The unglamorous strength and conditioning technique used by Dillian Whyte that delivers result

Run up a steep hill as fast as you can. Walk back to the bottom then do it again, and again, and again. Most boxers understand that, if you can commit to doing this on a semi-regular basis, chances are you will be incredibly fit.

Dillian Whyte (PA Archive)

As I watch a YouTube video on developing athletic performance, a sinewed man racks up the miles on a treadmill that looks more like a Transformer than a typical running machine. An oxygen mask covers his face and several tubes run from various bits of his body to a machine that would be at home in a NASA laboratory. This is part of modern sport.

I skip to a new video, and the contrast is stark. Dillian Whyte stands on a busy roadside, then lets out a roar of exertion as he accelerates up a hill. This is also part of sport, and it has been for some time.

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Despite the humble hill sprint’s low barrier for entry – all you need is a stopwatch, a steep incline and enough grit to keep going – it continues to outstrip tech-heavy alternatives and remains a stalwart in most boxing coaches’ strength and conditioning playbook.

To prepare for his clash with Moses Itauma on 16 August, Dillian Whyte headed to Portugal and hit hill sprints in a range of locations. Johnny Fisher’s strength and conditioning coach Sonny Cannon also swears by them, as does Samuel Otti, who works with Daniel Dubois.

But what is it about this age-old training style that continually stands the test of time?

Dillian Whyte’s hill sprint workout

Complete eight rounds of:

- Hill sprint x200m

- Walking recovery back to the start of the 200m

Then six rounds of:

- Hill sprint x60m, focussing on fast acceleration

Ahead of his clash with rising star Moses Itauma, Dillian Whyte went to Portugal for a pre-fight training camp. In the Dazn video above, he can be seen completing sprints on an exercise bike in front of a steep sand dune. The sand dune has a series of tracks leading up and down the incline – it does not take a detective to sniff out the presence of hill sprints here.

A separate video shared by boxer Cathal Crowley, showing the same training camp, follows Whyte as he completes a hill sprint session along a busy roadside. This type of training is far from glamorous – there is no private air-conditioned gym and limited gadgets involved – but it is effective.

Benefits of hill sprints for boxing

Hill sprints do not just benefit boxers. For athletes in field sports, they can reinforce favourable sprint mechanics and, consequently, increase top-end speed. However, while the attributes involved in sprinting may translate to boxing, a fighter is unlikely to need to sprint 60 metres in the ring.

For boxers specifically, the interval format emulates the undulating intensities an athlete faces over the course of a match – bursts of explosive power sandwiched between periods of watching and waiting for an opponent to let their guard slip. Hill sprints train the body and nervous system to be able to repeatedly generate high power movements, reducing the drop-off in explosiveness often seen as a fight goes on.

“[Hill sprints] are about learning to push your heart to the max, recover, then push it again,” Daniel Dubois’ trainer Don Charles tells me. Given the three minutes on, one minute off, structure of a boxing match, this is a handy ability to have.

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Hill sprints can also lift VO2 max and lactate threshold – relating to heart and lung efficiency – to allow athletes to fuel their body more effectively and work harder for longer.

They allow athletes to exert maximal power at sub-maximal velocities too – you will run slower up a hill than you do on the flat, while still giving 100 per cent effort. This can allow for physiological adaptations such as improved rate of force production, with a potentially lower risk of injury than if you were to simply do sprints.

But for Dubois’ strength and conditioning coach Samuel Otti, it is the mental benefits of hill sprints that hold additional value over alternative exercises.

“Daniel never knows the number of hill sprints we are going to do that day,” Otti says. “When we are doing our hill sprints, that’s when physical fitness goes out the window. At that stage, it’s all about the mind, because the mind often plays tricks on you.”

In this scenario, Otti applies the ‘40 per cent rule’. This refers to a concept popularised by retired US Navy SEAL turned endurance athlete and motivational speaker David Goggins: at the point your mind tells you to stop, you are physically only at 40 per cent capacity.

It is not a scientific ruling, but rather a numeric way of representing the ability to push past self-set limits. The efficacy of the placebo effect in previous scientific studies goes some way to supporting this theory.

“When we’re doing hill sprints and I can see Daniel is tired, I’ll say, ‘Do one more’. Then again, ‘Do one more’,” Otti says.

“Then he starts to build that confidence, build that resilience and build that faith to always trust the recovery. Because by the time he comes back down that hill, he’s going again, and everything is done on the clock. Every single sprint has to be within a set time.”

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