BEFORE the Fight of the Century, apart from ‘who will win?’ there is only one question remains.

‘Have they done everything right in training?’

Here, we have a look at the ‘Science behind The Money’.

Has Money done the business?

From chopping wood to Cryotherapy, there is no doubt that ‘Money May’ has stepped up his ‘Hard work! Dedication!’ for his Filipino opponent. But how much is this hard work without being smart?

Good methods

RECOVERY METHODS

Mayweather has taken this fight very seriously. So serious, there are a lot of new additions to his training regiment, including the vital ingredient – recovery. Floyd’s use of the ice chamber has been a big talking point, this is a method called Cryotheraphy.

Cryotheraphy takes place in a chamber that exposes the body to extreme temperatures of -130 degrees centigrade for a duration of between 2-3 minutes. This can relieve pain symptoms, inflammatory responses, injuries and overuse symptoms.

NECK CONDITIONING

Mayweather does not do much strength work in the gym, none with significant external load anyway. However, he does pay a lot of attention to neck conditioning.

This is important for boxers as the head gets all it’s support from the neck, therefore to control the impact from head shots. It also has benefits of reducing back pain and improving posture, both common traits of boxers.

Now, don’t go out and buy a neck brace and do 100’s of reps with a heavy weight. Training the neck needs to be as strategic as developing strength elsewhere.

  • Develop from various angles – supine, prone, and laterally
  • Start with isometric holds, then move onto self resistance (Hand)
  • Use various resistance methods. Towels, bands, cables, body weight and neck brace.
  • Build up the volume of repetitions (15-20 repetitions) rather than large external loads

NUTRITION

We all know how important a structured nutrition plan is to make weight and fuel performance, so I am not going to list all the benefits in this article.

However it is quite astonishing that Mayweather has got so far tucking into chicken burgers in the early hours of the morning. He seems to have got his act together by hiring a chef.

At a charge of $1,000 per meal, I am questioning my career choice of S&C, is it too late to switch over to the dark side?

Questionable

TOO MUCH TOO LATE?

Although I praise Mayweather for making some positive changes for this training camp, I do question whether it is too much too late?

This is quite a speculative analysis, and short-term use is likely to improve his physical performance. However, we know that long-term consistent use of sport science methods are likely to have a bigger impact.

SWIMMING

Talk to any fitness enthusiast, they will say how beneficial swimming is for you.

Yes, it takes away the external loads of the long, slow road runs. With this in mind, we would advise to go swimming for active recovery.

However, it becomes tough for conditioning as you cannot control set intensities, therefore will struggle to overload and progress. Furthermore, swimming is very technical dependent, this makes it even more difficult to raise the intensity.

WOOD CHOPPING

Is this Rocky 4? Or the highest paid athlete in the world training for the biggest fight of his life?

I don’t want to go into this too much as I haven’t ruled it out as a publicity stunt yet. However, I will ask these questions for any of those thinking about chopping some wood to prepare for their next fight…

  • What measurements does wood chopping have been taken to correlate it to successful boxing performance?
  • How will this be monitored?
  • How will the volume progressed?
  • How can you control overload and recovery?
  • How can the intensity be increased?

If anyone can answer these questions… please get in touch.

Training greatness

Although we have questioned some of Mayweather’s training methods, we can only admire how hard he has trained and worked to get to the top of the sport.

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