Week 2 of 'Through the Wire' details the difficult task of balancing work life and pro boxing
Welcome to unbeaten middleweight Nathan ‘The Wire’ Wheatley’s (9-0) weekly column – exclusive to BBN.
"It’s been a busy week for me, I’m currently in training for my next fight on July 27 at Bolton’s Macron Stadium on the undercard of heavyweight David Price’s ring return.
I’m training hard with Matthew Hatton, putting in as much graft as I can whilst also working full-time as a joiner. It’s hard to balance two professional careers, so I’m very lucky that my company are flexible and allow me to take a few days off here and there. I’m self-employed so a lot of firms could get upset with someone that’s taking too much leave, but they’re quite good with me.
I work full-time but when it gets closer to fight week, I take days off to concentrate on training. When it’s just a few weeks before the fight, then I drop down to working just a couple of days a week, usually in the last three weeks of camp.
Straight after my last fight in May, I worked every single day afterwards for a few weeks to get as much money saved up in the bank as possible so that I can afford to do these routines. On fight week I won’t work at all so it’s vital that I get that money in the bank to cover the days off.
Yesterday I only worked half-a-day because I had sparring. I got up at 7am and finished work at 12pm, I got back home to have some dinner and got ready for sparring at 4pm with my teammate Andy Kremner. He’s fighting next on June 30 in Wigan, but it was the first spar of the camp for me so just got four-rounds in and I finished the gym session by 6pm.
Today I’m working a full day, so I get on site at 8am, leave at 4:30pm, and have got a strength and conditioning session with Martin Cullen at Wigan Total Fitness between 6pm-7pm. We rotate each session, so it was a back session today. It can either be a leg, back or chest workout; legs are the most important and definitely toughest of the three. No matter what happens, we always make sure we get that leg session in every week.
I started doing the S&C sessions with Martin Murray when I first turned professional and have kept it up in the same place with the same trainer ever since.
On the weeks when I reduce my working days, I basically manage to fit in my boxing, weights and other sessions every day. It changes each day depending on what Matt [Hatton] schedules in for us.
I usually get boxing and weights done in the mornings to fit in around the sparring sessions later, then either hot yoga or physiotherapy in the afternoons to recover. The hot yoga sessions are tougher than what you think! I have started using the swimming pool at Wigan Total Fitness quite a lot, I enjoy using the hydro pool and sauna to help your body relax and speed up the recovery process.
It’s very important to fully recover, it’s happened a few times where I’ve turned up in the gym but been exhausted and had to have a day off or weekend of rest, especially when I first started and was still learning. Sometimes all it takes is a good meal, like a steak, to help me rebuild again.
It can be hard to not burn out, especially when working at the same time as fighting and balancing the two, that’s why I keep to the routine I’ve set. I don’t mind being depleted further out from fight week but closer to fight night I make sure I’m recovering well and will look after myself a lot more.
I understand in this early stage of my career that this is how it works but I look forward to the day that I get some good sponsors behind me to relieve a lot of the pressure!"
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Nathan would like to thank his sponsors Eat Clean Cuisine and Agent Tim Rickson