A Day in the Life of Local Boxer Sam Smith

Published on: 16 Aug, 2015
Updated on: 16 Aug, 2015

Sam Smith is an up and coming light heavyweight boxer who hales from Dunsfold and socialises in Guildford. In what we hope will be regular reports Sam is going to tell us about his training regime and his progress.

Sam Smith, local boxer with ambition.

I once overheard a conversation between two retired men when one asked, “What would you be if you could do it all again?” The other replied, “I’d be a professional boxer; fight twice a year and make a few million quid!”

Well, hopefully, I can show that it’s not quite as easy as that by sharing my daily routine as a professional boxer with you.

I get up 6am every morning for a three or five mile run but sometimes it will vary with sprints and hill runs. You have to mix it up as it’s always a different pace in the ring, you can go from throwing single shots to four or five punch combinations which requires different energy systems.

I usually work from about 8am to 4pm and then I’ve got to get over to Swindon for 5:30pm for training. From me, it’s probably about 90 miles away and I have to be there every day.

From my house it takes up to two hours and by the time that I get home, it’s about 11pm and after all of the day’s activities with work, training and driving, I usually go to sleep straight away.

Sparring is an important part of Sam’s training regime, as you would expect.

I spar every day when I’m in the gym, usually between six to eight rounds, with my teammates Eamonn O’Kane who is the current IBF Inter-Continental middleweight champ and Luke Watkins who is unbeaten in four fights with three KO’s.

I also spar with a very well-known boxer called George Groves in his Hammersmith gym once or twice per week.

As a world title challenger that put Carl ‘The Cobra’ Froch on the seat of his pants, I can tell you they are tough sparring sessions. He’s a class act so it’s very high-tempo, fast-paced rounds; he does hit hard, very hard which is the reason why he is the current WBC Silver super-middleweight champion.

Sam working out with the punch bag.

I also have many media commitments to fit in on top of all of that. For example, I’ve had an interview with BBC Surrey Radio to fit in between work and training so it’s a bit of a squeeze but you have to do it because exposure is almost as important as the training aspect.

At this level of my sport, boxers double up as salesmen and are required to run around the local area putting up posters and selling tickets for fights.

Of course, there’s not much time for my mates and I only have time to see my girlfriend on a weekend, sometimes on a Friday if I’m lucky. She understands my commitments and what it means to me and we’re actually getting married in October this year so looking forward to that.

Every part of the sport is taxing, I guess that’s why they call it ‘the pain game’, and the hardest part of all is the dieting. I’m lucky in that my trainer, Paddy Fitzpatrick, gives me a day off every weekend so I can eat what I like so normally it’s a visit to TGI’s or Frankie and Bennies to treat myself.

There’s a little more to it than the glitz and glamour that you see on TV. Despite the conversation I had overheard between the two retired pensioners, only 3% of all professionals are said to make enough money to live off once they retire and less than 10% earn a living at all from the sport. This is what I say to myself every day in training to push myself on.

Watch out for Sam’s next report, hopefully in a fortnight’s time.