How I helped Lewis Crocker become IBF World Champion

When I got the asked to fly out to Dubai and work with Lewis Crocker's camp out there, I knew two things immediately. This was one of the biggest opportunities of my coaching career, and I had absolutely no room to get it wrong.

Lewis had faced the same opponent before. It ended in a a very controversial win for Lewis due to Paddy Donovan being disqualified, but Lewis won’t mind me saying this, he was going to lose that fight, if the illegal shot never happened.

Now he was preparing to do it again with a world title on the line. The margin for error in a camp like that is zero.

Walking into an established team

The first thing I had to do in Dubai wasn't write a programme. It was listen.

When you join a camp that already has a head coach, a corner team, and an athlete who trusts those people with his career, you don't walk in and start telling everyone how things should be done. You observe. You learn the rhythms of the camp. You figure out where your contribution fits without disrupting what's already working.

There's a skill in knowing when to speak and when to stay quiet. In those first few days in Dubai I spent a lot of time doing the latter. I was earning my place, not through what I said, but through the quality of what I brought when the time was right.

That's something I'd tell any coach going into a new environment at a high level. Your credentials get you in the door. Your ability to read the room determines whether you stay.

The physical profile , what I was working with

Before you can build a programme for any athlete you need to understand where they actually are physically, not where you assume they are.

Lewis had a very good squat jump score. His ability to produce force from a static position was strong, this told me his raw power was there, a look at his insane KO record will also back this up. But when I looked at his countermovement jump, which measures his ability to use the stretch-shortening cycle, loading and exploding, it was only okay. There was a meaningful gap between those two scores, and that gap told me exactly where the work needed to go.

His reactive strength index, which measures how quickly he could absorb force and redirect it, the kind of quality that matters every time a boxer plants their foot and throws a punch or changes direction, also had room to grow.

This is why testing matters. Without the data you're guessing. With it, you know precisely where to invest the limited time you have in a camp.

Plyometrics and why we had to be careful

To close that gap between his squat jump and countermovement jump, I introduced plyometric training into the camp. For Lewis this was new territory, he hadn't done structured plyometric work before, which is more common than people think even at world level.

The benefit of plyometrics for a boxer is significant. Improved reactive strength means faster feet, sharper direction changes, and more explosive power transfer from the ground up through every punch. But introducing plyometrics to an athlete who hasn't done them before carries risk, particularly shin splints if the volume or surface isn't managed carefully.

We were deliberate about the progression. We started conservatively, monitored how his body was responding, and built from there. By the end of the camp he was moving in a way that reflected the adaptation we were looking for.

Breathwork

One of the biggest things you can do for your athletes is teach them how to breathe properly. This is where the breathing work became critical. I introduced structured breathing techniques to be carried out a specific times.

The results were measurable and they came quickly. By tracking his heart rate between rounds during sparring we could see his recovery improving week on week. His ability to bring his heart rate down between rounds, which in a 12 round world title fight is as important as his ability to push it up, was significantly better by the end of camp than it was at the start.

Daily monitoring — HRV and the data behind the decisions

Every day of that camp started with an HRV check. Heart rate variability is one of the most reliable indicators of whether an athlete's nervous system has recovered from the previous day's work. A low HRV score means the body is still under stress. Pushing hard on a day like that doesn't make an athlete fitter, it digs a hole they have to climb out of.

Alongside HRV we used force velocity trackers throughout the camp. This let us monitor whether the explosive qualities we were developing were holding up under the accumulated fatigue of a full fight camp, or whether we needed to pull back.

The data drove every decision. That's not a luxury at this level, it's a necessity.

The Somewhat Uncontrollables

There are always elements within a fight camp that you don’t fully control. The environment, the attitude of the head coach, and the work ethic of the athlete all play a huge role in the final outcome.

In this case, they were exceptional.

The head coach was extremely welcoming from the outset and open to everything I wanted to implement. That level of trust and collaboration made a massive difference, and it allowed the process to run smoothly from start to finish.

At the same time Lewis did everything that was asked of him. Every session was approached properly, every detail taken seriously. That level of commitment is not a given, even at a high level, and it’s a big part of why the outcome was what it was.

Without that environment and that level of buy in the process becomes far more difficult. These are often seen as uncontrollables, but they are also influenced by how you conduct yourself, how you communicate, and the relationships you build over time.

Fight night

Seven weeks of work came down to twelve rounds at the world title level.

I was there for the warm up. Standing in that dressing room preparing a fighter for the biggest night of his professional career is something I won't forget. Every drill, every breathing cue, everything in Dubai and back home in Scotland had led to that room.

He went all twelve rounds and won a close decision to become IBF World Champion.

At no point during that fight did I worry about his conditioning. Not once. That's not arrogance, it's the result of seven weeks of precise, data-driven preparation.

When the decision was announced, it was certainly one of, if not the, best moment of my professional career.

What this means for your training

The principles I applied in that camp, testing to identify specific physical gaps, introducing new training modalities progressively, monitoring recovery data daily, and building conditioning that holds up when it matters most are not exclusive to world champion fighters.

They're the foundation of every programme I build, whether that's for a professional athlete preparing for a world title or someone serious about improving their performance through the Enhanced Performance Academy.

The methods don't change. The application does.

If you want to train with the same approach, online through the Academy or in person through hybrid coaching in Dundee — the link is below.