How Bryant Lin cut his mile time from 6:00 to 5:20, lost 8lbs while putting on muscle and trained to fight at Dreamland Boxing
Throughout the years, I’ve worked with a number of amateur boxers. Once a date is set, we gather our team and set our expectations until fight night. This includes regular sparring, strength and conditioning, track work, and all of our fighters’ commitments to keep themselves in optimal shape outside of the gym.
We’ve had a number of success stories, such as Sandra Magallon winning the Golden Gloves, Vicky Zhao winning the Gene Lewis tournament, Masaya Nishioka winning the Ringside Masters National championship, or the many Dreamland members being able to successfully compete.
Today’s featured athlete is Bryant Lin. In 6 weeks while training for his first amateur fight, Bryant was able to:
- Cut his mile time for 6:00 to 5:20
- Drop 8lbs from 158 to 150
- Cut his body fat from 13.4% to 8.6%
- Lose 8lbs of fat mass from 21.3lbs to 13lbs
- Put on 0.7lbs of lean mass despite the weight cut
- Run 10.5 miles of hills at Quicksilver
As I’ve noted in my write-up of Mark Salgado’s training camp, Dreamland Boxing provides a very supportive environment with many key players helping out our team.
Boxing: Jesse Huerta, Luis Rodriguez, and I served as Bryant’s coaches. Jesse set up sparring with many talented amateurs from the Bay Area. Internal sparring provided quality rounds as well, as both Chris Washington and Ali Ahmed were training for pro fights and gave the amateur team rounds.
Trackwork: I served as the team’s track coach and took the amateur team to the track once a week for sprints. Bryant did a number of 800m sprints in preparation for his fight. I wrote about some of the workouts our amateur team does in preparation for competition here. Similar to Mark Salgado, Bryant made drastic improvements in his running times over a short period of time.
Strength and Conditioning: We took our amateur team to PerformanceGaines in Palo Alto to train with Arian Soltero for their strength and conditioning. Arian previously was an instructor at Undisputed Boxing and also trained a core class alongside the highly regarded boxing coach and cutman James Mike Bazzel. Today. Arian Soltero trains clients both in person and virtually and specializes in optimal performance via neuro drills, weight training, mobility, and boxing.
Weight Cut: Bryant lost 8lbs over 6 weeks to get ready for his fight. We used a body imaging scanner that detected his body fat percentage and muscle mass by muscle group. As you can see below, Bryant put on muscle while losing the weight. I had our fighters do weekly weigh-ins and made sure that they were not losing any more than 2lbs per week. I wanted the weight cut to be consistent and not force them to do anything drastic in the final week. He was required to weigh in at 152lbs on 2/16/2019, but as you can see here, he was already down to 150lbs by 2/13/2019.
That’s how you do it!
Recovery: We took the team to Sports Medicine Institute for their Normatec recovery and to get ice baths.
Normatec recovery boots use air pressure massage to temporarily increase blood flow to different parts of the body.
Ice baths provide a number of benefits, such as:
- Vasoconstriction and vasodilation allows oxygen rich blood to reach areas that may not have as much blood supply in stable temperatures.
- Cold exposure allows white fat to convert to thermogenic brown adipose tissue, which produces heat. Brown fat also slows the aging process and reduces the risk for degenerative diseases.
- Improved memory: Cold exposure can increase levels of norepinephrine, which plays an important role in cognition
- Resilience to stress: This one’s very noticeable, as you’re immediately subjected to stress the moment you hop in an ice bath. If I tense up or try to “fight” the cold, it only gets worse. I breathe my way through until I no longer feel cold.
- The cold activates the vagus nerve, which connects to many of the body’s organs via the parasympathetic nervous system. We live in a world which chronically elevates the sympathetic (“fight or flight”) nervous system, leading to a compromised immune system, poor mental health, and chronic conditions. Activating the parasympathetic (“rest and digest”) system helps improve the bodies resilience to stress, depression, and anxiety.
Result: Bryant Lin won a UD in his first amateur fight in February. He later won his second fight by KO in June.
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About the Author:
Coach Ian is an ultra-marathon runner and a volunteer coach at the non-profit boxing organization, Dreamland Boxing, in San Jose, CA. He competed in boxing for both Dreamland and collegiately at UCLA. His goal is to empower all to be the best that they can be, in boxing and in life. You can find Coach Ian on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.