When boxers have to travel....

I don't know about boxers, but when I travel for more than 6 hours, my body needs very good rest to keep up.


I have traveled From Dubai to Denmark in October. I could not even sleep that night. it was so cold, when in dubai it was a pleasant heat.

 

Don`t know if i am just lucky but i have travelled 4 times to Thailand from England.Also a couple of times to America - Vegas and New York no effect on me at all,not even tiredness

 

No idea

 

I think Americans have a big advantage with the US being the mecha. It's just the way it is.

 

I have no idea what it'd do specifically for a pro boxer flying between countries, but I worked nights from about May last year to February this year, and there were many times where I went without sleep for 40+ hours. At the time, I was essentially one manning a McDonald's kitchen and then later on, putting away deliveries at B&Q.

It's absolutely ****ing awful.

I was deathly cold no matter what - I was putting away pretty heavy furniture and appliances in a heated building with a hoodie and a coat on and still shivering - and the feeling of cold brought virtually every serious injury I've had back as phantom pains. Broken collarbone, two sprained ankles; ****ed up wrist, bad shoulder, dodgy elbow, shin splints, etc. I felt all of them across single shifts and it was almost as bad as the day after I originally got the injury.

It's hard to explain, but my body basically gave me zero signals. I couldn't tell if I was hungry, thirsty, sore, sick, or anything. All I felt was that I was tired. I had to manually keep track of when I last ate, when I last had something to drink, etc.

I couldn't think straight. But it wasn't like normal where I'm pretty scatterbrained and thoughts are generally all over the place. I mean I couldn't hold a conversation with another person for more than a few minutes. I couldn't type, because the letters would just blur together and since I was so cold, any muscle memory was ruined by how much I'd shiver. I remember once having to read a label six or seven times just to know the price of whatever I was putting away.

Physically, I found I didn't lose significant amounts of strength. I was still perfectly fine lifting the stuff I usually did - although none of it was heavy enough to be a challenge in a single lift. But I had next to zero coordination and would find myself swaying like I was drunk. Naturally, I had zero stamina and would take quick breaks every five or ten minutes. Everywhere I'd look would be extremely dull and hard to focus on, while my eyes felt like they were burning.

And on a couple of particularly awful nights, I had hallucinations so vivid I tried to interact with them. And I don't mean things like speaking to people who didn't exist or laughing at jokes nobody said, I mean trying to put out fires that weren't there or shouting at things which were completely impossible. I almost lost my job for it, actually.

But the truly worst part of it was that it was like a trap. It'd take me hours of lying in bed the next morning before I'd finally fall asleep, even while being so tired and having gone so long without sleep. Just lying there, literally not able to think about anything except sleep.

This was just running a kitchen at McDonald's and putting away deliveries at B&Q. I couldn't ****ing imagine how shitty it would be to train in a state even half as bad as some of the ones I trudged into work in. Nobody could get anything productive done in that state other than sleep.

 

Sounds like my acid trip.

 

Long distance travel is a big deal. When Tim Witherspoon fought Frank Bruno he was over in the UK more than 4 weeks ahead of the fight date. Domenic Breazeale was in the UK almost 3 weeks before he fought Joshua in 2016.

A recent example of how to do it wrong. When Johnny Rice fought Demsey McKean in 2020 he arrived in Australia only two days before the fight. He got stopped.

 

Why fighters dont travel till the purse is big enough to cover arriving early , weeks if not months before fight to acclimate.

 

Well, presuming the boxer isn’t a short-notice payday guy and he has a real camp far enough in advance of when he knows the fight will be, there’s a lot that can be done to offset jet lag.

For one, start training on the clock of when the fight will be (and adjust sleep cycle accordingly) from the start of camp. If the fight is going to be at 2 a.m. your time, be in the gym around midnight or 2. Sleep during the day. Etc. Most of jet lag is adjusting yourself to a new clock.

Even better, as there are acclimation issues often with a different climate/temperature/humidity/air quality and so on, arrive about 2 weeks earlier.

Obviously if you’re just traveling a couple of time zones (say East Coast to West Coast) the effects are pretty minimal and you’re back to being yourself within a couple days at most. But halfway around the world is a far different matter.

Another thing I learned, and I got this from the United States Olympic Committee’s program (I presume for all sports) is to eat a lot of sweets (i.e. consume more sugar) for the first few days after long travel. Apparently it gets you through the tiredness more easily to have a jolt of extra sugar (which is fuel) from the start so when you’re there preparing you can train at your normal pace and won’t feel exhausted from doing so.

 

A very good post indeed.

Not just training and training at a high level given the duress, but the recovery too. Let alone the fight.

Got to go to your destination early to acclimatize. Like Tim Tszyu does.

Re-action time, focus, mental and physical energy and power. Recovery, training, sleep. Time zone. All these things can and will get affected if you don't get to your destination in the right time. You got to recover from the jet lag alone.

Imagine how many fighters have had their career ruined by things like this.

 

Harrison lost to Tszyu actually because of our water.




couldn't resist. lol.