Setting Up The Perfect Boxing Fight Camp w/ Duncan Ogilvie (SSOF Ep 131)

Duncan Ogilvie2:23

But working at the uni now we get a lot of American scholars that come over to do their masters. It's a good situation for them to continue playing and get a masters over in the UK. I get a lot of different types of athletes. It amazes me sometimes we have four-year athletes that have partaken S&C, but their technical knowledge and their understanding of what's required from a technical perspective and even intent perspective is severely lacking. And then you get the opposite end of the spectrum as well, the guys that are just really good technically, really buy into it.

So I guess it's dependent on where you're at in the States. I think there's a culture there where perhaps you have one coach and 500 athletes, and you could be the best coach in the world, but trying to coach multiple teams across the day is very demanding. And you sometimes don't have eyes on all the time and you choose the most convenient or simplest method rather than get really deep down in S&C.

James de Lacey3:21

That does blow my mind. Yeah, when you think about it, okay, football, yeah, they have the one S&C coach works with football because there's so much money there. But everyone else, Olympic sports, as you mentioned, they might be doing golf and then volleyball and then some other basketball and then something else. You're like, man, how are they programming for all these teams at once, all different seasons? It's crazy.

Duncan Ogilvie3:49

Exactly, and it's pretty poor. It doesn't happen in many other professions. But one thing the US does have that pretty much trumps every country I've ever worked in or been to is the facilities access they have. It's top notch. They're continually seeing videos on Instagram of new facilities opening or whatever, and it's just amazing how much money they invest into it.

But it would be great for them to invest a little bit more into the culture as well. But yeah, that's just me from the outside looking in because there was a point in time where I had aspirations to work in the States in S&C, but that kind of has passed now. But I have a lot of friends that are out there and it's tough situations.

James de Lacey4:46

It's funny about those facilities. Yeah, you see videos of these massive facilities popping up and it's some rural high school in Kansas or something in the middle of nowhere. And you're like, where does this money come from just to build this? And it's just the football team as well.

Duncan Ogilvie4:46

Yeah, yeah, it's pretty nuts.

James de Lacey5:10

I want to go a little bit into some of the boxers you work with. When, I guess when boxers come to you, are they coming to you from different stages? So you mentioned that you work with some pro boxers as well. Do you just have pro boxers with you or do you have guys who are amateurs with you, guys who are even just, I guess, novices and just kind of almost weekend warrior competitors as well?

Duncan Ogilvie5:10

Yeah, I mean I guess I'll start right from the beginning. So I was working at the uni in 2015 and as we do, we get various athletes come in from time to time and just say, 'Oh, I'm a scholar, I want to start engaging.' So you have a little chat to them.

And there was a boxer that came in. He was an amateur, he was tall, gangly, about 6'5, and he said, 'Yeah, I'm a boxer, I'm going to fight for the uni, I want to do S&C.' I said, 'Great, cool, what's your ambitions?' He said, 'I want to be world champion.' I said, 'All right.' I didn't know anything about boxing really, but I said, 'That's fine, so we've got kind of where we want to get to, let's work backwards from there.'

And this boxer actually within about six, seven months became an Olympian because he won the European championships. And then he turned pro after the 2016 Olympics and then I worked with him during that period. But then when he turned professional he wanted me to continue to work with him. That was my first professional boxer that I'd had and it was a whole new world to me.

This boxer's then gone on to win I think 19 straight fights, become world champion at cruiserweight. He's then gone up to bridgerweight, won a world title, and now he's moving to heavyweight. His name is Lawrence Okolie. So he was the first boxer I worked with. I don't work with him anymore because he left the country, so I do some remote stuff with him occasionally. And then if he needs me he'll reach out, but I haven't worked with him since he won his WBC title in, when was that, April.

Off the back of working with him, kind of culturally in boxing, someone works with someone, everyone else wants to jump on board. So there was a time where I worked with a coach called Shane McGuigan. I worked with all his stable. I had about 12 boxers from his stable and a variety of other ones. And all of, I'd say 10 of those 12 boxers were top 25 in the world, so it's very high level.

But it started to become too much and just taken away from my other passions, my other sports that I enjoyed working with. So I stepped away and now I work with probably a handful, like five boxers now at various different levels. So a couple of amateurs, couple of prospects, and then some kind of seasoned pros.

James de Lacey7:16

Perfect. You're guy that's 6'5, what are the training considerations or were there any training differences you had to make to train someone that tall versus a 5'8, 6 foot guy?

Duncan Ogilvie7:47

Yeah, I mean boxing is a weight category sport, so at 6'5 he's fighting at cruiserweight, so he's pretty slender but he has very wide shoulders but really skinny legs. His mobility was severely lacking when he came in the gym, so our initial, as I do with the majority of athletes that are new to S&C, is just movement fundamentals and just trying to build gross athleticism through just basic movement and then build competency and then get a bit more specific to the sport and whatnot.

James de Lacey8:20

In terms of basic movements, you hear, maybe with your basketball background might be a bit different, but you often hear, 'Oh, tall guys, you can't do,' I mean I'm paraphrasing other people, 'You can't do full squats because you're too tall, it's harder, you can't do XYZ exercise, all the exercises are harder because you have longer limbs, etc.' Does any of this play a role in exercise selection for these types of athletes?

Duncan Ogilvie8:52

I think, again, you were paraphrasing, say fine, but it's more about what's their torso length, what's their femur length, how is their body proportioned? Is everything, do they have a very tall torso or very long torso? Then that's going to obviously mess with the squat pattern. Lawrence is pretty...

Pretty even, you know what I mean. His torso, he was 6'5 but his legs and his torso were relatively even, so it enabled him to get a good squat pattern. It was just his lack of ankle mobility often and some range through the hips that eliminated him from getting a good solid depth in the squat, but we got there in the end.

My philosophy on squatting for people, again it depends. The answer to everything is can they tolerate load in a squat position, do they have a nice upright posture, are they balanced? If you can tick those boxes then I don't see a huge issue if the squat has a solid structure.

James de Lacey9:53

Yeah, I work with some very tall athletes, some that I would never allow to squat because they're just useless and there's better ways to load them. But there's some really tall athletes that love squatting, they can go below parallel and very solid, good movement patterns. So for me it's can they tick the boxes of certain criteria I need to see in a squat, and if they can then let's see where we can take them.

You mentioned as well you start them around the fundamental stuff and the basic moving patterns and it moves maybe more specific. Maybe give just some general or maybe general programming or exercises or how that kind of progresses through with the athlete from that very general to that more specific, what that looks like.

Duncan Ogilvie10:48

Yeah, I mean it's just basic progressions. If you're looking through plyometric progressions, you're going to learn how to land, you're going to learn how to be stable on one foot, then add a bit of reactiveness to it, then reactiveness with intent. So to do that you could just do single leg snap-downs, single leg drop-downs, then single leg box jump, then single leg hurdle hop, then reactive versions and progressing through.

Through a squat again, simple movement patterns. If they can squat and maintain a rigid spine and hold those positions well, then take it onto single leg, load them up and progress through there, and then get more fancy with certain things or more challenging.

I mean the squat pattern's great. We go back squat, then maybe into, depending on what position of camp, might go into variations of the back squat, concentric only or from the pins, split stance, staggered stance, concentric only, then going to a rear foot elevated squat. That's great.

And then even playing around with Zercher type squats. Reverse lunges are great for combat athletes, just maintaining that rigid torso in that position is really advantageous for combat athletes as well. Does that answer your question?

James de Lacey11:49

Yeah, it does, it does. We talked about some of the specificity there, that's nice. I want to frame this: how specific, quote unquote, do you get? Because someone could potentially interpret this as, hey, we're doing specific exercises so we're going to box with dumbbells, we're going to add bands to everything, you know, the stuff you see on social media.

Duncan Ogilvie12:22

Yeah, I mean, my philosophy as a coach is you've got the force-velocity curve, you want to surf that curve at various points throughout the camp. I don't think that's too dissimilar to the majority of S&C coaches in the world. It's kind of a staple, and there's staple exercises to do that, whether it's trap bar deadlifts, back squats, whatever it may be, snatches.

And then you look at the specifics of the athlete, what can the athlete do, then you look at the specific of the sport. They've got to have nice strong stable shoulders, mobile shoulders as well, to throw different punches from different angles. Grip strength hugely important, punching power, kinetic chain, using those slings through the floor into the hips into the punch.

So how specific do you want to be? Well, I don't know. For me, if I'm going to work on punch power, it's where I'm looking at producing force into the floor first, transferring that into a rotational element, and then the punch power itself. But in boxing perhaps you don't rotate, you throw a stiff jab with minimal rotation, so then it's okay, we're looking at pushing power, pushing strength and combining those all in.

Does it have to be super specific? Again, you can talk to the internet gurus out there that all do amazing things that look just like boxing but they have no transfer to the skill or they're not getting elite boxers. Boxers love to throw stuff, they like to mimic movements. I think that's like any sport. Tennis people love to do a tennis drill with, oh yeah, I can imagine myself doing this on a court.

Does it have adaptation? If it does then yeah, I'm probably going to use it. If it doesn't, and if there's not some sort of science or rationale I'm backing it up with, then I'm probably going to leave it for the gurus out there that want their likes.

James de Lacey14:09

That was a good explanation there. Regarding the programming itself, maybe just give a typical or very general example of maybe how a strength session would look in terms of exercise order, maybe how that fits together.

Duncan Ogilvie14:37

Yeah, my philosophy would be we'd spend some time getting warmed up. We'd do a lot of tendon work within that warm-up, some mobility work as well, whether it's just simple yoga poses or Pilates movements or into just general mobility.

I like working a lot on the hips, so hurdle work, step-overs, step-unders. If you can make a boxer more mobile through the hips, they're going to be able to get nice positions and it'll transfer into some of their speed work and then movement capabilities as well.

Then from there, once we've got, it would be plyometric-based ballistic stuff, and then into—I do do some Olympic lifting variations with some of the boxers if they're capable. I think it's very rare you'll find a boxer that's able to catch in a solid clean position, but if you can teach a good overhead squat then they love snatching. And I find snatch hugely valuable for boxers.

So we're looking at those and then going into general strength, speed-strength work, strength-speed work, wherever you are in your block periodization. And then some auxiliary work, trunk work, rotational work at the end. And then looking at energy system development as well, and that's towards obviously the end of the session, or collaborating with their technical coach to ensure that they're getting their energy system work throughout the week. It's not just road runs and sparring and bag work.

And then S&C is trying to integrate everything in, and then looking at how big the fighter is as well within their energy system work. Do you want a heavyweight or a bridgerweight or even a cruiserweight running miles and miles and miles? That's a lot of weight, so there's better ways maybe to get your conditioning.

But yeah, that would be the structure that I follow with the majority of athletes, not just specifically boxers. But the beauty with boxing is it's a very traditional block approach that I take, because they have one event in 12 weeks or 16 weeks, or maybe even five weeks or eight weeks, whatever it may be. You can have that kind of traditional block periodization approach, whereas working in basketball or volleyball or whatever, it's very much conjugated throughout the season. So yeah, that's it.

James de Lacey16:33

We can talk about the camp mentality as well with boxing, because that drives me bonkers.

Duncan Ogilvie16:33

Well, we're going to touch on all of that. We're going to touch on the periodization.

James de Lacey17:00

I mentioned about the snatches, it's interesting because a lot of coaches they tend to shy away from the snatch variations and go with the clean variations. My experience, people often say that the snatch variations feel worse on the shoulders for a lot of athletes. I found the opposite. I found the snatch variations tend to, athletes that maybe do have some shoulder issues, that snatch variation feels better than some of the clean stuff, just because of maybe the wider grip.

I don't know, is there another reason other than they can't catch in the catch position for the clean variations that you use the snatch variations over that?

Duncan Ogilvie17:26

I wouldn't say I use one over the other. What I'm looking at is again, what adaptation do I want to achieve from this exercise, what do I want to emphasize? And it's again that extension, that powerful movement, the kinetic chain of movements, sequencing of muscles, which essentially is what you do when you throw a punch.

So it's great, and the snatch is a decent bang for the buck. If they can catch it, I'm not going to put someone in the snatch if they can't give me a decent overhead squat. But if they can do that, then I'm going to look at that. That gives me kind of the extension and the sequencing that I want, but then catching it overhead, you've got to have a stable shoulder, strong stable shoulder.

So that's only going to benefit their shoulder strength, shoulder stability, shoulder health as they progress, because a boxer's throwing hundreds and thousands of punches a week constantly. So they've got to have some strength all around the shoulder complex to tolerate that and not get a dislocation, tendon issues, ligament issues.

And then with the clean, I've just, yeah, boxers hate this position. For obvious reasons they want a nice stiff wrist, and so any kind of movement in the wrist in a punch is probably not great. It's probably going to result in some

Sort of issue, break or a bone break or something. So they feel uncomfortable in that position, and again they can be tight around the lats through the shoulders, so getting in that position is not great. There are some that do it—we front squat, we have variations of front squat—but again, what am I trying to get out of the exercise? Well, forceful extension and sequencing. So can we get that from a trap bar jump, clean pull, whatever it may be, a snatch? Perfect.

James de Lacey19:16

Let's go straight into your rant on camp mentality. What are the things that you're seeing?

Duncan Ogilvie19:16

Well, there was a very successful coach—he's a bit of a mentor of mine growing up, still reach out to him all the time—called Dun Friend. The first job I had in S&C, first proper job, he was kind of like my lead on that. And he mentioned to me, "An athlete should be a 50-week-a-year athlete." If you want to be a pro athlete, that means you're on game 50 weeks of the year. Sure, take a break, two weeks where you switch off.

Boxing has this mentality that drives me bonkers. It's, "I've got a fight in 12 weeks, so let's start now." "Oh, I'm out of camp, so I don't need to do anything." And from an S&C perspective—I chatted about this on another podcast a few weeks ago—from an S&C perspective, your biggest win is out of camp. That's when you can really hammer down and get some real good workload in. And then when you come into camp, you're already at a level and then you can be a bit sexy with it or whatever.

But often the camp mentality in boxing is, "Oh, I've got a camp. So 15 kilos overweight." So you spend the first few weeks trying to manage that, and then before you know it you're getting into fight week and it's like, "Well, we haven't actually made any improvements from the last camp. We've just got you back to the level you're at." And obviously in boxing you continue to rise the level, so physically you should be aiming to do that too.

But boxing is a very hard sport. I can't sit here and say that I've been in the ring and had fights—it's not something I've ever partaken in—so I don't necessarily understand the demands of stuff. Apologies for my cat running around. But if you're an athlete, a professional athlete, you should be on job 50 weeks a year, whether that's just maintaining. I don't like that term "maintaining" because if you're maintaining that means you're staying still, you're staying at the same level. Everyone else around you is trying to raise it, so in essence you're getting worse compared to competition.

But this is the world that boxing is, and trying to educate your athletes—it's great when you get an athlete at amateur level and you can instill that education. I'm working with a guy called Billy Ad. He's about to have his sixth fight coming up, and he's really diligent, dedicated, and hasn't really had much of a break since he turned pro, other than a week off after the fight. And so we've made some really good progress within that short amount of time.

James de Lacey21:30

Perfect. I guess as a carry-on on that camp mentality, your block approach—do you want to maybe run through how that looks, maybe from out of camp and then as they come into camp, how that block approach evolves as you get closer to the fight?

Duncan Ogilvie21:57

Yeah. I mean, if I'm fortunate enough to have a boxer that wants to work out of camp—and I get it, financially they're only making money when they're fighting, so these sort of things, especially with some of the level of boxers you work with, money's a huge issue, paying for services, et cetera. But out of camp, what do they need to work on?

Do they want to improve their strength, their base strength? So then we might just hammer down on a solid strength block. Do we want to work on more ballistic movements? So then we can look at technical, a technical block where we're like, "Okay, we're going to hammer down and get you doing the snatch really well or clean pull, things like this."

But then when you start to get into camp, let's take a 12-week camp. So we might work on strength-speed for four weeks, speed-strength for four weeks—so that's eight weeks. Then we're four weeks out, then do a peaking phase for a couple of weeks, then we're two weeks out, and then we'll do a taper down for a week, and then we get into fight week.

I love to have the athletes in. I've got a fighter that's fighting on Saturday, and he came in this morning. That would be his last S&C session. Ideally I'd get him in twice on fight week, but just because of his schedule and his weight cut and stuff like that, he came in on Tuesday. He fights on Saturday.

But then just touching on some of these anaerobic-based specifics to the sport, because as we know as coaches, this will deteriorate within two, three days. So if you're not touching it on fight week, you reach the peak and then you're coming down. So yeah, that's a simple block approach that I might use with a fighter for 12.

James de Lacey23:11

So what would be an example of what you would do on this Tuesday for that fight week, for that peaking? Is that just your short sprints on, say, airbike or something with complete rest?

Duncan Ogilvie23:41

Yeah, I'll tell you exactly what we did because it's fresh in my mind. So we did it at 8 a.m. this morning, and then he went to his boxing session, and that'll be it. And then tomorrow, Wednesday, he's got media duties. Thursday he'll do the weight cut. He doesn't have to lose a huge amount of weight. Friday, obviously the weigh-in, the refuel, and then the fight night Saturday.

So today we came in, we did a solid warm-up, got going. Various routines, band work, mobility work, tendon work, bit of isometrics or whatever—it's pretty similar to what we do pre-fight. And then we threw some med balls, various different stances, various different throws, did some just very high-velocity movements, so some slams, some throws, did some assisted jumps, some broad jumps as well.

And then we jumped on the bike and did what we do: we did five sets of 12:48. So that'd be 12 seconds on as fast as you can possibly go, 48 seconds rest—plenty enough time to rest, recover. Five sets, really short. It's not going to have a detrimental effect on his recovery, but is keeping that anaerobic system topped up. And then obviously from a central nervous system perspective, that's where we do all the ballistic, the throws, the slams, to make him feel good on his fight week. So he should feel good. Fortunately he's had no niggles, so he's in a really good place.

James de Lacey24:58

You mentioned you like to potentially get them in twice on that last week. When would be the second session and what would that involve? What situations would you do that?

Duncan Ogilvie25:23

Yeah, so on an ideal fight week, they'd come in on Monday and they'd come in on the Wednesday, and then they'd obviously focus on the weight cut on the Thursday, the Friday the weigh-in, Saturday. For whatever reason, his schedule didn't allow it this week. It was my fault actually because I was at a wedding, so that was why. Because I got back Monday evening, so we agreed to do it on Tuesday and incorporate everything on the Tuesday.

Whereas Monday we might do more upper body ballistic work, Wednesday lower body ballistic work, and then the bike might be six sets or seven sets on the Monday and then five or four sets on the Wednesday. Again, just to touch on that: to keep him stimulated, to keep him active, to keep him primed, but nothing that's going to have a negative residual effects on his recovery or his general well-being.

James de Lacey26:18

Do you want to just touch on the differences as well at the beginning of—so you're doing four weeks of strength-speed and then four weeks of speed-strength. Just for the audience there, what those differences would look like in those two blocks?

Duncan Ogilvie26:18

Well, okay. So obviously we're looking at—we can use VBT stuff to look at the velocity of, say, let's take a trap bar deadlift, which I think every boxer in the world probably does a trap bar deadlift at some point. But let's look at that. So we're looking at strength-speed, so we're probably looking to hit numbers of 0.6, 0.7, and then maybe as we progress through, we're looking to hit numbers like 0.75 to 0.9, something like that. Working on similar rep ranges, probably around four to sixes.

I don't do a huge amount of volume in reps throughout any of the blocks really, unless we're super-focused on trying to get some muscle mass or whatever. But yeah, that might be an example of just one exercise, how we use variation. And then we could use maybe on the speed-strength block, looking more concentric-based, so coming off blocks, maybe pins, whatever it may be.

James de Lacey27:22

Does that answer the question?

And then the peaking phase, how does that change again?

Duncan Ogilvie27:22

Again, peaking phase is very—we've surfed that curve, right? So we're coming down towards the end. So it's low load, high velocity. Or if it is high load, it's very, very minimal reps—one, two, three reps—but the intent is there to move some timber as quick as you can. Yeah, so I think working that curve throughout camp is, for me, a pretty fair, safe way of making sure your boxer can be ready come fight night, if you're fortunate enough not to get any injuries through the sparring.

Or just overuse injuries, which often happens depending on the type of coach. Technical coaches in boxing are very old school, at least in the UK, so you have a lot of old coaches, old mindset coaches, that want the road runs three days a week and this set and the other. Probably not the best thing going into a fight, but again, that's my job to try and educate within the right way. I'm not trying to tell a technical coach how to do their job, but giving them an idea of another way to get where we're at.

James de Lacey28:49

So how does the conditioning change then throughout that? So you mentioned the long running there. Are you trying to, not going to say trying to remove it all, but is your preference to have none of that going through this? The example, I think it was 12 weeks, the example you gave, would have none of that and be doing other things and how does that progress as you get closer?

Duncan Ogilvie29:14

There is an advantage to, I call it LSD training, like long slow duration training, from a mindset perspective. Boxers would like to put their headphones on and just go out and just think about what's coming up and just toddle along for 6, 7, 8K, whatever. But then the question, the answer would be, it depends again. Like where are they at in their camp? Where are they at with their weight loss strategy? Like do they need to lose some weight pretty quickly, so therefore they're going to have to do some boring kind of fat burning type cardio?

Ideally I wouldn't have that towards the end of camp. Like as we know with the energy systems, you can maintain aerobic fitness for x amount of weeks, anaerobic fitness declines in a couple of days, whatever. So going into a fight you want that focus to be more on the anaerobic side rather than the aerobic side. And then obviously from an athlete wellness perspective, a recovery perspective, there's lots of implications you've got to look at, is it great to put that much volume on a road run when they're at the peak of their sparring within camp?

Perhaps not. Perhaps that's when you get these overuse injuries and tendon issues and stuff leading into the fight. And that's what we want to avoid.

But again, I use a similar block approach with the boxers within the energy system work. So working through the various energy systems, aerobically, anaerobic, like glycolytic, up until the fight. I much prefer the modality of bike to do my conditioning, that or assault bike. We've got both of those, got Watt Bike, assault bike. So various different intervals that would touch on those energy systems working through camp.

I've made a little spreadsheet that I had a lot of the fighters use and we've had really good success with it. And it just works through the energy systems as we get closer to the fight, and it's based on intervals on a bike. If you ask me again, Duncan French told me once, the body doesn't necessarily care what you're doing, it's the adaptation to what you're doing.

So if there's a way to get that adaptation without putting stress or load through the joints, i.e. a bike is very kind of friendly for that, whereas a road run perhaps isn't, or going on the track to sprint. I'd hate to see my boxer doing maximal sprints two, three weeks out from the fight for obvious reasons, but it happens, right? You see it happen.

James de Lacey31:45

Do you want to maybe give some examples of what some of those sessions would look like going through those different phases?

Duncan Ogilvie31:45

Yeah, okay. Let's chat about something real quick while I just grab it, and then I can talk you through it. My memory now.

James de Lacey31:45

You're good. Pull that up so we can, that'll be good for the listeners to kind of go through and maybe just get a general idea of what that kind of...

Duncan Ogilvie32:13

Okay, aerobically, basic sizes, and then as it progresses through. Yeah, so I got it here. Let's get these windows. There we go. We're good.

So this is from what we got. A conditioning, like this is just one of my framework. So we're looking at aerobic focus. So we got four sessions in a week, so this would be 10 to 12 weeks out. And we're looking at, I just put for the athletes, I'll send the spreadsheet to an athlete and they potentially do it. And we have percentage of their max, so we're looking at between 65 and 75% over those four sessions.

James de Lacey32:41

That's max, that's that percentage of max heart rate?

Duncan Ogilvie32:41

Yeah, and then we're looking at five minutes at that with a rest interval, and then repeat for four sets. Then we've got our total time. Then we're looking at we're going into an aerobic focus with a lactate. So then we're looking at more interval based, so again, four sessions in the week, 30-30, time 5, one minute rest, time 4, equals 24 minutes, the total. That's just one session from that four.

James de Lacey33:11

Is that the same heart rate prescription for those 30-30?

Duncan Ogilvie33:11

No, we're looking at 80% now. Yeah, sorry. Now we're looking at the next one, we're going into anaerobic focus again, but we're looking at slightly more intense, so we're looking at like 85% plus. And then as we're getting closer, three, four weeks out, we look at anaerobic focus for the ATP, where obviously max effort 20-40 sprint. Even going into as low as 12-48.

And then we're getting to those one, two weeks out, we're touching on just the ATP stuff, which is like max effort and full recovery, if that helps you. I'm happy to send you that over and you can give me your thoughts and rip it apart.

James de Lacey33:44

No, it's awesome to just see other coaches' perspectives and what they're doing and how they're playing. And it's really good for the listeners as well, I think, just to get an idea of all the different things going on.

Duncan Ogilvie34:15

And this was, I created this when I worked with a coach, Shane McKeever, and he did some very intense bag circuits within his training that obviously had a similar response to some of the energy systems we're working on. Working together with him, getting an understanding of what he does, he loves our circuit Wednesdays. For someone I might say, okay, we've got four sessions this week, but we're going to chop one out because you've got circuit Wednesdays.

And there, I don't think there's a huge amount of science in that. It's just we're going to beast you for x amount of rounds to really get you working hard. Again, this is, I'm not coming in and thinking I can change the culture of boxing, and there's huge value in those sort of circuits as well, just to know the confidence you're getting from busting your ass in those circuits going into the ring is important, even if there's better ways to get it. You get what I'm saying?

James de Lacey35:05

I do, I do. Regarding the progression through, are you ever running maybe like a more polarized approach? For example, that you're doing that aerobic work in the beginning, are you doing any kind of max sprint work or anything like that paired with that, or is it just purely this is the aerobic focus and we're going to progress through into those short intervals as we go through?

Duncan Ogilvie35:30

I mean, yeah, this is combining in with their training within their sport. So often they're doing some conditioning work with their coaches as well, so it's having communication based with their coach. So this was just an example of the conditioning plan that I had when working with fighters from McKeever's gym, because I knew what they were doing away from their sport. But yes, we would touch on other elements if needed, or perhaps their coach wants to handle all their conditioning, so then perhaps I won't do any conditioning other than some finishers at the end just to get some top up. That makes sense.

James de Lacey35:55

Regarding the amateurs versus pros that you're training, are there any differences in what you're prescribing? Because once an amateur, once a pro, or is it, hey, they're both boxers, they're both athletes, they need similar things and adaptations anyway?

Duncan Ogilvie35:55

Yeah, I mean from working with the amateurs, is often that they're very naive and a very young training age, so it'd just be more about the education. I worked with a handful of amateurs, really. Like Billy, he was an amateur, so we worked on his just basic competencies from a strength and conditioning standpoint.

They have multiple events at various different times depending on where they're at. They're with the national team, the England setup. I have a few guys that will use my gym when they're back from Sheffield, so Sheffield is the base of the GB boxing national program, so they'll be up there through the week. So yeah, I mean my experience working with amateurs through a camp is not great.

It's more so just helping them out around kind of their training, so they're doing it just because they want to get stronger. But when they become into the professional ranks, they've got a team around them, and we work closely together, and we're obviously going for one specific fight to build them up. I don't think I explained that very well.

James de Lacey37:25

I'll keep going with followups to keep prompting, because it's a good conversation.

Duncan Ogilvie37:25

Yeah, it's like the amateurs are literally, they're not necessarily interested in me becoming part of their team in a sense of going to their fights and this, that and the other. They just want to partake in because it's not provided at their amateur gym, because amateur setups are, you know, they're very low budget, often community funded, these sort of things. So yeah, is there, let's go hypothetical then.

James de Lacey37:57

Or theoretical. Cool. You know, some pro boxers are boxing 10, 15, whatever rounds. Amateur boxers, okay, I might be doing three rounds. Does that influence or change much for you, or would it change much for you regarding the way you program or prescribe from a conditioning perspective?

Duncan Ogilvie37:57

Yeah, I think so. I mean, you'd expect the amateurs have to be probably a lot smarter with their weight, their strategies, and their weight. They box a lot, can box a lot more regularly than pro boxers. Obviously, going into a tournament you have back-to-back-to-back-to-back fights. You have to maintain that weight, but then it's a lot more intense, it's a lot more uptempo fight style.

So yeah, you've got to touch on towards that anaerobic conditioning. You've got to keep that really topped up throughout the whole year, and you'd imagine with good amateur setups that the aerobic focus is taken care of within their training and they wouldn't necessarily need any additional road work for weight management per se, you'd hope.

James de Lacey38:57

And then with the pros, is there—you mentioned obviously the amateurs, they're fighting back-to-back-to-back, a little more intense. With the pros then, it's a similar, I guess, thought process around the training, even though it's more rounds. But they can take rounds off, they're probably better at managing energy potentially if they've been going for a while, understand the sport better, et cetera, so maybe they're more efficient.

Is there—just trying to frame it in a way that makes sense—is there a way that, I think most, a lot of people from outside looking in, or boxers that are looking to go pro maybe think because there's more rounds I need to do more? Is that the case within your thought process or prescription?

Duncan Ogilvie39:24

I mean, there's different strategies within the amateurs and the pros, right? Because you've got three three-minute rounds, you've got to go for it. There's no sitting around like in the pros. What often happens is you get someone that turns pro, they'll have some four-rounders, they'll build to six-rounders, they'll have eight-rounders. But within those four to six rounds, you're probably fighting journeymen that are there to survive and not win. So that's where you develop your experience and you learn how to box and you learn how to time, manage it.

Billy, for instance, he's only ever four, six rounds. So he might, when he gets to 10, that's the first time. So his ability to manage those rounds is obviously the mentality is very different to the amateurs. So yeah, taking rounds off, these sort of things, learning how to manage their energy levels throughout the round is very important. But that's something again they'll learn from their technical training. They'll learn how to manage rounds and survive.

But yeah, boxing in the pros, you go championship rounds of 10 and 12. It's considerably—I mean, that's like what, four times longer than the amateurs? So the style and the method of training would need to reflect that as well.

James de Lacey40:51

Perfect. I appreciate that. This chat, Duncan, I think it's a good way to end this podcast. Where can people find and follow you and keep up with what you're doing?

Duncan Ogilvie40:51

Yeah, I mean I'm not really huge on social media, but Instagram is just Do Training, so Do Training, all one word.

James de Lacey41:16

Perfect. I'll link that up in the description too. Is there anywhere else you want to point people?

Duncan Ogilvie41:16

I mean anything, Do Training. There's the website. I think I have Twitter or X. Again, I'm pretty poor at social media. I actually have someone that posts some videos for me on Do Training. But yeah, I'm more than happy to always reply to people. If someone wants to drop me a DM, they even want to come down to the gym, we pretty much have an open-door policy if people just want to come in and check out what we're doing or ask questions. And I'd love to hear people's thoughts on my philosophy, what they think, and we can have some back and forth for sure.

James de Lacey41:44

Hopefully we get some people reaching out to you as well, but I appreciate you coming on and sharing everything, Duncan. Thank you for your time.

Duncan Ogilvie41:44

James, I appreciate it as well.