On Daily Routines, we profile successful leaders, entrepreneurs, artists, executives and athletes to explore their routines, schedules, habits and day in the life.

Like we wrote in Gennady Golovkin’s daily training routine, punching power in boxing is a funny thing. There’s almost a superstitious aura around it — experts, analysts, and boxers alike are divided as to whether you can cultivate punching power, or you’re simply lucky enough to be born with it.

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There’s one thing we know for sure though, power has nothing to do with a boxer’s physique. We just have to look at legendary punchers like Mike Tyson, George Foreman and Deontay Wilder to form that conclusion.

Tyson’s dense, muscular body made him look more like a bodybuilder than a boxer at times, while Foreman, especially the 45-year old version, rocked the ultimate dad bod. Then we have Wilder, who sports a leaner figure and lankier frame than most heavyweight boxers.

And yet, like Tyson and Foreman before him, Wilder is regarded as the hardest hitter in the sport today with a 98% knockout-to-win percentage; he has knocked out 41 opponents in the 42 bouts he has won, with 20 of those knockouts coming in the first round.

Devastating knockout power is boxing’s greatest equalizer — a boxer can be behind on all the scorecards coming into the last round, only to nail a perfect shot on his opponent’s chin to win the bout. Wilder’s power has saved him during a number of occasions.

He was being thoroughly outboxed by Tyson Fury for the majority of their first fight, but managed to score a pair of knock downs, in the 9th and 12th round, to scrape through with a controversial draw. Then in his rematch against Cuban boxer, Luis Ortiz, Wilder was behind on all three scorecards before scoring a brutal knockout in the 7th round.

Wilder’s trainer, Jay Deas, told The Guardian that the heavyweight boxer needs three mitt men during a gym session because “one is never going to last very long.”

“To a huge degree you’re born with it,” the trainer said, trying to explain Wilder’s heavy hands. “You can improve power about 10% through conditioning and technique, so you can take a guy who’s a nothing puncher and make him at least respectable, and you can take a guy who’s a pretty good thumper, and make him a 10% better thumper. But the best I’ve ever seen anybody improve is about 10%.”

“I put my power up with anybody, period,” Wilder boasted. “And it’s natural, I don’t have to lift a weight, period. I don’t have to go to a weight room, I don’t have to go to a gym period and my athleticism, my body frame, my build will be what it is. Ask the people that’s around me. It’s in living color.”

Deontay Wilder’s training routine & diet

When it comes to his daily training routine, Wilder described a typical day in a 2014 interview with Coach magazine:

We work hard in the gym. A lot of heavyweight guys aren’t in shape when it’s time to fight but I always come ready. To make sure my conditioning is up to scratch my coach gets me to do lots of uphill interval runs on the treadmill. Core strength is also critical to boxing so I often stand on one leg on a bosu and catch a medicine ball. For strength and power we do cleans, jerks and shoulder presses, often while wearing a weight vest. Our programme is all about multi-tasking.

Deontay ‘The Bronze Bomber’ Wilder: interview | Coach

For his conditioning, Wilder isn’t a fan of road work — a staple of boxing traditions — because of the wear and tear on your body. “That’s old school; I stay away from road running because it tears up your knees over time,” he said.

Instead, he prefers the swimming pool — a low impact alternative — to improve his cardio performance. “I love the water because it builds all your muscles in your body,” Wilder said. “After I get finished with a water workout, I can’t even tell you the name of the muscles, that’s for sure, but I feel it.”

There’s also the recovery aspect to swimming as well that appeals to Wilder, “When you’re sore from all the weights and running, when you’re feeling any kind of fatigue, it takes all that soreness out of your body, as well, so you’ll be ready for the next session.”

“For Wilder, the pool provides a low-impact medium for workouts, plus it adds crucial resistance during all of his movements,” Des Bieler wrote in a 2015 profile for The Washington Post. “He wears a device called an Aquajogger, which keeps his head above water in enough depth so that his feet never touch the bottom. Then he jogs and sprints in place, or moves from side to side, while also working on boxing techniques; Wilder also swims traditional laps.”

Sometimes when guys become champions, they start to slack on a lot of things, they start partying more, they start exploring the world a bit more and skip training. But I’m the opposite of that — I love training.

How the man with one of the finest physiques in boxing gets in shape | The Washington Post

In addition to swimming, Wilder runs on the treadmill or sand, in high intensity bursts — 30 reps of 30 seconds, followed by 30 seconds of rest, at a level 9 incline. He also focuses a lot on balance work — “one of his go-to balance workouts is to wear a weighted vest while standing on a Bosu ball, sometimes on just one leg, while catching medicine balls thrown at him from a variety of angles,” according to The Washington Post.

For his diet, Wilder shared an example daily meal plan with Alabama Local News:

I eat me a good breakfast from pancakes, to Polish sausage, to patty sausage and some good eggs. One morning I will eat egg McMuffins and it will rotate throughout breakfast time with that. I come back again at 11.30am, eat a nice Alfredo chicken pasta with corn on the cob, maybe have some nice garlic bread toasted alongside that with a protein shake. I will also have a protein shake in the morning with the breakfast. 2pm will be a sandwich, you know, maybe ham and cheese, maybe tuna, with two boiled eggs. The 5pm (meal) will consist of a Salisbury steak, with mashed potatoes and green beans and I eat a lot of red potatoes; I eat a lot of yams. And then at 7.30pm, I have a nice T-Bone steak, some more red potatoes, we might have some squash in there and some green beans.

What heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder eats every day | Alabama Local News

Before you go…

Check out more daily routines from Barack Obama, Joe Rogan, Jeff Bezos, Michelle Obama, Sheryl Sandberg, Richard Branson, Warren Buffet and plenty others.