I bench 400, though I'm still a chunkier guy than I need to be at 255-260. No pro boxing wise by any stretch, but I still like to train for fun. FWIW. Weights came easily but stamina came tough- I despised wrestling (we didnt have a boxing gym around) conditioning and was a front runner in every sense of the word on the mat in high school. I saw some improvement in punching power as my bench went up, but it was also when I was focusing on punching with better technique, too. The truth is somewhere in the middle...you will benefit if you combine a strength building regime in with balanced boxing training. Cool as it'd be, I was never thought I'd be punching through harder metal objects every time I hit a new round number lol. So much of punching revolves around leverage and leg drive that other things would probably have a more direct impact on punching power. But I don't see how a higher bench would ever hurt a boxer as long as they didn't get over muscle bound to do it.
Funny you say that I would prefer someone with a bricklayers hands and arms over a weight lifter because of his hand and forearm strength the same goes for a mechanic or a steel worker.....you cannot produce punching power from weight training but someone with hard thick hands will not only have durability but heavy punches.....now to your thoughts on weight training if a natural 154lb fighter weight trains up to 160-68-75 he will have muscle but not the natural strength and size of the naturally bigger man his bone frame his tendons will not be as strong and would be a smaller framed man with some muscle taking the punches of a bigger stronger more durable man.....I am reminded of Danny Hodge a NCAA national champion and Olympic wrestler and Golden Gloves boxing champion who despised weights but was born with freakishly strong tendons in his hands when he became a pro wrestler he was the most feared wrestler by the biggest strongest guys like Bruno Sammartino, Tony Atlas, Ken Patera and others because he had natural tendon strength in his hands specifically he hurt the other wrestlers for the same reason Tom Jenkins and Ben Roller was feared from his years of working his hands hurt they were hard and stronger than everyone elses he was like a piece of steel in his given profession manhandling men and if you think wrestlers do not have strength superior in man on man fighting then I recommend you wrestle I did for several years as a kid while I boxed and manhandling other wrestlers is sometimes being better but tons of strength, endurance, speed etc......it isn't BJJ....I also recommend you read about the Hackenschmidt-Gotch matches or the Stanislaus Zbysko vs Great Gama matches.....Grab a mechanics hands a real old school mechanic and grip up you will see them do feats of strength that will blow your mind and not have muscles or a brick layers sheer amount of time under load gripping bricks all day or like when I loaded trucks the sheer amount of time under load generally a powerlifter will not lift more than a total of 100,000 lbs of weight in a training session we loaded 44,500 trucks every 30 minutes for 8-12 hours a day....yeah Brian Shaw could handle throwing a 100lb box but 8-12 hrs a day he would start shrinking and burning muscle and developing stamina and core strength for a 8-12 hr day not a 2 hr controlled training session where your strength goes from fatigue in a hour and needing a rest to the strength and endurance from the 1st hour and for the next 24 if needed. Foreman's strength and power were natural like Liston's big strong men who were not forged from hard labor but by natural power and anatomy for boxing or any other explosive sport but Frazier who was not a natural athlete had the physical strength and endurance of a sinewy muscled working man who could do it all day.....he had little trouble until he fought Foreman with out muscling other fighters and doing it the entire fight without fatigue.
Well i am a bricklayer and at 55yrs old, imo, i can hit harder with one shot than i could when i was 25.
So did I get it right - bricklaying, steel working etc... Are the best strength training a boxer can do? And it also increases punching power? And bricklayers are stronger than powerlifters and strongmans?
It is a different kind of strength altogether. I have seen hod carriers built like whippets who could outlift guys who obviously spend most of their spare time in the gym. As far as stamina goes, the muscular guys are leagues behind. Of course powerlifters should lift a heavier dead weight, but lifting it and carrying it over a distance are two different things. Trust me, i have spent over 35yrs on construction sites and have seen it all.
A guy who has the grip and posterior chain strength to deadlift 900 pounds is going to be able to lift and carry a heavier weight for a longer time than a guy with a 400 pound deadlift. You'd think that muscle endurance based events like weight hold, cask circle, stone carry, hercules hold etc would be dominated by the lithe and chiselled guys but you've ever watched or competed in strongman competitions you'd see that it's always the biggest and strongest who perform the best even there.
All i know is what i have seen onsite and lifting, carrying those kind of materials, over that terrain and up ladders. Completely different type of surroundings etc.
Did Holyfield hit as hard (in absolute terms, not pound for pound) when he was 175 as he did when he packed on muscle and moved up to heavyweight?
Not even close to the same. All I'm really seeing from the guys saying weights won't help is them molding the argument to compare unskilled weight lifters vs trained non weight lifters. Of course the trained guy who has put in hundreds or thousands of hours of reps will be more adept than the newcomer. Pros today get the best of both worlds, though. Strength training, technique work, and conditioning. It seems silly and insulting to me to essentially believe they've all got it wrong and those weights are a waste of time. If all it took was manual labor for world class training, I'd be driving by Joshua hauling bags of cement for the strength training. Trainers and fighters (the guys with actual livings to make in this line of work) do what generates the best chances of winning, just as they've always done.
Sajad Gharibi, also know as the "Iranian Hulk", makes his debut in boxing only to be ko'd in one round: https://www.sportbible.com/boxing/the-iranian-hulk-the-kazakh-titan-boxing-debut-20220801 That's it. I'll never lift weights again, ever!!!
Some of it is technique. I saw Miami Dolphins wide receiver, Mark Clayton, 5'9" 175 lbs beat Mark Gatineau, 6'5" 260 lbs in a military press contest. He pressed 275 lbs.
Even so, heavyweights from the 70s and 80s (indeed, probably later as well, into the early 90s) don't appear to have been that strong in absolute terms, judging from the performances in this competition. At least compared to guys like football players, etc. Only one of them clearly hit 240 pounds on the press, and that was Evander. The strongest other guys didn't get past 220.
Crazy since you need a lot of athleticism to be a great fighter. Probably need to be in better shape than any other type of athlete
Aside from swimming, Joe actually didn't do too bad in the other events. http://www.thesuperstars.org/comp/73final.html
