Due to their physical and mental demands, martial arts like boxing and others make it difficult to always perform at your peak. To prepare for the ring, you really must have motivation, discipline, a diet plan, and a training schedule. However, these things frequently aren't sufficient to raise your level of performance. When that happens, specialist vitamins for fighters become crucial. They distinguish between average and outstanding performance (and results).
To excel at boxing, one must be committed, persistent, and hardworking. Even though boxing is your passion, there are times when you have to use all of your resolve just to drag yourself to the gym. However, there are occasions when lack of drive isn't the issue; instead, we may be hindered by fatigue as well as aches and pains that make us doubt whether exercising is a smart idea.
In the modern sports world, supplements are, without a doubt, a crucial component of any athlete's development. However, for boxers wishing to step up their training and performance, supplements might be crucial in maximising their overall performance and fitness.
We strongly advise you to have your diet, exercise routine, and motivation in line before thinking about purchasing any supplements. If you don't use supplements consistently and correctly, your investment could end up costing a lot of money. Before making a purchase, be certain that you are prepared to advance.
FAQs
Boxers should aim for 1 g per pound of body weight on average. If you are cutting weight, opt for slightly higher protein intakes of 1.05-1.1 g per pound of bodyweight to retain as much muscle as possible. If you are going up a weight class, then protein as low as 0.8 g per pound of body weight can be enough.
Creatine is great for boxers. It provides extra energy instantly, and all you need to do is take it every day. You will improve strength and power more than training without it. Unfortunately, getting enough creatine straight from your diet is nearly impossible.
Boxers should aim for 1 g per pound of body weight on average. If you are cutting weight, opt for slightly higher protein intakes of 1.05-1.1 g per pound of bodyweight to retain as much muscle as possible. If you are going up a weight class, then protein as low as 0.8 g per pound of body weight can be enough.
Vitamin D3 is an important supplement for boxing. There’s an increasing body of evidence for multiple roles of vitamin D throughout the body. For example, Vit D assists in bone and immune health and cardiac and muscle function.
Your performance as a boxer can be effectively enhanced by drinking a cup of coffee daily. It would help if you had a caffeine dosage of 2-4 mg/kg body mass for optimum results. For example, if you weigh 165 lb, you need to take 150-300mg. It is what makes coffee good for boxers.
What Supplements Should You Take For Boxing?
Be aware that supplements are at the top of the performance pyramid before spending hundreds of dollars on them. If you don't have everything else in place, such as correct training, nutrition, and sleep, supplements won't provide you with that extra performance edge.
But adding supplements to your already excellent competitive boxing lifestyle will offer you an advantage.
There are a few different areas of supplementation. Each category of supplements focused on a particular area is called a 'stack'.
For boxing, you’ll want to focus on an athletic performance supplement stack, a muscle building supplement stack, and a recovery supplement stack.
Below are some of the supplements I advise a boxer to take which fall into these three categories.
Caffeine Supplements
The amount of caffeine in most supplements is equivalent to 2-4 cups of coffee. Therefore, caffeine pills can offer you a boost on days when you need a little extra motivation to start going and even help you POWER through two-hour exercises when you weren't 'feeling it' before.
They are a great pre-workout pill for boxing because they don't make you feel nervous or have heart palpitations, which are bad ideas when raising your heart rate above 140 bpm.
You won't develop a caffeine tolerance if you just use them on days when you are incredibly exhausted, and you'll still feel like a rocket ship after taking them.
According to a recent study, caffeine may aid with hunger control and possibly increase metabolic rate throughout the day. There is good news for everybody who loses weight by boxing. The biggest advantage is that you are already accustomed to an increase in energy.
For optimal benefits, look for a product that has at least 200 mg of caffeine.
Whey Protein
The most complete and bioavailable protein you can find in powder form is whey protein. In other words, your body can digest, absorb, and use the protein to create new, better-quality proteins. Is whey isolate more expensive than whey concentrate, and is it worth it? No. Your daily protein intake is more vital for your training than whether you isolate or concentrate.
However, due to decreased lactose levels, isolate may be a better option for you if you have moderate lactose intolerance or trouble digesting dairy. If dairy is difficult for you to digest, choose beef protein powder. It turns out that beef protein works in a manner comparable to whey protein for the development of lean body mass and even lasts longer in the bloodstream.
To pick the best quality protein supplements, you should look for these two things:
- The least number of ingredients
- Protein content per serving to be as close as possible to serving size.
For instance, ideally, a 30g scoop of protein should have about 25g of protein.
You are paying for a lot of filler when protein powders have more than 20g of content.
With one of the highest protein content per 30g scoops of whey protein among all brands, Bulk Supplements is a reputable brand that can be found below.
Each 30 g scoop contains 26 g of excellent, well-mixed protein. Unfortunately, since all beef protein is collagen, it is formed of low-quality offcuts, rendering it basically useless for recuperation and muscular growth. The muscle-building or healing response is not boosted by collagen.
Recovery Supplements
If you want to be even remotely competent at boxing, practising once a week won't cut it, and you'll probably be spending numerous hours at the gym every day.
Your muscles are under a lot of strain due to frequent and intense training. Therefore, if you intend to train five or six days per week, enough rest and nourishment are essential.
Your workout session will be more challenging, and you run the danger of getting hurt if your muscles haven't fully recovered. Consecutive training days don't always allow for complete muscle recovery. You will almost always be working out with slightly weakened and torn muscles.
If you take a recovery supplement along with your post-workout meal, you can be confident you're getting all the nutrients you need for optimum recovery. Although it won't work like a charm, and you might still feel painful the next day, your body will feel better than it would have if you had done nothing.
Select recovery products that are both protein- and carb-rich.
Pomegranate Juice
This is a dietary supplement that has slipped people's notice. Maybe the media won't cover it because it's not hot enough. The good news is it means fewer people are utilising it, which might give you an edge over rivals.
The benefits of pomegranate juice for recovery and endurance performance are well supported by scientific research.
In contrast to the placebo group, endurance athletes who drank 6.7 oz (200 ml) of pomegranate juice every day for 21 days saw a reduction in oxidative stress indicators. Muscular tiredness is suggested to be a potential result of excessive oxidative stress.
Taking 1000 mg of pomegranate extract 30 minutes prior to exercise caused blood vessels to expand, which enhanced blood flow and prevented weariness from setting in when running until exhaustion.
Creatine Supplements
According to studies, athletes who engage in long-term, recurrent, high-intensity training sessions can increase their lean muscle mass, overall strength, explosive force, and performance with the aid of creatine (like in boxing, wrestling, judo, weight training, and other similar sports).
Creatine can help your muscles grow and get stronger by increasing their phosphocreatine reserves.
When you take creatine, your body produces more ATP (adenosine triphosphate), which gives your muscles more energy. It has also been demonstrated to speed up muscle recovery after strenuous exercise.
After a meal and a workout, boxers who take 0.03 grammes of creatine monohydrate per kilogramme of body weight may be able to boost their endurance and exercise capacity while maintaining their punching power over lengthy, strenuous training and tournaments.
Vitamin D
Since vitamin D is mostly produced via exposure to sunlight, those who practise and participate in indoor sports are more likely to experience a vitamin D shortage.
Elite Spanish boxers and athletes who competed in other indoor sports had vitamin D deficiencies that were severe or worse.
Why is this important? Vitamin D concentration has been linked to increased immune system strength, improved strength and performance, and impacts muscular growth, particularly of Type II muscle fibres.
Vitamin D supplements are a fantastic choice if you live in a place with little sunlight or spend a lot of time outside.
Multivitamin Supplements
The majority of vitamins and minerals are obtained from nutrition; however, for boxers, it can be more difficult due to their regular overtraining and dietary limitations to lose weight before fights. Because of this, fighters are more likely to experience nutritional deficiencies, which can harm their overall health and ability to build muscle.
For instance, a boxer with low vitamin D levels is more likely to experience inflammation and bone fractures. Just consider the impact such an injury or a few days spent recuperating from the flu can have on your work, health, and muscle performance. The numerous nutrients you receive from a multivitamin supplement support a robust, healthy immune system while enhancing your energy levels and metabolism.
Exercise has a wealth of positive health effects, but it also creates oxidative stress and dangerous free radicals, which can lead to a variety of ailments.
Fortunately, taking multivitamin pills high in zinc, selenium, beta-carotene, and vitamins A, C, and E can aid in detoxification and disease prevention while also protecting your cells from damage. Therefore, be careful to select a supplement high in all these nutrients and potent antioxidants generated from pure, natural foods without synthetic ingredients.
Fish Oil
Again, if you want to improve your overall healthy lifestyle, we highly recommend using this supplement, and if you are a boxer, fish oil is a fantastic option to think about. Fish oil is excellent for enhancing your general well-being, particularly for your bones, joints, skin, and blood pressure.
Why Should Boxers Take Supplements?
Because of one thing, combat athletes like boxers, MMA fighters, wrestlers, and others should think about supplementing with top-notch legal goods from reliable manufacturers:
They frequently have to contend with the demanding demands of intense training sessions as well as exhaustion, pain, stress, a variety of injuries, health concerns, and other difficulties unique to combat sports.
These nutritional supplements are essential to replenish the exhausted body, aid in performance improvement, help boxers recuperate and help them build their stamina and endurance.
What nutrients do boxers need?
It would be best if you tried to eat a variety of fruits, vegetables, proteins, and carbohydrates to meet your body's nutritional demands. A balanced diet is a crucial component of a healthy lifestyle. Boxers must eat more to maintain their energy and stamina in the ring since intense exertion consumes a lot of energy and nutrients.
Carbohydrates
Your muscles are fuelled by carbohydrates, especially complex carbohydrates like whole grains and legumes, which can provide energy all day. Prior to using boxing supplements, think about increasing your carbohydrate intake if you find it difficult to maintain your exercise regimen.
Protein
Since protein is a crucial component of muscle cells and takes longer to digest than either carbohydrates or fat, it can even help with weight loss. Protein is also crucial for repairing and growing muscle. Therefore, you must consume a lot of protein from foods like meat, eggs, tuna, peanut butter, beans, and protein powder if you want to increase your muscle mass.
Fat
Although many people who exercise regularly want to reduce weight, fat is a necessary component of your diet and contains more calories than carbohydrates or proteins, giving you long-lasting energy. To acquire lots of energy for boxing, try to include these foods in a balanced diet since they are sources of healthy fats like nuts, seeds, oily fish, and fatty meat.
Supplements boxers should avoid!
Instead of taking illegal substances to gain an advantage during training, many top boxers use a variety of vitamins. Well, some of them are as regrettable as it is to learn.
Any type of weight-loss supplement, anabolic steroids (injected), and testosterone-related items should be avoided. This is blatant cheating and endangers the life of your opponent, particularly in this sport where one punch can be fatal. So please don't go there and resist the temptation – would you prefer to live the rest of your life with the stigma of being a cheater? Most likely not, so don't even think about it.
The supplements serious boxers should avoid are those products containing:
- Illegal substances
- Artificial and potentially harmful additives
- Fillers
- Contaminants
- Bovine gelatin
- Anabolic steroids
- Human growth hormone (HGH)
- Testosterone or other hormone products
Boxers are also advised against using weight loss products, unclean supplements produced by unreliable companies or improperly labelled with opaque precise ingredient doses, etc.
Avoid dangerous items like performance-enhancing drugs because they can affect your health, performance, reputation, and career.
Remember that vitamins and any prescription or over-the-counter medications you may be taking may interfere.
Conclusion
Whey protein powder is the most crucial supplement for boxing out of all those mentioned above. It would help if you incorporated this into your diet while you are in a training regimen due to the quantity of difficult training you would be undertaking in order to improve your recovery and continue to perform at the maximum level.
Creatine is something you should think about trying to see if it can help make a difference if you're seeking that extra boost in your training and development in strength.
While not absolutely necessary, fish oil and multivitamins are excellent options for enhancing the general healthy lifestyle that boxers place such a high value on.
Despite all the supplements listed above, your total diet and food intake should precede how you use them.
If you are unsure how specific dietary supplement products can affect your health, don't forget to consult a doctor or nutritionist.