Practical Data Driven Conditioning For Boxing

Caleb Handley2:56

It's so hard. When I first started in the online space, I was trying to manage everything and I think when you are online it is very, very hard to do. When we first talk to a new athlete, it's always we go through their training week, what their structure is, figuring out what are their hard days, where's a sparring days, what's going on throughout that week, and we just try and make S&C fit there.

I think I've even posted about it, the classic high-low system and making the perfect week. But for any combat athlete that does any of the combat sports, it's never going to be a perfect week, especially when you've got gyms that are like, it's good, have sparring Tuesday, Thursday, and then there's the other technical sessions outside of that.

When it's going to be a hard day, some guys will be like, "I rock up and my coach is like, 'Alright, we're sparring today,' or I rock up and we're doing power rounds of bag or whatever it is." So it's so hard to manage that. So yeah, when I first started I think I was like, "Alright, this is the perfect schedule and this is how it has to be." I think now I'm a bit more fluid with it.

I do my check-ins every Monday just to be like, "Alright, how's the week prior? What's the week looking like? Do we need to move stuff around?" So yeah, it can be tricky, but you do the best with what you can.

It's like, again, any other sport, sometimes they might rock up to training and they're like, we're doing something absolutely cooked that the coach has just cooked up. Yeah, the high-low system is nice. It works well and for team sports I'd implement that, but you'd have total control over every—well, I say total control, I'll say somewhat until the coach goes off the rails and does something stupid. But regardless, you kind of still have control, so Monday's going to be an easier day, so the session structured a certain way, and then Tuesday is going to be contact stuff.

That makes it a lot easier to have that variability. Obviously within combat sports, I mean even I'm sure people listening, even within their own training, are probably like, "Yeah, I'm just going to go light today." And then you don't.

James de Lacey5:10

Yeah, like every time I do jiu-jitsu, I'm like, "Alright, I'm just going to have a few easy rolls today." And then I do jiu-jitsu and someone goes a little bit harder and I'm like, "Oh, that's out of the way. I'm going hard today."

Caleb Handley5:26

So boxing, someone just touches me on the nose with a half-decent jab and I'm like, "Well, this is it now. We're going hard."

James de Lacey5:36

Great. Well, I wanted to jump into the conditioning side because you were in our first mentorship with Dr. Andrew Asha. So if anyone listening, get on the waitlist. I think we'll have another one sometime in the beginning of 2026. I'll put a link down the description for anyone who's interested. We've done three cohorts so far now and it's been awesome having people come through and really applying the stuff that's being taught there.

So I want to go through how you've been applying it and how people listening can maybe take what you're doing and implement it with themselves, because actually we've talked a little bit about some of the stuff you're doing with the testing and whatnot, which has been really cool. It would be cool to go into some of that detail around maybe your overarching process and what you're currently doing with your fighters.

Caleb Handley6:14

Yeah, cool. So I guess first thing is, yeah, we do some testing. We always start with—it's a bit hard because some guys don't actually have heart rate monitors. So in that case we can't really do the things that were, I guess, spoken about in the mentorship. So in that case we will just go for a look at their power output across some short sprints and see how that's dropping off or maintaining. But preferably most guys will have a heart rate monitor and then we look at that repeat 30-second sprint test.

And I guess the main things I'm looking at across testing is resting heart rate, the repeat 30-second sprint test. I guess they're more my diagnostic tests. They tell us what we should be focusing on and what direction we're going to go in. And then from the last test, we just look at that time to exhaustion. So again, what we spoke about in that mentorship, having a performance-based test to be like, "Alright, are we actually getting better or is something stagnating and not improving?" So yeah, those are the three tests I really look at.

Based off that resting heart rate, I've made a few posts about it. Above 60 is where I'm probably going to shift my focus more to that central side of things that we've spoken about a bit, and then below 60 to mid-50s or closer to 50s for that resting heart rate, we're really going to hone in on that sprint-based work. And then yeah, obviously within the 30-second sprints, there's those different phases we can look at. Can obviously look at their on and off kinetics.

You've spoken a lot about that on your YouTube channel. So, sneaky plug for your YouTube channel—if anyone hasn't, make sure to go watch James' YouTube because there's plenty of good stuff on there. I always learn stuff off there. But yeah, we look at the different phases similar to what I'm sure you guys do. I want to start trying to be able to look a bit more at power outputs through those 30-second sprints.

The only thing I'm looking at is really heart rate. So again, what's happening in the 30 seconds and then what's happening in that 60-second recovery. And then that informs me what we're going to go with.

I think one thing I have found though is I always have an idea of what I want to work on, and based off doing the mentorship most people start in a similar area. But the hard thing, especially I've found with sprint intervals, is if it is the early phases of recovery that we really need to focus on, am I going to throw them straight into a 10 on, 20 off or something like that, or am I going to ease them into it?

Because if someone's never done a true block of sprint intervals, that first, second, even third and fourth session is going to be absolute [expletive]. So it's just figuring out, do I want to cook them from the get-go? Do I want to slowly build into them? So yeah, that's my process for looking at that conditioning data.

James de Lacey9:18

Let's start with the testing side. Let's just start with the resting heart rate then. So, how are you getting them to do it just so it's standardized for each test? So, for people listening, I can because I think some people think, oh, I'll just do my resting heart rate and they might put something on or use their watch and they kind of stand there maybe after they've taken a [expletive] and eating breakfast or something like that.

Caleb Handley9:37

Exactly. Some guys have I had I started with this new I won't go into details just in case he does listen. But someone just told me their resting heart rate the other day and it was like 80 and they're quite young. I was like it's not 80. He told me at I don't know 11:00 a.m. that day. I was like you've obviously had food, you'd had a coffee, you'd had all these other things.

I was like your if your resting heart rate is 80, you should go to the doctor. So the thing about I guess technology these days is so many guys wear smart watches and so we just if they are we look at the from the last 30 days to get a pretty good understanding of that. If they're not literally just getting them to do the classic check my pulse, get an average over that over the next seven days.

Again, making sure that it's usually as soon as you wake up, before food, before coffee, all that sort of stuff to kind of get a standardized way of looking that cuz yeah, some people will say, "Yeah, my resting heart rate," but they've done all these things since that maybe even exercise that morning. It's like, that's not your actual resting heart rate.

James de Lacey10:01

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How often are you testing and retesting resting heart rate? Is it something you just kind of look at initially and then leave it or is it something you come back to?

Caleb Handley10:01

Initially. There's been a couple of guys where we've looked at again but that hasn't been for 10 to 15 weeks. If it is just looking at their smartwatch then it's super simple. It's like all right this was that. But it can be quite difficult to get someone to number one remember and number two actually do it if they are just doing the classic pulse method when they wake up.

So I try to I think you can get a pretty good understanding of someone's I guess baseline fitness levels just from initially looking at it. Unless something drastic happens like they get really sick. They have a bit of time off training then it's usually just within that first week of us working together that we'll look at that often.

James de Lacey12:32

Nice. I'm just writing questions and [expletive] down cuz you I keep coming more and more as they do it. But

The other test you mentioned was so obviously we talked about the 30 seconds sprint intervals. I think most listeners if not two sets of 30 seconds on 60 seconds off. But you also mentioned the time to exhaustion test. Do you want to maybe go through that?

Caleb Handley12:51

For sure. So I think my first two tests would be either just kind of diagnostic tests. So what is going to be the focus? So above 60 we might be more long hit or potentially biased. Below 60 we're going to be sprint intervals. If sprint intervals is going to be the case, then that's where we use that 30 second repeat sprint test to really identify what we're going to work on.

And then that time to exhaustion is basically just our performance test. So, how long can you go until you exhaust? And I guess this is what most people are interested in or most athletes are going to be interested in, how big quote unquote is my gas tank.

So, what we do is I just go with the assault bike, start at 40 RPM, every minute we just increase by five. Go until exhaustion or go until you can't hold that RPM for longer than 5 seconds. If they don't have the assault bike, I have been playing around with the treadmill. Which has been good. Some people again it's online training is obviously hard cuz you can't as a coach and someone that's gone through the processes of university understanding trying to standardize things. It's a bit hard with that.

So, I guess just trying to give them the clearest instructions possible cuz sometimes people will come back and they're like, "I got 14 minutes on the time to exhaustion." I'm like, "No, you didn't." From all the data I've collected so far. I don't think you got 14 minutes. But anyway, well, that's another story.

James de Lacey14:20

What's the usual mistake that comes up when people are coming off these numbers?

Caleb Handley14:25

So, the hardest thing is the model of the assault bike. A lot of assault bikes a different distance profile. So for example, if I'm on an Echo at 40 RPM versus my assault bike that I got off marketplace, those resistances are going to feel quite different. So some, for example, the other guy that said he got 13 or 14 minutes, he sent me a photo of the assault bike and it looks like it was from the '60s. It looked so old. So I can't imagine that was truly what the resistances would have been like if you did it on any other assault bike.

So, that's been probably the hardest thing is trying to figure out not trying to figure out but just obviously making sure whenever he tests it's always on that same bike. But most people what I'm finding is if they're using I guess a modern assault bike is there what I'm seeing is anywhere between 7 to 9 minutes for a time to exhaustion test which yeah that's what I'm seeing at the moment.

James de Lacey14:25

Yeah, those are well, yeah, a assault bike is chain driven, right? And then the Rogue Echo is belt driven, so you get a little more resistance on the Echo

versus

versus the assault bike. So, yeah, as you mentioned, try to stay on the same piece of equipment if you can. And yeah, and then there's also the thing of

Caleb Handley15:48

When you're because I found when I'm cuz the guys that come from my gym to do testing, I've just got my home gym set up and so we do the testing of my assault bike. I found that when I'm with them motivating them, I can probably get an extra 30, 40 seconds out of them, really getting them to push. When you're online, you've got no one there streaming keep [expletive] going. You need to put some work in here. So, it's a little bit different in that sense.

So I guess with any testing you obviously got to take it with a grain of salt how you seeing this as gospel and this is exactly them and but we are only testing that specific test will be every five maybe 10 weeks. So again what was their nutrition like what was their how they go how they feel going into the session caffeine all those other things you got to kind of take into account that's where I will also then go to with some repeat almost baseline testing where we go do the initial 30 on 60 off by two and then for one maybe two weeks depending on their schedule we'll then go to the 20 on 40 off for three reps again just to get a bit better overnight idea of exactly what's going on if we're going down the sprint interval route.

James de Lacey17:04

Does the time to exhaustion test influence programming at all or is that more just kind of a marker that you start to track over time?

Caleb Handley17:11

Just yeah, just tracking over time as I guess 3 rep one strengths. We're just tracking that over time, seeing how we're tracking. Those first two tests are kind of the real ones where I'm like that will inform the programming a lot more.

James de Lacey17:11

And you mentioned as well about guys with maybe higher resting heart rates above 60 that you're not going to go down a sprint to approach initially. So what is the kind of condition that you may prescribe in that instance?

Caleb Handley17:40

So I had one of the guys actually from the gym. He started when we first started working together. He was a tradie and was getting ready for his first fight. And so kind of had the typical tradie diet of wake up, have a mother, have a pie. The classic Australian breakfast. And so when we first started together, his resting heart rate, he had a whoop. So again, you got to see how that goes with the whoop. But from the last 14 days, his resting heart rate was 72 or something. He was I think he's early 30s.

So I was like, I'm not going to throw you into sprint intervals. I just don't think we're going to get what I want out of it just yet. So we basically started with some long hit. We went long hit 4 minutes on 2 minutes off. We actually the first block we went with some mass intervals. So just gave him we did a 5-minute time trial with our testing and then just gave him I think we started at 80 or 85% 4 minutes on 2 minutes off.

Just built the percentage over four weeks or five weeks. Then we went down to 3 minutes on, one minute off, at a little bit higher intensity. And then we got his resting heart rate down to I think when we started the sprint intervals, we got him down to 59 resting heart rate. And then he was about 5 weeks out from his fight. So we were like, "All right, let's rip into it."

James de Lacey19:08

Was that were those mass intervals running or off feet?

Caleb Handley19:12

No, all off feet. Most of my, pretty much all my conditioning will be off feet. I've actually for some guys now I'm coming around to running. Obviously again, I've never really had an issue with running. Issue I have with running is when it's just flog yourself for the sake of it or just doing mindless work for the sake of it.

So I'm slowly coming around to the idea, or not to the idea just slowly coming around to it, that we'll do further away that we'll do our longer hit on feet. And then as we get closer to the fight, it will predominantly become off feet and be that more sprint interval base.

James de Lacey19:54

Nice. And then you mentioned as well about kind of you see a lot of guys have the same, they kind of come back with the same or similar conditioning profiles with what they kind of need to work on based on those kind of 30 seconds on, 60 seconds off. What are you seeing mostly from your guys?

Caleb Handley20:14

Yeah, so I guess it's hard to explain without a visual in front of me, but essentially what I'm looking at there, again go to James' YouTube, he's put up plenty of stuff like this, but essentially when we're looking at their 60-second recovery, kind of the way that I've simplified it is, and I think Andrew has spoken about this as well, is breaking it down into thirds. So where is their recovery lacking? Is it that initial first third within the second, third, or that last third?

And for most guys when they do that 30 second repeat sprint test, I'm finding that it's mostly in that last third. So they will still have a bit in that first though, but it's kind of the first through last. That second is usually pretty good after they get that initial phase of recovery.

So if I was purely just looking at it, be like I want to attack that first third and make sure that as soon as they finish the sprints that they're able to get into some good recovery. Coaches hat on, I'm like I don't want to flog them in. I don't want to flog them from the get-go. We're not going to just go straight to 10 on, 20 off, or 10 on, 10 off. So we always start kind of 10 on, 30 off.

That's what I'm finding most guys need to work on initially, and just kind of ease them into it. Because, yeah, going from even 10 on, 20 off to—I've done 10 on and 10, 15 off—you're just like holy [expletive], this is a different beast.

James de Lacey21:44

So this just feels completely different to that extra 5 seconds that I had to recover. So typically we'll start with like a 10 on, 30 off. You're like, all right, 5 seconds can't be that hard, and then you're like holy [expletive], this is something else.

Caleb Handley21:59

Yeah. No, exactly. Yeah. No, I've seen kind of similar with a lot of different data. That first is always delayed, like basically recovery at first, recovery is always a problem. And then, yeah, similar to you, I've just been going, I've just been cutting everything not in half. How have I been doing? I've been going like 20, 40, like you mentioned, and then I've just been going small increments from there, 15, 30, and then 10, 20, because it's a little easier to do that, as you mentioned, then going straight to like 10, 20s, 10, 15s, etc. Because, man, those are, if you're not accustomed to these, they blast you.

Yeah. And I guess it's similar to strength training. I'm not going to throw someone into some heavy singles or anything like that. We're always going to work into it. And so that's kind of just the process I found myself going into.

Initially post mentorship, I was very much like I'm just going to attack exactly what they need to work on. And a lot of the feedback was like that was just, I mean it is, it's always going to be unenjoyable, but they were like I just couldn't find, I could find the output after two reps. And obviously you need to make sure that the output needs to be maximal every single time. And then the motivation starts dropping off and they're like, oh I just really don't feel like doing that.

So I think as with any program, you're just going to ease them into it a little bit. Also depends on if they've got a tight schedule. If they've got a bit of a tighter schedule, maybe we might focus on those earlier phases.

But I have found also that even just focusing on, if it's 10 on, 30 off, it naturally will improve those earlier phases of recovery. Like there's always going to be that slight delay in the heart rate coming down post sprint, but I've found even just with a block of 10 on, 30 off, that delay is a little bit shorter anyway. So there's going to be those second order effects from not directly targeting that area.

James de Lacey24:06

How often are you retesting then in terms of using that the 30 second on, 60 second off?

Caleb Handley24:14

Pretty much every 10 weeks. So what I'll do is do blocks of 5 weeks. And the way that I usually go about it is just, yeah, figure out what my work to rest ratio will be, typically start at like 5 to 6 reps of that, see how they respond, and then I'll just add a rep over the 5 weeks.

Once we get to that next 5-week block, most of the time we'll just start to reduce that recovery period a touch, depending on how they responded to that. Some people are like, all right, I felt like I could maintain that power output every rep, didn't feel too cooked after it. Maybe we'll drop down to 10, 20, 10, 15 maybe.

Some guys will go 10 on, 25 off for 2 weeks, and then 10 on, 20 off for another 2 weeks or 3 weeks. So I guess that's just figuring out or maintaining communication with them to be like, all right, how's that feeling? How much can we actually drop off that recovery period? But yeah, back to your question, it's every 10 weeks.

James de Lacey25:17

Is there, how does the, or do you do or are there any strength, power, whatever you want to call it in the gym test then you're having guys do alongside the conditioning to further influence the programming?

Caleb Handley25:17

Yeah, from a purely testing standpoint, we'll look at a medball throw. I would prefer to do a, just see a medball throw, but I think it's just fun to throw a medball as far as you can. And these guys are just like I want to see how far I can rip this thing. So that's my first test. That's kind of just having a general overlook at what their power output is like. And this is for everyone online, by the way. For the in-person guys I do something a little bit different.

But for the online guys, it's a medball throw, a broad jump, a triple hop left and right side, 3 RM for the bench, trap bar deadlift, AMRAP pull-ups, and then we get into our conditioning testing.

James de Lacey26:19

And then how often are you retesting some of the strength stuff, some of the strength power stuff?

Caleb Handley26:25

Typically around same thing, every 10 weeks. But when I'm looking at their program as we go, and if we're doing any sort of broad jump variation within the testing, I'll be like, record your distance. So I can have a look at that to see if it's improving over the block. Same with the strength stuff.

If we're going to be doing a bench press or a trap deadlift with Trainer Heroic, you can, it gives you the estimated one RM. So we can kind of have a look along that along the way.

So, yeah, kind of depends. Some people like testing, some people like I really want to test again, I really want to see how it improves. Some people are just like I don't want to test at all. So it's kind of just figuring out, do they want to do it or do they not want to do it?

But kind of at the bare minimum, if anything, I'd like to look at their conditioning. I think that's where most guys are getting the value and seeing the biggest improvements. So we're trying to do that. And plus, if we to look, resting heart rate you don't really have to do much, but if we were to look at those other two tests, the repeat sprint test and the time to exhaustion, what's that? 10 minutes of work. Get that done and then we can have a pretty good idea of what we need to focus on for the next block.

James de Lacey27:36

Nice. And then you mentioned in person some of the tests are different?

Caleb Handley27:41

Yeah, a little bit. So in person we do, I have a node accelerometer. So we just look at some jump testing with that: counter movement jump, squat jump, single leg both sides, and then RSI. So we can get a bit better of an understanding of, I guess their, what their, I guess force profile is like. Well, not necessarily because we can't see the force, but how they're kind of producing force, those numbers.

And then we will do the same strength work and then the same conditioning. But it's nice to, I guess, give them some numbers, how high you jumping and what's your RSI like, in person.

James de Lacey28:22

So how does this then all come back to influence program? What are you specifically looking at from these numbers that may change something for one fighter versus another?

Caleb Handley28:33

Yeah. So, I've tested 130 or 140 boxers now. So, I've built out a pretty good little database. So once I get their numbers, I plug it into that and then I've got a bit of a spider graph. So just generally looking at how they're comparing to the average of everyone else.

And so once we've got that data, we're looking at what's their relative lower and upper body strength, how's that compared to all the other boxers? What does their lower body power look like from that broad jump? So that kind of gives me an idea of what we need to work on.

But again, it's never going to be like—I always reiterate this to anyone that I ever work with—it's great to see those numbers go up and it's good to initially get those numbers, but if we're only chasing those for the sake of chasing numbers, then what's the point? As a strength and conditioning coach, it probably fills your ego a little bit to be like, "All right, I got his broad jump up by this much or his time to exhaustion by 20%." Obviously looks good on social media because you can be like we did this.

But I guess my main thing is always going back to like are they feeling better doing boxing? Are they feeling stronger in the ring? Are they actually having that transfer? Because I've actually had some times where the numbers have either been the exact same or maybe even slightly reduced, but they're like I feel way better.

So again, I think combat sports, boxing is so chaotic. It's hard to be like, "All right, broad jump goes up, performance goes up, or my bench press goes up, performance goes up." It's not like track and field where you can directly see that those improvements have made improvements in the performance. It's a little bit harder with combat sports, right?

James de Lacey30:25

Yeah. What do you put that down to where you mentioned some guys maybe had some of their numbers go down, but they say they feel better than they have?

Caleb Handley30:25

I think it just comes back to the sporadic nature of testing, especially when it's in person. Sometimes I might not test for 10 to 15 weeks. So again, it could be sleep the night before, stress from work, all these other things. You know as well so many things go into testing and when you're not getting those constant data points to be like all right this is what's improving.

Because some of those guys if we look back onto their strength data from TrainHeroic we can see that their lifts have been going up and maybe their jumps have been going up, but when they come into testing it's either the same or even slightly less. So, it's you got to take that testing with a grain of salt.

It can't be like, "All right, his broad jump started at 2.2 m and then we came in and tested. We've been doing broad jobs for 10 weeks and he came in, it's 2.25, it went up by 5 cm." Great. But how does that actually transfer and how does he actually feel going into it?

Because I think having those really sporadic—well not necessarily sporadic but just sometimes a little bit longer periods between testing—it's hard to really I guess nail or hone in on what's improving, what might not be improving.

James de Lacey31:49

Yeah. For sure. And you mentioned as well a lot of you guys are getting a lot of the value from the conditioning side and that's kind of where you're seeing really big changes and big gains. Has that influenced or changed maybe some of your thought process around the strength training, whether that's the importance of the strength training, maybe how much, how complicated or how much you emphasize it maybe compared to previously? I don't know if that question even made sense.

Caleb Handley31:49

Yeah, a little bit. I think my strength and power programming has become a lot more simple this last year. Especially if guys are coming to me and be like, "I really want to focus on the gas tank side of things or the conditioning side of things," then the strength and power becomes very simple. Because we obviously give a little bit more volume to that. But yeah, it's hard to say. I think it's just become a little bit more simple in that sense.

James de Lacey31:49

Yeah, I was just asking because it's almost like I've had a similar thought process around especially for striking sports. I think it's a little different for jiu-jitsu and grappling just because there's such a big strength component to it and maybe MMA to an extent. But with striking, yeah, just be kind of generally as strong and powerful, but it probably doesn't need—I don't want to say the same. I don't know how to explain it other than it's almost like the conditioning probably needs more emphasis at least and it's going to have a bigger impact.

Caleb Handley33:15

I think naturally boxers will have that tendency to be like my gas strength's improving I need to work on my gas tank. And so you can kind of lean into that and be like all right this is exactly what we need to do. The strength stuff you can just be a little bit more general with that I think.

James de Lacey33:15

Without [expletive] on boxers because that's who I work with predominantly, but if they are just generally weak from the data that I've collected, most of them are sitting at a 3RM relative trap bar of the average I'm seeing is 1.6 times body weight, which is nothing. So, we try and get that to two times body weight at least.

Caleb Handley33:34

Without [expletive] on boxers because that's who I work with predominantly, but if they are just generally weak from the data that I've collected, most of them are sitting at a 3RM relative trap bar of the average I'm seeing is 1.6 times body weight, which is nothing. So, we try and get that to two times body weight at least.

And again, that can just be super general of like we're just going to rip some trap deadlifts for a while and do some squats for a while. It doesn't have to be really that much complicated. Same with the upper body. It's I'm looking for is a one times body weight for a 3RM. Some guys are coming to me with 0.6 times body weight or 0.7 times body weight. I'm like you're just going to feel so much better if you just improve that the slightest.

So that stuff can be so general. It's only really for the guys that I've been working with for two, sometimes three years where we can finally get into that realm of being a bit more advanced with our strength and power stuff rather than just doing three sets of eight on a dumbbell bench or three sets of six on a dumbbell bench. I think that's all it has to be when you're starting out. And we can focus a little bit more on that conditioning side of things.

James de Lacey35:08

Yeah. And I think some people forget that conditioning is also strength training. Pushing hard on that bike while power is going to condition or at least strengthen your legs.

Caleb Handley35:20

Yeah. 100%. If you're going full pelt, that's one of the biggest complaints I get. They're like, "My quads are pumped." I'm like, "Well yeah, dude, you're pushing against resistance."

James de Lacey35:26

I can't walk. It's the worst feeling, man. That's the worst feeling.

Caleb Handley35:33

It's summer. It's summer here in Australia and I have not done one conditioning session for probably two months and I'm just I can't bring myself to joy. It's meant to be 38 degrees today so doing that right now would absolutely suck.

James de Lacey35:46

It's like being in Texas. But you mentioned around the transfer—obviously if numbers can go up it doesn't mean obviously they're going to be a better boxer or a better fighter. Is there some way or something you're looking at or anything, any insight into maybe how you're looking at potential transfer or you just kind of like that's just down to the sport and the coaching?

Caleb Handley35:50

Yeah, mostly I find the most transfer I'm seeing and the most feedback I'm getting for them feeling better in their sport is just again—not super general, but just some general strength and power work. Getting their conditioning up.

Most of the coaches that I speak to are on board with them separating it. So it's the strength and power is the strength and power stuff. You know most a lot of social media gurus at the moment it is like you have to be specific and you have to be functional. So it's all just I think just getting generally strong, generally powerful, generally improving your conditioning, then just let the technical side of things just take care of those side of things.

I don't really—the most I guess specific I will get is I'll prescribe them some heavy bag intervals and that's about it.

James de Lacey37:15

Nice. Let's go into some more practical stuff for the listeners as well. So say there's a boxer listening to this. They want to come work with you and let's just say they've gone through all the different tests and maybe you can use one of your clients anonymously maybe as an example. How may a general strength and power session look in the gym for them? And then I think we've already covered the conditioning anyway from the sprint interval side and the long side. So maybe we can stick to this strength and power stuff.

Nice. Let's go into some more practical stuff for the listeners as well. So say there's a boxer listening to this, they want to come work with you, and let's just say they've gone through all the different tests and maybe you can use one of your clients anonymously maybe as an example. How may a general strength and power session look in the gym for them? And then I think we've already covered the conditioning anyway from the sprint interval side and the long side. So maybe we can stick to this strength and power stuff.

Caleb Handley37:45

Yeah, so I guess I'll just use the most previous diet. So he came to me, his broad jump was 1.7 times 1.7 m, which is pretty crap. Triple hop was 4 m each side. He had a relative 3RM trap bar deadlift of 1.2 or 1.3, and then his relative bench press 3RM was 0.8, I think. And then from memory he could do six pull-ups.

So in the scheme of things, quite weak, naturally not that powerful, and his goals were just generally to improve his strength and power, improve his conditioning. His conditioning was actually all right. He got I think he got 8 minutes 45 seconds on the time to exhaustion test. So not too bad.

But the strength and power side of things were pretty crap, and I think a lot of the time I am finding that their conditioning isn't as bad as I think it is. But it's the strength and power side of things, because most boxers will naturally, as they're going through their boxing career, will watch anything on YouTube about boxing training. It'll be geared towards speed and power. And so when you actually look at their strength side of things, it's just pretty bad. It's compared to other sports, it's pretty bad.

So for that specific athlete, where the power side of things, the broad jump and the triple hop weren't that great, the strength side of things could obviously just be generally improved, we have just gone with two full body days. Essentially what we do is use the warm up just to I guess get the body moving, and this will usually be specific to the individual. So if they have some injury history, this guy had a rotator cuff injury, so we just made sure that that was good to go into the session.

And then we go into his velocity block, as I call it. This is just where his jumps, plios, all that sort of stuff go. And for him, again, figuring out where they are in their I guess training journey, are they more advanced, have they had experience with S&C, have they not? So we just kept that very, very basic. So we just did a seated core jump and then some pogo jumps. So just generally improving those kind of areas that we identified within the testing.

So his general lower body power output, and then I use that triple hop, although the ground contact times are a little bit longer, as their plyometric activity. So just trying to work on those. And then for his strength blocks, again, his upper and lower body strength just needs some work. So we did some pause trap bar deads as our first strength block. Second strength block was a push and a pull. So we did some dumbbell benches into some pull-ups and then accessory work, and that's it.

And then on the next day, it's just kind of alternating those movement patterns. So we're kind of ticking off all those boxes. But for someone that just needs some general strength and power, I think that's all you need. I don't think there needs to be these really advanced cluster sets or 531 or whatever it might be. You can really just get away with a good 10 week block of sticking to those exercises, progressively overloading those, and you'll be fine.

James de Lacey41:08

Nice. We actually just had a comment in the chat from Black Ranger 187. Two of my favorite S&C coaches finally collaborate. This is very exciting.

Caleb Handley41:16

Hey, let's go. Thanks, Black Ranger.

James de Lacey41:20

I appreciate it. Actually, go back and listen to Caleb on the podcast over a year ago. You can listen to that one too after this. But let's let's go. I think I've already got maybe one more question for you, but we talked about kind of the basic general stuff for some of these guys, but the guys that you mentioned have been with you maybe longer and you're looking at maybe more advanced methods of strength power. What are you typically looking at doing in these situations?

Caleb Handley41:43

Yeah, so for those guys we're going to be going towards, I guess, some more, again, quote unquote, advanced methods. If you really wanted to, you could use them with anyone, but whether they're going to get as much value out of it. But then we go towards maybe some cluster sets, maybe some overcoming iso work, might be some contrast based work, just I guess keep trying to move the needle, keep the programming fresh.

I think if you're a beginner, you can literally just get away with doing straight sets, adding some weight, adding some reps each week, and then just adjust to those. But for some of those more advanced guys, that's when we'll start to go down those routes, using those overcoming isos, cluster sets, contrast sets, all that sort of stuff. Making the plio a bit more intense, I guess. Faster ground contacts, higher jump heights, that sort of stuff.

For the more I guess beginners, we'll do seated jumps for 10 weeks maybe, whether that's a seated broad or a seated continuous broad or a rocker jump or something like that, where they're just having to produce that power concentrically. Once they get into more of those I guess advanced areas, then we'll start taking those away and can start doing I guess normal variations of those, some hurdle jumps, those more continuous based plios, and those sort of things.

James de Lacey43:10

Is there any push into eccentric overload style training, or is that just become difficult to do? Maybe some of your guys are there or not there, or maybe with the online it becomes a little more difficult to implement.

Caleb Handley43:24

Yeah, I'm trying to, I've been trying to implement a little bit. I've been doing a lot of iso work with everyone, actually. That's one thing I've probably within the last few months been incorporating a lot more, and that's probably thanks to you.

James de Lacey43:24

What kind of isos?

Caleb Handley43:39

The longer duration stuff, longer muscle length stuff. So depending again, obviously on how much time, if they don't have much time, some guys come to me and be like, I've got 45 minutes, that's all I can do. We're literally going to be like, all right, 5 minute warmup, 10 minutes of jumps, and then you've got 15 minutes for an upper and lower body strength work.

For the guys that have an hour, hour and a half that are potentially training multiple times a week, we're chucking in some deficit push variations, some split squat variations, that sort of stuff. But then from the eccentric overload area, I've been doing a little bit of it, but not too much. The main things, the main modality I'm using is just the leg extension, just two up, one down. Oh, and also the seated calf. I'm finding that's getting some good value.

I think the classic of weight releases or squatting down with some pins, taking the weight off, I think if you're online it's just too hard to do by yourself. I think if you're going to do that properly, you probably need a couple people there to do that.

But yeah, I want to play around a bit more with it. I think it's hard though to, I think naturally boxers already don't know how to lift heavy. And so when you tell them to do something essentially overloaded, they're not going to do that to the required intensity if you're not with them. If you're not with them to be like, all right, this should be the hardest set you've ever done, you're resisting this thing pushing you down, they're not going to do that nine times out of 10.

So I think the leg extension and the calf raise is probably the easiest way to get that, because you're sitting down, the worst that can happen is that the weight just drops. Whereas if someone's got some, if they're doing some eccentrically overloaded squats, they're probably going to shoot themselves with this weight being super heavy. But I think with next year with some of the more advanced guys, it'd be cool to try out, see how they feel from it. Again, I just got to factor it into their whole year and where we might actually fit that.

James de Lacey45:07

Is there any reason? So you've been doing, you've been doing a fair bit?

Caleb Handley45:53

Somewhat. Not much with myself. I don't, man, I've just been, since the weightlifting competition I did maybe a month ago, I'm just trying to get myself healthy again because I pushed through niggles and [expletive] to do that. And I'm like, okay, try and get myself back to normal.

But yeah, I'm going to, I'll have a 1080 cable soon to be able to try and do some more.

James de Lacey46:15

Oh, I see. Yeah, I saw your post about that.

Caleb Handley46:17

Yeah, so should have one in the gym just to play around with and try some overload stuff and really just play around with the different pieces of equipment, because it's so hard as you mentioned. It can be hard to implement properly with minimal equipment, stuff like that. But you mentioned with the seated calf raise as well.

James de Lacey46:39

Are you choosing that as a preference over say a standing calf raise?

Caleb Handley46:42

Yeah, again, I just find it a little bit more comfortable for them. I think naturally most of the guys I'm working with will have a tendency to be a little bit more I guess skittish when they've got some weight on their back and I guess you can't bail from it as easy. So seated is just going to be an easier variation to go with. Yeah, that's probably the main reason we're using that seated.

James de Lacey47:08

Nice. Nice. Yeah, and then for I guess for anyone else listening as well, there's obviously you got your fast ones, your drop catches. I mean, even

Caleb Handley47:16

I use a fair bit of drop catch work, especially because we get close to that fight just to try and promote that contraction relaxation kind of action we're looking for. But yeah, the true eccentric overload like two up one down work, trying to figure out how I'm going to implement that better because obviously there's a lot of benefits from that.

So it's trying to figure out how we can get the proper stimulus because sometimes it's hard enough just to get them to lift to a proper RP or reps and reserve. You saw what they tested and then you get them to do a set of five of trap bar deadlifts and it's like you work it out to be 50%. You're like, what are we doing? What intensive are we working at here? Because that's not the reps or the reps and reserve I prescribed for you.

James de Lacey48:08

Yeah, it does become challenging sometimes when you're going RP or reps and reserves. It takes a while for people to feel what an actual ten is if they haven't been there.

Caleb Handley48:22

I think that's an ongoing process that I need to figure out a little bit more. I've started to give some of my guys a percentage range and then a bit of an RI and RP which is working a little bit better. Because yeah, sometimes you can say, "All right, we're going to do this trap bar deadlift and I want you to have two reps in reserve." And then again, I look at the weights and it's like that would have been an RP8. I mean, sorry, an RIR of eight. That would have been light if you're just going through the motions of it.

So I think that's one thing I'm finding with boxers is to truly get them to feel what a heavy lift should feel like. But I think that's where machines can be really valuable. If you're just doing the free weights, I think it can be a little bit harder for them to get that close to failure where we want them. But machines are really good for that just to rip some.

James de Lacey49:14

Would you then in some cases say, let's just talk squat. Would you abandon say a barbell squat and place for something like a leg press?

Caleb Handley49:24

I've abandoned it for a hack squat just for the stability aspect. I haven't yet got to the leg press, but I think that would be a good option. Yeah, I think just lower body training in general can be a bit hard to get the true strength adaptation we're looking for where they're really grinding out a set or feeling what a hard set should look like.

A lot of it I've been using a lot more zerchers for that aspect so it's not loaded onto their back. So they can get a bit more of a feeling of what it should feel like. A lot of the guys do feel a lot more comfortable bailing from that because they can just tip that weight forward.

So yeah, it's just finding whatever is going to work for them and whatever they're comfortable with. Some guys come to me and like, I will not squat. So we just got to find other ways to do that. And sometimes that's a reverse lunge or sometimes that might be the leg extension if we have to, but it's just finding what's going to work for them, I guess.

James de Lacey50:24

Yeah. Nice. All right, that's a good way to end this podcast. Where can people find and follow you?

Caleb Handley50:29

Instagram, Handley Performance Coach. Slowly working on the YouTube, but that's an ongoing process, but Instagram, TikTok, Handley Performance Coach, that's where you can get me.

James de Lacey50:40

Perfect. I will link up your Instagram down in the comments as well, so people can give you a follow. And I appreciate you coming on.

Caleb Handley50:46

Thanks. Thanks for inviting me back on, man. The chop.