Help With 11 year old Boxer

Hi people,

I'm new to this, I'm after some advice as my little bro is an amateur boxer. He has just turned 12 and weighs 43kg, he has had one fight which he had away from home and lost on points (home town decision).

He trains at his local gym around 3 to 5 times a week for 2 hours. I'm after advice on what sort of strengh and conditioning work i should do with him. Any advice on nuitrition/protein shakes: exercises will be appreciated. Also what sort of distances should an 12yr old run, sprints or jogging etc.

He is hoping to fight at 41kg eventually, he is due to have his second fight this coming
Wednesday.

Thank you in advance

at 12y.o. his body has a lot of growing to do. I would stay away from weights and stick to iso work outs. Build his cardio and work with high intensity intervals. Start to build his muscle memory early. Well balanced meals as well as rest.

Thanks dude,

Any ideas on what sort of distance he should be jogging.

if he's fighting this Wednesday, in 2 days, then do no extra cardio. he won't have time to recover for his match. but after that, you can consider picking up the cardio, starting maybe with some short distance running, some sprints here and there. not much more then twice a week on off days from the gym. as far as strength training, ya, being that young it is best to only stick to bodyweight exercises, and nothing too taxing. again on off gym days.

his body will be growing a lot in the next while, and that provides enough stress on the ligaments and joints, musculature of his body, without the added force of outside elements. in short, take it slow and easy, add a bit at a time. it'll likely help keep him from getting too bored of it also, which can come quite easily from over training.

Hard to say without knowing his strengths and weaknesses and what he is already doing first to be honest... :)

Really appreciate the fb,

He can knock out about 80 press ups, 80 squats in sets of 10 pretty easy.

Along with sit ups I don't really do much else with him, open to any other body weight exercises he could do. Boxing wise, he is pretty quick and punches hard for a kid his age, has a sweet left hook. His footwork has come on great but it is still in the process of improving.

He trained under David coldwell for around 6 months but I moved gyms so he could get better sparring. I'll put up a vid somewhere if anyone knows how?

I started training my grandson at age 12. I agree with one comment....stay off the weights. Sit ups, pushups, skip rope, medicine ball, and wind sprints, were the exercises of choice before moving into the boxing drills and hitting bags. I admit that we pushed him to hard on the wind sprints at first and he would began chocking and could not catch his breath. Athletic ashma. He had to get an inhailer because his lungs were not developed enough for the heavy wind sprint drills. In six months time, he could run sprints and distance runs with no problems and no inhailer needed. Make sure his diet is balanced. At his age, he could burn it off quickly, so I was never concerned about to much carbs, protein and sweets ( bit I did discourage soft drinks and cool aide). Add some fun to his training such as dodge ball and wrestling with others on the mats. If you ever do start him out with weight training, be danmned careful about overloading him to quickly. That age requires attention so you do not burn him out or cause injury...keep reminding yourself...he is young..there is plenty of time to develop him.

I honestly wouldn't worry about a few things and this is just my opinion as a fighter/trainer:

Don't worry about distance, although roadwork is a vital part of boxing, I feel that because this sport has so many variable energy bursts, training with long paced workouts can only hinder you as a fighter.

The reason I say this is because while you're jogging, you develop a rhythm, you're jogging for an extended peroid of time. How many times in a fight are you at one particular pace for any given amount of time???

Basically, when you're fighting, in ANY combative sport, your body is going through quick bursts & moments of rest, and to maintain that cardio during a fight, one must train in that matter.

You say he can do 80 press ups(push ups?) and 80 squats in sets of 10, well why not try explosive intervals of :30 bursts of any work out.

I changed my own work out regiment to follow a strict interval method and after two months, I was able to clock 30rds of sparring weekly, just fine.

Here's an example of a work out I did.

3 minute round
:30 Jump squats as fast as possible
:30 double jump rope as fast as possible
:30 Burpees
:30 Jump slides
:30 jump rope as fast as possible
:30 mountain climbers medium paced

During Rest Period
:30 medium paced jumping jacks
:30 full rest

Repeat x 3

Doing excercises like these, I dropped almost 100lbs and toned my body up better than I have in my entire life.

Something that I think people lose sight of: There is no point at all in training to fight 10 rounds if you are only going to fight 4 rounds (or 3 or 6 or 8). Train for the fight, so that you are ready to fight at the first bell, and are able to fight hard for the scheduled distance. I think that many fighters are, in fact, overtrained and leave their fight in the gym, so to speak.
With a 12 year old, in my opinion, more time should be spent on nailing down the fundamentals of boxing technique than on running or doing calisthenics. These are is formative years and he should be taught, properly and thoroughly, to box correctly and how to do things until they are second nature. This education should be daily. Hitting the bags should be daily. Running- three rounds of running intervals to sharpen the wind- can be every other day and shouldn't be done on sparring days.