The late Dr.

Mel Siff put it well: To me, the sign of a really excellent routine is one which places great demands on the athlete, yet produces progressive long-term improvement without soreness, injury or the athlete ever feeling thoroughly depleted. Any fool can create a program that is so demanding that it would virtually kill the toughest marine or hardiest of elite athletes, but not any fool can create a tough program that produces progress without unnecessary pain. If it does not look like a lot of work, it is supposed to be that way. The idea is to build as much strength as possible while staying as fresh as possible for boxing. The benefit is much more rapid strength gain. By keeping sets and reps low, timed and without lifts to failure, lactic acid is minimal or non-existent. . . . athletes feel exhilarated and ready for a full-event workout(boxing skills) after lifting.
You need to Finish your workout feeling stronger then when you started. Stop your workout if your performance is less than perfect, and come back another day.

Will you get as strong as a power lifter who does more volume, either in the primary lifts (the PTP Bear, Sheyko) or in assistance exercises (Westside-louie simmons)? No. But your strength will be head and shoulders above your competitors in boxing, or whichever sport you have chosen to excel at. And your skills will be superior if you have wisely invested the time and energy saved through state-of-the-art easy strength training into relentless and perfect practice of your sport.
In my opinion easy strength training is the only productive way a competitive fighter

can strength train. But most people think if you dont break a sweat, it must not work. This used to bother me a lot, but not anymore because I think it is one reason why my fighters win so much.-Steve Baccari All fighters and coaches understand the importance of roadwork, says Boston boxing coach extraordinaire Steve Baccari, RKC They understand the importance of working the heavy bag, the hand-pads, and of course, sparring. But what is commonly overlooked, and possibly the most important piece of the strength and conditioning puzzleis strength training. Or what Pavel refers to as slow strength. What does slow strength do for a boxer? First and foremost, when a fighter has a good strength base, it reduces his chance of injuries. Second, it makes him more resilient in the ring. Finally, strength translates into more power in his punches. After all, power is strength times speed. Most coaches over-emphasize strength endurance. Granted, this is very important, but before you can endure strength, you must first develop it. Slow, heavy lifts or grinds, done for one to five reps are one side of the RKC coin. High-rep, quick lifts are the flip side. When we train to endure strength, we turn everything around: the lifts are quick

and the reps are high. Kettlebell swings and snatches done for 10, 100, and even more reps are unbeatable for developing championship conditioning. Countless tough hombres have been humbled by these drills. Fighters, athletes, and special operators have admitted that they were shocked to discover they had met the hardest workout of their lives. Fighters keep confusing strength and conditioning with conditioning and more conditioning. We will be training pure strength 2-3 times per week depending on recovery ability. Fighters need to be strong. Conditioning is great, but given equal levels of conditioning and skill, the stronger man shall win.

Sessions will comprise of two lifts . Trained never to failure. If you practice being tired thats all that you will be good at. Also we do not want Skills work to be compromised by strength and conditioning training. So our maxim will be to Do as much as possible, while staying as fresh as possible . Training this way will shorten your recovery times before your skills sessions and also lead to faster gains and quicker recovery because you will not be sore or too tired to train. Each set should be terminated well short of failure, because "pushing to exhaustion will burn out your neuromuscular system and force you to cut back on volume- Pavel Tsatsouline The idea is to leave the session feeling stronger then when you started.

Ten reps per workout, as advocated by Dan John and by Pavel Tsatsouline is smack in the middle of the rep range recommended by Russian strength authorities like Ozolin, Medvedev, and Vorobyev: 36 sets of 23 reps. Ten reps is where we are and have been for several years, reports Barry Ross. This allows our athletes to leave exhilarated rather than exhausted. It also allows them to exit the weight room and start immediately on event training. Read boxing skills. Steve Baccari is a stickler for perfect form, and he discovered that none of his fighters could do 5 perfect deadlift reps all the time. Doubles hit the spot. Some fighters with perfect technique are allowed to do triples. Interestingly, 2 is the most preferred rep choice of the Russian National Weightlifting Team. Two or three is a great rep range to emphasize in an Easy Strength program. Four or five is where neural training and muscle building meet, which means you could end up with some hypertrophy. This is out of the question in sports like boxing. Singles, doubles, and triples are pure nerve force training. Singles, however, are very demanding on the nervous system. Do a few, but dont abuse them. Dan John lifts ten times in two weeks. Only two of these workouts are singles and only one comes close to his max.

So to recap

We will Lift two to three times a week. Keep the reps in the 1 to 5 range, emphasizing doubles and triples. Keep the volume around 10 reps per lift or 6 when using only singlesfor example, 5 x 2, 2 x 5, 532, 3 x 3, 343, 424, 1234, 4321, 12321, 6 x 1, and so on. You may stay with the same weight or vary the weights from set to set. Rest approximately 5 minutes between sets. Practice Fast & Loose relaxation drills in between. Train in the 80% to 95% 1 RM intensity zone. Always leave at least 1 or 2 reps in the bank. Finish your workout feeling stronger than when you started. Stop the workout if your performance is less than perfect, and come back another day.

We will be doing 3-4 Conditioning workouts per week again depending on recovery ability. They will be short hard training sessions designed specifically around your fight requirements. 12-18 mins of high intensity work. You will do 3 interval running sessions per week run at 70% of an all out sprint, or what we would call a Comfortable strain and 1 -2 roadwork sessions of around 30 mins in or outdoors for recovery. The number of intervals will exceed the number of rounds you have to fight. So we will do 5 intervals. Closer to your fight we will drop the extra interval and increase intensity of the remaining 4 rounds to around 80%-85% intensity. The intervals will
Intervals will last 3 minutes (2 mins of interval run,1 minute of active shadow boxing) Followed by 1 minute rest. Closer to fight when the 5 interval drops off we will reduce interval time to 1 min 30 sec and 45 secs shadow boxing and have a longer rest. This increases your work rate, tempo and intensity, and reduces chance of injury because you wont be training as long.

An important factor in endurance, especially special, is the speed reserve. It has been known for a long time that if the athlete is able to cover a short distance very quickly, he will find it easier to cover a longer distance with lower speed. In this case the maximal speed on the short stretch speaks of a high level of development of strength, quickness, joint mobility, anaerobic capacity, and the CNS work capacity. Technical mastery also matters. This applies to boxing as well. Just remember: Excessive endurance training, aerobic or anaerobic, can make you weak, sluggish, and slow. Dont fall into the common trap of turning every type of training skill, strength, speed, and so oninto an endurance event. You are weak! Do more reps . . . Your skill is poor! Do more reps . . . You are slow! Do more reps until you get faster. Yeah, right. There is much more to excellence than sloppy endurance, and freshness is essential for development of skill, speed, strength, and power. Any idiot can smoke an athlete. But can you make him win?
So to recap conditioning. It will be short, and high in intensity and high and power and speed! To summarise the whole program, I want you to train your strength and conditioning as little as possible, avoiding failure as its counter productive. and to give you as much time as possible to train your skills for boxing instead of spending 20 hours a week doing fitness. .