Boxing great Danny Green’s life motto

There’s no pressure to follow dad into the ring. Instead, Green says he’s building fitness goals into his son’s everyday routine now so that it becomes the norm as he grows.

That way, Green says, he’ll be ready for anything.

“I’m looking forward to watching my son start to develop and continue building his engine for his future,” Green tells Health Hacker.

“Whether he wants to be an athlete or not, I am instilling in him the importance of building a big tank, the main reason being his long-term health. His sister Chloe did it with swimming and I’m really digging watching him procure the bug.”

That “big tank” Green talks about isn’t just in the body, but in the mind, too. Sure, meditation wasn’t big around the gyms and rings when Green was cutting his teeth in the boxing world but mindfulness still played a huge roll in his success.

“When I was still competing, the quietest time I would experience was when the bell rung to start a fight. Amongst the noise of the crowd, sometimes over 30,000 people, and the surging adrenaline I was able to fully switch off and zone in on one thing,” he says.

“I could hear nothing apart from my opponent, the ref and our respective corners. Therefore I have always been able to switch off and focus intensely, no matter what was happening around me.”

He might be approaching 50, but Green isn’t slowing down, with the Aussie sporting great founding the 12RND boxing gym, designed to bring boxing-style fitness to the masses.

But there is one area of his fitness journey he’s yet to conquer.

“I’m going to force myself to invest more time in stretching,” he says.

“I’m impatient and find it difficult to sit still for long periods but I feel so good after a long stretch session.

“At 48 I need to be more diligent with my flexibility to avoid injuries as I’m still pushing hard — and I’d also like to be able to put my shoes on still standing up.”

DANNY GREEN ON …

Diet

“I have had to understand nutrition for a long time in my trade. At times it needed to be meticulous but away from fights I’ve always had a decent handle on my nutrition and balanced it out with training hard to keep my metabolism pinging for as long as I can as I get long in the tooth. I might not have teeth for long though with my lolly obsession.”

Exercise

“A common point our members make is ‘it never gets boring’. It is literally all I have done since I was 18 years old. We were doing simple, ‘functional’ exercises back in the day like sledgehammering a tyre and doing long hill sprints with a car tyre tied to you – mainly at night so the neighbours didn’t think we had lost the plot.”

Life motto

“It’s ‘move it or lose it’. Being active helps people live longer in most cases and regular exercise should be a part of everybody’s routine if possible.”

Routine

“Routine is a bit of a foreign word to me. However, a lemon squeezed into a glass of cold water is my morning heart-starter.”

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