Jake Paul has not been shy about wanting to become a boxing world champion . To achieve this, it helps to have the best people in your corner, which is why Paul’s team pursued strength and conditioning coach Larry Wade following his loss to Tommy Fury in 2023.
Wade quite literally wrote the book on strength and conditioning for combat sports – Let’s Build Champions . The 50-year-old former track athlete seeks to develop power, mobility and agility in his athletes to ensure they are ready to perform come fight night, and this has proved an effective approach with the likes of Shawn Porter, Badou Jack, Caleb Plant and Rolando Romero.
Whichever athlete he is working with, Wade tells me there is one workout he insists all of his fighters can complete before their ring walk: 100 push-ups, with no breaks.
How to do Jake Paul’s push-up workout
- Complete 100 push-ups without lowering your knees to the floor or taking any breaks.
“If you can give me 100 push-ups straight, that means not only do you have the strength you need, but you also have the conditioning to support it,” Wade says. “That means when it’s time to throw hands, you ain’t gotta take a break.”
Jake Paul’s workouts
During his training camp for the Julio César Chávez Jr. fight, Paul has split his time between boxing-specific work, strength training workouts and conditioning sessions at the running track – putting Wade’s track and field background to good use.
He trains five times per week, twice per day, with sessions lasting roughly 90 minutes each, excluding warm-ups and any other preparatory work.
Gym sessions tend to involve a cocktail of pull-ups, push-ups, decline sit-ups, dumbbell lateral raises, max height vertical jumps, box jumps and kettlebell turns for the wrists, as well as daily dedicated neck-strengthening work, Wade says.
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There is also a considerable focus on exercises for power development – or Paul’s ability to generate force fast – such as medicine ball rotational throws and dumbbell split squat jumps.
On the track, Paul tends to hit a gruelling sequence of 800m, 400m and 200m intervals.
“The workout Jake talks about the most is the 800, 400, 200, 200 workout,” says Wade. “He’ll run 800m, then 400, then 200m and another 200, all with a minute of rest [ in between ].
“Depending on where we are in camp, we can do that a minimum of two times to a maximum of four times.”
The making of Coach Larry Wade
Given Coach Larry Wade’s enviable CV – taking athletes to 14 world titles – you might expect him to have been raised in a boxing ring. But his background lies elsewhere.
He began his career as a professional track athlete, boasting a 110m hurdles PB of little more than 13 seconds, before retiring as an athlete in 2007 and becoming a coach.
It was only after a chance encounter with (now two-time welterweight world champion) Shawn Porter that Wade made the transition to boxing.
“I was a professional track and field coach and strength and conditioning coach, and I was living in Los Angeles where I was training a lot of high-level Olympians, basketball players, NBA players and NFL players,” he says. “At the time, my wife was the head track and field coach at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). We got married and had a kid together, so I left the life I had in Los Angeles and moved to Vegas.”
At the UNLV track, Wade spotted what looked like an American football player running laps under the watchful eye of ‘another guy with a very intimidating look’, so he went over and introduced himself.
The man was Kenny Porter, and the athlete was his son Shawn – not an American football player at all, but a boxer. Wade handed over his card, and two weeks later he received a call in which Kenny asked him to work with his son.
“It wasn’t supposed to be a camp or anything, we were just supposed to get a workout in,” says Wade. “I did the workout, they loved the workout, and then they asked me if I wanted to be part of a camp.
Things moved on. “At that time,” he says, “I had no idea what a boxing camp was. Kenny said I’ll pay you for your strength session twice a week, but I want you to come to the gym every day – just pay attention and learn. I did that for four months.”
In December that year, Porter won the IBF welterweight world championship by defeating Devon Alexander. Wade’s methods were working.
“When that happened, it was such a powerful moment, and an exciting moment for me,” says Wade. “I had already fallen in love, and there was no way to get around it, but I still didn’t take another fighter on for about two years because I wanted to make sure I knew enough to be able to create something that’s sustainable.”
In 2015, Wade started working with Swedish fighter Badou Jack, and world titles followed. The same can be said for Caleb Plant and Rolando Romero.
He briefly worked with YouTube star KSI, then joined Jake Paul’s camp in 2023. Since then, Paul has been outspoken in his desire to win a belt and keep Wade’s hot streak going.
“We’re targeting cruiserweight,” Wade confirms. “The heavyweight fight with Mike Tyson was not necessarily what we were targeting, but it was where the opportunity was.”
The blend of sport and entertainment, and why this is good for boxing
Paul has attracted more eyeballs to the sport of boxing than most professional fighters. He commands vast audiences wherever he goes, and this can benefit the sport, according to Wade.
“The thing that boxers, and all athletes, need to understand is that sport is sport, but there’s also sports and entertainment,” he explains. “You’re in a sport, but your job is to entertain. Entertainment comes in the grey area of ‘What if?’. What if this guy did this? What if this guy did that? What if they got together and had a fight? What would happen?”
This, Wade says, is where the intersection of sports and entertainment can be found.
“We had sports and entertainment all at once for the Mike Tyson fight,” he says. “Here you have this social media superstar, now boxer, getting all this buzz, then you have the baddest man on the planet in Mike Tyson. If you put those two together, what’s gonna happen? You get a great entertaining fight.”
He concludes: “I think that’s where athletes as a whole have to do a better job of understanding. It’s not just about if you can do the sport, but can you make people want to watch you do the sport?”
Original Source:
Harry Bullmore
