Let’s be honest; we have all pretended to be Mike Tyson at some point in our lives.
However, becoming Tyson is tough. In fact, you could say it’s impossible, given what it took for him to become the legend he is recognised as.
He wasn’t your average human being. He was a proper beast and he didn’t become that on the back of sheer mental strength.
It took hours of immense training to go with the kind of diet plans that most would give up at the sight of. That is how he became the youngest heavyweight champion in history.
Now, you must be wondering what was so special about his diets and training sessions? To begin with, they were ridiculous. No, really. Thanks to Fitness Volt, we can take a look back at a prime Mike Tyson's diet and training!
Tyson’s calorie intake per day ranged between 3,000-4,000, and he would take those in three full-fledged meals; breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Thanks to Cus D’Amato, these were three comprehensive meals, that included everything from oatmeal, milk and vitamin supplements in the morning, to chicken breast, rice and orange juice in the afternoon and steak, pasta and orange juice for dinner.
As for snacks, well, all he was allowed was protein shakes.
That is not all. We haven’t even mentioned his supplements yet, which included protein, creatine, beta-alanine, caffeine and Vitamin D. We don’t know the quantities he consumed any of these in, but it is very safe to assume that they weren’t scanty.
Which can also be said of his training.
In the build-up to a fight, he would train up to 60 hours a week with a day off, which means an average of 10 hours a day.
These 10 maddening hours comprised of six different training sessions in a day; early morning, noon, mid-afternoon, early evening, after dinner and late evening.
The morning got underway with a 3-5 mile run followed by three rounds of calisthenics and 10 rounds of sparring during the noon. Let us not even get into the details of his calisthenics routine. Okay, if you insist, it constituted of 200 sit-ups, 50 dips, 50 push-ups and 50 shrugs with weight.
The mid-afternoon session was yet more intense. It had 4-6 rounds of sparring, jump rope, 60 minutes on workout bike, another three rounds of calisthenics and shadowboxing.
The early-evening session had five more sets of calisthenics and shadowboxing before he did 30 minutes of stationery bike cardio after dinner.
There was also the negligible graft during the wrap-up, which included 2,000 decline sit-ups, 500 bench dips, 500 push-ups, 500 shrugs with a 30kg barbell and 10 minutes of neck exercises.
That is insane. No wonder Tyson’s still unmatched.