Moses Itauma and Dillian Whyte are like two opposing bookends to a boxing career. At just 20 years old, Itauma is catching everybody’s eye, while Whyte’s trainer Buddy McGirt admits: “There’s no tomorrow after this for Dillian. If you lose a fight like this then you just become a stepping stone for younger guys. This is his championship fight right here.”
Whyte is not ready for this eventuality. The 37-year-old sees the clash on Saturday (16 August) as his chance to ‘get back in the big time’ and earn the opportunity to compete for a world title again. It is why he has subjected himself to an intense pre-fight training camp in Portugal.
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“They’re trying to feed the old wolf to the young wolf,” he tells DAZN. “I may be an old wolf, but my teeth are still sharp. I carry power in both hands, I’m sure he does the same, so let’s see. I’m going to do whatever it takes to win.”
As a fitness writer, I wanted to know how Whyte is preparing physically as he attempts to claw his way back to the top of the sport. When DAZN gained behind the scenes access to his training camp, I was impressed with what I saw.
Strength is good, but speed is king
Whyte is a strong athlete – you only need to look at his imposing 6ft 4in frame to know that. With the Dazn cameras watching, he playfully curls 20kg to prove this point, then goes on to complete a heavy set of dumbbell bench presses. Baseline strength is clearly not an issue.
But this is not what caught my eye. Instead, it was the emphasis on speed and power in his training that impressed.
According to his trainer McGirt, these are important attributes to have at your disposal – especially when combined with a healthy dose of strategy and cunning.
“We’re working on sharpening up his defence a bit more and not getting crazy, because when he gets hit, right away he wants to go to war, and it’s not always about that,” McGirt says. “You’ve got to be smart now. You’re older – build each round.”
“Dillian’s thing is war,” he adds. “It’s OK to go to war, but you’ve got to attack smart, especially against a young man that’s fast.”
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At one point during the video above, Whyte can be seen completing all-out sprints on an exercise bike at the bottom of a sand dune covered in vertical columns of footprints – a surefire sign of hill sprints.
Hill sprints are a favourite among the many boxing-focussed strength and conditioning coaches I have spoken to. They are popular for their ability to build an iron mindset, more efficient cardiorespiratory system and power repeatability – being able to repeatedly produce and recover from high-intensity efforts, which is something you will likely need over the course of 12 rounds.
This exercise provides natural resistance in the form of a hill, allowing you to achieve maximal intensity at sub-maximal speeds, while the incline also creates lower braking forces and less joint stress per stride – potentially lowering injury risk.
Add in the fact that hill sprints practise powerful extension of the hip and knee – pivotal when throwing a punch – and you have yourself a brilliant conditioning exercise for boxing.
Moving moderate weights explosively
Another way Whyte is developing speed and power is by training to move lighter weights at higher speeds.
This is a tactic I discussed previously with Matchroom Boxing’s head of performance Dan Lawrence. He terms it ‘surfing the force-velocity curve’.
The force-velocity curve is a graph depicting the inverse relationship between force and velocity – in layman’s terms, you can move lighter weights faster than heavy ones.
A boxer’s training should hit various points along this curve to develop attributes such as maximal strength (the maximum amount of force a muscle can generate), strength-speed (the ability to move moderate weights as fast as possible), speed-strength (moving at very high speeds while moving the greatest load you can maintain this speed with) and pure speed.
Given the body adheres to the SAID (specific adaptations to imposed demands) principle, if we want to develop speed and power then we need to practise moving weights fast to trigger this physiological adaptation. Whyte does this through several means.
While sprints and exercise bike sprints can develop speed, Whyte’s heavy dumbbell bench presses operate at the other end of the spectrum to build maximal strength.
He also uses Olympic weightlifting exercises such as hang clean pulls and snatches, as well as trap bar deadlift jumps and even some plyometric pull-ups, to fill in the gaps in between. These are the exercises that can develop the explosive power behind the knockout blow he hopes to deal Itauma when the two meet in the ring.
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