{"id":17159,"date":"2025-07-16T19:08:48","date_gmt":"2025-07-16T19:08:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/usyk-vs-dubois-2-how-brain-training-created-a-heavyweight-monster-in-oleksandr-usyk\/"},"modified":"2025-07-16T19:08:48","modified_gmt":"2025-07-16T19:08:48","slug":"usyk-vs-dubois-2-how-brain-training-created-a-heavyweight-monster-in-oleksandr-usyk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/usyk-vs-dubois-2-how-brain-training-created-a-heavyweight-monster-in-oleksandr-usyk\/","title":{"rendered":"Usyk vs Dubois 2: How brain training created a heavyweight monster in Oleksandr Usyk"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

The reward for a second win over Briton Dubois is a place in a very elite club as a two-time undisputed heavyweight champion.<\/p>\n

Only George Foreman, Evander Holyfield, Lennox Lewis and Muhammad Ali have achieved that feat, but Usyk will be the first to do it in the four-belt era if he is successful.<\/p>\n

Usyk is no stranger to facing an opponent for a second time – he has twice beaten Tyson Fury<\/a> and Anthony Joshua – but his preparations never centre around the opponent.<\/p>\n

Instead, Usyk is put under immense physical fatigue before being tasked with mental tests to strengthen his ability to think on the spot when he’s in the ring.<\/p>\n

During tough physical workouts, Usyk is asked to solve a Schulte table, which is a grid filled with numbers or letters that need to be ordered into a specific sequence.<\/p>\n

Another task is juggling balls with the purpose of keeping his mind focused as he recovers from a period of cardio training.<\/p>\n

“We know everything about Usyk’s physiology and how his body works under different stresses,” Chycki added.<\/p>\n

“We know how we should read his signals and symptoms. We didn’t change anything.<\/p>\n

“We have a round table every Saturday and look at what we’ve done and what needs to change. We don’t change to the opponents’ strategy.”<\/p>\n

One of the major health risks concerned with boxing is chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) – a brain condition linked to repeated blows to the head and concussion. CTE leads to dementia and can only be diagnosed post-mortem.<\/p>\n

Chycki suggested one of the reasons they monitor Usyk and do cognitive training is to help with the “prevention of brain injury”.<\/p>\n

But Dr Thom Wilcockson, a senior lecturer of psychology at Loughborough University, says the scientific evidence is not strong enough to suggest cognitive training prevents CTE.<\/p>\n

“It would add a robustness against fatigue induced cognitive decline but not necessarily the long-term effects that CTE could cause,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It would give Usyk a larger cognitive reserve which might help mitigate other types of dementia like Alzheimer’s disease.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The reward for a second win over Briton Dubois is a place in a very elite club as a two-time undisputed heavyweight champion. Only George Foreman, Evander Holyfield, Lennox Lewis and Muhammad Ali have achieved that feat, but Usyk will be the first to do it in the four-belt era if he is successful. Usyk […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17160,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-boxing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17159"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17161,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17159\/revisions\/17161"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}