Secrets Behind How Professional Boxers Train w/ Rhys Morris (SSOF Ep 191)

Rhys Morris2:36

Yeah, so the chap that looked after him before me, Jordan, really nice bloke. So, we've had a few conversations around what we've done previously. And everything they have done previously is fantastic. So, I'm literally not going to change much.

The only thing I'm going to change is the isometric squat to the mid-thigh pull. And that's only because my PhD was around mid-thigh pull, so it's just sort of second nature to me. But it's your typical strength and power assessments that you would assess against any athletic population. And then there's some conditioning tests with limited technology that we're going to try and roll out to get some idea of, I guess, that conditioning part.

James de Lacey3:21

Nice. So, you mentioned the mid-thigh pull there. What are you specifically looking at from that test? Well, maybe explain the test quickly first for anyone who's not familiar.

Rhys Morris3:29

Yeah, so mid-thigh pull is an isometric test where the position should replicate second pull of a clean. So, typically the bar will sit mid-thigh or just above, and the athlete will maximally pull isometrically or push for five seconds, and you get force time.

And I've gone around the houses with what metrics are important, and what do we do. And I've come back to just force and time. So, let's get some time epochs that we think are important and let's just get the raw force that the athlete produces at those time epochs and then express relative to body mass.

So, force over time and then relative to body mass is where we're at. And obviously a peak would be nice because everyone loves to have a max gain. Typically that occurs three or four seconds probably down the curve which just isn't relative to sport and activities really.

James de Lacey4:21

Yeah. So, what are the time frames then that you're most interested in in relation to boxing?

Rhys Morris4:26

Yeah, so it's got to be for me 100 milliseconds and then anything probably 250 milliseconds there really, just to represent I guess slow and fast crudely measures or starting strength and then everything aside from that. And Lachlan James has done some really good work recently with his five components of strength qualities.

Absolutely all over that. It just resonates with me so much. So, again influenced by a lot of that work that he's done in that space. And yeah, trying to get that idea of what our athletes are producing over in a nice symmetric capacity is just useful for us.

James de Lacey5:05

Yeah, he's a really good little graph showing the shared variance was it a peak isometric force and dyne rate of force development early and late stage rate of force development.

Rhys Morris5:15

It was like 68% or it was something really massive wasn't it? And I was really shocked by that which again gives us more insight into what we should and why we should be collecting things really. So, yeah, really cool stuff.

James de Lacey5:29

So then say you get these 100 millisecond, 250 millisecond, I guess force values for these boxers. How do you take that data and make it useful for your program? Because I'm assuming that you get the data, oh cool you hit this many Newtons of force at 100 milliseconds. Okay, are you comparing it between the squad? What's going on there?

Rhys Morris5:48

Yeah, absolutely. And it's always an interesting point because how do you program in it or how do you make decisions off it, which is ultimately what we're trying to do. So, for me, I've built up a bank of previous data from the boxers I've been in and around. So, I've got that to refer to.

Normative values expressed relative to strength is in the literature. So, we would then benchmark against that. And we had a conversation yesterday potentially looking at Z-scoring some athletes within that sort of individual zone. So, they have something to take away. We can track and then make meaningful changes based on some of that data.

James de Lacey6:25

Are you going to Z-score across the whole squad or just individual?

Rhys Morris6:29

We did the whole squad to start with because the individual we won't have the data. I think only six or seven boxers might be returning. So, I don't have previous data on them, but over time we'll just build up that bank up really.

And for me, James, it's probably more the data's good, but it's actually getting in front of the athletes and coaching that's the important part. So, understanding them as an athlete and as a boxer and as a person will then drive some important conversations and assess what they actually want. The testing for me is just a supplementary added bonus which we will use and obviously meaningfully use going forward.

James de Lacey7:10

Do you find there's general trends in terms of their isometric dipole tests around boxers generally or even your soccer guys? Are there just general trends that you see between the different sports?

Rhys Morris7:24

Relative to weight during a camp where a lot of weight needs to be lost due to the combative nature, some of your metrics will obviously go up. So, going back to some of the papers you've done, we had a rapid weight loss period of five days just before weigh-in of the fight and jump metrics went through the roof two days out.

Now, you have to think why. The athlete hasn't all of a sudden got better. It's just because of that massive rapid weight loss has made him lighter, which means he can express force. Similarly to the mid-thigh pull, what we seen over the five-week period was strength was declining.

And I was on Gavin Pratt's webinar last week and he talked about you can take two approaches to combat sports for performance is weight loss or weight making versus performance. And nine times out of ten, my experience with the athletes I've worked with is chasing weight loss. So, therefore, you see these metrics decline in the professional sort of route.

And then it's been meaning managing that expectation of the athlete because they want to know what they've done, but also as a coach going, right, how do we react to this? And that's been a real big difference for me.

Soccer players just stay steady across the season. Typically, a lot of my work was done in youth. So, there was a maturational growth element, which is also an interesting thing to consider. Because if as a coach, you didn't train your young athlete going through maturation, they'll get better anyway. So, you all of a sudden look good. It's like, no, it's just, so when you've got that data and the coach goes, oh, look, great, you, whatever.

And you're like, well, he's just grown or she's just grown five centimeters over half a year. That's all that is. So, it's being intuitive and understanding the data and your athlete ultimately what it means.

James de Lacey9:19

How do you, you said being reactive to that kind of strength loss during that acute weight cut phase? So, what does that mean to you? Are you letting it just happens and you know at the other end they're going to be okay or is there something that you're actually doing to try and

Rhys Morris9:32

Yeah, so we are we're not really proactive with it. So, we are definitely reactive and that's just because of the conversations we would have daily across that phase. I'll give you an example. The athlete I'm talking about can jump easily 45 cm. He's pulling 44 N per kilo. He's a strong, strong athletic boy. And he understands the science and he understands the numbers.

So, when he comes in with a 38 cm sort of decline across that 5 weeks, it's trying to understand why. We know it's because he's probably in a calorie deficit. So, you have to re-educate and reinforce some good sort of behaviors of strength and power, and power is important. Stick to what you're doing.

And what we might change is looking at, I guess, a non-fatiguing dose of strength or power. So, isometrics would come into play. We would look at plyometrics, but maybe low amplitude. Depending on how he feels, you might flip that and go, "Right, let's give you a real high intense session, but really short. Just so he's still getting that exposure of training and that dose, but also working with the athlete to go, 'Don't worry. Don't throw the bathwater out of the tub just yet.'"

So, it's a real challenging sort of place to be really because they entrust in you. And which is why I'm a big believer of they need to be a part of the process. And that coaching element which sometimes might get lost in our role actually is really important.

James de Lacey11:00

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I feel you there. With the mid-thigh pull, so you mentioned you're looking at that fast 100 milliseconds and I guess the longer 250 milliseconds, how are you potentially looking to train, I guess, rate of force development in those different time frames? Are there, do you have like a almost like a little bucket of exercises that you would put in—again, this is to develop that kind of fast rate of force development work and this is kind of the slower side, or it kind of all blends together?

Rhys Morris12:23

Yeah, that's a great question. I think it's all intent. So, we know intensity is the key to adaptation that we might sort of drive, and then it comes back to what are we trying to do? So, I wouldn't be too concerned with, I guess, prioritizing 100 versus 250 and going, "Here's some exercises and buckets for that."

What I would go is what's the adaptation we're trying to chase? What's the intent that's going to allow us to do that? And then typically it's the movement complexity or movement velocity and the force expression within those. So, really heavy and slow maximum work would do X, and then your plyometric sort of element, fast, high, explosive stuff would would do Y. That's where we would probably sit with that.

And again, coming back to the rapid weight loss element of boxing, the athlete needs to understand and buy into that process. So, if they're not attacking the heavy dynamic strength work with full intent, then you're probably doing no good.

So, it's—I haven't really answered the question there, but it's just a train of thought—it's going what we're trying to do really. And I wouldn't be too concerned with profiling off the mid-thigh pull. And the limitations it is as a, I guess, a tool and an exercise. Sometimes we can get carried away, can't we? Ultimately, they're there to box. They need to be able to box. So, the mid-thigh pull is great, gives us some numbers, but I'd be skeptical to go "and this is what I would do" sometimes.

James de Lacey13:54

What are some of the adaptations that you're looking at to try change in order to, I guess, improve some of those metrics, but overall kind of improve performance?

Rhys Morris14:05

Yeah, I probably come from a typical strength background with that. So, you sort of heavy max lifts to drive that foundation and then we'll filter through to more explosive stuff. And it's the explosive stuff where, depending if the athlete's dialed in or not, with you as a coach can get tricky because they're not feeling a pump. They're not necessarily massive strain under the bar and they're going, "I feel fresh." And it's like, "Yeah, but this is your seventh hit this week of training." That's why, if you feel fresh, you're in a great position. Let's not overdo it.

So, typically, heavy strength and then roll into your more explosive power base sort of SNC type elements there. I did mess around a lot with complex training in our last two camps with the athlete because he was talking about not feeling reactive or explosive.

So, we almost went really heavy complemented with some really fast reactive stuff. As we got closer to fight night, we reduced that heavy component and we supplemented it with some isometrics to still get that force expression while sort of trying to maintain that explosive power productive movements really.

James de Lacey15:19

How did you and how did that athlete find doing the complexes versus I guess doing it in different straight sets?

Rhys Morris15:25

I loved it. So, I guess the potential PAP effect might have obviously made him feel better and the coupling of the heavy strength with the excitation of the neuromuscular system would make him fire, arguably better. So, he found it really, really useful.

James de Lacey15:43

How long did you rest between the heavy exercise and the lighter one? Obviously, 'cause there's different—there's a bunch of different, I'm going to say theory. There's a bunch of different research that's like 3 minutes to 12 minutes.

Rhys Morris15:55

It's really difficult, isn't it?

Again, because we're not in a time efficient sport. They've got so much to do. Probably not long enough. So, I tried to sit on him and go, "Right, let's have 2, 3 minutes here." He's getting into his feet. Probably not as long as we did. That should is probably where I'd have with it.

James de Lacey16:18

It's funny as well, but like to almost as if doing the heavy exercise, even if you don't rest long enough, if it's not super fatiguing, it's still kind of okay. Whether you see like a massive performance benefit on the side, I don't know, but it still feels good. So, you get the right target.

Rhys Morris16:33

No, absolutely. And then like that dialing into the athlete and having those conversations, he loved it. So, even if that's a placebo effect and he's found—we're on to a good thing, right? So, yeah.

James de Lacey16:48

You mentioned obviously there's some conditioning case you want to do in your boxing without much tech. Do you maybe go into that?

Rhys Morris16:56

It's—yeah, I've got the luxury at NTU, my real job. I've got everything. So, you want, a VO2, we'll get all the bells and whistles. So, I was like, "Right, what have I got? I've got a track and I've got some athletes and I've got a stopwatch." So, now we've got to be creative, which isn't like everyone's doing, aren't they?

So, it'd be some assessment time trial. And a lot of this might be, I guess, Andrew's influenced me a lot around some of this stuff. Like, can we get a time trial that might give us an idea of some boxing terminology going through the gears, being really hard, high intense, but long enough to induce some fatigue, and then we look at the decay of time over a couple of trials. So, going to sort of H 1K, 3K and then 3 minutes by 3 minutes all out, see how far you can go with a minute rest. And just give us an indicator of some elements.

James de Lacey17:56

I like that. So, what would be the goal out the other end with that kind of data in terms of influencing the conditioning?

Rhys Morris18:03

Yeah, that's a good question. So, I actually sent an email today. If we're not testing appropriately, we're just going to be guessing. So, it's great we've got these markers of time trial performance, but what does it mean? Well, we can potentially take maximum aerobic speed, so we can calculate that. The limiting factor with that, as we all know, is maximum sprint speed. So, why don't we collect some sprint speed data and then look at anaerobic speed reserve as a metric, which we might be able to use down the road in program. So, there's one thing.

The second to that is can we get any heart rate data? So, simple heart rate monitors—as most governing body sports are not that well funded at times, so that's probably a no. But, if we don't know what's going internally, we're still guessing, aren't we?

So, over time, I'd like to build an education piece around the boxes understanding the necessity to track heart rate. They can wear it for all the sessions. And then, as with Andrew on here, you can look at recovery kinetics. And then, all of a sudden, we can dial in what the athlete needs, what they don't need, how they're recovering, and give them the peace of mind going to competition, you're in a good place, not just based on some time trial data. So, there's a lot to do, but I'm really excited for it, for sure.

James de Lacey19:18

Yeah, it makes it hard without a lot of the data and you kind of like people love to test things and you get some numbers, but then you're like does it become actionable? And then it's kind of like from there, you're kind of like was it worth testing then? And yeah, I guess you can test and see change, but then you're taking time out of training just to test all the time. It's just a whole roundabout there.

Rhys Morris19:42

Absolutely. It comes back to mid-side pull. So, like your previous questions like am I actually going to book your exercises or programming? I will do, but it's probably not as intuitive as like you just described there. So, you have to be really careful with the athletes' time.

What they do really well at England Boxing is they create most organizations we do this at creating individual development plans. So, if I can get a plethora of data of the athlete and just give an overall athleticism score, i.e. the Z score, and then dial in some facets around, you know, you need to develop strength, power, speed, whatever it may be. It just creates a bespoke program for the elite amateur boxers in this country. And ultimately, that's what I'm there to do is make sure it's individualized and they can perform maximally and they're the best version of themselves.

James de Lacey20:29

Yeah. And you mentioned obviously around the bespoke individual programming. There's obviously a trend or at least maybe a push towards a lot of people on social media parading the idea of I just do the basics, basic like all the pro guys are doing. Well, not pro guys. All the highly regarded guys whatever are doing just the basics and they do their sport, that'll get you there.

And then obviously when you're actually part of a high performance environment, sure the basics are there, but there's a lot of things going on that are not the basics. And yeah, basics will get the average person very far, but at some point there has to be some we'll call it quote unquote advanced training. And with that bespoke training plan, I guess that's kind of leading down that road.

I'll be interested to hear kind of your thoughts around, "Hey, are we just squatting, pushing, pulling, and hinging, and that's all we're doing?" Or is there, you know, more advanced, quote and quote, methodology going into some of these individual programs because these guys are at a high enough level and you're trying to eke out everything you can there.

Rhys Morris21:27

Yeah, so it's a great question. You're not going to like the answer because it all depends. So, again, training age, movement competency, previous injury history, that's going to be the key to what we do.

I think Jonathan Weekly and his group out of I forget where he is in Australia. They've just done a review around training, and the biggest thing that come out of it was consistent training is the key to all. So, and by that, what I mean is as long as we can get the athletes lifting and they're safe, and they're moving really well, for me, we're nearly there. Then we can think about advancing it.

If they've got a decent training age, all the important parts of movement to follow. We know imbalance is a big thing in boxing, so asymmetrical, so we would look at, you know, doing single leg work, injury sites, wrists, necks is another sort of contemporary issue at the minute, isn't it? How we sort of catering for that. Shoulders, making sure obviously the way that helps people in the time that we're looking after the scapula.

You know, those sort of facets where we can bespoke depending on the individual, and then chase those performance gains after is probably where we will be. Sometimes you've just got to keep it stupid simple, haven't we?

James de Lacey22:49

Yeah. Yeah. And especially depending on the athlete, as you mentioned, like a lot of them don't have huge training ages in the gym and things like that. But I guess that as they become more advanced and things can progress.

But I got a question for you in the live chat here from Famous Music. He's asking, "What indicators have you found in the data that predict boxing performance, ability to perform well in later rounds, or any correlations that identify a punch exit?"

Rhys Morris23:11

Yeah, so that I mean, if I could answer that, it would be amazing. So, my long-term goal for research is to understand the deterministics of what boxing performance looks like. So, how do you be really successful? That's really hard to do given the nature of it. So, let's reverse engineer what we think the sport of boxing requires.

You speak to anyone, punchers are born, not necessarily made. So, there's an innate genetic ability to be able to punch someone to knock out. That means you're successful. But, as S&C we know we can help improve that sort of pathway to knocking people out, shall we say, or winning the contest. So, how can we understand that a bit more?

Seamus McEnaney's work is probably the real holy grail of where we are at the minute with that. How we advance that is really difficult, but you speak to most practitioners, they'll look at a reactive strength type metric. So, whether that's modified RSI or drop jump RSI to give a level of explosivity, which they would then track and change.

In addition to that, we might look at some conditioning performance metrics. So, a repeated sprint ability might be an indicator given the recovery kinetics associated with that. Typically, the athletes that I've looked at, that relative max strength across those time epochs is a good indicator. I think it gives a global expression of strength, and obviously it's a weight-making sport.

And then the reactive strength stuff, which we're trying to dial in a little bit more given some of the issues around the metrics itself. But again, that's probably a couple of years away from my sort of research perspective at the minute.

James de Lacey23:11

And if anyone's interested in Seth and his keys' work, he's been on the podcast three times, I think. If everyone scrolls back far enough, they'll find it. But interesting to hear your takeaways from I guess Seth's work and maybe how it's maybe potentially influenced your programming or approach to strength and conditioning and how it's maybe influenced some of that I guess general boxing preparation.

Rhys Morris25:21

Yeah, definitely. So, we've realized that punch power or force is kind of round up. He's a big pioneer of that. So, lower limb strength is really important and the ability to transmit that force through a stiff core to the end of the fist is really important.

An old colleague of mine, Fred Brown, Dr. Fred Brown, has adopted Seth's work. So, he's created pendulum mechanics based on a teardrop punch bag where he measures acceleration of the bag once it's been hit. And now he's been using that as a tracking tool. So, we've got that in the background and we're good to go.

James de Lacey26:01

I was saying cool, cool. Continue on. Is there any more you can share on that, too?

Rhys Morris26:04

Yeah, I mean, I'm probably going to do it a disservice here, but essentially he's taken the pendulum sort of teardrop bag pendulum mechanics. And as the arms swing on the bag. You know where the center of the mass of the bag is. As soon as you hit it, you do some maths. And then it gives you sort of an acceleration force trace. So, I've really really crudely messed that up, but he would definitely be one better to explain.

But what I would say is we've collected the data for about 2 years now across a range of boxing athletes. And we're looking to roll that out, compare that to something a little bit more robust, and see if it can be a deterministic performance metric.

James de Lacey26:47

Interesting. Interesting. I guess one of the limitations on this is that obviously you're kind of I'm assuming you're just standing there and just throwing a hard punch. So obviously it's difficult to translate across.

And then what are, what's the plan? Obviously you mentioned you're trying to make it more relevant, but is there anything you're kind of taking from that at face value that would be most useful? Are there any trends you're seeing just from that initially?

Rhys Morris27:12

Yeah, definitely. It's definitely a discriminative tool. So we've had some random off-the-street people hit the bag and showcase some real good sort of data. The challenge with that is, do they know how to punch properly and are they hitting the target and all the limitations you described?

So what we might need to do in the future is motion capture what's going on. Now, anyone with a motion capture background, which I do not have, anything that rotates around the axis and disappears, i.e. a punch coming across, it's really hard to capture what's going on.

But forward-thinking is there a possibility to be able to capture punching deterministic model based on ground reaction forces done on a force plate, hitting something, and video almost like Seth's work, but advancing it into a ring. So motion capture now is markerless. So is there an opportunity with a system like Theia markerless system of capturing that and then making that more meaningful for practitioners really to use. Seth will probably know, but Dez definitely knows more than me about it than that. But that's where we want to get to.

And if there's anyone who is a biomechanist out there who wants to get involved, drop me an email.

James de Lacey28:28

Oh, perfect, perfect. It'll be interesting as well. As you want to before we go down the professional boxing, I guess more kind of generalist or globalist training route, you mentioned that I think one of your students is doing some near research. And is that in boxing?

Rhys Morris28:43

Yeah. So Fred Beesley, shout out to Fred, don't know if he's listening to this. Really, really good student and he's probably the only one, he's the only one in my cohort that loves combat sports. So I just gravitate straight towards him and I said to him in September I said, "You are my dissertation student." And then we found this old Mark One portable system literally under the stairs at work and I was like, "Oh my god, what is this?" It's got cables coming out of everywhere.

It's got a light sensor and anyway, got on a call with Paul and mine, we were like, "Look, we found this. What's the crack?" They've turned around and said, "Yeah, it'll work. Brilliant." Crack on.

So Fred's taken it away. He's self-taught himself how to do near-infrared research and he's collected preliminary data last week. So he's looking at comparing training modalities similar to Andrew's work actually across sparring, heavy bag work, and pads. But he's collected on the deltoid. So I know Andrew's like rectangle. So he's gone more upper body just to have a look really and start that journey.

So I mean if we could get sensors all over it would be fantastic, wouldn't it, to understand localized muscle what's going on. But what he found was very similar to that of Andrew's work. So sparring had the lowest punch count but caused the biggest desaturation across the rounds. So again comes back to you can't replicate the sport, do the sport. So yeah, he's getting his teeth stuck into that.

James de Lacey30:23

That's super, that's super interesting. It's interesting that the at least the preliminary findings that are very similar in terms of those outcomes. I think it adds more evidence to the fact that you can do as much pad and bag work as you want and then as you mentioned sparring's a different beast. I mean, same with any sport really, right? You can drill as much as you want outside of the sport, but when you actually come into the chaotic environment of what's going on, there's just so much more going on that it is more intense regardless.

I mean, even grappling, grappling's the same. You can drill, you can do live scenarios, but when you're actually, I guess you can drill, etcetera, but when you actually go into live scenarios, then it's a completely different beast. And when you go into competition, it's even more intense. So I guess Christian, how does that play a role into how you prepare your boxers then overall, in terms of maybe some of that data? Does it change anything for you, or has it influenced anything you do in particular?

Rhys Morris31:21

No. Even in having, I guess, trying to have the correct conversations of what each session is set out to do. I've been fortunate enough to work with a couple of really good coaches who are really receptive to sports science, and they I think they understand the importance of the practice we do. And it's trying to, I guess, educate them around, right, you're doing a heavy bag session, what does it look like? What are you trying to achieve?

Okay, you know what you want your athlete to look like. Right, how are we going to do that? And then that's where then conversations can kick in. Again, I'm not full-time with the clubs, and it does become, I guess, a challenge, but educating the coaches to understand why they're doing and what they're doing it for is where that information would help.

James de Lacey32:08

Yeah, for sure. So you've had professional boxers that you've been training for a while. It'll be I think it'll be valuable for the audience. You don't have to share names or anything or any personal data on this, but it'd be interesting to know, I don't know if you're able to maybe share like almost like a case study of like kind of how a general maybe a program would look for one of these boxers maybe further away from camp and closer to a fight, just to get a general idea of how that's set up.

Rhys Morris32:36

Yeah, definitely. And to be honest, James, I've been on a journey with it myself. So it's probably about 8 years ago now, maybe how old am I? Oh, I'm old. Maybe 9 years ago we first started with one of the first professionals. And it was a journey together. Fortunately, he is an athletic specimen. A specimen. So you give him a weight and he looked at it and he just superseded everything we could expect him to do.

So a lot of strength work was foundational max strength work away from camp. And then moving into more explosive stuff again. And then we added in some plyometrics. As his training age has got older, we I guess we took advantage of his concentric strength capabilities and went, "Look, let's overload eccentrically." So we did a lot of attenuated eccentrically loaded jumps. We looked at microdosing isometrics where we could, and really dialed in on expression of force that he developed over three or four years.

And traditionally, it is you push, you pull, you hinge. Then we took him single leg. But a lot of, he also suffered with like a back injury. So he loved Bulgarian split squats. Absolutely loved them. The challenge we had is his legs blew up from a—

James de Lacey33:50

He loves Bulgarian split squats?

Rhys Morris33:53

Honestly. Such a weird guy. I mean, he gets hit in the face for a living.

James de Lacey33:58

He's a psycho.

Rhys Morris33:59

Hit in the face, okay. But what was really good with him it was just always dying to learn. So he always took on like an Instagram post and sent it me. What? Reece, why are we not doing this? Or what about this? And it was just really good for his own career. He really took ownership of it.

Conversely, I've had some pros that aren't like that. And they as much as you try and educate around the gym sessions and the importance just didn't buy into it. And lo and behold, some of them athletes haven't been as successful as they could have been. And then you've just got the ones which I guess everyone probably will experience to this, they just did their own thing. So I've had it all.

So the biggest challenge for me is the old running, trying to come away from long steady state running and that sort of education around that. I'm going to go into that in a second. Let me just write that down so I don't forget because I've got a couple of questions in the chat for you before I come back to the granular programming stuff.

James de Lacey33:59

So first question from Christian, he's asking, "What are your favorite plyos for boxing?"

Rhys Morris33:59

Well, that's a great one. Probably not the ones the boxer likes. So I love, so if we think about what are we trying to achieve and is that reactive explosivity, so any sort of depth jumps I'm a real big fan of and it's the coaching the cue and the correct way to get the desired adaptation. So making sure they're not spending a lot of time on the floor.

Skater pogos or lateral bounds I'm a real big fan of. I think obviously boxing isn't just that way. We also need to move and pivot. And then sort of the jump rope stuff might take care of itself. I know there's some people in for jump roping and some people out depending on what the calf complex is doing. But yeah, them two are my biggest things. And then obviously—

James de Lacey35:58

Are there people against jumping rope? You think?

Rhys Morris36:00

I heard someone a couple of weeks ago going, someone was doing a low amplitude assisted band jump. He essentially replicated skipping. And I just heard someone just say, "What are they trying to do? What is the point?" And I was just like, "Okay, brilliant." There's many ways to skin a cat, so depending who you're asking what the point is. Yeah. We're never going to get rid of skipping in boxing, are we?

James de Lacey36:29

There's no need to.

Rhys Morris36:31

Exactly that. So yeah, that was an interesting, not thought-provoking. It was just an interesting comment. And then obviously I love med ball work. So there's a lot of videos now out of like obviously Fabio Wardley and what he's doing with Danny Wilson around some of that rotational power med ball throws. It's fantastic because it's trunk and lower body coupling which is basically the sport theoretically. It's a brilliant. Let's try to express as much force as quickly as possible doing that movement. Fantastic.

James de Lacey37:02

Nice. And then he also has a follow-up question. How much emphasis do you put on forearm and hand training? Is forearm hypertrophy important for force transfer and injury prevention in punching?

Rhys Morris37:12

Yes to all of it really. We would microdose forearm work whether that's grip work or flexion extensions with dumbbells across the week. And a part of that might be just building armor to take shots. So if you protect yourself, you got bigger forearm, bigger muscle mass, you're going to withstand punishment a little bit easier than said if you weren't. And then the boxer I worked with he had bad hands. So throughout his career we've had to manage his hands. A lot of grip work, rotational grip work is really, really important.

James de Lacey37:46

How do you balance that with boxing? Because obviously the hands are taking impact every day.

Rhys Morris37:52

So he had a couple operations as well which was always a challenging sort of time because his coach used to say he's getting itchy knuckles. So he died to hit. So it was a case of like how, okay, how can we take this opportunity to maximize his energy and put it into something meaningful.

So we focused a lot on the lower limb power stuff avoiding overdoing with hits. And the grip strength stuff was really important at that point because he'd stopped hitting and then instead it almost treated like a rehabilitation camp, let's say, around that sort of area.

James de Lacey38:28

So he wasn't doing much punching while you were smashing forearms and stuff. And then when he got back to it then, how did you kind of find that out?

Rhys Morris38:36

Yeah, it was just microdosing. So at the end of, depending what he's doing in a camp or out of camp, so let's say he's strength training twice a week in camp is probably what we'd want. He'd microdose one or two of those exercises at the end of the session. And then the next day, he would I guess report how he was and then over time he just built tolerance up to it. He's fine now. Thank God.

James de Lacey38:59

That's good. You mentioned obviously the running long distance thing. Obviously this is a soft spot for many, I guess, people on the internet around long distance running. And obviously the main argument you hear is, "Well, all the greats ran long distance, blah blah blah blah." Interesting to know your thoughts on, okay, why are you trying to reduce or stop these, I guess your boxers or all these professional boxers from running so much long distance.

Rhys Morris39:26

Probably end does the good work that we're trying to do. So, I'll give you an example. So, one of the boxers used to run to the gym, do his two hour session, and then run home. And his home was eight miles away.

James de Lacey39:39

Oh.

Rhys Morris39:40

I kid you not. I kid you not. Like honestly. When you unpick why, he was in the military and his dad was in the military and it was just in a habit that he'd formed. And honestly, trying to change... What doesn't help as well is that he had an engine and he was really well conditioned. But he just had one gear. He couldn't go through the gears, but that one gear was pretty fast and pretty intense.

So, in his mind, everything he's done is almost supported his boxing style, supported his career to date. So, it's really hard to then change that mindset and go, "We could increase your ceiling potential if you sort of dial back these runs. Don't run to training." But, and I never happened.

James de Lacey40:27

I can imagine that's a hard one to change, but it's interesting that you mentioned how kind of supportive his boxing style is. I guess he was just kind of like a workhorse, volume style fighter.

Rhys Morris40:39

Yeah, I would have said, well, yeah, but one gear. So, he could never go through and have that concussive knockout power or, you know, he would just go 10, 12 rounds and you're guaranteed same amount of punch volume throughout the rounds to the point it just reaffirmed what he'd done was good and okay.

Not the fact that right, we could change this now and, you know, let's dial in a little bit more hit work or sprint work. Let's really try chase those adaptations that we know are going to be important for round recovery, mitochondrial density, biogenesis, all the nice things we know we get with that work. Let's try and dial it in. And he just...

James de Lacey41:20

And with such a novel stimulus it would just, you're probably in a couple of weeks it would just be drastic changes.

Rhys Morris41:26

And that's the frustrating thing with him. It didn't help either his brother was a quite successful long distance runner. You just got competing entities really around this long steady state stuff. Don't get me wrong, I've used long steady state runs. So, the boxer, the most successful one I've worked with, just liked it to clear his head and use it as a recovery tool.

I'm fine with that absolutely because if that's going to give you a psychological benefit thinking I'm doing the right thing then crack on. And equally cuz you have to make weight so rapidly and so drastically, if we reduce the on-feet conditioning sometimes there's not enough calorie sort of a metabolism going through. Sometimes they have to run. I mean in an ideal world we would look at that the hit sprint stuff. Sometimes I have used long steady state, but it's for a different reason.

James de Lacey42:22

Is there almost like a maximum ceiling per week where if you're trying to reduce it down like okay, this is kind of like where you see like that threshold of long distance I guess running work you wouldn't kind of go past?

Rhys Morris42:34

Yeah, and I definitely... So for me needs to be less than an hour. So he would go on an AKC run on a Sunday and just use it as a recovery modality and I just, look, that's all you can do this week then because we've got three hit sessions or sprint sessions. You've got three relatively medium to high intense boxing work and we need some strength stuff. So let's not overdo it.

I don't know if you've found this with your sort of athletes James but they just do not want to sit still. They do not want to sit...

James de Lacey43:03

I got a guy that, he's second he's like oh yeah I'll do the sprints and I'm like bro don't do this, it's always every time after he's like oh yeah that sprint session was hard but you know I'm recover is sick and I'm like man don't do them.

Rhys Morris43:15

It's so frustrating isn't it? And you're like okay brilliant now we just change the week accordingly but it's funny games isn't it? They're a different beast which is why they do what they do and we do what we do.

James de Lacey43:26

Is I guess one of the arguments for doing more long distance work in general is hey I'm targeting anaerobic base central heart rate whatever it is, VO2 max. Yeah, does that, how does that play a role into your overall conditioning and are you still trying to gain some of that adaptations maybe through other modalities or anything like that?

Rhys Morris43:51

Yeah, I think there's definitely a place for it isn't there but we probably lose the word long. So you know let's think about how efficient we can be with our time and then let's think about what modality, hit work or sprint interval training from off feet or on feet, what can we do there that long-distance running does? Well, they're the same thing pretty much, but we know we get more bang for our buck. We get more time-efficient costs with the hit and the sprint work. So, why aren't we doing that?

And you know, I guess Andrew's been a big sort of advocate for this. This sprint interval work, you get so much benefit for little cost. Why we're not doing that? And I'm not saying, and maybe this is where I need to educate myself a little bit more, but I wouldn't chuck my training age novice athletes straight into sprint work cuz a couple of things might happen. One, the intent might not be there. So, if the intent isn't there, you're not actually chasing what we think we are. Second to that, you might put them off. They might not come back.

And then thirdly, do we need some sort of central systemic adaptation first to really maximize some of the sprint work? I'm not saying we go out and do 40-minute runs, but is there a Norwegian 4 by 4 or can we dial in some 3 by 3s or, you know, fast 800s or 1200s, which is a different stimulus than just keep doing the sprint interval works.

That's where I would start with the more time-based 3-4 minutes, sometimes 6 to 8, and then we dial it in once they've I guess developed that central systemic sort of approach to training and then we'll go right, let's get some real peripheral adaptations here and let's get you really good.

James de Lacey45:34

I think people confuse or maybe don't understand the fact you're still getting a lot of the aerobic base or central adaptation stuff from say long high-intensity intervals like you mentioned there. Just a different pathway, but you're getting the similar outcome just with less work. And then the long-distance work, how do you progress? Say that guy who's running 8 miles to and from or 8K or whatever to and from the gym to continue progressing, he's going to have to either do that faster, which he probably isn't, or he's going to do more volume.

Then how do you stack more?

Rhys Morris46:06

Yeah, you can't. And we both know typically the literature is in cyclists. Well, guess what their sport is? It's to cycle.

James de Lacey46:12

5-hour rides and on the weekends.

Rhys Morris46:15

Absolutely. They can get the volume in. And their zone two or whatever they're at is probably my zone five. Like let's not beat around the bush here. They're not little old recent on a bike having a conversation at 110 watts or 150 watts. They're producing I don't know, 250, 300 watts, which I'm struggling there, aren't I?

They are the beasts and you know, we need to take into account what boxes do. Well, certainly I do. What do boxes do? They box. They fight. Right. How can we best condition them for that sport? And it might not even be running. I know sometimes that's a contentious topic. Like, why are you doing running? They don't run.

So, we need some stimulus. Normally, I need to... The athletes I work with, they need to lose weight. So, I need that on feet element. So, it's a way and a means of, you know, I guess making sure my athletes make weight for one and driving adaptation for performance.

James de Lacey47:14

All right. I have another question in the chat for you around strength work. So, he's asking, are there any minimum or maximum loads that you try to stay above or beneath for strength work? Like a level of split squat you consider strong enough or a level of overhead press that you don't think it's worth to push past.

All right. I have another question in the chat for you around strength work. So, he's asking, are there any minimum or maximum loads that you try to stay above or beneath for strength work? Like a level of split squat you consider strong enough or a level of overhead press that you don't think it's worth to push past.

Rhys Morris47:30

No, I think simplistically, I think if the athlete—what drives maximum strength adaptation would be high sort of rep ranges—sorry, high percentage of load and low rep ranges, but it's all about that intent. So, as long as my athlete is giving me rep ranges of three to five with maximum intent, I'm really comfortable with regardless of what that weight is. And I think we need to come back to what our role is.

It's not to do any harm as a coach. So, as long as movement is really, really good and they look competent, take as much weight or as little weight as you want in relation to it needs to be 7 out of 10, 8 out of 10. Let's chase that intent and get strong. That's probably where I'll be with that.

I think from a general fitness perspective, like Jim Wendler's 5-3-1 really nailed that philosophy in terms of everything's real sub-max but moving as quickly as possible and people get stronger just consistently over cycles even though you're not even going near your max in those instances. So, you're improving your maximal strength, but again, it's the intent to move those loads quickly. And absolutely, I don't know if you've ever tried it yourself.

When you actually dial in and think about moving the bar and not just counting 1, 2, 3 and having a good time in the gym, you switch on, you focus and it's—we've all been there and we're away with the fairies listening to your podcast and not really driving that intent, that maximum force expression which is the key to what will drive ultimately maximum strength.

And look, it's really easy and flipping for me to say it that once they're making weight, we need to be careful of injury. They're more susceptible to all sorts of things within that nature. So, we don't always go max. Let's drive 7, 8 out of 10 in terms of intent, but we need to make sure there is a component of it.

Isometrics then becomes a tool. Right, can we supplement Bulgarian split squats at certain knee angles that we might associate with the sport for being successful with a punch? Let's try that single leg work under the bar. Let's reduce that risk of injury. Brilliant. Okay, now let's jump. So, there's ways of doing that.

James de Lacey49:44

Those split squat isos in a like almost like a quarter split squat position and then you're doing like a a push or like a a push with the bar on the back.

Rhys Morris49:52

Yeah, so I've always traditionally used a push because it removes influence of grip and sort of that element there and the athletes seem to like it more under the bar with that that quarter squat. It's probably less than a quarter, it's really minute. But then we'd mix it up, we do sort of pallof presses for sort of core trunk sort of strength development. Do an upper body but end range, it's really try and hold and press.

I think sometimes it could be neglected in boxing but pulling. Think about our sort of latissimus dorsi and and what they might do for the spine when we chop a jab or a punch, sort of anti, stops that that rotation so we need to work on that pulling strength to be able to withstand that sort of transmission of force. So there's lots of things we can try and do really.

James de Lacey50:46

I mean interesting if you're able to maybe just go through a general program outline for one of your boxers from warm up all the way through and just maybe label some exercises throughout that.

Rhys Morris50:56

Yeah, okay. Yeah, brilliant. Okay, so we do typical rotator cuff sort of warm up element so we'd look at some banded work, your I's, your W's or your Y's just to make sure the rotator cuff is nice and nice and warm. Then we jump rope for a period of time, get that heart rate leveled up. For me, I would then start with the most complex movement that we want so they're the freshest.

So sometimes I've done some Olympic lift derivatives and by that is probably just a hang pull. So if that's what we're going to do during that block of work we would do a hang pull. I would then always superset with a complex with this given athlete cuz he can withstand the load. So I might go really heavy hang pull and we'll then get into some repeated bounds, three or four, rest, repeat. We do maybe two or three sets.

From there, I would then isolate the needs of the day. So, let's say we're going for a a lower limb focus, we would then go split squat. We would look at doing some some split squat variations. And then I typically might superset that with some posterior work. So, nothing too heavy, but just to ensure we're trying to look after that that sort of backside sort of element.

From there, we would look at I guess going through some lateral work. So, I'm a big fan of like lateral plate holds. I just think that counterbalance at the end the lateral lunge just allows the athlete to drop in nice and deep. So, we would look at that. And then we'd look after calf complex at the end. So, some potentially some heavy calf work just to try and chase that calf complex. And then we might supplement that with some pogos or for a better phrase some assisted pogos even though they're apparently not great.

So, that might be a lower limb focus sort of session. That would be like a day one and then a day two would be more upper body focused. And then we took some—sorry, we took some trunk and core work in there. So, I'm a big big fan of power presses. I'm a big fan of sometimes after squats. So, just that anti-flexion holding the barbell there, that can be really cool.

And then the upper body sort of element, warm up shoulders again. Make sure we get some injury prevention bits in there. And then we'd chase med ball sort of complex. So, frozen slams with some rotational sort of component. Typically with the athlete I'm looking at, he's struggled with some shoulders. So, I might go floor press for him. So, a floor press to to limit the range of motion, but we'll still get some good intensity in there. And then he might go into a superset with a chin or a pull which is typically weighted. So, I'd do them two together.

And arguably we then look after the shoulders. So, he—quite again they have some ownership on this, but he likes some light shoulder complexes, side lateral, front raises. And then we couple with like some military press just to burn out and get that element there. So, that's more him and his ownership on the program. And then we finish again with some some trunk work. Which could be some anti-flexion work. Anti-rotation work depending on on where we are really.

James de Lacey54:14

How does that shift as you get closer to the fight in terms of cuz you obviously have the weight cut going on and everything? Does exercise selection change at all or is it mainly just the kind of the volume?

Rhys Morris54:24

A bit of both really. So, again we have to think about the injury and what we're trying to achieve. So, at the start of the camp or off camp, let's say, you can have all the nice pretty all singing shoulder complex in there, but what's that actually doing for us? So, for the upper body session we would again make sure we're warmed appropriately. We would superset some med ball complexes.

I would then look at either doing the isometrics if we're getting closer to to fight sort of prep maybe 4 weeks out, drive that maximum intent, and then we superset that with a plyometric push up or a variation of a barbell throw. So, now we're driving force through the isos and then we're going to express it.

Conversely with the chin-ups, I still keeping weighted chins. I just think that that ability to pull really sort of heavy weight is important as long as movement's good. So, looking after the scapula. And then again we might chuck in more sort of med ball this time overhead throws to maybe include that sort of shoulder complex along with the pull.

And then from there we're we're probably at maybe some I guess wrist, forearm, maybe arm work. I was speaking to Gavin Pratt around this. A bit different for for grapplers. It's important to be able to pull. Sometimes in the clinch, that could be a limiting factor of a boxer. So, are we actually strong in this pulling range? So, again, we might give them a bit of an arm pump around the end of the session. And then finish off with some trunk work.

James de Lacey54:24

Nice. What do you ISO? What obviously we're talking about the core of the splits going on. What are some of your other variations that you like to use?

Rhys Morris54:24

Yeah, so a good one for me is the end range sort of floor press. So, they're pressing away from from from the floor. And the thing you have to think about is what does this relate to the sport? So, are we going to get much adaptation that's transferable to the sport in like really close to your chest from a a floor press ISO floor press? Probably not.

So, what's end range doing? Okay? Where are we most strongest? Where can we produce our most force? It's definitely definitely not there, is it? It's going to be sort of away in terms of sort of length tension relationship there. So, let's chase that. That relates to punch force then. End of range close to that I guess that high force sort of producing power. So, there's one there.

I have done obviously the pallof press against an immovable fixable sort of point. Again, really good for transmitting force around that trunk. You single leg calf, it's almost sort of style where you single leg calf work. Again, we we program some of that in as well. And these can be microdosed in within the warm up. So, there's times when we can do that. And there's times where we we don't do that really. It all depends on what we're trying to achieve with where we are.

And weight making with the athletes I work with is the biggest sort of limiting factor. I always say to them if we can walk around around 8% of fight weight, 10% ideally, we're in a good place cuz you don't have to worry about making weight. We can just concentrate on performance. When they're not, it then changes.

James de Lacey57:46

Yeah, then it becomes that's the main priority versus the actual performance in the training, which is tough. But then obviously there could potentially be an advantage, or people at least perceive an advantage of making the weight and then obviously coming way back up and ideally being bigger than the opponent too. So what's the trade-off there? It becomes a little maybe challenging.

Rhys Morris58:10

Well, the work we've done, that paper published with Fred Brown, Dr. Brown, we started camp 6 weeks out. He weighed, I've got it here, he weighed 80.3 kilos at night. All right, at weigh-in, he got down to 69.9, so that's an 8% body mass drop. He then hydrated for fight night back up to 79.4 kilos, so that's a 13.6% increase following weigh-in.

So what that did to his metrics were returned to baseline. So he was privy to the study and what we found, and he says, "Well, my numbers are fine. Like, what's the crack?" What we didn't take into account for was any of the cognitive function, any of the conditioning elements that are important for fight night, any actual strength. This was all purely based on countermovement and squat jump.

So there was a lot of facets there that we missed, but for him, he thought, "Well, my power's back to normal. I'm going to be fine." And that was typical behavior for him across all the camps we do. He's now moved up a weight, which is great, so hopefully he can be a little bit more natural and we don't have to chase that weight making all the time.

James de Lacey59:27

What was some more of the findings of that paper? I haven't actually gone through it yet. What were you kind of looking at with that study?

Rhys Morris59:34

Yeah, it's a big old study, so it's quite hard to get your head around. So we thought, how can we best capture what we do as practitioners to inform science? So we took a load of measures 6 weeks out. We monitored cortisol, salivary cortisol and IgA for immune markers and stress markers. We did mid-thigh pull, and we did countermovement and squat across 5 weeks.

Leading up to fight week, we scrapped the mid-thigh pull given the risk, and we just concentrated on jumps daily up until weigh-in. And then fight night, we're in the changing rooms. We had our force plates, and part of his warm-up routine, we captured some jumps.

What we found was there was a slow deterioration of metrics 5 weeks across camp. He's making weight, calorie reduction, not great. Rapid weight loss, which occurs a week out where he loses most of his weight, which is water weight. Day two before weigh-in, his numbers went through the roof. His jumps were PBs, and it was great.

What had happened was he'd just reduced his body mass. So he was able to jump higher, but he didn't make weight until the day after, and then there was a decline in performance as we'd expect. And then rehydration, fight night, fight day, he returned to baseline.

So it is our typical story we might see and hear of: decline over camp, maybe a bit of a spike when his rapid weight loss kicks in, further decline when he's really sweating out, and then when he feeds, he returns back to normal. That again, that's crude. Like, we can't not consider the cognitive function, the psychosocial element to it, the psychological element around how he actually feels. He always looks dead on the scales, and I'm a big believer of like if you don't feel comfortable 24 hours out, how are you expecting to go in and perform? But I wouldn't know. I'm not a boxer.

James de Lacey1:01:33

Nice. And I have one more question for you to round out this pod that's come through the chat. Are there any big differences in either strength or conditioning that you use for higher weight classes, or is your program just based on individual abilities?

Rhys Morris1:01:46

Yeah, it's probably a bit of both actually. So we know that the heavier athletes, off-feet conditioning is probably where they would like to spend most of the time, just because the ability to get into the red zones sometimes they see it as a limiting factor. So one athlete we had in previously just didn't run at all. So everything was off-feet.

So I think that's, you know, we can really dial in some sprint interval hit work then and really focus on chasing that rather than I guess running. Tyson Fury is a big runner, isn't he? You always see him plodding around, which is fine for him. But typically big athletes we would take off-feet.

And then again, it comes down to like we need to dial into what they want. So the behavior of, well, that self-determination theory of making them a part of the process will drive motivation to do what we want them to do. So if you give them a bit of autonomy, right, what do you like doing? Brilliant. Okay, I can work with that. Let's try and dial in what we're trying to chase and let's work together.

They're more likely to do that than me just going, right, do this. I don't know if they like that. If they don't like it, there's a good chance they're not going to do it, which creates that we need to know the individual. So it's probably yes to both of them.

James de Lacey1:03:08

Perfect. That's everything I had for you, Reece. That was a solid pod. Where can people find and follow you and keep up with your work?

Rhys Morris1:03:15

Yeah, I'm not on social media, so I'm pretty useless for that. I'm on LinkedIn, which yeah, they can find me on there. My Nottingham Trent University website. And I write, this is really corny, but I really love it, I write for Boxing News, which is a monthly subscription magazine in England.

So I do an article column each month in there called Fight Lab, which is just my, yeah, it's lay term, so I don't have to worry about science and just give my perspective on things. So I write that monthly. So I guess that's three places there.

James de Lacey1:03:47

Cool. Awesome. I'll link up your LinkedIn anyway down in the description for anyone who wants to give you a follow and send you a message or anything, but I appreciate you coming on sharing everything.

Rhys Morris1:03:55

Yeah, no problem, James. Thank you for the opportunity and yeah, I should have had more examples rather than trying to think and get them going, but yeah, thanks.