I’ve been told that the more often I train boxing the better results I will have in the ring. But is that really true? Is boxing training on a daily basis good for you?
I did a little research and here is what I found:
You absolutely can train boxing every day, but you need to mix the intense workouts with the less intense ones properly. Here is what I mean by that: If you do only intense boxing workouts every day, your body won’t have enough time to recover. You will start feeling tired and will start suffering from things like persistent muscle soreness, lack of motivation, insomnia, etc, which are the main symptoms of overtraining.
To avoid that, after a day with an intense workout, you need to include a day where you do only light exercises. In those days you can do only cardio drills such as swimming, light jog or shadowboxing. And in the intense days, you can do heavy bag work, sparring, strength exercises and shadowboxing with light weights. Thus your muscles will have enough time to recover and you will have enough energy.
That’s was the short answer. But there are more factors you need to consider if you want to train boxing on a daily basis. Let’s dive into them.
If you are training almost every day but don’t see results, check out my Beginner Boxing Workout routine – free pdf file. It’s a downloadable weekly boxing routine with more than 50 drills!
Nutrition
Boxing requires a lot of energy. That means that you burn many calories during the workouts. So, to recover, you need a healthy diet. Otherwise, you won’t have enough energy and your workouts won’t be as good as they should be. Here is what a diet of a real boxer should contain:
Protein
Your muscles are made mostly of protein. So it’s really important to take enough of this macronutrient throughout the day. It strengthens the muscles and helps them to recover. I recommend consuming 20-30% of your calories from protein. That means that, for example, a man who weighs around 80 kg (176 pounds) should aim to consume 140-200 grams of protein per day. Great foods that contain a lot of protein are meat, eggs, fish, yogurt, milk, cheese etc.
Carbs
The carbs are the fuel that you need during the intense workouts. It gives you energy faster than any other macronutrient. And as I already mentioned, in boxing, you need a lot of energy. That’s why your diet needs to consist of 40-60% carbs or around 280-420 grams for an 80 kg man. Great high-carbs foods are foods like rice, potatoes, bread, bananas etc.
Fat
The fat is a high-calorie macronutrient. It provides 9 calories per gram. Which, compared to the carbs and the protein (which provide 4 calories per gram) is a lot. So the fat can give you a great amount of energy, but much slower than, for example, the carbs. It’s a good idea to take high-carbs foods 1-2 hours before training and high-fat foods for dinner or after a workout. Foods like nuts, eggs, chocolate, avocado, and the cheese contain a high percentage of fat. It’s great if you can consume around 20-30% of your daily calories from fat.
It’s obvious that in the days when you do more intense exercises you will burn more calories. So I recommend adding 250-350 more calories to your diet in those days. That is = to 1-2 bowls of rice.
Exercises
Like we already know, to train boxing every day, you need to do light exercises in the days after the intense workout days. But there are exercises which will prepare you better than others.
Best exercises for conditioning
The way you workout highly affects your performance in the ring. For example, the long-distance running actually isn’t as effective when it comes to preparation for a boxing match as many people think.
The old-school boxers ran many miles, but now, most of the new generation athletes prefer to do sprints. That’s because, in the boxing ring, you need to be explosive for many but short periods of times – the rounds (3 minutes each). And the sprints prepare you to do that better than the long-distance running.
So, I recommend running at intervals of 2-3 minutes with roughly 80% of your max speed. The idea is to mimic the boxing rounds when you exercising. For the best results, you need to apply this in every exercise you are doing. For example, your intense workout may be:
- One round (3 minutes) heavy bag work
- One round push-ups
- One round sit-ups
- One round shadowboxing with light weights
After each round you can rest 1 minute, mimicking the intervals between the rounds. When you finish the four exercises, you can rest more – up to 5 min. Then start over.
At the less intense days, you can do rounds of sprinting or swimming, shadowboxing, or light heavy bag work.
The key is in the balance between both types of exercises. If you do too much of the intense ones, you will, eventually, overtrain. And the opposite – if you do too many of the light exercises, you won’t be prepared enough for a 12 round boxing match or sparring.
Recovery time
The overtraining can dramatically slow your progress down. It causes, not only things like muscle soreness and fatigue but also muscle mass loss. And that can really decrease your explosiveness and punching power. To have too big muscles can be a problem in boxing because they can make you gas out quickly, but too little muscle mass is also a disadvantage.
So you need to take your time to recuperate your muscles. Here are some tips on how you can recover faster, so you can train on the next day:
- Don’t forget to stretch – The stretching helps you to warm up and prepare your body for the workout. It decreases the chance to get injured and to get muscle soreness
- Don’t train the same muscle group – Your muscles need 48 hours to recuperate after an intense workout. So it isn’t a good idea to train the same muscle group two or more days in a row. I made that mistake more than once… To avoid that you can, for example, train your upper body with exercises like pull-ups, dips, heavy bag work on Monday and your legs on Tuesday. Thus your muscles will recuperate and you can do upper body workout again on Wednesday.
- Get enough sleep – I know that is obvious, but when you train every day, you may need even more sleep so your body and mind can recover. For most people, 7-8 hours of sleep are enough, but if you are an athlete you may need around 9 hours. So it’s a good idea to go to bed earlier. To fall asleep faster, I also recommend to turn off all the technology (your TV, computer, and your phone) 1 hour before you go to bed. It’s working great for me.
- Drink enough water – we already discussed how to eat properly, but to drink enough water is also very important. Drinking a lot of water helps energize muscles and flush out toxins. An average person needs around 2 liters of water per day or around eight 8 ounce glasses.
Professional boxers
Ok, now we know what an average person can do to train boxing every day without overtraining. But let’s see what are the workout routines of the pros:
Floyd Mayweather
Floyd likes to start the week with cardio exercises, followed by more than 2 hours of sparring and technical work. After that, he does several hours of heavy bag work and then some skipping. In his less intensive days, he likes to swim, jog, and even do yoga. He also spends a whole day working in the ring on the strategy he will use against his next opponent. Usually, he does that on Saturdays. Sunday is his complete rest day.
Antony Joshua
Joshua also starts with cardio – early in the morning. Then he usually does strength exercises such as weightlifting. He tries to train all of the muscle groups, including the legs and the neck muscles. In the evenings he spars in the gym and does some heavy bag work.
Vasyl Lomachenko
Besides the strength exercises, Lomachenko also likes to train his mind. He solves some kind of logical puzzles. That helps him think faster and remain focus which is really important during a boxing match. He usually does those exercises when he is exhausted, after the physical ones. This is a great example of very useful but less intense exercises which you can do after the intense ones.