0:00 One of the most common questions I get from boxers is, I don't have access to a gym, what can I do instead? And today I'm gonna take you through exactly that, a speed, power and conditioning session every boxer can do without access to any equipment. Let's jump straight into it. Like pretty much all sessions, we're gonna start with some mobility. This session will be pretty lower body dominant, so I think it's important that the exercises you choose are targeted towards those areas just to get some range and extra blood flow to them. This could be exercises targeted towards the hamstrings, the quads, the hip flexors, the groin, the calves. Obviously you can also do some upper body exercises, but I like when we're doing these types of sessions to do more integrated movements. But essentially the main point is just to get the body moving, get some extra blood flow, get some range before you get into your high intensity work. What I like to do, especially if I've got some space, is just set up a 10 to 15 meter target and I'll just cycle through three to five
0:47 exercises for 10 minutes. What I really like to do in these mobility mobility blocks is just go through some crawls, some crouches and even some gymnastic work just to get a bit of variation. What's really good about this variation is you can get the mobility that we're looking for in the warm up, but you can also develop some really good body awareness, which is essential when it comes to any sort of speed and power based work that you're doing. And this can just be a nice good amount of time to make sure that you're targeting all those major muscle groups that are going to be used within the session. So you've warmed up, you've got the body moving, got some extra blood flow around. Now we're going to get into our plyometrics. And because this is a speed and power based session, I I'd like to allocate a good amount of time to really get some high quality work done here. Also because it's going to be high intensity, we need to allocate a bit more rest periods here. So 25 to 30 minutes is a good amount of time for this block. Like I said, you need to be having good rest periods when
1:33 you're aiming for high outputs with plyometric and jump based exercises. The key with this is we're not turning these exercises into a circuit, which ends up making it conditioning. We're really trying to get maximal output with each of those exercises so we can get those speed and power adaptations that we're looking for. So a very basic rule of thumb is for the lower intensity plyometrics, which we'll talk through first, you could have around 60 to 90 90 seconds rest in between blocks and in between sets. When we're looking at the high intensity variations where maximal output is the goal, I really recommend having around three minutes minimum after you do each set to really get the most out of them. So this is how you're going to structure that plyometric block. For about five to seven minutes, we're going to go with that lower intensity work. This is essentially an extension of the warmup, so it doesn't have to be really high intensity, but it's a good way just to get some rhythm and coordination
2:21 and slowly expose the body to some higher velocity movements. block I really like using D tier variations and this is where we can expose the muscles to some longer muscle lengths at higher velocities and then pairing these with some lower intensity pogo movements so we can gradually expose ourselves to some more reactive bass pliers. So what you can do in this more warm-up bass plyo section is pair two to four exercises together and do them in a circuit. And I know I said don't do plyometrics in a circuit to make them conditioning but because this is lower intensity work and we're not focusing on outputs it's okay to do them here because we're not relying so much on high outputs with longer rest periods. So what this could look like focusing on those things that we mentioned around rhythm, timing, coordination, and some variation is a deep tier split squat into some bilateral pogos and then into some lateral or
3:09 multi-directional base plyo. Again, the focus here isn't on outputs. We're just getting the body slightly more warmed up, getting in some different movements and getting the body exposed to some high velocity work before that max output work. So now you're warmed up, this is where we can really get into our max intensity or max output based jump and plyometric work. And so rather than doing them more in a circuit style like we did before with that more warmup based work, these are gonna be done separately to really make sure that the output and the quality of the exercises we're doing is at the highest possible quality. And I'll be completely honest, there's a million different ways you can structure this depending on your goals, what you specifically need to work on, proximity to a fight. There's multiple different factors that go into choosing what exercises you would do here. But if you need a basic structure that you can do right away then I would recommend something like this. Number one is a max effort
3:57 jump and here we're essentially focusing on developing peak power outputs. Seated variations are really good here because essentially what we're doing is trying to get your nervous system to generate force almost instantly. Then number two would be a max effort continuous plyometric. This could be a pogo, a hop or a bound but what the focus of this is is max force and minimum ground contact time to really develop the reactivity side of things. And then number three would be a lateral variation. Boxing obviously doesn't occur in one plane or a sagittal plane, i.e. up and down. So I think it's important that you expose your body to the demands that you'll see within the sport. So I think having some form of lateral base jump or plyo is essential here to really work on your ability to change direction. Now remember in this part of the plyometric block, we are focusing on high intensity quality outputs. So
4:43 it's important that you keep the volume low and not just focus on trying to be tired from these exercises. So I'd be aiming for something like two to three sets of three to six reps each of those exercises. And remember rest is key. Don't go for being tired, go for quality of the exercises. You should essentially finish the block of plyometrics and be like I could probably do double that amount to actually get tired. So make sure the volume stays low and the quality stays very high. So you've done your warm-up, you've done your jump and plyo work, now it's time to get into the conditioning component of the workout. And if you followed me for a while, you know that I always preach high intensity conditioning for boxers. Obviously there's going to be some nuances around what you can choose in this component of the session, but for the purposes of a no equipment session, bias towards speed, power
5:29 and conditioning, we're going to go with some hill sprints. So the reason we go with hill sprints when we don't have access to an assault bike for high intensity conditioning is for one main reason. There is going to be a far less risk of injury and fatigue compared to flat ground sprinting due to the lower speeds, the differences in the mechanics, and the lower ground reaction forces. This means with the hill sprints, we can go full all that intensity with a little bit of technique breakdown. With flat ground sprints, as your technique starts to deteriorate with fatigue, there's going to be a higher risk of hamstring injury. So we don't want that. That's why with the hill sprints, we can have a bit of technique breakdown and not risk that hamstring injury. The way that I would structure hill sprints is exactly the same that I usually structure sprint interval training on the salt bike. So if you want a full breakdown on that, just head back to the other videos on my channel. But essentially, these are the parameters I use. For the total sprint volume of the session
6:16 we're looking at 120 seconds for the work to rest ratios I'm usually looking around a 1 to 1 to 5 and then for the sprint duration how long you'd actually be sprinting for I usually prescribe anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds now if you want more endurance based qualities I would be using a work to rest ratio of 1 to 1 to 3 but if you want more power based qualities I'd be increasing the rest periods so you'd be looking at a work to rest ratio of around 1 to 3 to 5 but you can remember it as this endurance equals less rest Power equals ball rest. So most no equipment sessions would usually stop there, but I wanna give you a little extra something that could actually help improve that speed and power performance with some quote unquote strength work to finish the session. Now, typically with something like this, if I was wanting more of a strength stimulus, I might prescribe some form of calisthenics. But remember this session is geared towards speed,
7:05 power, and conditioning adaptations. So what we can do is prescribe a very specific type of exercise that will be conducive of these speed and power adaptations. I try my best to keep things pretty basic and easy to understand on this channel, but I think it's important that we kind of dive a little bit into muscle architecture and then how that relates to speed and power performance. I'll do a bit of a breakdown and then we'll jump back into the more practical things. So in muscle architecture, we have something called a muscle fascicle. And essentially what this is, is a group of muscle fibers that is surrounded by some connective tissue. And what research consistently shows is that increased fascicle lengths increase speed and power performance. And this is through two things. Increasing our maximal muscle shortening velocity and then improving the length tension relationship of the muscle or how well muscles can produce force across a varied range So to
7:53 summarize that scientific jargon what we're looking at is if we can improve our muscle fascicle length We can hopefully improve our speed and power performance and there's multiple different ways that we can do these but research consistently suggests that there's two main big ones Number one is obviously sprint and plyometric training and number two is eccentric overload training Can't really do number two because this is a speed and power based session without any equipment. And to get true eccentric overload, we actually need some weights that will push us past that eccentric overload within a session. But what we can do is a version of eccentric overload without any equipment. And I'll preface this, there isn't a ton of evidence of using this type of exercise, but we can make some inferences from long, sustained, high-intensity stretching studies, as well as long-duration isometric holds. So what happens with these very long, sustained isometric contractions is as the muscle
8:41 starts to fatigue, the muscle actually starts to creep into these longer muscle lengths under load. And that load is gravity. It's this sustained tension at long muscle lengths we think that will drive the adaptations for the fascicle length. So this is that eccentric overload we were talking about, just over much longer sustained durations compared to if we were just going to do it in the gym with some weights. But there's a couple of things we need to note about using these types of isometrics. Number one, they need to be done at long muscle length. Essentially what this means is when you're doing the isometric, the muscle should be put in a stretch position whilst you're doing the isometric. understanding if I was going to put my pec on stretch I would be having my arm out behind me. If I was going to have my pec shortened my arm would be in front of me. Number two is the duration. And you basically need to hold these isometrics to failure or pretty much close to
9:28 failure where your muscles start going into more of a stretch position. Then lastly for number three is picking the right exercises. Whilst the research mostly looks at the lower body, we need to choose exercises that will increase speed and power performance using the muscles that would be used within boxing. And if we think about muscles that would be specifically used in boxing, this could be things like the pecs, the quads, the glutes, the lats, the obliques, even the calves. So let's jump back into how you'd actually apply this to that speed power and conditioning session. It'd be done after the conditioning and what you do is just pick two to three exercises. This could be things like a split squat hold for the quads and the hip flexes, an isometric push-up for the pecs, or something like a dead hang for the obliques and the lats. You can be as creative as you want here but the key is to do each of these exercises at a long muscle length. For sets and reps, one set is more than enough. If you're doing these all to failure, that's all you
10:16 really need. Like I said, what you're looking for is that you get close enough to failure where your muscle has to continue to lengthen to keep that tension on the muscle itself. If you've ever actually done these properly, you'll know that these absolutely suck, but they're a good way to try and get some of those muscle architecture changes without having to lift any weights. And there you have it, a simple yet very effective speed, power, and conditioning session you can do without any equipment. Remember, the key with any sort of S&C program is consistency, so there should not be any excuse for any boxer not to do S&C now that you can do a session like this without any equipment. Oh, and by the way, if you haven't already grabbed it, there's a free guide in my description that'll make you a stronger, faster and better condition boxer. It's basically an email sent to your inbox every day for the next 30 days with simple, easy to implement principles that I've learned from the last
11:02 six years of coaching boxers. Alternatively, if you want to work with me one-on-one for all of your strength and conditioning needs, there's a link in the description to apply for one-on-one coaching. Anyway, don't forget to subscribe to the channel for more boxing, strength and conditioning tips. Till next time.
