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Do they do a lot of manual labor?

It also has a lot to with genetics and your bone structure.

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I usually wait 1 minute between sets.
You should not try to sets without a break between.

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I am not an expert, but the big names start when they’re younger. You would be at a severe disadvantage getting started. Unless you are an unbelievable natural at the sport, your prospects as a pro aren’t good.

That being said, if you really want to box, go box. I just wouldn’t count on making a career out of it.

Alternatively, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu relies much less on pure strength.

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The first thing to understand is that small muscle group exercises do not cause muscle growth….at all. The only people who get muscle growth from something like an arm curl, inject steroids directly into the muscle before their workouts. That is both dangerous and a waste of time for most people (only works on about 10% of the population who is genetically predisposed).

The way you cause muscle growth is by stimulating your body to release testosterone. You do this with large muscle group exercises and lots of rest between workouts. Since the muscle growth happens all over your body and during the downtime, if you workout during the growth phase, BOTH workouts are wasted. One workout a week….maybe 3 workouts every 2 weeks is what you are shooting for. The exercises that work are the squat, leg press, bench press, pushups, pullups, lat pulldowns, and abdominal work.

You want to carefully work the muscle group to failure, using high reps, low weight. You could actually use any weight/rep combination to do this. In fact, changing your weight/rep combination prevents muscle potentiation and is a good idea to keep your workouts effective. But this is a safety issue. It’s important that you keep correct form at all times while working the muscle. This is what makes your workout effective. But it also prevents injury. It’s alot easier to do that with a higher rep workout than a lower rep one. Buy a book on weight lifting forms and study it carefully. Always work on improving your form, every workout. It’s a big deal.

Basically, you workout for your set of reps, then lower the weight and increase the reps for your next set. You do this for 3 to 5 sets…..until you can’t do anymore. There is no rest between sets other than what it takes to quickly change the weight on the bar. Lowering the weight substantially prevents your body from giving up the ghost early in your workout by not firing a portion of the muscle fibers. As you work closer and closer to failure, fewer and fewer muscle fibers will fire unless you decrease the weight. The closer you get to your muscles refusing to do a rep, even with little weight on the bar, the more effective your workout. I’d say, not being able to do even one more rep, despite only 25% of the weight you started out with, being on the bar, is a pretty good goal to shoot for.

You may or may not be sore after the workout. Soreness is a sign that you kept too much weight on the bar while trying to do reps. Your muscles were doing the exercises with too few muscle fibers doing the job so they got strained. You’ll definitely be sore the first few weeks of working out. After that though, you might not notice anything during your down time. Don’t be fooled by this into doing another workout too soon.

Also, muscle growth has almost nothing to do with strength gain. I’d pit any varsity high school wrestler against any of the guys you see in the muscle mags, any day of the week. The wrestler has functional strength and lean muscle. He’d easily beat the weight lifter in a test of strength. So too would a gymnast. If that’s what you want, go do body weight exercises instead of weight training….particularly work with the rings. What I am getting at here is, don’t expect regular gains in the amount you can lift. Sure. You’ll get some, particularly in the beginning. But, without steroids, that will plateau and then cease. Instead, get a body fat analyzer scale and keep track of how much you weigh that isn’t fat…..as a measure of your progress.

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