Why Punch Velocity Doesn't Matter & S&C For Boxing w/ Seth Lenetsky (SSOF Ep 121)

James de Lacey2:32

That's nuts, because we were cracking up about that. I remember that was way back when we were both in school. That was ages, 10 plus years ago.

Seth Lenetsky2:32

Yeah, I figured. I mean, most of those guys, they don't last, right? Because they just—you can fool some of the people some of the time, you can fool all—or no, what is it? You can fool all the people some of the time, you can fool some of the people all the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time, right? So they get caught, and I assumed he'd get caught up, but guess—

James de Lacey2:55

Well, I mean they've had how many debates and stuff and stuff pushed against them, but I think as long as they hold on to a couple of current competitive high-level athletes, it'll stick around. And then once they kind of phase out, then it's, you know, who have they got to use as their poster boy?

Seth Lenetsky2:55

It's very true. No, I mean, there was—what was that guy who was doing—he was with Black House back in the day, MMA. He was doing some pretty wild stuff with balance boards and calf raises and stuff like that. And he had all these amazing athletes, and then they all either got injured or retired and kind of disappeared.

James de Lacey3:18

Well, did that system have a name?

Seth Lenetsky3:45

I don't remember exactly. It was way back in the day. I think the guy actually went on Joe Rogan and he had a system, and I was like, "Oh, I'm so angry about this," because I cared about social media at the time and I just kind of like—what the [expletive], grow up. And I just stopped caring.

James de Lacey3:45

Yeah, at some point there's just no convincing people. Are you currently doing any more research in the boxing space, punch space?

Seth Lenetsky4:10

Not as much as I'd like. What do I have on the research front right now? I've got a couple of projects with the guys out of this special interest group. We're kind of kicking around some stuff. I spoke to another young researcher out of the UK just a couple weeks ago, and we were talking maybe about doing something.

I've still got some papers coming out from my PhD student way back in the day. Nora, she did all the mouthpiece work on head acceleration, and so she's still publishing off of her PhD. So there's research coming out there. But I think from a combat sports perspective that's about it.

A lot of my research has been kind of more in-house. So I was involved in a pretty big research project to develop a winning style for the nation. So that was—I went around the whole country and I interviewed tons of people, and we did a huge qualitative research on it and came up with what we think is a winning style of boxing that's going to reflect more of what we do in this country of Canada than, or what we should do in this country of Canada, than what we have in the past. So we're kind of developing that.

James de Lacey5:04

How much of that can you dive into?

Seth Lenetsky5:04

Oh yeah, a decent amount. What are your specifics you're wondering for?

James de Lacey5:04

I mean, basically the program itself.

Seth Lenetsky5:04

I interviewed, I think it was 30-some coaches from around the nation, and we talked about various things about what succeeds in Canada, what succeeds internationally, the difference between those two. I interviewed some IBA judges. I interviewed people from our national program. I interviewed a couple of coaches from outside the country as well.

And we kind of put together an overall view of what we think it's going to take to win in the—I won't—I'll say post-IBA, not necessarily World Boxing, because we don't know if that's going to take off—but that world of kind of current judging, what you need to take into account for the top level, but also for the real basic levels. Like, how do we develop people along the way?

I think there's a lot of issues going on right now with—it's easy to talk about tactics, but we're forgetting the technical component for a lot of boxers. And particularly I think that's an issue we see in—I want to say kind of the English-speaking world more. Maybe not so much in the UK, but a lot of the English-speaking world—they're focusing—Ireland I'd throw in there too—they're focusing too much on tactics, not enough on just basic technical skills.

James de Lacey6:34

Interesting. Okay. In terms of—you mentioned obviously a winning style of boxing—so what would be some examples of styles then, I guess, within that qualitative re—

Seth Lenetsky6:34

So when we built it, that was actually one of the things we wanted to put in is that, in general, as a country, Canada doesn't really have a boxing style, right? So we wanted to build a boxing style. And as we went into it more, we didn't want to make it—we didn't want to force anyone out. We wanted to have a space for every type of boxer because we don't have our own style, right?

Like if it was Cuba, fight like a Cuban, right? If it was Russia, it's like, "Okay, we're going to pendulum step and we're going to do kind of our Russian style." But that's not what we're doing. We're trying to create a style that allows for differences between some kid in Nova Scotia and some kid in Victoria, BC, right?

We want them to be able to have different styles and just have kind of fundamental blocks that are going to be what carries us over. And so that's what we worked on—developing a way of saying, "Okay, we know from judging criteria effective aggression matters." But historically in Canada, we've had just aggression as what we will judge people on, not effective aggression.

So we had to tease that out, tease out that idea and kind of lay out a groundwork that it's actually—it's not just [expletive] windmilling like a lunatic out there. It's first 30 seconds, last 30 seconds. It's about breaking down individual exchanges and going, "Yeah, I hit them first and hard, but they hit me twice on the way out, and the judges are going to give that points to my opponent, not to me, because of the way I let this out."

So it's about building those components from a technical standpoint. Yes, our punches need to be proper, but we're a little less focused on—we want to see a high guard with this type of parries. We're not getting that deep, whereas some nations may get a little bit more deep.

James de Lacey8:54

So it's not so much trying to find the same or perfect technique for everyone, it's just more a guiding principle in terms of the technique you want to see, or the style?

Seth Lenetsky8:54

Yeah, and that goes back to my early research, which is this idea that, obviously dynamical systems theory—I know you're a Bosch guy—and so we know there's a lot of variability in the movement we do, right? And there's supposed to be. As we become experts, there's going to be a lot of variability in every movement, so every punch is different.

And there's a quote from Nadal about how every backhand he's done has been a different backhand his entire career. I think I quoted that last time, actually, when we were on here. That's been with me for years now. And every punch is going to be different, not only by the same boxer but by different boxers, but there's key attractors that we need to pay attention to, and that's what matters in a punch. So as long as you're able to figure out those key attractors as you move down the line, you'll be fine. You want to have the variation, you want to be mixing it up.

James de Lacey9:44

Do you want to label some of those key attractors for people listening?

Seth Lenetsky9:44

Well, I mean, this is where we're getting into now anecdotal. There is some work I've done on ground reaction force, but that's done. I did some phases work. But one of the key attractors I look at is foot position, rear foot position particularly. What are they doing with their rear foot?

Now, I've had guys argue that you have to use your whole rear leg, needs to go into triple extension, and that's a good punch for a rear hand cross. I don't necessarily go that extreme, but when I'm looking at it, I am going, okay, what's going on at the toe? What's the hallux doing? And how much are we moving up onto the ball of the foot, the toe, during that cross?

And I was just working with a heavyweight boxer, brilliant boxer, but he didn't have the toe mobility to move into that. The fundamental of his right cross wasn't there, and he doesn't have a lot of power in it. So we worked on that, opening up his toe, giving him some mobility, and then practicing working through that. So that's a key attractor for me.

Moving up the chain, then the hip has to rotate. So whether it's through triple extension, whether it's through jamming yourself on the lead foot, you got to rotate that hip. And there's a lot of different ways of doing—again, I don't have the best way—but so I want to look at that hip and look at the rotation there. Obviously, you're moving into internal rotation on the lead leg, so is there ability to move there? Is there stability through there, those kinds of things I'm looking at?

I want to see loading in the front, but that tends to come from that rotation of the hip. Moving up, you often see the lead side, the lat isn't activated and isn't working to rotate through. You end up losing a lot off of that. Those are the main attractors I would look at.

And then the last one probably would be at the shoulder joint of the punching arm. Again, from a right cross, what's going on at the shoulder joint? I'm quite shocked to see people who really lose a lot of stiffness right through that joint on impact, and you just watch their scap just pop right out. That leads into effective mass as well, which we'll touch into.

James de Lacey11:58

That and more on the styles. But I've got questions and comments loading up on the live right now. You're obviously popular.

Let's start with—I'll come back to you, Asher—but Andrew Asher's joined. He's saying good point over tactics as things do change, and coaches tend to swap between more technical to tactical based on competition, etc. Also at the mercy of what the judges are looking for, what might score on the 'what it takes to win' model, others on aggression, etc. It's a bloody minefield.

And then we have a question as well. I'm not going to be able to say your name properly, but he's saying, "Glad to see Lenetsky back. Interested if there are any updates or new research about training punch/strike power. In brackets, still general strength of lower body plus lats plus tri muscle group-wise, question mark."

Seth Lenetsky12:55

So first off, and this is a pet peeve of mine, but I'm going to nerd out on it: punching force, right? We're producing power throughout the whole system, but what matters is our impact force. And that's one of the ones that I nerd out on, because if you think about it as punching power, you can lead yourself down this erroneous thought process of simplifying, simplifying, simplifying and going, "Oh, well, it's power, and it's force times velocity, and the force is going to be mass times acceleration, so really all I need to do is increase velocity."

And there's still guys who are stuck on that in the literature right now who are publishing papers going, "Really, it's just velocity that matters." And that does link into the effective mass conversation, and it's not just velocity. And I think I spoke about this last time years ago, and it hasn't changed, and there's still people who are stuck on that basic idea. And that's why punch force is so much more important to talk about and to really analyze.

Secondly, for me, again from a research standpoint, not a lot of stuff on my part that's been published, but a ton of stuff anecdotal that I've been doing in the lab and doing with boxers. So, obviously, from a punch force standpoint, I've been hitting up a lot of work just on heavy bags, on wall bags, playing around with those fundamentals.

I'm doing a lot more video work. I got to say, on Form, that app is brilliant. It's a great way you can just chop up a bunch of footage from some rounds, share it with the athlete, share it with the coach, and we've been really pushing some good conversations around some pretty technical components of what we're seeing.

Going beyond that—so that's, you know, your most specific exercise is just using bags and punching and using proper time for that. One of the things I'm really interested in, and if someone wants to do a paper work on it with me, give me a ring, Cus D'Amato: we all know Cus, Tyson's old coach. There is a really cool YouTube video of Cus D'Amato doing heavy bag work with Tyson, and the timing he uses on it is really awesome. The breaks between the punches, the breaks between what's going on, really inventive.

So I have to say that there's an area in there, I think, for programming around actual heavy bag work. I use a lot of heavy bag work that's not your traditional "I'm just going to pound on this for three minutes and then catch my breath." Punch, punch, and now we're sitting for 20 seconds. And it's becoming cluster sets of max power output rather than just beating the out of a bag.

James de Lacey15:50

So very similar to Andre Asher's sprint interval training on the bag.

Seth Lenetsky15:50

Yeah, well, and I've been using sprint intervals on the bag for ages for that same reason. Those are your bond chuck special exercises, right? And then you go one degree of separation. And I'm still heavy on my med ball work. I do use landmines. I'm still keen on landmines if done right.

I use still a lot of isometrics because, again, going back to those fundamental attractors, if we can see a breakdown in a punch and really using our footage, we can go, "Okay, well where is the breakdown? Is it that shoulder? So where do we need to work our isometrics to try and get better stiffness and control through the actual impact?" And that's showing anecdotally some really cool results right now.

James de Lacey16:42

So what would be an example of that isometric for the shoulder?

Seth Lenetsky16:42

So just doing a wall isometric in that case. We would just do a basic isometric like the guys from Boxing Science have been doing for ages, except I'm going to use cueing. And I think that's the thing—there's nothing groundbreaking about what I'm talking about anymore. Probably there never was, let's be honest. I wrote an article a few years ago that this isn't groundbreaking.

But where I'm getting to now at a point with my practice is I'm able to go, "Hey, let's adjust exercises based off of what I'm seeing in the ring." And that's where we're getting a lot of carryover and a lot of what I'm seeing anecdotally of good improvements. So if you've got that bad shoulder and it's retracting on impact, yeah, let's protract it, let's set our shoulder, and this is the cueing I'm focusing on. And I'm not worried about your lower body.

Whereas at the same time, I had that guy, that heavyweight, it was a lower body issue. So all we were talking about was moving through that toe and shifting his weight forward and then holding that in his isometrics. With those isometrics as well, I've seen some of them done differently. So obviously you're talking about having an in-range at—

James de Lacey18:02

The punch and you have that straight arm and you're stiff, like a stiff impact. But I've seen somewhere the arms bent and I'm assuming that's... and obviously performing overcoming isometric against the wall with the arm bent, I'm assuming that's not going to give you what you want out of the exercise, or is there maybe a time and place for something like that?

Seth Lenetsky18:02

Good question. So I have not used that one personally, just breaking it down. If I were to look at a punch and look at what my boxer was doing, I could potentially want to use that for triceps. And if we think about the literature on triceps, of the double peak that we all talk about, actually has only ever been correlated to any kind of punching performance in triceps. The only time there's ever been any data that correlates it to anything, and it wasn't super high and it wasn't a jab.

But maybe if I'm looking at a boxer and I'm seeing that they're losing it here, not here, I want to work that one to get the double peak, but two, just to work on stiffening that elbow joint. That would be my initial thoughts. I'm sure that whoever used it, I think I've seen the video because Danny was using it, right?

James de Lacey18:56

Sure, think so.

Seth Lenetsky18:56

And I'm sure he's got good reasons because he's a pretty smart guy.

James de Lacey18:56

Perfect. Actually Andrew commented here saying all of the heavy bag interval based... okay, all the intervals are heavy bag based and he'll do a paper on it. So I'm sure he'll hit you up after this.

And then more of a, I guess, a nutrition based one that don't feel free if you don't want to answer this one. But it says does caffeine before training or sparring inhibit endurance?

Seth Lenetsky19:24

Okay, big red flag: not a nutritionist, not a nutritional expert, not my area at all. So talk to a nutritional expert. I'm lucky in my work that I have amazing registered dietitians who work with, so I've really in the last, particularly in the last four years, moved further and further away from all this because I've got experts to lean on.

What I would say is the research on caffeine seems pretty solid. I don't think there's any issue in taking the proper amount of caffeine. You can go online, I know AIS had some great resources, the Australian Institute of Sport, to look at supplements. I don't know if they're still the number one, that's coming from a bit ago. But check out what exists there on published literature. There's tons of meta analysis. I mean, caffeine is probably the most studied supplement, maybe creatine is the only other one. So there's tons of information.

And what I do know is that we recommend caffeine. We do recommend creatine too, but we recommend caffeine for all our folks.

James de Lacey20:21

And Andrew jumped on here I think as well, saying his master's systematic review on caffeine shows within combat sports only showed significance on RPE, nothing else. And Emil as well, I would also check out Dr. Eric Helms's recent videos or podcasts and videos he's done. They've done a lot of stuff on caffeine recently, breaking down a lot of the meta analyses and studies there, potentially showing caffeine may not have that much of an ergogenic effect as people think. That's pretty interesting as well, so do have a look at those, check those out as well.

But I want to come back as well to this winning style of boxing. Okay, so we've talked a little bit about okay, 10 the punch. But was in your findings as well, what else did you find as well I guess that characterizes a winning amateur boxer?

Seth Lenetsky21:17

Well, none of this is super groundbreaking, I don't think. I think when I break it down you'll be like, yeah, duh. But so we know from judging criteria, right, and this is published, what they're looking for. They're looking for effective aggression, they're looking for you to win combinations, they're looking for you to have some competitiveness, and these are what judges are looking for.

We break it down a little further, and for that high level, obviously we talked about effective aggression and what that means. We talked about ring control, and ring control in amateur boxing is at another level than a lot of things at pro boxing. One, just because of the speed of the fight, right? This is a sprint. We don't have a huge amount of time. But two, because of the way the judges are organized, so ring control matters.

In amateur boxing, do you know where your judges are when you walk in the ring? Do you know how to face your back to them, the majority of them? Because they are around, but then there's a grouping of three usually. Well, if you face your back to that grouping, it's harder for them to see punches coming to land on you but easier for you.

So things like that we start to take into account. Again, that's a high level, that's not something I'm teaching a kid who's just figuring out what a jab is. But when we have someone who, we're looking for a medal, these are the things that are the difference between getting a medal and not.

What's going on? Looking into being able to deal with different styles of boxers from different nations and being able to deal with different styles of judging from different competitions. So I know the Irish, and I think the English too, have a ref that travels with them. And the ref analyzes what the judges are liking and then communicates that to coaches, so they have specific feedback on what they need to do. Because we're in Bratislava and this is what they want to see.

James de Lacey22:58

Well, they're invested, aren't they? They're in, and that's good. Obviously some countries don't invest money into doing things like that, but there's obviously a positive outcome for you guys as well.

And I also wanted to touch on, we'll come back to this as well, I've had some questions pop, more questions pop up too, so I'm trying to wrangle a bunch of thoughts in my head. And around the effective mass and double peak activation stuff, because obviously as we mentioned that always comes up as well. And one particular exercise I can't remember if we touched on it last time, but the landmine punch throw is obviously the most popular boxing exercise in the world to improve boxing performance.

And I'd love to know where you sit with it. Do you feel it's an exercise that is worth doing, detrimental, doesn't really matter, you can do it, in terms of just I guess general punch performance, power production, etc.?

Seth Lenetsky23:58

I use it extensively at this point, and actually I think that might be a big difference from the last time we spoke. I wasn't completely sold on it. I use it extensively now. Again, if we're talking that breaking down movements from as specific as possible, so hitting a bag, I look at the landmine punch as my one degree separation movement. And the ballistic landmine punch. And then I have a second degree of separation landmine punch I use, and a third degree of separation landmine punch.

I use it as my, other than push-ups, probably my primary upper body movement for boxers. I don't rely on a lot of bench press anymore. I like it because of the shoulder health. So at the farthest distance from specificity, I do a heavy, feet squared, landmine press. That's very far away from specificity.

And then I'll do things, I stole someone. We had a really cool hockey athlete in and her coach works for Patrick Mahomes, the guy's amazing. And he does a band rotating isometric landmine, and so I'm an old guy, so I was like, wow, that's amazing. And I'm figuring out where I want to put that in my progression.

And then going all the way to lighter ballistic in fighting stance. And one of the things that I've seen a lot of folks do is everyone loves the landmine press, but they end up throwing it like it's a throw rather than a punch. So proper cueing around the feet is something you don't see very often in landmine throws at all. And for me, I think there's a lot of specificity in that that gets missed.

That if your heel of your left foot, assuming you're orthodox, comes off the ground, you're not doing a punch. So your specificity is out. Now that's okay if you want to be more of a general exercise, but if we're saying this is directly going to give me punching force, it's about shifting weight, not about vertical force and just propelling up.

James de Lacey25:58

Where does the medicine ball throw then fit with you? Like a medball punch throw. Are you using that as well as the landmine punch then?

Seth Lenetsky26:26

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So again, it sits where we are. Is punching force the focus of the athlete? And that's the thing. I've done research in it, but I've got athletes who, we don't care about punching force. We're amateur boxers and who cares? So I'm focused way more on mobility in the ring and things like that.

But for punching force, depending on what's going on, if I'm seeing in general they're just not strong enough, I'll landmine punch them. And then I'll do a lot of isometric medball and isometric punches. If velocity is our issue, or if we're, again, periodization wise, we would just want to transition...

James de Lacey27:19

We've got a kind of more general boxer, they're living in reactive med ball work and things like that. How much has your philosophy around strength conditioning changed slightly since you've been doing more technical coaching, more so in the fact that you start to be involved in the skill development and you realize skills pay the bills and the S&C side? Yeah, it's there, but you know, me adding X amount of kilos to squat or whatever other press, is that going to make that much of a difference compared to what you're doing technically?

Seth Lenetsky27:48

Yeah, oh yeah, no, I would totally agree with that. I've always wanted—well this is going to be a stupid statement because we've always all, everyone who's in S&C has wanted to be Dan Pfaff at one point or another, right? Like guy is amazing. But I've always wanted to be Dan Pfaff for boxing, right? And I don't think I'll ever be that, let's just be honest. I'm not that smart, but I'm going to push myself towards that.

And so for me, Dan's ability to technically look at someone and have both S&C and drills, and from every aspect he comes in on an athlete and goes, "Here's how we can make them a better athlete." I want to be able to do that from a boxing perspective. And so now having the technical knowledge, yes, S&C—I still like it when someone squats heavy, that's still one of the coolest things ever, but I get it for a boxer that, nah, we don't have to worry about that right now and we're not going to do that.

I don't do power cleans with my boxers, right? So in our less specific exercises we do high pulls though, and that's pretty cool. But I've decided that with boxers it's just not worth it to go anything more than that. And then again, being able to analyze and give specific exercises for specific issues I'm seeing has been one of the coolest things.

James de Lacey29:11

Yeah, I've already—blurs the lines, right? Between what S&C and technical training. And I think that's really where S&C is slowly heading down that road. I do have a question on here for us around, do you have strength standards for boxing, whether for the landmine press or any other lift?

Seth Lenetsky29:11

Nope. So we put together a gold medal profile using just averages from Lee Brown right now. And the only thing I really look at is kind of movement jump height, and I can't remember off the top of my head what I had that that needs a baseline. But other than that I don't have anything because there's a lot of ways to do this sport. Like there's a lot of ways to knock people out, and you can velocity the [expletive] out of someone and knock someone out as well as slow and effective mass knock someone out.

So I don't have any specifics and it really is a case study of one for every boxer right now that I work with.

James de Lacey30:01

So the countermovement jump there, that's your main testing battery? Do you have anything else on top of that, or is that anything you're looking at?

Seth Lenetsky30:01

So countermovement jump is my baseline, but depth jumps are really what I look at. And actually you had a huge impact on that. You had the S&C coach from way back in the day. He was talking about that, and at the same time I was looking at some other work. One of the coaches I work with, Christian Proofer, who is an athletics coach and just brilliant, he was getting really into it around that same time.

And we really developed—now he developed his athletics view, but I'm looking at mine from a boxing standpoint. Using the depth jump is really important and it's figuring out how people produce their forces and figuring out where to feed the beast and where there might be weaknesses and how to build them up and look at them, particularly when we're going outside of punching force and wanting to look at how you move around the ring.

James de Lacey30:51

What in particular are you looking at with the depth jump? Is it just RSI or are you looking at other aspects of it?

Seth Lenetsky30:51

So I'm looking at how they're producing that RSI, right? Do you have a more terrestrial boxer, someone who likes to really be on the ground and apply force to the ground, or do you have someone who's more reactive and wants to bounce off the ground? Right? So that's what the depth jump's going to tell me.

So if you're a really terrestrial boxer and I like what I'm seeing from the punches and everyone's happy with that and you're slow on moving around, well then maybe we actually decide we're going to build up a weakness on you and we're going to get a little more reactivity because it's about your ability to move around the ring and we want to improve that.

You could be a really reactive guy and you know what, we're okay with it. We just want to make you a little bit better and we're going to feed the beast and we're going to give you more plios and we're going to make you even more reactive and that's going to make you that much better.

James de Lacey31:37

Is there a ground contact time cut-off you're using for that?

Seth Lenetsky31:58

Not right now. I don't have enough data at this point, just more by feel. And it depends, right? Like if we're seeing numbers that aren't where we want to be anyways, depth jump, then it's like, well, we can do anything and then we can figure this out. But once we hit to that baseline—and I can't remember off the top of my head—but once we hit that then it's like let's look into it a little more in depth and see what they're doing.

James de Lacey32:21

Man, I've got questions rolling. This is the most questions I've ever had for a guest. So you are—so again, he says, he's asking if he understood right that you work on ballistics for weaker boxers rather than maximum strength, question mark.

Seth Lenetsky32:21

So if someone is physically weak, no, I will work on maximal strength 100%. And you may have someone who, even in an extremely specific phase of boxing, we're focusing on strength. And it depends not only on if they could be really strong, but we could still focus on that because I've had some heavyweights—sorry, some super heavyweights—that are just clinch machines, right?

So we're going to need them to be strong for their bouts and I'm not going to turn that away for making them fast because that's who they are.

James de Lacey33:16

Perfect. A question from Phil G here. What sort of ratios do you suggest for technical tactical skills versus strength conditioning? Is there a minimum amount of technical sessions that needs to be done before you start looking at S&C sessions?

Seth Lenetsky33:16

That's a really good question. So I'm going to make an assumption here that we're separating out and our S&C is really pure S&C, it's general stuff, not specific stuff. In that case, I think we are definitely looking at an open boxer. There's no reason to do S&C for anyone who's in that novice space. So, you're talking amateur, but you want to wait for an open boxer, so that's going to be a year, two years at least. Just let them box as long as there's no injuries there.

Now I do believe that every boxing gym should have an S&C program as far as an injury mitigation plan. But for real focused S&C, I would say wait until at least they open up, right? And then from there I don't have a strict ratio I use and it varies. But in general, I have people who are training conditioning three to four times a week, boxing three to four times a week, and S&C twice a week, sometimes three times a week in more off-season times. That's about it.

James de Lacey34:14

That's answered and there's some more questions around conditioning, so we'll jump to—you mentioned contest now a little bit. A crap, Andrew's on the call. He's going to kill me.

Seth Lenetsky34:14

Hey, you're going to collaborate after, it's all good.

James de Lacey34:14

I hope so. Let's just jump into what you're doing conditioning-wise. I'll keep it very open in general just because I'm assuming it's different based on all sorts of different factors. But just, you know, overall conditioning philosophy for your guys currently. Maybe out-of-camp versus in-camp is maybe an easy way to start.

Seth Lenetsky34:44

Okay. So, what's their names? Great. Beaulieu and Larsson wrote that great book and Duncan French wrote the chapter on combat sports. Yes, that is a must-read for anyone who's interested in combat sports in any way. I don't really follow a lot of what they prescribe, but Duncan's ability to really communicate the periodization puzzle I think is ideal. So I would say steal that from Duncan and use that.

So I use a block periodization scheme for my conditioning now, fully 100%. Then influences, obviously Joel Jamieson has had a huge influence on me. Additionally, Gareth Sanford. We went to school with him, do you remember Gareth?

James de Lacey35:13

I know the name, yep.

Seth Lenetsky35:13

Yeah, and he's doing some great stuff right now on social media. Gareth has a real simple way of explaining it and that works for me because I'm a simple guy. Every time you do low-intensity work, you're putting money into your account, your bank account, right? So you're putting money in your bank account. When you do high-intensity work, you're pulling money out of your bank account.

Your bank account. If you don't build up your bank account, you're going to run out of money. And I think that's where a lot of boxers, a lot of combat sports athletes miss. So I do a lot of low intensity work to build up that base, like road work as an example. It doesn't matter. Yeah, you could do road work, but I think that's people are like, can I use a bike? I don't care. Use whatever works to get your heart rate up in this zone.

And that's where again I'm kind of going more towards Joel's work, which is Joel doesn't give a [expletive] what you do as long as your heart rate's right where he wants it. And so my accumulation phase, especially if we're kind of more offseason, is going to be large and it's going to have a lot of long slow distance. And that pays huge dividends by the time we start getting into multiple fights and we have really short periods of training and a lot of high intensity work.

James de Lacey37:09

Do you have a speed, some kind of speed component during that block, I guess that long slow block phase, just to kind of keep that quality there? Or is it just everything's just geared towards that low intensity work as far as conditioning goes?

Seth Lenetsky37:09

No, because they're getting that usually from the boxing specific training. So I don't, like that's the thing is I'm always supplementing training. I'm never like control of it all. So no, I don't because they just need that supplement and they're still doing high intensity work at least a couple times a week with pad work. Because I don't know very many boxing coaches who don't take people to that high intensity point at least partway through their pad work.

James de Lacey37:37

That's fair enough. And then obviously you mentioned the long slow distance. So does some kind of high intensity interval training, you obviously mentioned the intensity ramps up as you get through. So are we still about sprint intervals and something you do it with the heavy bag? But is there anything in between that happens from to say that low intensity to that kind of heavy bag or more specific heavy bag stuff?

Seth Lenetsky38:01

I use a tempo pace, and that's again very much based off of Joel's tempo. So go read his book if you haven't read his book and you're interested in this stuff, it's a must. But so his version of tempo I use quite a bit. It's kind of more of an, rather than aerobic capacity, it's an aerobic power.

I don't do a lot of work in threshold, and that's just because I'm not smart enough to really work in threshold. It's a challenging area, and my recommendation is you can go low, you can go high, but that middle area is pretty tough. So I end up kind of doing a polarized model just because I don't know what I'm doing.

And then from high intensity, kind of your classic VO2 max intervals. So longer intervals, and a lot of athletes get a ton, a lot of combat sports athletes get a ton out of those three, four minute VO2 max intervals because they've done short [expletive] and they've done long stuff, but they've never lived in that area. So they tend to get massive gains there. And then really short intervals, and that's when I bring in the heavy bag usually.

James de Lacey38:53

Nice. And for anyone listening, when he's talking about those VO2 max intervals, think of, I think I've talked about in the podcast or various videos like maximal aerobic speed training is one very simple example that you can do. Anyone can kind of, if anyone's listening, they can search Dan Baker maximal speed PDF and that is the best guide you'll ever have on something like that and it'll break it down all for you as well. So make sure you check that out if you're intrigued by some of that conditioning work.

And then obviously coming back to this winning style of boxing. Well, so we talked about amateur boxing. I just want to throw a random question as well like regarding amateur versus professional boxing then. How much does that change and differ massively? I mean, it's, they're not different sports, but are they different sport?

Seth Lenetsky39:43

Now early on in a pro's career they do a good job, and that's actually one of the things I don't think boxing gets enough credit for from a transition standpoint. They do a really good job of transitioning amateur boxers to pro boxers when you're not a big name. If you're a big name, you're hooped. Like sorry, you're going to get thrown to the wolves.

But if you're not a big name, you're going to do four rounds, you're going to do six rounds, and they're going to build you up over time and you get used to the strategy and the way to approach that and keep that zero.

James de Lacey40:13

What was that?

Seth Lenetsky40:13

And keep that zero. Keep that, yes. Although with that Saudi money, maybe zeros don't matter nearly as much anymore. So, small miracles, I guess. But amateur boxing is a full-on sprint. And if we're going to have someone take time off in a bout, which we almost never would, it's going to be in the middle of a bout or sorry, middle of a round. We're going to say okay, this round if you need to catch your breath in the middle of it, but don't really take the foot off the accelerator.

Pro boxing, when you're getting up into championship rounds, it's like, you know what, we're ahead on the cards, take this round off, don't worry. You can have those conversations, which is just mind-boggling at the amateur level. That's, like don't get, like obviously don't just stand there, but you can take a round off and we all know this. Boxers will take a round off and just lose a round, just to make sure their fitness is where it needs to be. That level of strategic decision making just doesn't exist in amateur boxing.

James de Lacey41:06

Interesting. And does the, I don't know if you've done, if you've prepared anyone for professional boxing bouts, but does the conditioning prescription change when someone's doing something like 12 plus rounds compared to the amateur boxing side? But even though amateur boxers might be fighting multiple times, right? So you still got that to contend with.

Seth Lenetsky41:35

But amateurs aren't fighting multiple times in a day. They're only fighting once per day, so there is that. I would say for the most part for me there's not a huge difference in the preparation for amateur and pro, because above everything else I want them to be as aerobically fit as possible. So I'm working towards that same goal no matter what.

Now, pro boxers are usually a lot further along, kind of the developmental standpoint. So I've used a lot of tools and now I'm using my fanciest tools. Whereas a lot of amateur boxers, it's like, you know what, if you went for a run three times a week you'd be a lot better. Okay, just at the bare minimum. So that's where it kind of comes in, but at the end of the day I want them to both be as aerobically fit as possible.

I would say for some pros, particularly heavyweights, I do tend to kind of focus more on accumulation. Because there it's not necessarily from a strategy, but it's more just from to be a heavyweight boxer you just don't do that as much, or they tend to not do it as much. So I focus a little bit more on.

James de Lacey42:59

Sure. Was that something you would also carry over to heavyweight amateurs?

Seth Lenetsky42:59

No, heavyweight amateurs, it's the same as everyone else. And heavyweight amateurs aren't that heavy, so they tend to, like they're more like cruiserweight kind of for pros. So they tend to be pretty solid on that. It's the super heavyweights maybe, but even then at that amateur level, anyone who's kind of at that looking to go national, international, that's not at much an issue. But you can find a guy who's a fairly decent pro but still has really poor training habits.

James de Lacey43:27

I do breakdowns every week on the channel for anyone listening. Make sure you subscribed to the Sweet Science of Fighting YouTube channel. I do a breakdown pretty much every week of, because fighters will do vlogs of their training and stuff building up for fights and things like that. And what was one I did recently? I did, I think it was Terence Crawford.

He had a couple put up there and there was a gym training session. Holy [expletive], man. It was like watching the weekend certified PT put the new person through the gym on every machine in there. And I was like, what the hell's going on with this?

And that was the session. It was like, and even part, one of one of the exercises, one of the supersets was leg press plus partials superseted with back squats. And it was just, and I was like, I don't understand what's going on. And then man, I was having a good day, I don't need to think about.

Seth Lenetsky44:21

I'll send you the video, you can watch it.

James de Lacey44:21

No, please, no. Don't.

Seth Lenetsky44:21

No. Again, I stay away from this stuff. I just get wound up.

James de Lacey44:21

Yeah, a lot of these guys have very average.

Seth Lenetsky44:21

I mean, that's one of the other things I've been working with in the space, kind of changing topics a little bit. I've been going with professional boxing teams and doing not exciting, not sexy [expletive] at all, really basic stuff. You're never going to make it to YouTube or Instagram.

James de Lacey44:43

Well, I mean, with a face like this, I'm doomed for podcast anyways, but.

Seth Lenetsky44:43

I just, I go through the basic stuff. Do you have a debrief after your fights? No, nobody has debriefs. Do you do a hot wash? What's a hot wash? Okay, so that's.

That initial like three things that went well, three things that need improvement, and you talk about that as a coaching staff and then you develop from there a more formal debrief process. It's not going to, again, nobody wants to watch that on YouTube, but that's what makes championship organizations championship systems. So I've been working on that kind of stuff lately in my technical space, right? What do we have for nutrition?

I worked with this incredibly good boxing coach, the guy is amazing. We were at an amateur event, he had no nutrition lined up for his athletes. Were they cutting weight as well? They were cutting weight. So his athlete, and he'd need them to kind of deal with this, his athlete cut weight, didn't want to eat, it was going to make them feel uncomfortable before the fight, so basically had like four strawberries between weigh-in and fight, and then after the fight there was no food.

So I dragged my ass across the street to Walmart, bought $200 worth of groceries and came back, and we're sitting on the floor of the changing room eating, right? And I'm just like buying like bread and ham.

And so come debrief, it's like, why don't you have a chill bin full of food all the time? Like I know it's expensive, so tell the athletes to bring food in because again, amateur boxing, there's no money. But simple like that, there's these really big rocks in combat sports that we just miss.

And I look back to like early in my career, I remember going to Wendy's after a fight with my fighters. Like that's nice, but that's not what we should be doing. We should be smarter than that. It should be about kind of big rocks and making systemic changes in your boxing or combat sports organization.

James de Lacey46:47

Perfect to round out this podcast as well, you mentioned at the beginning your PhD student around the mouthpiece head acceleration research. Do you want to maybe share some of what's going on there and any implications I guess in boxing?

Seth Lenetsky47:16

Long story short, right now we're not there, we're just not there. So anyone who's telling you like, "Oh, we figured out how to monitor this, that, and the other thing," very likely they're overselling their products. There's just too many kind of erroneous data points, too much like people shifting around and mouthpiece falling out, and we're just not there.

So there's a lot of work to be done to get mouthpieces up to snuff. We did some neck pieces and some headgear pieces. The one surprising thing was, I think it was the neck mounted, were actually really good at punch count, and I was super interested in that because I think there's something to be said about monitoring just head impact count and not worrying about magnitude quite so much.

We're stuck in this framework, and my student was very focused on this because that's where she was looking, so magnitude mattered a lot. But for me, I think because we've managed to see fight density and a relationship with health issues, I think we would additionally see just impacts, head strikes, and a relationship to health. And I think that like a pitch count for your 12-year-old pitcher, I think we might eventually get to a place where once you've racked up a certain amount of head impacts, you're done sparring for the week.

James de Lacey48:14

Interesting. Does that change the way you may, I guess, structure a training week or even sparring generally, as in less sparring with head impact in certain times of the year or things like that?

Seth Lenetsky48:43

Well, so I'm a big fan and I've always called this Cuban, Cuban box, but it's shoulder touch boxing and chest touch boxing. I've been a huge fan of that, and so I use that quite a bit. So I'm always, if I'm structuring a program that's going to be an early component, a warm-up, but also just a component of what we do.

I don't have the numbers and the science behind head impacts yet, so I don't really adjust my training too much. I think what you would see from me for the most part is not as big a fan of hard sparring. And one, that's because I don't see it as as valuable. I think once you've been through it a couple times, you know the experience, and when I mean hard sparring, I mean really unloading on people.

But also I think that's an influence for my time in Thailand. They don't do a lot of hard sparring there, they just fight more often.

James de Lacey49:36

Interesting. Andrew just saying that most good gyms are now doing a lot more body sparring than full open class.

Seth Lenetsky49:36

There you go. In that pro environment not as much, but I believe it, especially in the amateur. At least the pro environment in Canada, they're still, you show up and people are trying to kill each other.

James de Lacey50:00

He also said that regarding the previous conversation, people don't appreciate how shitty fights are sometimes in pro shows. No water bottles, no provisions, etc.

Seth Lenetsky50:00

Yeah. I was a cut man for a fight and they didn't have scissors for me. They're like, "Don't worry, don't bring anything, just show up." And I'm like, "Cool, I'm in." And then I showed up and they didn't have scissors for me, so you just had to tear everything.

James de Lacey50:00

Tear everything with your... Oh my gosh.

Oh, that's a good way to end this podcast. Where can people find and follow you? You have no social media except LinkedIn, so they find you on LinkedIn?

Seth Lenetsky50:28

I guess if you want to, I don't post anything. Send, okay, just keep up with this podcast and we'll bring on every now and then. Bug James and he'll bug me and then I'll respond to maybe. Maybe we should do, I'll answer some questions online or something. No, I'm the worst. I just want to be my little hobbit hole.

I'm on ResearchGate if you want to see my research, but that doesn't come out like weekly or anything. Follow Andrew, he's smarter than me anyways.

James de Lacey50:55

Well, we'll get you guys collaborating because there'll be some interesting research coming out of there too. But I appreciate you coming on and sharing everything that's been going on, I guess, within your research and practice and everything. And I know people enjoy hearing you on the podcast, so should be a good listen. But appreciate it.

Seth Lenetsky51:22

Well, James, thanks so much for having me, and I really appreciate all the positive output from you and the people watching. It's nice, it's good to know some people care.

James de Lacey51:22

Perfect, let's stop it.