BoxRec

pundit wrote:The data computerrank sent me some time ago on the top 30 heavyweights in each year show that

- there is a relationship between the average weight and the average height of the best heavyweights that holds more or less from the 1920s until the mid 1980s

- in the mid 1980s this relationship breaks down -- from then on the average weight of the top 30 heavyweights increases much faster than the average height.

One explanation for this is "modern training and conditioning methods" ("with modern conditioning methods Jack Dempsey would have bulked up to 210 pounds, etc.") -- but this would imply that modern methods were invented in the mid 1980s only.

The other explanation is the use of steroids.

Views?

Decagon wrote:Seriously, do you think that Evander Holyfield, living off a 40/30/30 diet in camp was using worse nutrition than Sonny Liston?

Eric the Viking wrote:I'd love for someone to do a body-mass-index comparison for the HW top 20 for each of the last 4 or 5 decades -- we can't really do a body-fat analysis, but just based on looking at these guys I'd say BMI isn't increasing due mainly to more lean muscle mass.

Decagon wrote:

The Great John L wrote:

Decagon wrote:Seriously, do you think that Evander Holyfield, living off a 40/30/30 diet in camp was using worse nutrition than Sonny Liston?

I wasn't talking about Holyfield. There are quite a few athletes who do eat well, but I doubt that that's true of the majority of the current HW crop. If it is, then perhaps they should consider trying canned beans, because their current diets aren't working very well.

Name me a 22-year-old man in the history of civilization who didn't eat like shit. You think junk food was invented in 1982?

Decagon wrote:

kick asner wrote:Junk food was invented awhile back, it's just that as time passes they become better at producing food faster and cheaper which makes it more full of chemicals more fattening and less healthy thus creating near epidemic leavels of cancer, obecsity, and diabeties to name just a few of the diseases asociated with the modern day diet. Its not just a coincidence that cancer is at an all time high.

See, the difference is that boxers have never lived normal, nine-to-five lifestyles. Most of them don't have wives or mothers looking after them. So many fighters of the 1950s and 1960s ate nothing but hamburgers and hot dogs. The economics of America and perhaps someday the world have been such that nearly everyone who isn't starving on the street can eat McDonald's three times a week.

pundit wrote:BMI for the top 30 according to boxrec from 1920.

Eric the Viking wrote:

pundit wrote:BMI for the top 30 according to boxrec from 1920.

Pundit: thanks for the number-crunching! According to the Calorie Council,: "A BMI greater than 25 is considered overweight and a BMI greater than 30 is considered obese."

Now, the very consistent average BMI between 25.5 and 26.5 for the top-30 heavies up until around 1970 (and knowing from films what the old-time heavies looked like) tells me that for BMIs up to perhaps 27, the excess over the 25 "overweight" is easily explained by significantly heavier musculature relative to your average man-off-the-street. But once you get above 27 or so, you've gotta have some serious muscles to explain that.

Also, the start of the ramp-up in the 70s has two possible explanations (probably both at work to some degree): the spread of resistance training methods to sports where they were long considered harmful (e.g. boxing, baseball, etc), and the explosion of fast-food culture.

Damn, the average top-30-HW BMI is right around 30 currently - that's fricking pathetic. Hey Pundit, care to give us an individual BMI for each of the current top 30 heavies? It'd be interesting to correlate those with the physical appearance of the fighters and see just how many (if any) that have a BMI over (say) 28 are really fit. I'm willing to bet that there's not a single BMI-over-30 guy on the list who isn't at least 20-30 lbs overweight. (For convenience, we could define overweight as anything > 10% bodyfat at fight time - although we have to guess at the bodyfat %, using the fighter's appearance.)

And don't any of you hoops fans give me any "Hey, Shaquille O'Neal's in great shape and he carries 15% bodyfat" bullcrap - Shaq could afford to lose 20-30 himself, but because he doesn't have to run the court as much as the smaller guys (or go 12 rounds), he gets away with it. I call it the "Charles-Barkley-Butt Effect" - if you spend most of your time in the low post, a big butt can actually help you.

Decagon wrote:

kick asner wrote:Junk food was invented awhile back, it's just that as time passes they become better at producing food faster and cheaper which makes it more full of chemicals more fattening and less healthy thus creating near epidemic leavels of cancer, obecsity, and diabeties to name just a few of the diseases asociated with the modern day diet. Its not just a coincidence that cancer is at an all time high.

See, the difference is that boxers have never lived normal, nine-to-five lifestyles. Most of them don't have wives or mothers looking after them. So many fighters of the 1950s and 1960s ate nothing but hamburgers and hot dogs. The economics of America and perhaps someday the world have been such that nearly everyone who isn't starving on the street can eat McDonald's three times a week.

pundit wrote:For 2005 the top 30 fighters with BMIs are:

Decagon wrote:BMI is almost meaningless for measuring the health of world-class athletes. In the 1960s and 1970s, Arnold Schwarzenegger's BMI was pushing 40, but he had less than 5% body fat.

samuel wrote:

pundit wrote:

Decagon wrote:BMI is almost meaningless for measuring the health of world-class athletes. In the 1960s and 1970s, Arnold Schwarzenegger's BMI was pushing 40, but he had less than 5% body fat.

.... and took truckloads of steroids.
Hence the title of this thread.

The point made that BMI is meaningless for athletes is still valid. Take steroids out of thre equation and you can still build body mass through adding muscle and reduce fat(albeit not as much of course). Therefore you can add weight (since muscle weighs more) thus increasing your BMI, even though you reduced your body fat percentage. BMI=completely useless tool for measuring the fitness of athletes.

Decagon wrote:All three options are wrong. From the 1920s to the 1970s, lifting weights simply wasn't in style. In the 1970s, technology enabled World-class athletes on both sides of the Iron Curtain to use weight lifting methods designed for athletes' particular sport.

In the 1950s, there was no weightlifting method specifically designed for runners.
In the 1950s, there was no weightlifting method specifically designed for road bikers.
In the 1950s, there was no weightlifting method specifically designed for race-car drivers.
In the 1950s, there was no weightlifting method specifically designed for boxers.
In the 1950s, there was no weightlifting method specifically designed for sprinters.
In the 1950s, there was no weightlifting method specifically designed for marathoners.
In the 1950s, there was no weightlifting method specifically designed for swimmers.
In the 1950s, there was no weightlifting method specifically designed for triathletes.
In the 1950s, there was no weightlifting method specifically designed for heavyweight boxers.
In the 1950s, there was no weightlifting method specifically designed for welterweight boxers.

Weight lifting was just weight lifting. Cardio was just cardio. Rocky Marciano didn't have a specific cardio routine that favored his style of boxing, or was even geared towards boxers in general. He did the Charles Atlas cardio routine!!! Now there are all those weightlifting methods, with sport-specific and even athlete-specific cardio routines to go with them.

You know what? I'm sick of people dismissing modern nutrition. Sonny Liston is one of the fighters that I've always been interested in, and I've done a fair amount of research on him. You know what? I think he would've been a much better heavyweight if he'd eaten more carbohydrates. I think that if he were active today, or in the past 15 years, he'd be the best heavyweight who ever lived.

Decagon wrote:Shit, look at what heavyweight boxers ate for dinner every night. Sonny Liston had a two-pound steak for dinner and a one-pound steak for breakfast. In the 1950s and 1960s in America, it was falsely believed that the more red meat you ate, the more healthy you'd be. That's a historical fact. If you don't like its implications, that's too bad. Heavyweight boxers eating a 40/30/30 diet are able to have more stamina with less work in the gym. If you don't like the implications of that, that's too bad. "Modern nutrition" is NOT a myth.