How GB Boxing Prepared For Paris 2024 Olympics w/ Gary Hutt (SSOF Ep 119)

Gary Hutt1:21

Now for us, that first qualification opportunity was the European Championships last year, the European Games last year, which was 12 months before. So our guys needed to be kind of peaking around that competition to be able to secure their spot at the earliest opportunity. But then it's not just a selection for that. To get selected, you have to go and compete in a few smaller tournaments and be successful.

So what we'd usually look for is kind of anything up to about 12 bouts a year for the boxers to go and get exposed in competition. To get selected for, or to try and guarantee your spot at the weight class, you really need to win kind of 12 out of 12 bouts in a year to solidify yourself.

So performing at a high level for a long period over a year out from the games, and that involves three or four different more local competitions but still having to go and compete against the guys that are also trying to compete to go to the games and be successful.

Where does the question, where does the games prep start? Is probably years prior to the games where you want somebody to be really in a position to go and start winning consistently.

James de Lacey4:00

So you obviously mention 12 bouts in a year. That's a lot of fights. So how does strength conditioning fit around that? Because if you're trying, I mean, I'm assuming all those fights are important because they're all qualifications. So obviously you probably can't get too gung-ho and maybe do a lot of say volume or preparation work.

So it's a very general question of how it looks, but just a general idea of kind of how the S&C fits around it.

Gary Hutt4:25

Yeah, and I mean this is where I think the small distinctions between the amateur side and the pro side become important. Because when I say 12 bouts, in an ideal world they'd get three or four bouts in a competition if they go through the rounds and win. So in actual fact, 12 bouts might only be three performance opportunities, and then that means that we can gear our training around those key events, those key opportunities.

Now, that's assuming that people go win every bout they're in and go to a handful of competitions. What happened in this cycle was that not everybody was successful in every single competition. So boxers wanted to go out to multiple competitions and different opportunities to try and get that exposure and win. And that was where a little bit of the challenge and nuance around trying to plan and program around what peaking and tapering looks like versus what physical development looks like.

And we've got quite, we've got into a reasonable rhythm around kind of having a three-week comp prep, a five-week comp prep, to be able to kind of give that little bit of peaking and tapering whilst also then dedicating a lot of the block to physical development. And then when you throw in international training camps on top of that, it just gets a little messy.

But from an S&C point of view, that's where I don't think it's just about sticking to a plan. It's about how do you execute a plan in an effective way to achieve the adaptation you want.

James de Lacey5:56

For sure. So how does that say three or five week peaking, tapering kind of block look versus say the physical development block?

Gary Hutt6:25

So as you'll know, because we've spoken before, at GB Boxing we have a fairly structured program when we're in Sheffield around, we consistently use running as a modality for conditioning. And we've got a strong philosophy in non-sport-specific conditioning being a priority when we're trying to develop physicality. We've also got a consistent exposure to kind of strength modes through the week, two or three lifting sessions a week is pretty standard. And then the coaches will manipulate their sparring and technical load throughout the period.

Now, we use the analogy, so when we're looking at kind of physical programming, the seesaw might be weighed down towards my side, but the boxing coaches are aware that that's the focus. And then when we're getting closer to competition, the seesaw will tip and we'll be much more interested in prepping for peak performance in sparring, prepping for peak performance in competition.

And then that three to five week block, from our end, we'll still have the core training sessions that we deliver around a couple of runs, a couple of lifts a week. But the emphasis becomes much more kind of, as an example, we'll use a lot of interval runs in the conditioning prep when it's a physical focus. When we move into competition, we tend to move towards more Fartlek delivery where it's trying to mimic the demands of the sport more than drive physical change. Taper down the volume of running and increase the intensity of running.

So our guys regularly sprint, we'll do sprint training sessions at least once a week. And in that taper it'll probably be slightly more weighted towards sprinting than the longer slow endurance, as long as people are on weight. And then the lifting side is much more traditional. We'll try and drive hypertrophy or strength gains outside of that competition block, but we'll adjust the training into the competition block going through shorter ranges of motion, using more explosive modalities. And we've integrated loads more med ball work into what we do in the last cycle as well.

James de Lacey8:03

Nice. So let's start with the running side. So you mention you're doing more interval style based outside during the physical development block, and then you're saying more Fartlek style and sprints in the comp/taper block. So does any of that, obviously you mentioned, obviously longer stuff if they're not on weight, but in the physical development block, is there any kind of, I guess what people would say when you say running, Rocky Balboa or Mike Tyson road work kind of thing, or just those intervals?

And then with Fartlek, are you prescribing what's happening there, or are you kind of leaving it as play, as it's originally thing, where they kind of just go and do their own thing and kind of change the pace as they feel?

Gary Hutt9:05

Yeah, interesting question. In our philosophy, we do use, I wouldn't call it Rocky Balboa or traditional boxing training, but more tempo, zone two work. So we use a critical speed model to prescribe our for the boxers, and they're all quite clued in with using Strava and different tracking tools to be able to be really specific about what they're executing.

That's the highest priority thing. It's we need to create the stimulus for the adaptation we want. So the adaptation we're looking for a lot of the time during that kind of the sense where we're a long way out of competition are those more aerobic...

More recovery-related type adaptations. We talked to the coaches with that around, and the boxers around, well in our circumstance that's the type of fitness that's going to help you perform across multiple bouts in a short time frame and recover effectively, or be able to keep up a tempo across the whole of a bout.

Now with the critical speed model, we can be really specific about the tempos we want guys to run at. So it doesn't necessarily end up being that long, slow ploddy type traditional boxing training. Traditional boxing running, it does link towards more of that. And I think I've got guys going up to 40 to 60 minutes on a run if it's the adaptation we're looking to try and chase.

James de Lacey10:32

Gotcha. And then the fartleks, that kind of just they do their own thing, or you prescribing what they're doing there?

Gary Hutt10:32

No, so again it's quite prescriptive in what we do. We'll also include some sustained reps in that. So even though we're doing up-down tempos in a certain structure, we might do a session where it's five three-minute intervals, but across four of those there's different variations of up and down tempo.

And again, when we're close into competition, we might bias that towards more of a, when you're up tempo you're really high, up when you're down tempo you're really slow, versus further away from competition where we might kind of sit more of a middle ground and have a short shift around a particular tempo. But we're always really quite prescriptive over how that works.

And it leans in a little bit, I guess we've spoken previously about that peripheral conditioning and some of the podcasts you've done previously with Andrew Aser and the guys, um, play into some of our thinking around this. But our fartleks end up being a slight extension of that as well.

James de Lacey11:36

Yeah. Are you jumping on the bike as well and doing various bike sprints since you mentioned that peripheral stuff?

Gary Hutt12:05

We're super lucky in GB Boxing that we've got an altitude tent and we've got a physiologist dedicated to supporting training load monitoring and all the bells and whistles. So our preferred mode of training in the altitude where we're trying to focus on generating those peripheral adaptations is an assault biker, watt bike.

For particular athlete profiles, we'll give them some extra bike work around sessions which is more peripherally focused, particularly if we feel like they're going to get a really strong adaptation from that. And usually the guys with a little bit more, who are a little bit more, so those explosive 55, 60 centimeter counter movement jumpers or those plus 4 RSI type guys who are strong and fast, we tend to use the bike a little bit to be able to bury them in that peripheral kind of adaptation focus.

James de Lacey12:42

Is the use of doing it in altitude just so you can essentially up the physiological load without having such a high, I guess, output on there?

Gary Hutt13:13

Yeah, so it's trying to play on the idea that, well that type of training I'm sure your audience will know if they've tried it, it's horrible, hard stuff. All we tend to try and use the altitude for is really to add additional stress to that really potent stimulus, make it even more potent.

Now, particularly around driving the reason we use that is to drive recovery kinetics. So if our logic is that if the ambient oxygen in the air is lower, it's going to force, or challenge recovery kinetics even more than if it was in an ambient oxygen level. Now there's also a slight bit of psychophysiological piece to that in that the guys find it hard, they feel really confident off the back of executing really hard sessions, and there's a logical premise as to why it would be effective as well.

James de Lacey14:20

I can imagine if you're able to smash a session on there, feel wasted, then do have that similar feeling out in normal oxygen, then you're recovering fast, oh I feel good still. And then that just that mental state would be enough.

Gary Hutt14:20

I think it's really underrated actually, if you do it in a smart way, being able to execute a really hard conditioning session say in the start of the day and then be able to spar effectively at the end of the day. I know usually we try and stay clear of that from a physiology and S&C point of view to try and make sure that sparring's really the priority session.

But sometimes in the phase it's really useful as a confidence piece for the athletes to know, and I know they take a lot from it, that okay they've gone and executed a really tough conditioning session and then they've still been able to spar at the level that they need to be able to compete.

So when they're fresh, the sparring level can go even higher. And taking that confidence into a bout where you're by yourself in the ring and you need to just rely on what you've got, knowing that you've got that in the locker, is really, really powerful.

James de Lacey15:10

Are those hard altitude sessions, are they up to 10-minute kind of sprint intervals, or we going longer?

Gary Hutt15:10

No, so they're really, really short maximal sprint efforts. And in fairness, those altitude sessions will tend to bolt onto the back of a session rather than do it earlier in the day. So it might be the last thing that a boxer does with us in the week so that they can leave with that big peripheral hit, be so that in that hormonal state to adapt for a few days.

Now they'll look something like 4 to 6, 10 to 20-second max sprints off of a double work-to-rest ratio. And then do a set of maybe two or three sets of that, sometimes four if it's really extreme. But so they're doing 15 minutes of total work, and in that they're probably doing maximum five minutes of actual work. So it's really quite aggressive stuff but driving that very muscular adaptation, hopefully.

James de Lacey16:12

I like that. And then regarding going back to the critical speed, is that something that someone listening to this could implement now just on their own, and if so, how?

Gary Hutt16:12

Absolutely. So it comes from a lot of the research on critical power on watt bikes and different, some of the cycling research. But the main reason we use it is because it allows us to program really individually and specifically for a large cohort of athletes.

So as I've said to you before mate, we're dealing with say 40 to 50 athletes in any given training phase. So even if that's 20 on a track, it's still 20 people to individually program for.

Now the way that we apply it is we take a 1K time trial and a 3K time trial, which roughly equates to a three-minute effort and a 12-minute effort, 10 to 12-minute effort. You can use those two points to map on the curve what you expected maximum exertion at a given time might be.

So we can look at our critical speed model and predict somebody's 10-minute max effort speed versus their 11-minute max effort speed or their 3-minute max effort speed. And we use that to inform the training sessions that the guys do. So we end up with a setup where the guys know exactly what distance they should cover for any given interval with the stimulus that we're looking to try and achieve in that session to get the adaptation across 20 people.

So it makes life quite simple. But if it's useful for you mate, and I don't know whether it'd be useful for your audience, I can send over some reference papers that we've drawn on just to be able to get a bit of an idea of how that might work in practice for them.

James de Lacey18:26

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, send those through and I'll email them out as well. And I guess regarding the critical speed then, so you go at a percentage of that maximum speed for a certain time?

Gary Hutt18:26

No, so the way that the critical speed model works is that the idea of a critical speed is an aerobic speed that you can maintain for say 20 to 25 minutes. And you've got an anaerobic fuel tank which you can spread across the time that you want to work for if it's a maximal effort.

So my critical speed might predict out at say 5 meters a second running speed for 20 to 25 minutes that I can keep up quite comfortably is 5 meters a second. I might have this fuel tank of distance that I can then spread across an effort. So if I'm going to do a 5-minute effort, I can take that fuel tank and split it into 5 minutes worth of extra speed. So I might have an extra meter a second, but I can only last 5 minutes at that speed.

So I know then, rather than working as a percentage off of a speed, it's our anaerobic fuel tank which we refer to as distance prime, D prime, but in the research they talk about W prime when you're on a bike and looking at how much power you've got remaining. We can use that to estimate what speeds our guys would be able to work at, and we're working then on meters per second speeds for certain types. It makes it a lot simpler than trying to work out and guess off of, use guesswork, trying to estimate off of percentages from a key.

So we've looked at anaerobic speed reserve and approaches around that, or maximal aerobic speed and different approaches around that. But we find that the critical speed model allows us to be a little bit more specific in the stimulus that we're applying.

James de Lacey20:18

Interesting. Okay, I'm going to have to read through some of those so I can get my head around some of that stuff you mentioned. I'm working off the different meters per second of the different speeds there. I know the anaerobic speed reserve, I'm sure it's making a comeback recently. I see more and more stuff about it, more and more people talking about it, so it's obviously coming back around in cycles. Is that something that you already looked into or something that is still part of that philosophy?

Gary Hutt20:47

Yeah, so it's a really good question actually, James. One of the challenges with the critical speed model is that when you're getting towards a more neuromuscular effort, so like a sprint effort, it becomes a little bit less accurate. So it's quite good at predicting anything from like a two-minute effort out to 30 or 40 minutes. Underneath a two-minute effort, it's not very good if you're working as like a maximal effort.

Now the anaerobic speed reserve, we've had a play with trying to use our two time points of a 1K speed and a 3K speed along with our maximal velocity in a sprint to try and give the model a little bit more of a clear idea of that shorter time period or shorter interval speed. But I wouldn't be able to say that we've really nailed that yet.

We've not been able to reconcile programming with anaerobic speed reserve, where it's a little bit more relative percentage based, than with the model around critical speed. But I think there is a way. I think there would be a way of doing it if you really dug into it.

James de Lacey21:45

It's interesting for anyone listening, it's kind of just seeing your maximum speed and then the speed, essentially I guess the top of your quote unquote aerobic gas tank, that speed, and kind of seeing that difference. And obviously you can plot athletes and see, hey, this one maybe needs more speed or this one maybe needs more base work or whatever it is.

But yeah, it's interesting. It's an interesting concept. Kind of when I think about it as well, it's kind of like, well, you're always trying to improve both. So would it influence programming that much? Because you're not, are you going to prescribe from an anaerobic speed reserve? Or I mean, I guess you could prescribe from the max number and maybe from the velocity, max velocity number, but I don't know what much else you could do that would really influence programming to a great extent. Maybe you've got an idea there?

Gary Hutt22:40

I'll try to look at it. What we in general, what we'll see as two polar profiles in boxing will be the really explosive guy that perhaps can't endure, and the really endurance-focused guy who can't explode. And I think the anaerobic speed reserve does a really good job of separating those two up. Got it. That distinction in physiology will sometimes adapt the way that we try and tackle certain training sessions.

So if we're doing a peripheral training session on the track, so we might, one that we use with that for the guys is like five 300-meter max efforts. So our guys will do a 300 in maybe 40 to 45 seconds.

James de Lacey23:40

Damn, that sounds brutal, doing five 300s.

Gary Hutt23:40

Yeah. So we do it on a five-minute rolling clock. So they'll do 40 seconds work and have four and a half minutes off nearly. Now for a combat sport athlete, that feels like eternity. It's almost painful to recover that long. But what it means is they can execute really well in the reps.

Now the guys that are more neuromuscularly explosive, or more explosive, that's a really good session for that. Long time recovery gives them a really good chance to try and recover and execute really well, and it's a real test to execute well every time. The less explosive, more endurance-based guys tend to just tick that session off pretty easily because they're not able to bury themselves as badly.

Now what we tend to do to try and achieve the same, obviously that leads to a completely different stimulus for those two guys in the session. If we've got a really clear idea of the stimulus we want, we tend to adapt the session that the different profiles are executing to try and achieve the same stimulus. So we'll either bring the recovery down for the more endurance guys, or I was going to say up the speed for the speed guys, but you can't up the speed if you're going max. So we kind of tend to migrate those endurance guys down towards a lower recovery to challenge that stimulus a little bit more.

James de Lacey24:45

Gotcha, gotcha. That makes sense. Do you have more?

Gary Hutt24:45

Yeah, it was just playing that back into how does it inform programming or differentiate different boxes. That's like a practical example of how that might play out on the track in Sheffield.

James de Lacey25:15

Perfect. Now that makes sense. And I also wanted to take this as well. So we've talked a little bit about the peaking, tapering phase. It'll be good to get an idea of maybe how, obviously this peaking, tapering, and then this peaking, tapering, I mean it'll be similar, but for the Olympic Games, obviously a massive, like the pinnacle of what you're trying to peak for.

So maybe like one to two weeks out, how does that look? Does it look any different to maybe a different competition or something that you peaked or tapered for earlier? Or is it just kind of taking what you know worked there, bringing it over here, and everything's exactly the same?

Gary Hutt25:44

It's a really interesting one. I think in combat sport, peaking and tapering is really difficult to monitor and measure. So because it's so multifaceted, you've got so much technical skill involved, I think that drawing on the research from historic peaking and tapering, where it's all in athletics or like a very controlled setting and just applying it, I don't think it necessarily fits the profile for a combat sport athlete, especially when there's, like in the Olympic Games, we've got potentially four to five bouts across 14 days for some of our guys.

So that peaking phase, although you've got a peak for every single bout, could last for two weeks. Now for the approach that we take at GB is we like to try and make sure that physicality-wise, the boxers are prepped up and peaking maybe a week or two weeks prior to getting into competition, and then almost do the minimum possible to be able to support the boxing load.

So ideal world, the guys will be in and around a weight where they're happy to be able to get down for competition two weeks out. They'll be hitting their key lifts, they'll be hitting their numbers, their explosive measures, they'll be hitting all of their physical bits back in Sheffield two to three weeks out from a games.

And then the two weeks leading in will be looking at maintaining those physical qualities more than trying to change anything or push them on. And if anything, if they're boxing regularly through the week, if they're doing a little bit of training with myself in the gym and a little bit on the track, it's very rare for us to see somebody lose those physical qualities. If anything, we tend to see people hiding those physical qualities through fatigue, doing a little bit too much.

So a lot of our tapering, peaking and tapering approach, particularly with the games, is around can we remove a lot of the work so that the athlete can just be fresh and be ready to execute.

James de Lacey28:20

Yeah. How do you handle then, maybe, I don't know if you get this, I'm sure most coaches, including myself, always get it. Like, are we doing enough? And I'm sure the athletes also feel the same or maybe even express the same potentially of, you know, I need to do more. What, how are you addressing that and how are you kind of wrestling with that concept in those two weeks?

Gary Hutt28:20

I think it becomes so individual with the athlete then. So that all becomes relationship-based. And I mean, first thing, one of the major reasons we use testing is to support the athlete in understanding where they're at and what they're entering the competition with. So we will do a lot of our testing battery say two to three weeks out from competition. That shows them, you're ready. So they're like, then if they're ready, they've got that to be able to support the idea that they're ready.

And then it just becomes an idea of, well, what's minimum viable dose? And if we can just keep up ticking that physical quality while you're freshening up to be able to box, you're focusing wholly on your sparring and making sure that you're fresh and ready for all of that work and executing above and beyond what you can do in your sparring. That's also going to have a maintenance quality because there's loads of strength qualities and loads of conditioning qualities which are getting challenged in the sparring setting as well as everything else.

So if anything, we want to feel like you're twitchy and ready to go and agitated to be able to perform, not buried under a load of fatigue and cautious to perform. Not everybody buys into the process. Everybody gets a little bit nervous and jittery, especially at the highest performance level, which is where, like where we were talking about that long tail of performance before the games. Hopefully we make a lot of the mistakes along the way.

We've had athletes who attended the games just gone that have done 10K runs less than a week out from boxing. At smaller competitions, they've done tup circuits and stuff two days out from competition. I think one of the things that we try and do and make sure that we're quite good at is supporting the athlete around that so they can be honest with what they're doing in the training and then debriefing if anything happens during smaller, less arguably less important competitions than the Olympic Games.

But I think that's one of the real powers of the amateur side of combat sport versus the professional side, because at the end of the day, if our guys go out to a competition in Mongolia and they lose a bout, it's not the end of the world. Whereas in the pro world, I think there's that real emphasis on keeping your zero and you're never risking a loss. And that brings so much more pressure around a lot of this stuff.

James de Lacey31:27

Yeah, and the big money as well, I guess. And I guess if you're supporting, say, a pro and you're telling them not to do something, it's kind of like, you know, the other one making the money, the other one probably paying you the big bucks too, so they're just like, whatever. But what does that minimum viable dose or maintaining look like compared to, say, the weeks before? Are we talking, maybe the sessions are reduced, or is it the same sessions or what in the sessions are reduced and what's changed?

Gary Hutt31:50

So frequency of session stays the same. So we're trying to get lots of little frequent exposures to not a lot of work. But the content of those sessions has changed over the time that I've worked with GB Boxing.

So historically, I was really biased towards very high force actions—slow, high force actions. More recently, I've probably biased more towards high force but fast, velocity-based. A couple of examples of what those would be: in the Tokyo cycle, I probably would have tapered with something like a 3-3-3 back squat, but a really high load, almost trying to hit a 3RM within the week of competition. Because then we know it's very, very low volume, so the actual hangover from that is going to be quite low. But we're ensuring that max force is definitely up there.

Whereas the period into the Paris games just gone, we used a lot of lower load but faster movements. So if we were going to do a high force modality, it'd probably be through restricted range and go like a partial squat rather than a full squat. We used isometrics a little bit more, again just quality assuring a max force hit.

And then I feel comfortable and confident that if we're getting a max force hit in a really low fatigue way every couple of days—two to three days or twice a week—even in fight week, then the guys are going to be in a really good place to be able to express max force in the ring.

James de Lacey33:30

I'm with you. What, and the conditioning, how does the conditioning change?

Gary Hutt33:30

So that's where we'd follow a much more traditional volume cut, intensity increase. If there's no problem with weight management, we'll cut into much more of a repeated speed type block. We'll do, if we traditionally do three runs a week, we'll still maintain that all the way in through competition up till about five days out, where they just move into more of a recovery and regen type phase.

We'll keep one interval in there as our kind of VO2 max type hit, and then the other runs will either be weight-making steady state or recovery steady state. You can kind of interchange that however you want to package it up. And then we'll do speed repeated speed and high—again, it's a high force velocity hit.

James de Lacey34:38

When you say recovery, low intensity, or weight-making low intensity, are they two different modalities for you?

Gary Hutt34:38

I mean, effectively the same thing, and it depends a little bit on the athlete as well. We've got some athletes that really love to run and they find a lot of psychological benefit to being able to get out and doing a steady run. Whereas we've got other athletes who could think of nothing worse than going out and going for a steady run.

So again, that's where individual tailoring and coaching, having an understanding of the stimulus we're looking to achieve—whether it might be weight-making or whether it might be some recovery mode—and then spin in the modality for the athlete in the way that they find most productive for them. I'm really comfortable to adapt programming around that.

James de Lacey35:08

Gotcha. And then so that's leading into the tournament or the game. So then, obviously, you mentioned some guys might have four or five bouts over two weeks. So how does the S&C change and work through that time? Are they still getting in the gym, are they still doing any kind of running with it?

Gary Hutt35:35

So the way that we approach that is the same way we approach it for normal competitions, and that's as soon as they've started their competition, I'll be completely hands-off. So although the games ran through till just gone Sunday the 12th, I traveled home from Paris on the 31st of July, which left most of the competition phase without an S&C coach on the ground, because I don't tend to deliver a lot during competition.

The other element to that, though, is that I really spend a lot of time trying to give the athletes kind of collaboration and autonomy in the program. So it was really one of the things I'm most proud of in terms of our programming over the last five, six years: the way that the athletes were able to self-manage whilst they were out in the games.

Lewis Richardson is a great example of somebody who went and was successful, won a bronze medal. But he sent me a text kind of seven days before his competition start with what his program—what he thought his program should look like—and I didn't have to change one thing because he's picked up and understood what is important for him. And I can check and challenge his programming rather than feed him the programming. And I think that's the place that we're trying to get to in terms of the way that we educate and support the athletes as well as train the guys.

And across the squad, Rosie Eccles, Delicious Orie, Charlie Davidson, all of those guys—they've all been in the system and they're all able to kind of operate in that way and understand what they feel is right for them and then have a discussion and a collaboration in terms of the programming. When I'm not there, if they feel they need to do some stuff, they can get on the phone, we have a little conversation, the coach is involved in that process, and the coaches are able to support the athlete to execute if I'm not there.

James de Lacey37:37

Was there a point in time with maybe some of the old athletes when you first came in where that wasn't the case in terms of what they showed you or maybe what they wanted to do during competition?

Gary Hutt38:02

So I mean, historically as a program, GB Boxing tend not to do any S&C-related work in the competition phase. But yeah, definitely when I first came into the program, we had athletes that were just happy to be told what to do. And that's cool as well—in a sense, that's them knowing how they want to function. I'm really happy to facilitate that as well. If anything, it makes my job easier.

But as I say, over the Paris cycle, one thing that I've really doubled down on and tried to make sure we're in a place to support is the athlete autonomy and athletes making decisions around what's effective in a warm-up, how can they warm themselves up effectively. Twenty warm-ups a week—if I still need to show them how to do a warm-up in a competition, in the warm-up area prior to a bout, I haven't done my job right, I don't think.

And really, that warm-up area for me then becomes a space for the athletes and the coaches to get really geared in on what they want to do in the ring. So if I can remove myself from that because the athletes are educated on what they want to do and they're autonomous on it, that's a great thing.

James de Lacey39:27

And obviously some very successful sporting teams have that kind of self-managed, athlete autonomy. And I know the Crusaders, one of the most successful, I guess you'd call them provincial or franchise rugby teams in the world—they had a lot of input from players into, you know, what should go in their program, what lifts they like to do, what they know works for them and stuff like that.

Gary Hutt39:54

Huge for buy-in as well. I mean, it elevates the level of coaching conversation that you can have. So something that myself and the team that support the guys from an S&C point of view talk about a lot as well: we want to elevate our conversations with the athlete. We haven't got all the information that we need to be able to have good quality conversations, because a lot of it's internal to the way that one of the guys is feeling or how they've been.

The last week or what they've been up to for the days before their competition or their training session. I can predict out what I'd like to get from the training session, but how to actually execute that based on the state they arrive and the state they leave into the next session, there's loads of information in there that I can't predict and won't know unless I've got an athlete that's able to have a conversation about where they're at, what they've done, they trust enough to be able to share exactly where their training is at, and then are able to happily make decisions around how they want to work and share their points of view.

James de Lacey40:45

Perfect. And you mentioned as well about hitting those physical numbers leading in, say two, three weeks out. What are some of those KPIs that you're looking at that for you are maybe important for boxing performance or just important for the athletes to be able to see?

Gary Hutt41:11

So I mean we put a lot of stock in our 1K time around that critical speed model that we were talking about. We always do a 1K time trial two weeks out from competition unless there's a structural reason why we can't, in which case we'll do it a week before that. And we see a lot of correlation with performance in that 1K and conditioning measures in the ring in amateur boxing.

We look at one RM hitting one RM in the two to four weeks prior to competition. If be squat and squat, bench, and maybe pull up. So we do squat and pull up, and then some trap bar, some deadlift variations, but again it becomes a little bit more individual around that.

We look at countermovement jump and reactive strength index on the drop jump. So something that we see, and I can't really fathom but I can understand to an extent, our guys are just ridiculously good at reactive strength in a drop jump, particularly around achieving really fast contact times. And there's also really clear correlation between performance level and reactive strength index.

So I think the last time we spoke, we spoke about our athlete database. But the data that we've got indicates that RSI and a drop jump is really important to performance level in boxing. Now if guys are hitting in and around their best performances for those type of measures, then we're pretty happy. So actually the testing battery that we rely on and draw confidence on in the buildup to competitions, pretty tight. It's only a handful of things, but we try and nail those things really well.

James de Lacey42:51

Are you standardizing the height for the drop jump and are you setting a threshold for ground contact time?

Gary Hutt42:51

So we do it off a 30 cm box. We use arm swing. I don't standardize a cutoff for the contact time. I think what I like to consider as well, I actually want to drive fast the contact time. I want to make the contact time the priority thing and then be able to execute height off of the back of it.

So if somebody's got the skill to be able to do a 125 contact time and still drive height behind it, I'm super happy with that because that's a specific adaptation to the sport.

James de Lacey43:49

Are you maybe discounting or like long ground contact time, say someone goes 300, 500 milliseconds on the ground, you kind of maybe we do that again?

Gary Hutt43:49

Do you know what, I just never see that. We do cue it as be fast first and then jump high. So it's more, and I'd almost separate out, I'd call a longer contact time like that, say a depth jump where it's almost a augmented eccentric into a countermovement jump. So just discount that from our testing.

And we use that as a training tool. So we'll use varying height depth jumps in training, but always to drive either countermovement jump height or drop jump performance.

James de Lacey44:24

Gotcha, now that makes sense. Do you prescribe, say drop jump or depth jump in training potentially not based on training age or training status, but is a certain maybe cohort of training status? So for example, someone came in with a very low maybe gym training age, maybe doesn't have the strength behind them, would you still be prescribing that from a maybe a reactive strength elastic standpoint, or would you be building up to that first?

Gary Hutt44:56

We include it in our assessment of boxers coming onto the GB program. So we'll have a drop jump, we'll coach them and familiarize them in the session, and then get them to do the test. That's because of the correlation with boxing and the amount of ankle conditioning that comes just generally through the sport.

I mean, and that's not even taken into account skipping as a mode for conditioning most amateur clubs. So I'm fairly confident a lot of the time that our cohort boxers are quite capable of delivering effective performance around that. I mean, if it was a swimmers, if it was a group of swimmers, I probably wouldn't take the same. But because of the nature of the sport, I think that, and it makes a lot of sense to why people would be good at that movement and why that movement then becomes such a physical characteristic we try and push, is that the sport drives of development.

I've had guys come into the gym who've never touched a gym in their life, never stepped into a gym apart from they've only ever gone to a boxing gym, and they'll come and do a four hour side drop jump, just pull out a 160 contact time with a decent jump height, and they'll be like it's normal. And that's off the back of only boxing training. So there's something in there that really drives that adaptation, and then if we can drive that adaptation I feel it guarantees us a transfer to the sport.

James de Lacey46:26

It's funny, it kind of makes a point for maybe a lot of extensive plyometric work, you know, jumping rope and maybe high volume of different bounds and jumps is more than enough to drive more intense outputs during hard things like drop jumps.

Gary Hutt46:57

Yeah, and I think the way that we've tried to interpret it a little bit is that we look at foot and ankle complex as being, if they're able to maintain stiffness through that complex, then actually the hip and the knee applying force is the driving factor to being able to drop jump high. Now if our guys are exposed to loads of low-level plyo within the sport or they're skipping a lot, they're going to be developing ankle stiffness or the ability to create ankle stiffness really regularly through the sport.

We see guys drive their drop jump on through improving hip and knee extension through the training program. So that's cool because I think then that mimics what we're thinking of with somebody throwing a punch. Obviously something that we've played into a little bit more with Sam Grady Graham coming on board, who's the other S&C coach that works with GB boxing, is multi-directional plyos. So looking at medial lateral shifts and looking at rotational transverse shifts and how we can try and play into conditioning the foot and ankle more effectively, which has been really cool.

It's a good bit of work that Sam's been doing with the guys. And we integrate that into track warm-ups and stuff as well, so it's not, we don't necessarily delineate like this is a running session so we're only running, this is a gym session so we're only gyming. We take opportunities wherever we can.

James de Lacey48:26

I love it. And before we finish this off, I have unrelated boxing S&C question about the village. Obviously we've heard many things. Did you sleep on a cardboard bed? One. And two, was it mainly plant-based vegetarian food, or is that just all talk?

Gary Hutt48:26

So this is the interesting thing. Actual spots to stay in the village for staff are quite limited. So in terms of structurally how it works for us was that, there are only, there were coaches stayed in the village with the athletes, and there were two members of support staff that stayed in the village. One was the doctor, the other was the physio. So I didn't actually stay in the village, so I didn't have to deal with any cardboard beds or anything like that, quite a nice hotel around the corner actually.

But the village at Paris, the feedback from the athletes was that it was quite cramped and on top, it was quite busy compared to previously in Tokyo, the coaches were saying. The food perhaps wasn't as good as usually it's billed as, but you're still walking into a food hall that's the size of a football pitch.

And then actually a lot of our guys spent time at the training lodge. So although they stayed in the village, where they did most of their training was a separate facility about 20 minutes down the road. And so they travel out to us, and that's where I was doing most of my work and staying close to. And that's just Team GB. So I think Team USA have a similar setup where they have access to a facility and all of the athletes from the different sports can go and train and use that space, get away from the village atmosphere and strain around that.

So a lot of our guys were coming and eating at the performance lodge because the food there was unbelievable. Okay, the training facilities there were top-notch, and Team GB...

And the BOA, the British Olympic Association, they do a stellar job in terms of setting that up. And then even prior to that, there's also a holding camp. So the US guys will have had to come and travel over a couple of weeks before to acclimatize to Paris time and Paris weather conditions and stuff, so they'll have housed themselves somewhere, perhaps outside of Paris, and completed a few weeks of training prior to going into the games environment.

And so a lot of the organizational, logistical stress of a games comes from all of that, having to be outside of your normal and still be able to deliver and execute well. But yeah, no cardboard beds for me, mate.

James de Lacey50:58

You got lucky in the end. But I appreciate you coming on, Gary, kind of sharing your experiences around the preparation for Paris and going into detail. But people want to follow you and keep up with what's happening at GB Boxing and what you're doing, where can they do that?

Gary Hutt51:29

Yeah, so the best two places to keep on with what I do: I'm not super big on social media really. I'm a bit of a gray man. I check in on Instagram and I'm really happy for people to follow what I do. It's just coach.Hutt on Instagram, or find me on LinkedIn. I'm happy to have conversations, support anybody.

And I've also recently started offering some mentorship opportunities as well. So if you want support, then by all means reach out and we'll see if we can connect, be it coaching or athlete. Again, I'm really not just restricted to S&C either. So I've been in around the system of elite sport for nearly 20 years now, and I really enjoy doing my best to try and help people maneuver through and understand how they can best attack the problems that they've got in their training, whether they're an athlete managing their own program or coaches trying to access or be successful in the elite sport world.

So yeah, I'm kind of trying to just subtly and quietly go around and help people if I can help them.

James de Lacey52:20

I'll link those up in the description as well for anyone. But thanks for coming on, Gary, appreciate it.

Gary Hutt52:20

Nice one, James.