Written by Does it really take gruelling training and punishment tactics to raise a good athlete? Does the development of mental resilience necessarily require ‘training hell’ and ‘starving games’? Tim Tszyu likens his indoctrination into boxing greatness to his favourite movie The Lion King, where the young cub emulates his great warrior father. But is his emulation a choice or a situation that was imposed on him as a young emerging athlete?
A recent documentary has been aired that looks into the training camps of Australian boxing champions Tim Tszyu and Michael Zerafa in the lead up to their epic showdown. The documentary called All Access: Tszyu v Zerafa reveals the unusual training methods that Tszyu endured growing up.
“Dad was always a strong man mentally. They used to make him to do real crazy tricks back in the Soviet Union days in Russia, just mental training … doing things you don’t want to do. And he’s put it on us. We used to do things like not eating, little exercises like that. He’d always want to make you say ‘I don’t want to do something’ and you’ve got to try and break through it. There’s always a limit where you say ‘no more, no more’ but there’s always a barrier you can push through.” – Tim Tszyu
Although Tszyu openly admits hating the training that his uncle Igor Goloubev put him through, he credits these ‘brutal’ sessions with making him the athlete he has become. Apart from referring to this training as ‘hell’, Tszyu also recalls the odd tactics that his father Kostya used to build mental strength.
Perhaps it is the strictness of the training that is responsible for Tszyu’s reputation for being a ‘killer’. Stevie Spark was dispatched within three rounds after a brutal onslaught of body shots deployed by Tszyu. Spark quite obviously had nothing to lose in the match; any resistance at all against the great Tszyu would add to his resume. Although he was demolished, Spark declares “the hype is real” in expressing his immense pride in having held court with a boxer of Tszyu’s calibre, who sits in two weight divisions above him. For Tszyu’s part in the bout, many would not realize that being close to an apparently easy victory is actually a situation of extreme vulnerability. This is because there is little additional perceived gain by winning but losing would be very detrimental and so very traumatic. The dynamic can impact the outcome also as even a minute display of self-satisfaction in the lead opponent can be unflattering in comparison to the gritty determination of the lesser opponent.
“The first one put him down but the second absolutely destroyed him” – Commentator Ben Damon
So, does it take brutal methods to produce elite athletes? Maybe only certain more ‘aggressive’ sports require this ‘killer instinct’ to be honed. Sports psychologists agree that aggression can improve performance and they coin this assertive behaviour. Where this aggression is derived from stressors or triggers to memories of aggression towards them in their formative years, the benefits to performance are perhaps debatable. Little research has been dedicated to the coping processes of elite players and their ability to balance or temper the components of their acquired ‘killer instincts’. It is something in sports psychology that needs addressing in greater detail. Looking at the coping processes of young elite players and understanding the impact of a perhaps unnecessarily brutal training regime will allow us to understand how the players deal with stressful situations.
Tim Tszyu vs Michael Zerafa: All Access documentary how to watch, stream, when is the fight, latest news
‘Tim Tszyu is a killer’: Terrifying Aussie boxing star adds another victim in Stevie Spark (news.com.au)
DEVELOPING THE KILLER INSTINCT – Sports Psychology and Clinical Psychology (johnfmurray.com)