Heavyweight victory

Posted by Nell Mead at 23:50 on 12 Oct 2010

Today was a pretty exciting day for the boys at School of Hard Knocks: we took a trip to Vauxhall to visit a gym belonging to WBA World Heavyweight Champion David "Hayemaker" Haye, who is only 4 weeks away from his next fight against Audley Harrison at the MEN Arena.

David himself is a South London boy (I figure I can call him a boy: he is still 29 until tomorrow, but happy birthday David for then!) who has clearly done extremely well.  He spoke passionately to the SOHK participants about how he has achieved so much, about the importance of hard work, discipline, and above all self-belief.  He then asked his protege, Commonwealth super-middleweight champion George Groves, to demonstrate his awesome footwork and punching power.

And then he laid down a challenge.  The SOHK boys were split into four teams, each working for a short period with David himself, George Groves, David's trainer, and David's strength-and-conditioning coach.  Each of the "staff" took a different type of fitness (power, endurance, abdominal toughening and ring-based punching and footwork) and tested each group in turn.  The prize was a Hayemaker tracksuit and a ticket to the big fight.

It was really impressive to see the boys - including Will Greenwood, Scott Quinnell and Andy Gomarsall - get stuck in.  You'll have to watch the series to see who won the prize, but they worked really hard and were duly rewarded.  Nobody was sick (despite some pretty serious punishment from George, who worked the boys over with punches and 10kg medicine balls to the abdomen) and nobody slacked, despite suffering at times with cramp and extreme lactic acid build-up.

And at the end it was time for photographs... hence Will showing off his six-pack again!