Floyd Mayweather is one of the most polarizing people in sports history. Some people love him, some people hate him, but everyone can agree he is one of the best fighters to ever live. He is officially gone undefeated his entire career 50-0, with 26 of those being world title fights, and somehow still maintaining a 54% knockout ratio despite fighting title holders at higher weight classes. On top of an impressive boxing record, he amassed over a billion dollars in career earnings.
Yet, somehow people still find ways to criticize Mayweather. Whether it is his “flashy” lifestyle, his trash talk, all the way up to his training routine. Somehow, being one of the best athletes in the world, with over a 50% KO ratio, won’t stop couch potatoes from telling you that your training routine is “ineffective” and doesn’t “mimic a real fight.” One of Mayweather's most criticized routines is his heavy bag routine.
In summary, here are some of the benefits of Floyd’s heavy bag training:
- Great for conditioning your lungs, muscles, and mind.
- Helps you work on throwing punches at full speed and power potential when it’s time to attack.
- Mirrors the bodily rhythm of a real fight. There is no real break when you are in action, only constant motion with bursts of explosiveness. This helps your body get to just that and prevent you from exhaustion come fight time.
Given that, let’s talk about why this routine is actually genius, and why you should do it too.
But first, the workout.
Floyd Mayweather Heavy Bag Workout
Floyd’s heavy bag routine is a pretty simple one. He gets on the bag and hits it for 20 to 40 minutes straight without rounds or timed breaks, and pauses only for water or as needed, usually 3 to 5 times throughout. He hits the bag at a steady pace and then rips it with heavy power punches and combinations throughout the set. He does this for a very long time.
Better explained through a video of him doing it:
Now let’s get into what it works, and why it’s genius.
Conditioning
One thing we’ve never seen from Floyd in the ring is exhaustion. No matter how tough of a battle he is in, we’ve never seen Floyd tired, not his lungs, not his body. He stays sharp all the way down to the final bell. His punches are fast and powerful every second of every fight, as well as is his footwork and his reflexes. That is one of the main thing that Floyd’s heavy bag workout helps with, conditioning.
Lungs
One of the first things to go is the lungs. Once your lungs get tired, you get out of breath which means your body is no longer delivering the right amount of oxygen to your body, and then your body follows suit. To avoid exhaustion your lungs have to be in shape and to do that, you must push them to their limits the same way you do your muscles.
This heavy bag workout absolutely helps with that. It’s a nonstop pace with unpredictably explosive movements in between. Try it for at least one 3 minute round a see if you can last. Floyd does it for 20-40 minutes straight with unofficial short breaks in between, and this usually AFTER a set of shadow boxing, pad work and sometimes sparring.
This is why we’ve never seen Floyd take a deep breath in the ring. He rarely does rounds in the gym, so the 1-minute breaks after 3 minute rounds are a bonus.
Muscles
The second thing to go after the lungs is the muscles. This workout also helps keep your body conditioned, mainly the shoulders. One of the first body parts to go out in boxing is the shoulders. This influences your ability to snap your punches, causing slower and weaker punches. It also hinders your ability to parry or block in time. When you’re tired, no matter how quick your mind is to respond, if your body can’t comply, it doesn’t happen.
If you’ve ever been tired in a fight then you know the nightmare that it is. It literally feels like one of those dreams where you are throwing punches in slow motion but your opponent is unphased by it all, and then he responds moving full speed and power. Yeah, it’s scary and I imagine it’s what it feels like being stuck in quicksand while a tiger slowly approaches you.
To avoid this, you need to condition your body to stand up to constant motion, followed by explosiveness, that is what it does.
Mind
Outside of being physically exhausting, fighting wears down the mind. Your mind has to be just as conditioned to the process as your body is. Having to throw punches and defend can get draining and overwhelming and part of the training is to condition yourself to not let it wear you down because once your mind goes so does the body. A lot of times you can trigger yourself out of a physical exhaustion by changing your mental state mid-fight. The key is to control your mind the whole fight, and grueling routine like this does just that. The pure volume of punches throughout a long period of time without breaks will force you to stay up and stay sharp until the time is complete.
Explosiveness
When Floyd hits the bag he hits the bag with straight punches, tapping with enough force but not too hard where it will tire him quickly. However, every ten or so punches, he will explode with a combination of punches at full speed and power. Here are the ones we see often:
- Three to 5 hard right hands
- Left hook to the body, left hook to the head
- 4 to 6 left/right hook combinations.
- Hard Jabs
If you watch Mayweather fight, you will see every punch he throws is with bad intentions. He rarely delivers a shot that is not at his full speed and power and that is exactly what he is practicing in this heavy bag routine. He goes from a state of constant motion to a full potential punch, working on getting his explosiveness off randomly.
Mirrors the Rhythm of a Real Fight
Most of the time when he hit the bag, we think we are mirroring a fight because we have the same rounds and breaks structure. However, when we actually fight we get tired much faster, and that is because with the bag there is no anticipation or actual, unpredictable defense involved.
In a fight, you constantly in motion, anticipating, moving, dodging, feinting, and constantly reminded that you are under attack. This way your body is never truly at rest, unlike the breaks you take between combos on a heavy bag.
What Floyd’s heavy bag routine does is copy the bodily rhythm of a real fight. You are in constant, steady, but intense motion, with spurts of explosiveness to evade or to attack at full speed and power potential. That is exactly what this heavy ba routine is getting your mind, body, and lugs ready for.
Not taking breaks in practice also allows for much quicker recovery during the breaks in a fight. This is because your body is used to going for non-stop, that when it gets a break it is an added bonus and will refresh you for the next round ahead.
Time to Think, Strategize and Practice the Game Plan
Lastly, this is a good workout to practice your gameplan. Often you will see Floyd visualizing the opponent he is fighting and practice some of the things he wants to execute in a fight. So, if you know your opponent has a lazy jab, you can practice shooting the right over it. If you plan on going to the body, you can implement counter body shots. The lulls in the action is the perfect time to set up scenarios in your mind and then explode when it’s time to fight.
He also uses this time wisely to repeat affirmations to himself, saying things like “I can’t be beat” or “I do everything great.” This helps put your mind into a positive and confident mindstate.
On top of that he has someone counting his punches the whole time. This can be a useful exercise. If you don’t have a team like Floyd that can do it for you, you can purchase these Hykso Trackers or the PIQ by Everlast, and they will count the punches for you. As well as let you know the speed at which you are punching at and track that data over time.
Try it for Yourself, Implementing the Mayweather Heavy Bag Routine
Chances are, no matter in how good of shape you are, you probably won’t be able to do 20 to 40 minutes straight of what Floyd does, even with the water breaks in between. So here is a quick guide for you to be able to get your feet wet with this workout and see what you can handle.
2 Minutes Rounds, 3 Rounds, 30 Second Breaks
Do what Floyd does but give yourself a modest 2 minutes of it, while still taking 30-second breaks. If you can handle it, then try to do 6 minutes straight.
If you can go straight through you can try upping the minutes as your stamina improves.
Try this out and let me know how you feel!
This workout will definitely improve your endurance and help you maintain your stamina better come fight time. It will also discipline you to throw better, more explosive punches when it’s time to attack.
Drop me a comment below if you have any questions.
Brawl all day!
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