White Collar Boxing Training
Boxing is known as the ultimate fitness training regime so it’s unsurprising that a lot of people have asked about my training for the Charity White Collar Boxing fight. Here you go:
The 3 round fight might have been the main event, and the win (and video) was certainly the main talking point, but there was around 150 hours of training undertaken in the 8 weeks leading up to the fight was real commitment. As the sign in my boxing gym said… “If you want to box, train. If you want to win, train harder”.
I trained 7 days per week, but varying the workout. Mornings were mostly about weights, strength and resistance training.
The core of my workout was an intense superset workout I’d used before. It took
less than an hour, but only afforded 6 minutes of rest in that time!
The workout consists of 12 exercises:
- KettleBell Oblique Side Bends – 16kg
- Goblet Squat – 16kg
- Mountain Climber
- Single-Arm Kettlebell Swing – 16kg
- T-Pushup – 7kg
- Medicine Ball CrossOvers
- Dumbbell Row – 12kg
- Pushup and Row – 7kg
- KettleBell Bicep Curls – 12kg
- Dumbbell Lunge and Rotation – 12kg
- Medicine Balls Wood-Chops
- Kettlebell Rotating Press – 16kg
Perform each exercise for one minute performing as many reps as you can in that minute before moving immediately on to the next exercise. The repeat each 12-part superset a further three times resting for just 2 minutes between each 12-set superset.
May not sound like much, but it gives you 12 solid minutes of exercise, with just two minutes rest before jumping into another 12 solid minutes of exercise, then again….and again. 48 minutes exercise in less than an hour, almost all on the upper body. It’s a killer, but it’s effective.
For boxing I then followed with 10 minutes of varied ‘core’ training to really hit my stomach before finishing off with 2 or 3 sets of sprint interval training – each set being 8×20 second max speed sprints with 10 seconds rest between for a heart-rate busting, body-fat destroying explosive finish.
I would do the above three days per week, days 1, 3 & 5.
Between the above, (days 2, 4 & 6) I hit my chest with a triple superset chest workout (Flat Bench/Flies/Cablesx3, Decline Bench/Flies/Cablesx3, Incline Bench/Flied/Cablesx3) again followed by 10 minutes of varied ‘core’ training followed by TRX Training.
I also ran, 3 evenings during the week and both days at the
weekend, time permitting. Nothing lengthy, 4-8 miles, 30-60 minutes. Typically a steady pace but every now and then with some fartlek training (running with a 15 second sprint every minute or so).
Then there was the boxing specific training. I did two 90 minute evening sessions each week (Monday & Wednesday) at a pro-boxing club where we would do roughly 30 minutes conditioning, 30 minutes pad/bag work and c15 minutes sparring.
I also did two 75 minute ‘drills & skills’ session at my gym, Cheshire Health Club, with most of the other white collar boxers, Friday evening and Sunday morning, which saw us doing everything from pads & sparring to running & pushing truck tyres up and down a carpark.
Beyond that I had either 1 or 2 one-to-one technical training sessions each week
with a former Pro-Boxer, usually over a ‘lunchtime’.
The effect was dramatic. Despite only actually losing 3kg of overall body weight, my body fat percentage went from 14% to under 11%, taking my waist from just under 30” to under 28”, and dense muscle mass increased and the most pronounced impact, my recovery improved by 50% – taking less than 90 seconds to take my heart-rate from maximum to under 100bpm.
The end result, aesthetics aside, was a high level of conditioning/fitness that saw me have the legs on my opponent on the night, and was the biggest factor behind my win.
My challenge now is to keep it up……
Gary Chaplin
garychaplin.com 
Thanks Gary awesome read, inspirational. A true champion looking forward to trying it out.
Hi Gary great read. I’m doing the ultra white collar myself this year and training starts next week. Can I ask what kind of condition you was in before training and was some of that program devised by yourself or did your trainer set it up for you? I’m doing as much research as I can before training to really give myself the edge on fight night. Thanks in advance.
Hi Dan – great to hear! I was in good shape before the training, probably the fittest of all ‘our’ competitors, but my fitness rocketed through the trainings.
I devised most myself, I went to a boxing Gym 2 or 3 times per week, and did a group session a further twice a week. The rest was all me – 5 or 6 morning training sessions in the gym following my own routine(s) and then some form of cardio 4 or 5 evenings per week.
Fitness is everything on the night – I got to a position where I could get my heart rate down from 160 to under 100 in less than a minute – that way I was fresh for each round. It paid off hugely on the night.
Good luck – please shout with any other questions!
I want to give it a good go and 100% into the training