscles all you want, but getting them to show is a matter of burning all of the fat around them. Also with the amount of punching I do the abs get a Hell of a workout on any day, just from stabilization of movement.

Today:

Rest. I was going to do legs today but I was up until 3am fixing my computer and then had to do a bunch of crap for family this morning. So instead I'm going to get to bed earlier tonight and arise earlier tomorrow morning to workout before I go to work again. This is good though because my rest-days weren't back-to-back (a no no), and it gives me time on my day off to refine my leg-strengthening routine which I was just going to ad-lib anyway. Now I can organize it and go into tomorrow's workout with a gameplan.

That is all.

 

[Chad Hamilton]

KK-

Why no back-to-back rest days?

 

[Sinister]

My rest days when I get them are usually COMPLETE rest days. Not just days of light trainign or what's called "active rest" days. So I tend to just be a shiftless lay-about. But that can "de-train" the body when done for too long a period of time. Generally speaking a lot of people "overtrain", thus when they are forced to rest because of injury they come back stronger, with good muscle memory, better focus, etc. But in the middle of training I don't like to implement that kind of rest for more than a day at a time because I've found it hinders my progress.

 

[Sinister]

***Getting up at 5am to train SUCKS.

Today:

15 minute stretch: (did more extensive Wu Shu stretches as today is the day for wheels)

3 minute rope-skip

5 mile run (rounded off to 5 because I'm doing legs today)

Heavy Bag Rounds 101

3 rounds double-end bag

3 rounds speed bag

2 rounds Shadowboxing

10 rafter pull-ups (this coming from a dude who in school never used to be able to do ONE)

Weights/Strength:

Calf-raises: (I do them in 3's, one set with toes forward, one with toes pointed in, one with toes pointed outward, holding the dumbbells)
- 3 sets of 20 each way
Ouch.

One-legged squats: (the way I do this is I have one leg on something about head-high in a standard kick position and then squat with the leg I'm standing on. I do one set with legs in front-kick position and one set with leg in side-kick position)
- 3 sets of 15 each way

Standard squats: (holding dumbbells also)
- 2 sets of 25

Jumps: (Back in the day I saw an instructional video by a TKD forms Champ who said the only real way to be a good jumper is just to jump. Made sense. When I do jumps I keep my hands in defensive position and pull my knees as far up as possible.)
- 3 sets of 10

Frog Jumps: (how to do these I posted above)
- 3 sets of 10

Burpee Hooks: (this is something I had an idea about and tried it, I like. You do a burpee in front of your heavy bag (if you have a partner it'd be nice to hit the focus mitt, smaller so you need to be more accurate...but my partner is MIA until tomorrow), do your burpee and when you come up, POW, hook to the heavybag)
- 2 sets of 25
I did these slow as HELL to get the form right.

Escapes: (remember this shit from Karate class? lol What I do here is I sit Indian-style, lift with my legs until I'm almost standing and then pop into stance)
- 2 sets of 10

** Tidbits: Felt like shit today. The weather shift has really been fucking with me. My wind is good and I don't get winded, I just feel so much weaker because the air I'm breathing is thinner. But it's alright. Completing the tasks is more important right now. You guys who read this probably notice I don't do much in the ways of ladders and what have you. That's because volume is a priority right now for me. Even if I have to go slow I'd rather do that then break up the numbers. I want a 36-minute fight to seem like a warm-up. I can't wait for tomorrow though, my partner's going to be throwing punches at me while I work. AWESOME.

 

[graedy]

Do you wanna earn your money only in boxingbouts or do you wanna do some kickboxing or even mma-fights as well?

 

[Sinister]

Right now my main focus is Boxing, but when the time comes I'll be open to other opportunities if the money is right. I just have the best shot at earning substancial money with Boxing.

 

[SwiftMcvay]

Right now my main focus is Boxing, but when the time comes I'll be open to other opportunities if the money is right. I just have the best shot at earning substancial money with Boxing.

Just curious man, what kind of amateur record do you have?

 

[Sinister]

Just curious man, what kind of amateur record do you have?

In terms of Boxing, I did some Junior Golden Glove stuff when I was young, but never actually won any big tournaments. I was heavy as a kid and always put into weight classes with older kids on account of it. I didn't take conditioning seriously enough. I then moved mostly into Traditional Martial Arts practices but never competed Officially, I didn't get interested in it until I got older (last year precisely). I just started kicking myself in the ass for taking shit jobs and never seeing if I could earn a living fighting. Which is why I'm putting so much into it now.

Historically I was always one of those guys who stressed practicality, when I taught Martial Arts I was younger and didn't like the idea of competing because at the time there weren't really any MMA events around and you had to wear all kinds of gear and abide by all kinds of rules and that irritated me. Now, I just want to know and see what I can do, if anything.