What history tells us about conditioning and boxing

[SplitSecond]

well haye is a heavyweight and incredibly explosive with an athletic style, it wouldn't be right for him to have exceptional stamina, his stamina is good all things considered, he paces himself so he can throw hard through the whole 12

but you are right ts, i agree completely that rounds(and learning to work in those rounds) are the main reason

[billeau2]

well haye is a heavyweight and incredibly explosive with an athletic style, it wouldn't be right for him to have exceptional stamina, his stamina is good all things considered, he paces himself so he can throw hard through the whole 12

but you are right ts, i agree completely that rounds(and learning to work in those rounds) are the main reason

Haye is to my understanding the epiteme of the future for the heavyweight division. Most people think the guys will get bigger, and no doubt there will be big heavyweights like Lewis and Vlad, but there will also be guys who instead of pressuring slowly, train to be what Dwyer calls "ambush fighters." Haye trains to do exactly what he needs to in order to get off bombs. He has the speed and agility to do this and can pretty much expect to catch his opponent a few times with a bomb.

In training to do this he does not really try to become a complete fighter, or learn through experience, rather he fights a few times a year at most and perfects his approach.

I think this wors for Haye and do not begrudge him. I also think that against a really strong heavyweight champion who fought regularly, had a decent chin at least, and had experience, Haye would have serious problems. A guy like Marciano would hunt Haye down and Haye would find himself with no skills to do much of anything because....you can't ambush a pressure fighter! Hayes style does work against big guys who can't really move.

[Anthony342]

Yeah maybe, but it didn't work for his fight with Klitschko, did it?

[billeau2]

Yeah maybe, but it didn't work for his fight with Klitschko, did it?

It is not a better way it is a more efficient, self serving way. Hay for example would have some success against others others but even a fighter like toney as a heavyweight would be a major problem for haye because of his skill set. Haye for his part makes it so he never had has to fight a guy with skills like toney.... Just look at Waco who haye chooses to fight. Valuev no problem, haha

[ShoulderRoll]

The biggest part of it is the obsession with muscle mass and body sculpting. That ripped look makes shallow idiots like Elroy aka HWeightblogger get major woodies, but all that muscle mass sucks up a lot of oxygen so that a fighter winds up with an oxygen deficit even if they do cardio training. Hence less stamina than fighters from eras less obsessed with appearance and more concerned with substance.

I am reminded of when the World's Strongest Man Mariusz Pudzianowski had an MMA fight and was literally turning purple after a few minutes of fighting.

A heavily muscled physique does require a lot of oxygen to keep it moving.

[billeau2]

So today the Orioles got swept by the Royals and all the pundits were besides themselves....It seems that to them it was the dardest thing how a team that plays the game fundamentally flawless, moves runners frequently, without any recourse to the long ball (last in the league in homers) and with a great bullpen could just forge ahead. Reminds me of some of the elroys here: Duh they can't hit homers dou!

The Royals won by basically becoming fundamentally flawless in the second half of the season. Baseball is similar to boxing in certain respects, like: not making mistakes, using technique to move runners, steal bases (which also screws with the pitcher something fierce) making great defensive plays and like a fighter having a defense....having great pitching.

Great fighters often make fewer mistakes, have defensive skills, understand the technical aspects of the game etc. And psychologically a great fighter imposes his will, just as a great team runs for the extra base, steals bases and does other things to keep the othr team psychologically unbalanced.

Teams like the Orioles and others have super stars, they have clutch hitters, but in the end, technique beats the brawn of the long ball, and handily it does! The two best baseball teams I ever has the privilage of watching were the 73 Cincinnati Reds, who beat the red sox (another great team) and the early seventies Oakland A's. Being a Yankee fan I admit this begrugingly BTW!

[Anthony342]

Yeah I used to be a Yankee fan when I watched baseball. Derek Jeter retiring is truly the end of that late '90s to early 2000s era. Speaking of fundamentals beating the long ball, that's what the 1996 Yankees basically did. They were near the bottom in the league in home runs, yet won the world series with pitching, defense and timely hitting, but also managed to hit some timely homers as well in some games in their case. This is more a reaction to it being the post steroid era than anything. Eventually, hitters will adjust and there will be some more offense. Other than boxing, these days I just watch MMA and Giants football.

Speaking of which, they're playing the Cowboys this weekend, plus there's the GGG fight and then the next Hopkins fight coming up.

[SCtrojansbaby]

Stamina is like speed or power. Aure you can train to get better at it but at a certain point its just a natural born gift

[them_apples]

There have been many attempts to create a failsafe system, a consistant and better conditioned fighter who can throw the same amount of punches from the first round on through the end of the fight. It seems though that this has been more of a problem for the modern fighters.

Madianna is a perfect example. He was at a cross roads when he had to figure out a conditioning regime that would allow him to pressure Floyd all the way through the fight. De La Hoya is another fighter who was known for fighting well for a while during the fight and then slacking off. It seems like today we see a tremendous amount of these problems...despite the fact that fitness knowledge is suposed to be progressive, athletes are supposed to be getting better, the fights last less rounds, there seems a geniune problem with pressure guys being able to fight hard for the entire fight.

There is ample evidence that this was not such an issue in the bygone eras of boxing where fighters fought more rounds and were active through the entire fight.

Fighters used to do road work, calesthenics, some basic weight training, bag work....and they used to fight. They fought more rounds in the ring, more rounds in the gym. A great example is James Toney. As a fat heavyweight against Rahman, Toney looked like a bad fat joke, while Rahman looked chiselled, like a greek statue. Despite appearances, Toney threw more punches than Rahman. Toney's way of traning for the fight was to spar rounds, over and over again.

What this tells me is that fighting rounds, sparring rounds are the primary way that keep a fighter in great shape, not any new innovative fitness concepts. This makes sense when we consider that repetition of movements and familiarity with patterns of movement make a person perform the movements more efficiently and more naturally.

Modern day fighters may look better sometimes, vis a vis David Haye for example...but much like Haye, who has problems with stamina, despite the looks fighting rounds and experience made a better conditioned fighter for the purposes of the ring. It would not suprise me if Tony Galenta, for example, had more stamina than David Haye.

The Klits hold on for dear life often.... And now we have some sense of why this may be!

well bulking up sucks your stamina, when you have no energy you become weak and get koed. Unfortunately we get told every day by conditioning "experts" that the mass doesn't slow us down or sap our energy, yet it does before our very eyes on live TV. PEDS are a different story.

number 2, fighters used to train for durability, running in hilly country for long distances gives you incredible longevity. See Hagler and Rocky.

Fighters are simply opting for a better looking physique over true conditioning, but we saw Norton get dusted each and every time by any banger in the 70's, he was one of the first artificially built up Hw's, going from 205 to 235 of pure muscle during the span of his career. Each time getting slower, losing power due to less velocity and of course losing stamina.

[billeau2]

well bulking up sucks your stamina, when you have no energy you become weak and get koed. Unfortunately we get told every day by conditioning "experts" that the mass doesn't slow us down or sap our energy, yet it does before our very eyes on live TV. PEDS are a different story.

number 2, fighters used to train for durability, running in hilly country for long distances gives you incredible longevity. See Hagler and Rocky.

Fighters are simply opting for a better looking physique over true conditioning, but we saw Norton get dusted each and every time by any banger in the 70's, he was one of the first artificially built up Hw's, going from 205 to 235 of pure muscle during the span of his career. Each time getting slower, losing power due to less velocity and of course losing stamina.

Your right on. I would say that modern fitness trainers have changed. When I came up, in the late 80's as a young stud....kidding. As a trainer EVERYONE who worked out had big chests and pencil legs. These guys were really something, When you put them in a joint lock they were putty! No useful strength!

Now a days trainers emphasize core muscle strength. This is a good thing and I see people, regular Joes and Jills who are in fantastic shape. I remember this started with nautilus training. What Nautilus wanted to do was efficiently train the major muscles so athletes could spend more time on primary, i.e their sport. Nautilus was misrepresented, but when used properly with negatives (as they were called) you could exhaust all the major muslces in literally one 8 rep cycle per a muscle group. I can tell you this from experience. I mean like in a twenty five minute workout! meaning, if you were a wrestler you could spend the next hour of practice doing your primary and building real useful strength from wrestling.

`The information is out there. Actually the MMA guys who are in shape do good work that way. I do think that boxing hit a cross roads. yes guys like the physiques and the problem now is the problem then: Good long muscle development comes with activity because activity requires real strength....why? because real strength takes balance, synergy with the other muscles and of course some brute strength.

What boxers do not do is go through a process of boxing, getting picked apart and put back together again. Becoming so familiar with the techniques that they become effortless....so one could punch all day in the ring and move around all day, gliding.

Also, I noticed this in Yoga and the Martial Arts, both of which I study... These activities, along with boxing and even mma! have become fitness activites for some people. The problem is cross pollination! The fitness jargon goes over to the real deal. So now we have people debasing Yoga (turning into a path of the ego) debasing martial arts turning it into line drills and aerobics, and boxing, turning it into a fitness pursuite. Its a damn shame.