How to follow in the footsteps of Anthony Joshua and Nicola Adams
The road that took the likes of Anthony Joshua and Nicola Adams to the top of the sport
T is a long hard road. Few boxers make it on to the elite GB Boxing programme, fewer still make it all the way to an Olympic Games, let alone medalling when they get there.
But there is a roadmap. After three years of research into the elements that contribute to making a successful international competitor, GB Boxing have published ‘The Pathway to Success,’ their guide to developing world class boxers. The GB set up contains the acknowledged experts on the subject, their programme has produced Olympic champions, like Anthony Joshua, Luke Campbell and Nicola Adams, as well as consistent international medallists. For this particular project they canvased contributions from key stakeholders, including GB coaches, the Home Nations, sports scientists, and their Pathways development team. They classified the information into the vital areas that form a model for the profile of a boxer, from tactics, skills and awareness, to physical readiness, mental preparation and health as well as experiences, professionalism and personal qualities.
For each of these areas they put together the key elements that comprise them. “We want to develop the athlete side of the sport and we wanted to develop the person and we are going from the pathway, picking up this experience and becoming a lot more professional, and developing these personal qualities to become the world’s best,” GB’S Performance Pathway Manager Rob Gibson, who led the project, told Boxing News. “It was written in a way so that both coaches and boxers could get something from it.”
The final document, available online from GB here: https://www.gbboxing.org. uk/performance-guide, is a tool for boxers and their coaches to see what it takes to reach the GB squad and to find out what is required if they get there. “What the document is designed to do is to support what they’re currently doing with the coaching at their clubs,” Gibson said. “To focus in on the particular elements that we’re looking for that will help them and support them to develop so when they do get the opportunity to be assessed, that’s familiar to them. It’s not to replace what coaches are doing, it’s there to
provide a recipe of the different metrics that we’re looking for.
“If their ambition is to get on to the World Class programme and represent their country, they can start thinking about some of these things.”
Of course the boxing is at the heart of it but the personal qualities and life skills required are also interesting. Travelling to foreign countries to excel over the course of long training camps and tournaments is a key factor beyond the ropes. Learning coping mechanisms, for instance, for when results aren’t going a boxer’s way are important. A boxer must have a variety of communication skills, must have the ability to reflect, respond positively to setbacks and operate in a team environment.
“The boxing element is what all the World Class programme coaches and Home Nation coaches pulled together, all those different metrics within each element. On the athlete side of things that was through the sports science team, the personal elements that was brought about through research, what other sports have done, what kind of people the world class programme thinks we do have, [what’s needed] in order to thrive in Sheffield, who can tolerate the demands personally not necessarily physically. That personal side of things as well. That’s where the main thrust of it came. We try to put tech element into context, provide a bit of a definition, why we felt that was important. Then we had some behavioural markers, so what would we see if someone was doing that well. [Then] how to develop those different metrics. We wanted to try and make it as coach friendly and athlete friendly as we possibly could,” Gibson said.
In terms of the boxing itself they highlight some of the factors the coaches consider critical. Among them is awareness. “To make good quality decisions the athlete has to know what’s going on with themselves, with the environment and what’s going on with the opponent,” Gibson explained. “It’s just doing the basics super, super well. As they become honed, the skills become honed, then all that flair and the fancy stuff will take care of itself because they’re so drilled on the basics; stance, defend attack, tempo, footwork, timing, all those things. If you’ve got that happening subconsciously, that will allow more brain space to observe your opponent, you start to get into that flow state.”
“We put tempo in, that’s almost like a GB way of winning. That ability to be able to move up and down in terms of speed,” he added, also highlighting composure. “Staying in control of your emotions, even if you’re struggling a little bit, not to go wild.”
Most boxers coming on to the GB programme will need to have experienced boxing abroad. “The key steps for me are developing the appropriate experiences and exposure through the pathway. So if your goal is to get on the World Class programme and represent your country, it’s important that those boxers are having different experiences… For club coaches to expose their boxers to multiple events,” Gibson said. “They’ve got club shows, they’ve got national championships, certainly doing all that but if they get [the chance] with the regions, Box Cups as well, and get them different experiences.
“So it’s really important that we go through the home nations, that pathway.”
Patience is a virtue. “For me the boxers shouldn’t get het about trying to achieve something in a short space of time. Everybody responds and develops at different rates and development is not always linear,” Gibson concludes. “What we don’t want is for young boxers being pushed quite so hard by the time they’re getting on to the World Class programme they’re feeling a bit burned out.
“It’s a very competitive world we live in, it’s important to have goals and if your long term goal is to represent your country at an Olympic Games, that’s a huge goal. It’s important to have very small short and medium-term goals to help you keep on track towards that one big goal.”
‘EVERYBODY RESPONDS AT DIFFERENT RATES. DEVELOPMENT IS NOT LINEAR’