Explosive reps
To fighters, boxers, or other competitive athletes, have you tried explosive reps? Meaning you lift lightweight in a controlled but quick manner. I've taken boxing seriously and cut out lifting almost completely. When I first started boxing, I was way too tense and lacked flexibility. Ive improved tremendously and when I do lift which is twice a week. It is only cleans, bench, ohp, one legged leg press, and sometimes deadlifts. I'll do 8 to 15 reps all quickly but of course tensing or emphasizing certain parts of the lift to fully engage the muscles. Anybody else tried this and helped? Or how do you fighters lift? I won't do a strong lift regimen for I feel its detrimental to my boxing until I become a better and more flexible fighter. I've found the explosive movements haven't been preventing me from sparring or hitting the bag daily. Ive stopped squatting since I'll do a couple of rounds with body weight squats and throwing 4-6 punch combos and typically I never have enough energy to squat a plate which is like 50% of my max
Posted Jun 4, 2015, 9:14 PM UTC
A couple things:
-- Yes, its very doable to design a program to de-emphasize slow twitch training modes (like heavy weight, low reps) and improve athletic function. For boxers specifically, high volume, high pace, bodyweight workouts with built-in rest seem to be the most effective. Check out the crossfit workout Fight Gone Bad or look at some of the tabata workouts as good examples.
-- From your text above, I'd recommend you be careful with overloading your push movements. The most common problem I see with punch or throw athletes is that they have over-developed chest and shoulders, and under-developed back, which leads to shoulder malfunction and ultimately zapps their punching or throwing power. Remember punching is an athletic movement and your body needs to be in balance to throw its best punch, for that reason, you weight workouts should include rows and deadlifts to balance out all that pushing/punching.