Wales wrote:jamesmcdonnell wrote:
In addition, how much have boxing training methods really changed? Watch Floyd train, what do you see, push up's, situps, medicine ball work, shadow boxing, padwork, floor-to-ceiling bag, skipping, roadwork, weight training - are these supposed to be modern innovations, with the exception of the focus pads, these have been around since before the turn of the century - boxing probably has the least innovative training regimens of any sport - in essence it has remained largely unchanged for well over 50 years, aside from a few small tweaks, and the odd boxer who deviates from the norm.
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Come on James, behave. That's like saying football players training hasn't changed since 1900 because they still jog around and kick a ball.
The evolution behind the science and nutrition alone has been huge, let alone every measurable aspect of human athletics improving. 0.4 seconds quicker over a 10 second race. Last time I checked every round is 180 seconds, not 10. Am I not right in saying the highest amount of punches per round is from this side of the millennium?
Of course this doesn't mean person a beats person b. just as it doesn't mean I'm better than George best. But to say the training regimes of top level boxers remains unchanged is a little unfair to the nutritionists, researchers and trainers in the sport today. I wonder if, in 1900, fighter A had a DVD of every fight fighter B had fought. Or if fighter A had a nutritionist calculating every calorie they intake. Or if fighter A had a dedicated 3 month camp in high tech super gym that can measure and record every output... Do you really think Floyd just rocks up to the gym, does some press ups, sit ups, has a skip then hits the bag... When his purse is 40m?
Let me give you an example to illustrate a point.
Back in the 1900's, fighters used to have steak and eggs as a staple on the buildup to fights, something which fell out of fashion, as it was believed these foods were 'unhealthy' - and high carb diets were espoused. Fast forward to now, and high fat, high protein diets are again all the rage, steak and eggs are back on the menu.
Another instance - Bob Fitzsimmons, one of the greats of his era, and a great athlete by the reckoning of the time, used to go for long walks interspersed with sprinting and jogging, although of course he wouldn't have called it jogging as it didn't exist. This style of training, interval training, is now very much back on the agenda for modern athletes, as it has been found to be far more effective in terms of time taken to get fit for hours put in, that 10 mile runs, and also far less damaging to the knees and ankles. Through decades and decades of fighting, boxers and trainers intuitively developed training methods which worked for the sport, stuff like chopping wood to build back and shoulder muscles for punching (intuitive because the action mimics the kind of movement that boxers have to emulate to punch) - guess what, the woodchop exercise, albeit often done with weights and pulleys, is very much back in vogue.
A lot of the innovations in exercise are ways of personal trainers packaging their product and making money, often it is just re-engineering something much older. Look how many athletes use Yoga training - lasts time I checked, those exercises were THOUSANDS of years old.
Highest number of punches - when did they start counting?, I don't think anyone has gone back through every fight pre 1980 and counted them all, compubollocks punch stats are a modern invention because people like to use statistics to analyse a fight, but whilst these things are useful, I can use my own eyes, to see that the last truly back and forth heavyweight world title fight was Bowe and Holyfield - since then there haven't been any of that ilk. Vitali throws a lot of shots, or did, but they are largely arm punches, and it's at a measured fairly placid pace.
No back in 1900 they didn't have DVD's, but they had excellent trainers, and fantastic fighting brains - because they fought so often, and encountered many styles during their careers - at the end of the day, no matter how many DVD's a fighter or trainer watches, the fighter has to make the adjustments in milliseconds in the ring, and think on their feet, and you cannot really do that with a pre fight gameplan, the moves and the savvy is either in the brain on fight night or not.
Do you have access to Floyds Gym? I've never once seen any shots of this 'super high-tech' equipment of which you speak - in fact, the only fighter in the last 20 years I've seen actually show footage of very high tech training methods is Evander Holyfield, who was certainly in great condition.
Fact is, that by the best reckoning of modern sports science, actually the old training methods are incredibly effective, calisthenics, including press ups, sit ups, squats, jumping jacks, chin ups etc, are very very effective at producing useful strength. Talk to a modern sports coach, and they will tell you the same thing.
Boxing nutrition may be more advanced and scientific, but I don't see much evidence of professional boxers using the kind of highly detailed analytics that footballers and runners do, with Vo2 max calculations etc. If it is happening, then everyone is keeping it very quiet.
As I said, compared to other sports, combat sports are far more reliant on technique, than tiny advantages in fitness, unlike something like sprinting where generally the guys with the best genetics, who train the hardest win. In boxing the mental aspect and technical aspect are incredibly important, of course baseline fitness is important too, and useful fitness suitable to boxing, but I do not accept that modern fighters are better simply because they have the luxury of longer training camps, and supposedly better training methods.
Let me just add - do you think Floyd is the best because he is the fittest? I know that's an oversimplified question, but better technique beats fitness. Looks at James Toney's late career, clearly he wasn't in the best of shape in his latter career, but he whupped Vasilly Jirov, who was younger and fitter - Jirov was a genuine world class fighter, but Toney's superior technique allowed him to outsmart his opponent, and take him apart over the course of the fight.
I guess my point is that I don't believe that modern changes in training methods are a) that significant, b) have had a great deal of impact on the overall level at which fighters operate. If anything, I see that the skillsets generally have regressed, and fighters like Floyd are the exception that prove the rule - it is significant that he has been lacing them up since he could pretty much walk and is from a family steeped in boxing knowledge - this more than anything else is what has turned him into such an exceptional fighter.
