"Everything I've done in the past 20 years has led me to this one fight. I've had my eyes on the prize since I was a young fella. I'm hungry to win."
New Zealand’s top boxer has a simple mantra: “A man isn’t measured by whether he falls or not, but by how he rises to fight again.”
With a professional record of 29-2 — 22 by knock out — Shane “Mountain Warrior” Cameron has done his fair share of knocking people down over the years. He is at the top of his game, riding high after a big win against American boxer, Monte Barrett. Cameron is also seven weeks away from what he calls “the biggest fight of my life” — a world-title bout against Australian Danny Green.
In preparation, Cameron has taken his structured traditional boxing training and melded it with CrossFit. Combining the methods, he says, will prepare him physically and mentally so he can enter the ring at the top of his game.
"Everything I've done in the past 20 years has led me to this one fight. I’ve had my eyes on this prize since I was a young fella. I’m hungry to win,” he says.
“I know I have to be more prepared than I have ever been to win this world title. More to the point, I need to be more prepared than the other guy. It won’t be easy, but adding CrossFit to my training has helped me up the ante on my overall fitness. I want to be the fastest, strongest and most powerful I’ve ever been going into this fight, and adding new elements is working."
Cameron is outside of his comfort zone when it comes to CrossFit, he freely admits. Years of boxing have left him with a hand injury that makes gripping barbells and other CrossFit movements difficult.
Alongside CrossFit coach, Jamie Milne, the two have drafted a plan with Cameron’s upcoming fight in mind. Milne says CrossFit will give Cameron a physical and mental edge heading into the title fight.
“The beauty of CrossFit is its scalability,” Milne says. “You can take someone as flexible as a steel bar and build a program to fit their specific needs. If the athlete puts in 100 percent, (he’ll) get results every time.”
In training Cameron, Milne says he likes to keep things fresh with three to five weekly sessions.
“Shane doesn’t know what I’ve got planned for him before he comes into a training session. One day he might be pulling his truck around the parking lot, on another day we might concentrate on Olympic lifting or a pure burst of bodyweight exercises,” Milne says. ”Keeping Shane on his toes is super important in preparing him for a big fight.”
Milne, also a former boxer, says he believes keeping training constantly varied and timing specific will culminate in the best results for Cameron.
“I’ve trained all kinds of athletes — from ultra-distance runners to weekend warriors — and being successful comes down to setting goals, making a plan and going all guns blazing towards the finish line,” he says.
CrossFit, Cameron says, was a needed addition to his pre-fight training.
"I need to drop seven (kilos) for this fight without sacrificing any of the power I’ve got as a heavyweight,” he says. “I’m not using CrossFit to aid weight loss, but to make sure that at a lighter weight I’ll still be faster, more explosive and stronger than I’ve ever been.”
