Science in Combat Sports: How Usyk and Topuria Stay Unbeaten

"Glasses let us see how the left eye and the right eye work, and most of all, see how both work in sync. What we are doing is a cognitive exercise in which he has to select the numbers from 1 to 50 while also working on accommodation and binocular vision," says Ilia Topuria's sports scientist.

We've known for decades that the mental side of combat sports is just as important as the physical. In fact, I briefly spoke to Mateusz Gamrot a couple of weeks ago, shortly after his recent UFC win, and he told me that changing just a few mental aspects completely changed his performance, and that it may matter even more than physical preparation itself.

Ahead of the Tyson Fury rematch, Oleksandr Usyk mentioned:

"I have a lot of new things. We walk on our hands for 15 minutes, we train a lot, we run, we swim, and we sit underwater for ten minutes already. We reached the level where we can sit underwater for ten minutes."

And this is just the beginning.

We are entering...

THE AGE OF THE NERD

Oleksandr Usyk in the lab.

(work in progress)