I Tell Boxers Not To Run So I Started Running transcript

Oh my god, that was I haven't run like that in way too long. Probably a good thing. Welcome to episode 1. I never thought I'd say this, but I am going for a run. 2 weeks ago, I competed in my first ever boxing competition and it was great. I had three fights, three wins, and felt over the moon, but body was absolutely cooked after it. End up having a week off it. Come Monday, I started to get a little bit of hand pain.

I actually tried to open a jar and just got this shooting pain all the way up my hand. Thought I'd get it checked out. Got an X-ray and the X-ray actually showed nothing. The doctor got back to me and said, "X-ray is all good. Let's go get an MRI." The MRI results came back and he said, "Actually, we went back and checked the X-ray. There was a little bit of bony fluid over where we thought there might be a break and turns out there's a little fracture in my in the base of my metacarpal.

So that means I'm out of boxing for a little bit. Does it suck? Absolutely. It is what it is. But like I say to every single athlete that I train, there is always ways to train. Whether you have a lower body injury, you train the upper body. Whether you have an upper body injury, you train the lower body. If your left side is injured, you train the right side. There's so many different ways to train. Rather than just doing nothing, I always take the approach of there's something to do.

It just means that when you get back into training, it is so much easier and your body is more accustomed to the training load rather than going from, "All right, I'm injured. I'm not doing anything to all right, I'm back into training 100%." Keeping that training load up, whether you're modifying your boxing, which I will be doing, or again, you're just training other body parts, still doing conditioning, it's just a matter of finding what works for you and what you can do.

Obviously with a hand injury, it's my upper body, so it means the assault bike isn't going to be really ideal when it comes to my conditioning. If you've followed me for a while, you know that I much prefer the assault bike, especially when it comes to hitting higher intensities. For now, it's just not going to be an option for me. So, what I'm going to be doing over the next 12 weeks is running. Again, if you followed me for a while, you'd know that I absolutely talk so much [ __ ] on running.

But if you actually listen to what I have to say, it's not that I hate running, it's that I hate unstructured running. I think boxers just do way too much unstructured running, and it not only doesn't do much for their gas tank, but it's potentially just adding extra fatigue. So, I'm going to be testing or going through my app 12. With the app that I've been building, you actually have the option between choosing uh the assault bike or running.

But what I'm going to be doing over the next 12 weeks whilst I let my hand recover is actually run. Because I'm not boxing as much, I can actually afford my legs to be a little bit more tired. And this is my biggest, I guess, issue with running is that boxers will just run themselves into the ground. Their legs will be tired and they won't actually have enough energy to rock up to the sessions that they need to be fresh for, which is boxing.

When you're going through periods of not boxing as much, whether that's out of camp or when you have an injury in my hand like I do, you can actually supplement your training and you can afford to be a little bit more tired or a little bit more fatigued from things that you usually wouldn't do. This is why I'm going to be running for the next 12 weeks. I'm going to bring you guys along to show you exactly how I'm doing this, I guess, 12 week period of conditioning running and show you exactly the sessions that I'm going to be doing, but also take you through 12, which is the app that I'm currently building out.

So fighters like you, if you are a fighter, can actually get personalized fight camp conditioning protocols to lead into a specific fight or if you just want to improve your gas tank. So come with me over this next 12 weeks while we run, I guess, which again, never thought I would say, but it's going to be fun. All right, down in the park, ready to rip into the first session. I haven't done [ __ ] running for conditioning since I was like 19 or 20.

About 9 10 years ago. This is going to suck. Plan for today is to get some testing done. And this is essentially the testing that I've inbuilt into the app. So any of the fighters that sign up to it will be able to actually get some specific and personalized recommendations for their conditioning. So the two tests that I'm going to go through are a repeat power test and then also a 6-minute time trial. Repeat power test is basically looking at how well you can repeat power.

For the app, there's going to be both a running version and an assault bike version, depending on what modality you choose. And then both the assault bike and the running, you'll be able to do a six-minute time trial. Now, everything is logged through the app for the running version of the repeat power. Not sure how well you guys will be able to see this, but repeat power test. All you have to do is click into the session and then start session, but essentially what I'm going to do is set out a 60 m course and you have 5 m or sorry, a 5second sprint and then 25 seconds recovery.

And then using the distance you get from the 5-second sprint, you can put it into an algorithm or a um calculation and figure out your power output. It's based off what's called a RAS test. Uh I think it's a repeat anorobic sprint test. I think it was developed for footballers, but you can work out your power from that 5-second sprint. And then we look at how well you're able to maintain that power over the five sprints and then what your fatigue index is.

Using that, we can actually uh prescribe you specific sprints if you start with sprints. Um, and then with a 6-minute time trial, it's basically how far you can run in 6 minutes. It's self-explanatory. I'm going to start off with the uh sprint test, then get into my 6-minute time trial. The 6-minute time trial is used to prescribe specific intervals, especially if you're going on longer intervals. When it comes to the actual figuring out where you start, whether it's sprints, zone 2, uh, longer intervals, this is all based off your resting heart rate.

So, I've been inputting into the app my resting heart rate from the last 4 days. And this gives me my starting point. Also depends on how long you're going to be choosing for your camp um, and choosing for your conditioning. going to get into a little warm up. I'm a little bit torn on warm-ups. Like recently I've just been like, "Fuck, I'll move around for a little bit and then get into it." Sometimes I'm like, "All right, I'm gonna have an extensive warm up, but we'll make it short and sharp, about 5 10 minutes, then we're going to get into the repeat sprints." I've also got planned before this session is a couple of pio exercises, which I'm going to be doing before all my runs because I've just wanted to, I guess, switch them up rather than doing before my lifts.

I'm getting out and doing some more dynamic runs and dynamic stuff anyway, so I may as well do those before. I guess there's a million different ways to do it, but this is just what's going to work with me so I can get straight into the runs or straight into my lifts when I'm lifting rather than doing all the jumps and pliers beforehand. So, got some pliers and jumps to do then the repeat power test and then the 6-minute time trial.

So, it's going to be it's going to be a session and a half. But, let's jump into the warmup. Uh or let's actually I'm going to set out the 60 m course for the repeat power test. Then, I'm going to get into a warm up and then I'm going to [ __ ] rip into this run. Let's get it. All right. So, for my pliers, you probably just saw I just did some low amplitude stuff, some light pogo work. I always like to do this as like an extension of the warmup before I get into more intense pliers.

Got some alternating hops, then some continuous lateral bounds, and then to finish with some continuous tuck jumps. The real aim with these, I guess, is to be reactive and uh getting off the ground nice and quick. Going to go through those. Then I'm going to go through the repeat power test. So, let's get into the first set of hops. And we've got continuous lateral bounds. Pretty self-explanatory. Just do a lateral bound continuously.

Four reps each side. One thing I always see when people doing these or two things, they really like try and jump as far as they can by reaching with this outside leg, but it just means you're not producing force off that inside leg. So something I always say to people when they're doing these is think about pushing off that inside leg or pushing the weld away. So that inside leg is actually doing the work. And the other thing is, especially on continuous ones, they'll like bound too far, which means bound back is just super slow because they can't actually deal with that eentric load.

So, an easy way to, I guess, combat this is literally just make the bound shorter. Rather than going like really far, just start a little bit shorter to make them, I guess, a little bit more reactive. You can just start 1 2 3 4. And then as you start to get more comfortable and better at those, then that's when you can start, I guess, making that bound a little bit quicker. But the next one I've got is continuous tuck jumps.

So again, just trying to like get off the ground quick. Kind of like hurdleless hurdle jumps. Eight reps of this. Oh [ __ ] Last two reps. So we just got for this week one more round of that and then we'll get into the run. So behind me I have laid out 60 m worth of cones. I put them at every 10 m increment. Now, you want something that is obviously straight, but an easy way to lay out 60 m worth of cones. I'm at a football field here where they actually have 10 m increments lined out already.

So, this is perfect. Otherwise, you can use something like Strava. It's going to be a little bit inaccurate, but um you can get pretty decent um to lay out those 60 m. If not, take a tape measure. can be a little bit uh longer to do, but yeah, you want to get something 60 m and then 10 m increments. So, essentially what you're going to do is sprint for 5 seconds and then rest for 25 seconds. Now, after each 5second sprint, I'm going to walk to the other end.

So, that way I'm starting from either end each rep. It makes it easier to count. I'll get an estimate of exactly where I am each 5-second sprint. Now, with 12 the app, I'm not sure how well you'll be able to see this, but all I'm going to click is click start. It's going to count me down. 5 4 3 2 1. I'm going to sprint for 5 seconds. As far as I can go, as hard as I can go. After the 5 seconds is up, it's going to prompt you to put in the meters that you sprinted.

So, basically what you're doing in that 5 m. And the reason we have 10 m increments is you're getting as close as an estimate as possible to the total meters you ran. So, if I ran between got up to two cones and then halfway between the second and the third, that would obviously be 25 m. So, you're just getting as close as possible to the meter that you sprinted. You're going to do five reps of that. So, 5 seconds sprint, 25 seconds recovery. 12 will then give you the actual uh power based off the um algorithm that I've given it.

And then this will give you your specific sprint um or your specific intervals that you'll be using. Now, after I've done that, I'll get into the 6minute time trial. The other thing to mention is I've also got my heart rate monitor on. It's not needed for the test, but it's a nice way to see how you recover between each effort. I'm also going to use it for my 6-minute time trial just to get an idea of what my peak heart rate is.

Ideally, with the 6-minute time trial, you're pushing yourself to the absolute limit. Interested to see where that goes. But again, you don't really need it for these tests. Also, with 12, um, you don't need it. It doesn't require it. You just need the distances that you hit. So, without further ado, let's get into it. Oh, other thing I forgot to mention is make sure you warm up. These repeat power, this repeat power test is a sprint.

So, I didn't show it, but I did three efforts um 20 m efforts uh at 70, 80, and 90%. So, um yeah, it's key that you actually warm up, especially before you're doing any sprint work. So, let's get into it. Holy [ __ ] My heart rate got up then. Legs were feeling absolutely cooked. Jesus Christ. But not sure how well you were able to see. Then after each 5second sprint, the apt prompted me to ask how much or how many meters I ran.

Now, obviously, it's not going to be super super super accurate, but you can get a pretty good read of where you're at. Eg. If I'm between two cones in the middle, that's about 5 m. If I'm a little bit back, that's about 4 m. And you just obviously add up how many cones you're at. That's going to be 10 + 10 plus 10 plus whatever fraction of a cone you get in between. Then at the end, not sure how easy it'll be to see this, 12 gives you a summary of fatigue index and then your average power across all five sprints.

So rep one I got 31 m, rep two was my best, I got 35 m. Rep three, rep four 29 and then rep five I was at 24 m. Now my average power across all five sprints was 7.5 watts per kilo body weight. And then my fatigue index was actually pretty [ __ ] 47% of peak held. So, got some work to do. But then, yeah, the average power will set my uh intervals that I'm going to do, whether it's power or endurance base. But I'm going to have a little bit of a break, bit of water, and then get into arguably what's way worse is that 6-minute time trial.

Had a bit of recovery. Now, it's time to get into the 6-minute time trial. [ __ ] I haven't done one of these in that long, and I remember last time I was absolutely fried. But key with the six or any time trial is don't flog yourself at the start. You basically want to hold max sustainable pace for the whole time. And if you have any more energy at the end, that's when you push. Too many people do this and they end up just absolutely cooking themsel in the first minute or so and then they can barely hold on to anything.

So what I always like to say is have a max sustainable pace. Then if you have energy at the end, that's when you push. Now again, using 12, all you have to do is when you're in the app is click start test. It'll give you some basic uh instructions, but you're running for 6 minutes and you just record the distance. 12 has GPS compatibility, so you can either choose to track with the GPS or you can measure it manually.

I'm obviously going to use GPS just cuz it's easy. My phone can track me. I'll click start test. Then it will come up with the timer for 6 minutes. As an example, I just click start. The timer is counting down. There's some meters adding. And once the 6 minutes up, I'll get my distance. And then, like I said, this is going to give me my intervals when I'm actually doing my intervals for conditioning. But without further ado, I guess let's get into it.

Oh my god, that was [ __ ] I haven't run like that in way too long. I actually forgot to press GPS to track. And so for the first 45 seconds, I started and then realized nothing was tracking. So I had to take a break and then restart. So I'm not sure how accurate that's going to be. There's an analytics tab on 12, so you can go back and see your results. I end up getting 1,532 minutes and 6 minutes. Wow, that's terrible.

So there was my results from just before. 1,532 and 6 minutes. 4.26 26 uh MAS or maximum aerobic speed. That's going to now set my intervals. And now that I've done the testing, my plan is put into 12. All I have to do is just open that up and get into my next run. [ __ ] that sounds terrible. But like I said at the start of this video, there's always ways to train and it's just a matter of what are you willing to do and also how are you willing to modify your training?

Too much gripping onto the assault bike and then pulling back and forth or pushing back and forth. And plus, I won't be boxing as much, so I can afford my legs to be a bit more tired. So, running it is. Plus, it's always good to test things. I think pretty much everything I've ever given to an athlete, or I would say everything I've ever given to an athlete, I've tested myself. And now, now that the 12 is coming out soon, I'm going to be making sure everything's ticked off and kind of ready to go before I launch the beta testing.

So, yeah, I guess that's where we'll end it for today and see how I pull up tomorrow. But next episode, I will be doing the first session. So stay tuned for that.