I have trained fighters for many years and I am fortunate to have had a couple of World Champions. And, in my opinion, when a fighter steps into the ring for a world championship fight and you take off that fighters robe, you’re looking at the best-conditioned athlete in the world. How does he get in that kind of condition?

When I trained fighters I had certain standards that I set. First of all, we do not have problems with training fighters. Some of them work, they have jobs so therefore you just can’t set things the way you want to. But here we’ll suppose the optimum situation, where you have a fighter in a training camp. Now, the most important thing that I stress when I train fighters is regularity. By regularity I mean he would do his roadwork at the same time every day, and go to bed the same time every day. And believe me, after a three or four weeks he’ll even be going to the bathroom the same time every day. That’s how you’d be able to tune these kids up.

Before you tackle a fighter up to training camp you first have to check his equipment. The most important piece of equipment that a fighter has to have is a well fitted mouthpiece. There are skilled dentists that made these and every fighter should have one. And then, of course, we have the headgear, the protective cup, and I always had my fighters use fourteen ounce gloves in training. I felt they were big enough to protect the fighters and not too cumbersome. To me they were the ideal size. And that’s what size my fighters used when they were up in the training camp.

Once they would get up into the training camp I would set up this regular schedule whereby they would get up at six o’clock, do their roadwork, have breakfast at ten, be in the gymnasium at three-thirty, and have dinner at seven-thirty, with lights out at ten. And if anyone of you did that for six weeks even without doing any exercise you’d be a lot healthier. Just that regularity is a great thing.

Now we get to the actual training of the fighter. Say the fighter is on his way to the championship of the world, I would bring him to training camp maybe six weeks before the fight. We would start on roadwork at six o’clock in the morning. For the first five weeks of training I would have my fighter run three days on and one day off, an average of four miles. Then, in the last week of training we would cut down to two and a half miles and we would run every other day. Two days before the fight we would completely cut roadwork out and just recharge the batteries so my fighter would be at full strength when he went into the ring.

Of course there are adjustments which may have to be made. If a fighter’s a little too heavy, have him run a little more. But I’m just giving you the average of what we do as far as roadwork is concerned. After roadwork the fighter would have his breakfast and then return to the gymnasium at three thirty for his regular work. Now the first thing a fighter would do when he goes into the gym is warm up. Give him some stretching exercises and then some shadow boxing. And then everything should be regulated – again we’re into that regularity. In the ring we have an automatic clock that rings every three minutes and every fourth minute. I insisted that my fighters work three minutes and rest one minute. I’ve seen a lot of trainers who, after a fighter finishes sparring, take their time removing his gloves, and talk to him about anything – about what movie they’re going to see or whatever. But meanwhile four or five minutes go by and the fighter doesn’t have a chance to keep going, his heart beat goes down and affects his stamina later on.

The sparring is the most important think to monitor as far as injuries are concerned. All the years I trained fighters, even if they were getting ready for a fifteen-round fight, I never had a fighter spar more than six rounds in a gymnasium. I didn’t think it was necessary. If they did their floor work and the rest of their routine, they would get their fifteen round in there. They wouldn’t be subject to getting hit for fifteen-rounds in the gymnasium. A lot of other trainers have a lot of other ideas; and I know there are some fighters, like Muhammad Ali, who would like to spar fifteen rounds maybe four or five days before the fifteen round fight. I’m dead set against that I always have been. Then they have the famous Philadelphia gym wars where everyday the fighter would have to go in and become champion of the gym. And while Philadelphia did develop some good fighters, these kids can come up and be right at the top, ranked number one, and then all of a sudden, come right down, because they had too many tough fights in the gym.

Again as I said, we made the fighter work three minutes. I had a fighter, Jerry Quarry, who was a very very hard puncher but I wanted him to get his three minutes work in. You know, fighters don’t pull punches when they spar- that’s why they have the fourteen ounce gloves. It’s a controlled situation, the only difference between sparring and an actual ring bout is the fact that if a fighter lands a good punch and has the other fighter a little groggy, he backs of and the trainer yells at him and pulls him back. But they don’t pull punches in the gymnasium, they’re going full out. That’s why you have to have good sparring partners and an actual ring. And after one minute, if one of the guys got hit a good lick and was a little groggy, out he’d go and in would come the next. But Quarry would get his three minutes’ worth, and one minutes rest that’s what they get used to and that’s what they did. And it worked well.

 After sparring I would have my fighter’s shadow box to loosen up their muscles and then I would put them on a heavy bag. The heavy bag is a bag where you work on combinations, on correct punches. And while he’s on the heavy bag you’ll be saying different things, like "keep your right hand up," "double up on punches" or whatever. But I don’t think a heavy bag is useful for every fighter. For example, George Foreman. I took him over late in his career, and when I first took him over he was very enthusiastic. "I’m to chop wood, and I’m going to hit the heavy bag," he’d say. And I said, "George, I don’t want you to hit a heavy bag. Your muscles are too big now. What we need is for you to work on hand speed… stay off the heavy bag." So he did and after three or four fights- and he won them all- we had a falling out. I don’t know it was a personality clash, or whatever, but he brought in another trainer to work with me. I don’t know if he was trying to show me that he knew more than I did, but whatever it was he started to hit the heavy bag for 25 consecutive minutes without stooping. And when he did his muscles were getting bigger and his punches were getting slower, and they sounded like bombs when they hit the bag. But they just weren’t going to hit anybody in the ring. Consequently, when he fought Jimmy Young in Puerto Rico, he got licked by a fighter he should have been able to beat. So there are different fighters. But Basically, I would have my fighters hit the heavy bag for a round, shadow box for a round and then skip rope for 2 rounds. Rope skipping is like swimming, it tones up every muscle in your body; it’s good for you. When he’s finished with the rope skipping, we’d go on the speed bag work.

I was never much in favour of the speed bag. It was good for the eye-hand coordination, and the fighters like it; it was very good phycology - they like to hear that rat-tat-tat and then, when they end up with that big left hook, it makes them feel great. But that’s all. After the speed bag we would do our heavy callisthenics. The callisthenics I prescribed are those to build up the neck and then abdomen to help the fighter absorb punches better. The rest of the muscles are taken care of by the rest of the routine.

With all this being done we have a psychological problem in training a fighter. That’s all the physical work, but you have to remember you have a fighter in training camp and all of the work I have just described takes about three hours. And you have a fighter 24 hours a day. What do you do with him 21 hours? Do you have to keep him happy, keep him ready to go? So what we do is become a bunch of overgrown adolescents. We’re always playing tricks on each other – same thing as ball clubs do when they travel. You throw guys in the water with their clothes on, etc – it’s very funny, a fighter feels happy and everybody feels good except the guy that gets wet. And we play games like table tennis and pool. Emile Griffith was a good table tennis player. He was better than I was and he beat me most of the time. But the last day before a fight we’d play and I’d always made sure he’d win, so that he’d walk away feeling good. These little things are the things that make a fighter feel good, toning up their mind as well as their body.

After all these things a fighter should be in condition, and as I used to say to Griffith, "We’ll put the holy water on you and we’re ready to go." and he fought some good fights. That’s what it takes, in my opinion, to train the best conditioned athletes in the world.