The study was undertaken with a view to investigate the physiological responses of amateur boxers during specific activity in the boxing arena, with special reference to their physiological evaluation in the laboratory. The study was carried out on 6 elite Indian National boxers in 3 phases. In phase 1, the VO2max of the boxers was evaluated in the laboratory following a graded running protocol on a treadmill. In Phase 2, the boxers were evaluated in the boxing arena, during simulated boxing on a punching bag for 4 rounds of 2 min duration with 1 min rest pauses in between. The movements were kept similar to actual boxing and the punching frequencies were kept fast and individualized. The physiological variables were recorded on a COSMED K4 RQ portable telemetric gas analyzer (Cosmed, Italy). In Phase 3, heart rate and blood lactate responses of the boxers were observed during sparring for 2X6 rounds in the boxing ring, for 3 times during the training phase, to observe the lactate tolerance capacity. After the end of activity in each phase, a blood sample was collected from the fingertip for estimation of whole blood lactate on an YSI portable 1500 sport model lactate analyzer (YSI, USA). The mean VO2max of the boxers was 59.5± 4.7 ml/kg/min on the treadmill. The mean peaks VO2 of the boxers in 2X4 simulated rounds were 56.1, 57.5, 57.7 and 59.3 ml/kg/min, respectively. The mean heart rate and blood lactate were 192 bpm and 13.6 mMol/L, and were observed to be higher than most of the intermittent team events. The present study highlighted that the amateur boxers participating in 2X4 rounds, should be able to tolerate a high blood lactate concentration (14-15 mMol/L) and a high heart rate (190-200 b/min) over a total duration of one bout (11 min). The on court training in amateur boxing imparted high demands on cardiorespiratory and metabolic variables.
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