Episode 1 of the How to Train Like series goes behind the scenes with Middleweight boxing contender Martin Murray, as he prepares for his next fight.
For the last 12 months, I’ve had two new video series I’ve wanted to create for my YouTube channel. One of those series is called, “How to train like a …”, which will be a series of 10-15 minute, mini-documentary style videos that go behind the scenes for a series of athletes and fitness enthusiasts. The first episode I wanted to create, was a How to Train Like a Professional Boxer. I had a number of potential boxers that expressed an interest in being involved, but a chance meeting with Martin Murray lead to me filming with him just a week before his next fight.
Martin has always been very generous with his time, and when I floated the idea of my video series he was happy to accommodate. I was, however, very conscious about taking up too much of his time or being a disturbance during his final preparations, but I wanted to create content that would be interesting and useful to everyone not just potential future professional boxers.
About Martin Murray
I’ve followed Martin’s career for a very long time, and I was introduced to him after he appeared on Prizefighter around 2008. We had mutual acquaintances, and there were potential opportunities to support each other as I had a company called Box Pro which specialised in digital promotion of fighters (digital promotion – creating online awareness rather than your traditional promotion associated with boxing!).
As of today, Martin has had 44 professional fights, 38 wins, 5 losses and 1 draw including 17 wins by knockout, in a professional career that started around September 2007. In that time he was won British, Commonwealth, European and interim World Title Belts at middleweight, and fought really elite fighters. He was challenged for a World Title on 4 different occasions, and although he has never claimed a belt despite some incredibly close results, there is no doubt in my mind that he beat Sergio Martinez in Argentina.
Train like a professional boxer
I met with him in the final week of his training camp before his next fight, and got to see first hand how he trains and prepares. After his training session I then interviewed him for 30 minutes, asking him a range of questions and specifics about his training methods which was really interesting. A lot of the questions were answered as I expected, but quite a few of his responses surprised me.
What fascinated me most about Martin’s training, was that a lot of it was quite simple and based on hard work, experience and intuition. He instinctively knows when to increase the intensity, when to taper off, when he needs rest to recover. Despite having had a range of dedicated coaches and trainers over the years, he now has just two people that he works with – Nigel Travis and Jamie Moore. Everything else related to strength training and nutrition he now does himself; his thoughts are that he’s been doing this for 12 years, and he knows his body better than anyone else.
As someone that has competed at the highest level of his sport, I assumed he would have a team around him that closely monitored every aspect of his training. Although he has done this in the past when preparing for i.e. Gennady Golovkin, now it feels like he does almost everything himself. His training is built around his family life, and is based on sustainability and lifestyle. He ponders whether he may have had more success in the sport if he had done things differently, but he’s glad that he didn’t sacrifice his family life.
You can find out more in the video, and at some point I may release the full video of the interview. It was over 30 minutes long, and there were some interesting parts that couldn’t make it into the final video.
Martin Murray vs. Sladan Janjanin
Martin’s next fight is against Sladan Janjanin on the 15th November at Liverpool Echo Arena. A win will create some excellent opportunities for Martin in 2020, including another potential fight for the European Middleweight title.
