Working the mitts with Roach

MANILA, Philippines - There’s no doubt that Freddie Roach has transformed the training drill of working the mitts into an art form. It’s his key to success as Roach is able to teach fighters how to react to situations in the ring with the large, circular pads.

WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao’s ability to make adjustments in the course of a fight comes from the physical and mental work that he does with Roach holding up the mitts. Moving around the ring, Roach simulates how an opponent is expected to fight and calls out the punches that Pacquiao needs to throw. Sometimes, Roach stands his ground and Pacquiao flails away at the mitts. Roach also slips and slides as he goads Pacquiao into cutting off the ring. What Roach expects from an opponent, he mimics with his mitts and Pacquiao becomes familiar with the fightplan to the point of reacting instinctively to the prodding.

To practice Pacquiao’s body shots, Roach wears a heavily padded midsection protector. The cushion is often not enough to soften the impact of Pacquiao’s blows and Roach ends up bruised. The padded mitts in his hands absorb the full brunt of Pacquiao’s power and Roach’s hands are banged up after each session. Because of Pacquiao’s boundless energy, they go 12 rounds with the mitts, stopping only for a minute after every three-round interval.

Roach also has a routine with the mitts where his back is against the ropes and Pacquiao throws soft flurries from close range to work on handspeed. So Roach uses the mitts both to boost Pacquiao’s power and tone his fast-twitch reflexes. For a trainer with Parkinson’s syndrome, how Roach is able to work the mitts with a power puncher like Pacquiao is remarkable. Surprisingly, Roach shows no signs of the syndrome when he wears the mitts – it’s like going back to his as a pro fighter from 1978 to 1986, compiling a record of 40-13, with 15 KOs.

Roach, 54, has now been a trainer for 27 years working with 34 world champions. He’s a six-time Trainer of the Year awardee by the Boxing Writers Association of America and a duly inducted Hall of Famer.

Roach takes daily medication for his disease, still encounters tremors and stutters when he speaks. His condition is similar to what afflicts Muhammad Ali. Both Roach and Ali fought longer than they should’ve and are now slowed down by their neurodegenerative illness. Ali, 72, has suffered from the syndrome since 1984 and was recently rumored to be in extremely poor health after failing to attend the Hollywood premier of his latest biopic “I Am Ali.” Ali’s family, however, denied the rumor and said that while the former champion has slowed down, it’s not as if he’s at death’s door.

Roach’s success story is the subject of some inspiring profiles in author Robert Greene’s book “Mastery.” He never expected to be interviewed by Greene for four hours and written about in the same level as Charles Darwin, Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein and Benjamin Franklin. Greene flew in from New York to meet with Roach in Los Angeles. Several months later, Greene mailed Roach a copy of the book.

Greene wrote about Roach working the mitts, a technique he picked up from former world lightheavyweight champion Virgil Hill who learned it from Cuban fighters. “Instead of working with a punching bag, they mostly trained with the coach who wore large padded mitts,” said Greene. “Standing in the ring, the fighters half-sparred with the coach and practiced their punches. Roach tried it with Hill and his eyes lit up. It brought him back into the ring but there was something else. In his mind, he saw a way to adapt the mitt work for more than just punching practice. It could be a way for a trainer to devise an entire strategy in the ring and revitalize the sport itself. Roach began to develop this with the stable of fighters that he now trained. He instructed them in maneuvers that were much more fluid and strategic.”

Greene cited Roach’s innovative approach as his way of revolutionizing the traditional methods of training fighters. “If change is forced upon you, as it was for Roach, you must resist the temptation to overreact or feel sorry for yourself,” he wrote. “Roach instinctively found his way back to the ring because he understood that what he loved was not boxing per se but competitive sports and strategizing. Thinking in this way, he could adapt his inclinations to a new direction within boxing. Like Roach, you don’t want to abandon the skills and experience you have gained but to find a new way to apply them. Your eye is on the future, not the past.”

Greene explained how Roach’s approach with the mitts turned Pacquiao into the greatest boxer of his generation. “In their mitt work, Pacquiao would adjust or improve upon the maneuvers that Roach had been developing for the next bout,” he said. “He gave input to Roach’s strategy, altering it on occasion. Pacquiao had gained a sixth sense for what Roach was getting at and could take his thinking further. On one occasion, Roach watched Pacquiao improvise a maneuver on the ropes in which he ducked out and attacked a fighter from an angle instead of head-on. To Roach, this was a move that made instant sense. He wanted to develop this further into a whole new possible style of fighting. He was now learning almost as much from Pacquiao. The previous trainer-fighter relationship had now morphed into something interactive and alive. To Roach, this meant that they could move past the seemingly inevitable plateau for fighters in which it all became stale and opponents would catch on to their weaknesses.”