Strength Training for boxing

I have heard that punchers can be made, but as yet there is no scientific evidence that it has ever happened. If you can give us a citation to a peer reviewed journal of science or medicine that proves otherwise, please enlighten us. Although most of these guys have never stuck their noses in a scientific journal, occasionally I do. In this case I will!

 

i personally dont think you need to concentrate on limit, static strength, or isometric strength for Boxing. speed strength is what's required. plyometrics, sprints, kettlebells/sandbag drills, and olympic lift varaitions. the more explosive you are, the harder you are going to hit. speed and technique=power.

 

Good. My thoughts are very similar:good

 

That is correct. However, limit strength is the foundation of which speed strength is based upon. The higher the maximal force of a contraction in a muscle, the higher potential for RFD (Rate of Force Development, power) it has.
Athletes are best of diving their training in phases to focus more on limit strength in the beginning of his macrocycle and then specializing more and more on explosive and starting strength (speed strength) the closer he gets to his competitive season.
This help develop what can be called a good foundation for the largest amount of power that can be achieved from explosive strength training.
(This is why olympic weightlifters are adamant about developing a high 1RM in exercises such as the back and front squat)

Isometric (static) training is mostly just a waste of time anyways, it doesn't have a significant effect on athletic performance like isokinetic training has.

 

I haven't seen a case study spesific for boxing, but I'll try to find one for you.

But it's pretty basic sport physiology that heavy resistance training has a profound effect on athletic performance.
What does heavy weight training do? It targets neural adaptations, increasing motor unit recruitment and neural firing rate (signal speed), both of which will increase RFD. What else? It targets and conditions fast-twitch muscle fibres, which, as the word kinda implies in itself, are the muscle fibres that contract fast. Fast is speed.
Now along with all the speed/technique based training that regular boxing training is full of (that you should never substitute for anything), you will increase speed with heavy lifting.
If you look at every other sport in the world that demands explosiveness - sprinting, shotput, long jump, football, you'll see that they do a lot of strength training, because it develops speed. Speed of sprinting, speed of throwing, speed of jumping. It absolutely works for speed and power of a punch.

Think of shotputters and all the time they spend with heavy resistance training. Do you think all that is just because they were born with it, or because they have had a dilligent resistance training program from a young age?
My mate with 10 wins, 8 by ko, 6 in the first round was a high-level shotputter.
He had no previous boxing experience before going pro.
Do you accept that like proof of which heavy resistance training has a profound effect on punching power?

I just got back to the boxing gym myself after not having boxed for a couple of years. All I've done is heavy resistance training, alot of Olympic weightlifting and football training, and I hit much, much harder than what I did before leaving boxing (previous sparring partners and coaches could confirm that).
It's simple, I've become bigger, stronger and faster and therefore hit harder from the get-go.

I don't know how much more convincing I can be, but I'll try to find a study done purely on boxers. Thing is that there aren't many studies done on boxing other than that of head injury following blows to the head or the rate of force from the blows themselves.

 

The scientific method does not include the use of anecdotes as evidence. You can tell me all about weight lifters, how strong they are and how easily they can get knockouts. Anecdotes prove nothing. Frank Bruno liked to lift weights, why didn't it do him any good? Mike Tyson made short work of him and that fat-ass Tim Witherspoon gave him a boxing lesson then knocked him out. A counter-anecdote, which proves nothing.

The traditions of boxing state that punchers are born, knockout artists are made. Until I see hard evidence to the contrary, I will stick with tradition. I am old enough to remember when most people involved in boxing believed that weight lifting is bad for boxers. Now most people believe that it is bad for boxers not to lift weights. I don't know for sure if it is good or bad, all I know for sure is that it is not necessary.

Assuming that your training methods are as sophisticated as you represent them to be, I would be willing to bet that you could visit, at random, a thousand boxing gyms on this side of the Atlantic and you would not find even one gym that employs your methods, or something equally sophisticated. Boxing is the sport of guttersnipes. They aren't much interested in science.

 

i guess it would strengthen my mid sec and legs slightly
no substitute for squats and calf raises tho - and is improved even more by weighted jump squats and one legged jump squats(the latter being very specific for boxing)

 

Of course, there is more to punching than shere power. Proper body mechanics are one thing, but you're not really born with that either, are you? If so, you wouldn't need to learn how to box, you'd just know. We know that's not the case.
Everything you can do is a product of your adaptation to your surroundings. Granted, some people are genetically predisposed to certain types of abilities, such as sprinters are born with more fast-twitch fibres and distance runners with a larger amount of slow-twitch fibres. But everything can be manipulated to a large degree.
Strength and power training in the form of weightlifting is a tool and nothing else, it wouldn't be bad for boxers not to make use of this tool.
But if the boxer can gain an edge from utilizing it, why shouldn't he?
Because of myths that state that it doesn't make a difference?
It does make a difference, studies (granted there are little studies made spesifically for boxing that I've seen) have shown it, athletes have and will always show that it does.

"Punchers are born, knockout artists are made."
This statement can be true in many cases, but like I've said, nothing is absolute.
Some are born with better circumstances than others, but that isn't to say you won't become a better puncher than someone genetically better off given that you properly make use of every opportunity you have at maximizing your potential.
The possibilities are endless, and nothing is impossible.

It's in any case the athlete's own responsibility to make the most of his abilities. To do so he must research and experiment. I'm just trying to help out with what I've researched and experimented with, and what I've learned about the human body from studying physiology. I feel it's also every athlete's responsibility to pass on whatever knowledge he can so that others can learn from it and progress.
That's why I think it's too bad that some get kind of stuck in the past. Tradition can be a blinding thing in most cases.

If you're still not somewhat convinced, I'll leave it at that. No use for me trying to bang my head through a wall, I feel I've stated my case.

 

now, just because i said you shouldn't spend too much time on limit strength, that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be done, but too many guys go on bodybuilding programs that wastes so much time and energy. i do bodyweight stuff nowdays just for injury prevention purposes. i think personally people look too deep into the science end of things instead of doing what needs to be done. hack out the bull**** and focus on the important stuff i always say.