The Architect

Maxboxing.com

For those who follow boxing and are excited about tomorrows fight between De La Hoya and Pacquiao here is an article you might like. Strength and Conditioning coaches have begun to work with boxers to improve strength, speed and power levels over the years.

On HBO's infomercial series '24/7', much has been made of the work being put in by Oscar De La Hoya and his long-time strength and conditioning coach, Rob Garcia, as he prepares for his first fight at the welterweight limit in seven years. Not much however, has been focused on the task at hand for Manny Pacquiao, who after winning his first title at 112 pounds, boxes for the first time on Saturday night at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas as a full-fledged welterweight.

The responsibility of making sure Pacquiao keeps his speed and quickness while adding the requisite size is one Alex Ariza.

"The main thing here is that we didn't have to worry about moving up so much in weight," he says. "For the David Diaz fight we did focus in a little bit on strength. Our main focus was the speed. This fight here, for the first weeks we introduced Manny to a more ballistic, high-intensity, interval training system. And then the latter half of this camp, we focused on the speed."

Speed is the one clear advantage the 'Pac Man' has over De La Hoya, who has fought as a middleweight in the past. The challenge is to make sure that his blinding speed isn't held down by the extra poundage.

"It's a challenge for every conditioning coach out there. There's always that balance, trying to hold strength and have speed at the same time and the hope is that conditioning will piggy-back on those two things. Speed is such a key factor in this but, at the same time, we have to know that Manny has to be able to sting Oscar when he hits him," said Ariza.

He explains his general philosophy thusly, "High-intensity, interval training is what's out there right now. It's the most modern method of training. Long runs, those more antiquated techniques of conditioning, they just don't exist anymore with your top conditioners. We believe in taxing heart rates, recovering, and things like that which will improve and condition an athlete."

In the early morning a few weeks back, as he conducted the roadwork of one Amir Khan at a local park near Freddie Roach's Wild Card Boxing Club in Hollywood, you see that Khan isn't just running several miles straight at a steady pace. Instead, a constellation of cones are set up over 100 yards and Khan, as he reaches each landmark, steps up his pace till he goes into a full blown sprint the last 20 yards. He is given a certain time to get back to the original starting point, where the process is repeated. As Khan begins to stride out, Ariza harps on the young fighter to pump his arms at his sides and to lift his knees. Each set of sprints is meticulously timed.

Afterwards, Khan worked on some 'ladder' drills, which are used by many athletes to improve their quick twitch muscles. In the past, many football teams would lay spare times side by side and have their players step through the tires as quickly as possible, pumping their knees as high as possible. Nowadays, instead of a garage full of Goodyears, trainers like Khan just carry rollaway materials that can be laid out to simulate the same process.

"It's all about plyometrics," Ariza explains of the drills that had Khan moving forward and laterally through the squares as if he were almost playing a game of hopscotch. But regardless of what they do, it's just as important to Ariza the pace at which they execute the workout.

"Conditioning right now is in its formative years still with boxing. So what we try to do is simulate a boxing round in everything we do when it comes to either the intensity of the plyometrics or the ballistic training or sprint training. It's always going to be interval, it's always going to be erratic heartbeats, high heart-rate with short recovery. And that's always going to be the focus.

"It's about taxing your heart rate, getting heart rate that's similar to what they experience in a boxing ring and then having that ability to recover and then do it again, recover and then taxing it again and recover. So it's gotta simulate what a boxing match is. Running a long distance, you can time your breathing, you can adjust your pace. When you're doing interval training, you can't do that."

And yes, Ariza did put Pacquiao through some resistance training - which is still considered taboo in many boxing circles.

"I do use weights, but in the sense that they're not for cosmetic reasons," says Ariza, who stays away from compound lifts such as the bench press and military press. He believes in high reps with movements that will benefit a boxer inside the ring. "They're more to develop a quicker, faster response, a faster twitch-muscle fiber. They're designed to target those things like that. So the idea behind using light weight is also for flexibility and to develop a faster reflex."

Pacquiao's work ethic, according to Ariza is, "Phenomenal. As a conditioning coach you are always trying to be a motivator, somebody who keeps athletes at a level of intensity. But with Manny, it's almost reverse. Motivating him isn't a problem. Getting him to work hard isn't a problem. It's keeping him from working too hard that's the problem."

But there is still the fear of the unknown, and Pacquiao and his long-time Filipino crew have balked at a few things and have been reluctant to make some changes. "Some of the stuff we cut out a little earlier than normal with Manny because Manny's just not used to it," said Roach. If it ain't broke, why fix it? That seems to be the philosophy at work here. But what helps his cause is that Ariza has the support of Roach, an old-school trainer, who is receptive to new ideas.

"I think there's room for it. Every sport in the world, we're getting bigger, stronger and technology is better," says the respected trainer. "I'm old-school, but if something makes sense to me, I'm going to go with it."

Roach harkens back to a time when he was fighting when he performed tried and true drills that, in retrospect, make no sense now."Like the medicine ball," he says with a laugh. "They used to pound the medicine ball into me so you got used to body shots and stuff like that."

So that didn't work?

"No."

Really?

"I think you get your body in shape to take punches by doing sit-ups and doing exercises. If I keep hitting you in the head, are you going to get used to it?"

Then there was the custom of doing your roadwork in heavy duty work boots to strengthen your legs.
"I used to run in boots," admits Roach. "I actually didn't believe in it back then and I still don't believe in it because it's just so bad for your legs, shin splits."

So why'd he do it, then?

"My dad made me. You did what you were told."

Perhaps all of these past missteps (whether in Red Wings or Nikes) has made Roach the ideal trainer to work under.

"Actually Freddie is an outside-the-box kind of trainer," Ariza states. "He's one of those guys who is more cutting edge, more modern. He thinks that conditioning and nutrition is an invaluable facet of a fighter’s training. His training is very intense, he's high-intensity, a lot of volume punching. So in order for his fighters to be able to maintain that kind of pace he keeps with the mitts, they have to incorporate this kind of conditioning."