Timing is actually also based on patterns and anticipation, rather than it just being based on a physical ability (reaction time). Most of the time, when a boxer manages to time his opponents with perfectly placed punches, they are usually doing so after figuring out their opponent's movement, which tends to be performed in a specific pattern. It's pattern recognition skills! For example, when Canelo Alvarez and Danny Garcia knocked out Amir Khan, they did so by anticipating what punch he will throw in advanced and counter punched accordingly where and when the opening was. In fact, Garcia's eyes were practically not even looking at Amir Khan when he caught Khan with that punch.
All those things are interconnected to a different extent, if you understand physiology you know that they are predicated on an underlying unalterable genetic predisposition towards being a fast twitch athlete. You can see it and know it when you see someone move. The ability to learn power and explosiveness is very limited. All the other sub categories of athleticism that you mention (which I wouldn’t call athleticism because they are more trainable) aren’t what someone typically means when they call someone athletic. If you want to include all those things you’ve just blurred the parameters so much that you can’t call anyone athletic because there are variables that are incompatible physiologically with others (endurance vs power). I’m not sure if you were the person I was talking to originally but if you are then it’s no wonder you’re confused about what athleticism is. I’m a strength and conditioning coach for elite athletes so perhaps I see athleticism easier than others, but I think it’s clearly evident when someone is a good athlete or not. Wilder is clearly an exceptional, freakish athlete.
That's true. Totally forgot to think about it that way. Ring IQ and muscle memory should help as well. Ive read a study saying IQ correlates with Choice reaction time. But if we have two boxers going against eachother. A1 is taller rangier and faster. B2 is Smarter but have a worse reactiontime. Everybody will call him a bum nevertheless. And A1 could just pick him of with the jab making him look stupid like the Stephen Hawkins of boxing. That's what separates great minds from great athletes. There is levels.
no. good athletes generally excel at most sports, while average athletes take their personal genetic advantages and apply them in a sport where they are most advantageous. both can achieve the highest levels, but one can do more things better, easier, than the other. here is a list of multi-sport athletes at top levels, its not a small list, so you can get a look at what athletic should look like and move like. [url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_multi-sport_athletes[/url] athleticism is measured in agility. the agility to run faster, jump farther, maintain control longer, etc... a great athlete can do all these things at high levels. an average joe can have the strength of a bear, but couldnt jump a hurdle if an actual bear was chasing him. you could say great athletes are physical geniuses, cause when they learn what we learn, in sports, they learn it faster and easier... if they arent already able to naturally do it.
There was someone who lived round the corner from me when I was growing up who was very good at most sports. Ended up playing cricket professionally. But probably could have made it at football (soccer), rugby, some of the throwing events and even gymnastics. Was it natural though? I dunno, but I don't think it was though. Because when the rest of us were kicking a football about on a small patch of grass near where we live, or playing silly little games like 'hide and seek' or 'knock and run' from 4 years old onwards, his dad was taking him down to sport clubs where he was getting proper coaching most evenings and weekends, and when he wasn't at one of his clubs, his dad was taking him down to a large park for 1 on 1 'training' or 'practice'. There's no doubt that some people have better genes than others which allow them to run faster, or jump further, but I think for most sports which require a bit more skill than that, it is mainly about getting the right coaching and getting into the right habits really early in life. And for that, you really need a supportive parent.
He's like the Javale McGee of boxing, so much potential unfulfilled. Like McGee, who is also incredibly gifted physically but like Wilder is very rough around the corners. I can't wrap my head around how bad Windmills is in the skill department but at this stage he is probably too set in his ways. Whomever his handlers are... should be shot for not addressing his abysmal skills and fight awareness when he was younger. I'd also add that McGee was a bust until only recently. Hell, he was heckled so bad on Shaqtin' a fool that McGee's mom blasted Shaq in the media for making fun of her son, lol. Anyways, a smart coach in Kerr used this once joke of a center last year and turned him into a center to be reckoned with. McGee is now quite highly sought after, so much so that even Lebron admitted to wanting McGee on his team after the Finals. "I played against him in the last two NBA Finals and I wanted him on this team because I know what he brings," James told the Associated Press. "It's his energy, his energy level, his ability at the rim. If you don't have that on your team, you're not going to have much, man. You need to have people with high IQ, which he's got. That's why I wanted JaVale to be part of this team." Haha, the irony... his high IQ?!! This content is protected
This thread is why I sometimes hate this forum, how can so many of you not understand a simple thing like athleticism. Ffs Wilder is a damn specimen. Pure speed and power. Coordination and motor skills are very often sport specific ffs. Bball players and football players can look like gods with ridiculously good coordination in their chosen field. Put a pair of boxing gloves on and they are like a fish out of water, they make Deontay look like freaking Floyd Mayweather ffs.
His stamina appears to be lacking, his timing and reflexes are terrible. His lack of effective fainting shows he's not a natural boxer.
I agree that the ability to learn power and explosiveness is limited. But the same can be said about agility, balance and coordination too. The reason why people COMMONLY refer to speed, explosiveness and power as athletic attributes because they are very OBVIOUS and SIMPLE athletic attributes. Whilst the reason why people COMMONLY don't refer to agility, balance and coordination as athletic attributes is because they are more complex and unobvious athletic attributes. To claim agility, coordination and balance aren't athletic attributes is to disrespect many great athletes. As I've already stated, unless someone has genetically inherited sufficient amounts of those athletic attributes, no amount of training will ever allow that someone to ever become as agile and as coordinated as a Vasyl Lomachenko or a Lionel Messi. I've not blurred the parameters. I have a very strict definition for what I consider to be an 'athletic attribute'. Attributes such as: 1) Endurance 2) Physical Strength 3) Speed 4) Agility 5) Coordination 6) Pain tolerance / Durability 7) Balance 8) Power 9) Flexibility These are attributes you will find athletes having in any athletic / physical sport. Whether the sport is boxing, mixed martial arts, football / soccer, rugby, tennis, wrestling and so forth so on. Hence, I consider them 'athletic attributes'. Meanwhile, attributes such as hip rotation when throwing a power punch, not bending the elbow when throwing a jab, defending with the left hand when punching with the right hand and vice versa, not crossing the feet when moving in a boxing bout and so forth so on. These are all 'technical attributes' because only boxers possess those attributes and are trained to possess those attributes. Athletes from other sports don't possess those attributes because they aren't useful. Which is why to me, the best athlete is the one who is the most complete athlete. That is, the athlete who is superior to others in more athletic attributes. Simply being a more powerful puncher and being more explosive, whilst being inferior in every other athletic attribute, doesn't make someone like Wilder the most 'athletic' boxer in the world. I've studied sports science and expert scientists in that field will disagree with the notion that only explosive abilities and power are related to athleticism. As it's totally false! Agility, balance and coordination are as much to do with 'athleticism' as power or explosiveness.
Good post, very true. It's why some of the better boxers usually take time to figure out an opponent and get better as a fight goes on, guys like Mayweather, Hopkins, Crawford etc. They are picking up on their opponents patterns as you say and anticipating their moves and even using this to set traps because they'll now how their opponent will respond and then use that to their advantage. Also what seems like good reflexes can be down to simply drilling in patterns of responses in training and creating the muscle memory and instinctive response to what is happening in the ring. By doing that you remove the middle step of having think of a response to what is happening, you simply instinctively do it, that along with being able to anticipate a move from their opponent usually means that fighter has a huge advantage.
Well for a start agility is strongly correlated with power, it’s the RFD that causes you to put an equal and opposite force into the ground to make you change direction in response to a stimulus. What ‘expert scientists’ in sports science disagree with that notion? I know many of the main names personally. Defining someone as athletic isn’t something that is typically done in our field, when I talk to other coaches and we call someone a good athlete we are talking about movement and explosive quality in general, if we’re referring to a road cyclist and their anomalous ability to deal with lactate etc. we call them a freak. All that is done in a different context anyway, we’re talking about boxing fans watching boxing. You’ve stretched the definition of athletic to include everything, therefore rendering it meaningless and completely open to interpretation. Well obviously you’re then confused about what is meant by athletic, this conversation is over before it starts because we’re talking about something different. I’m talking about something obvious that most people understand when they see it, you’re changing definitions to your liking. It’s very difficult to be powerful and explosive without those other sub categories you’re including, someone like Wilder has those things to generate power but because of his over commitment and lack of learned skills it looks clumsy in a boxing context relative to other more masterful boxers.
When I think of an 'athletic specimen' that probably would've done well in any sport he set his mind to because of his physical attributes, Roy Jones comes to mind for me. I don't regard Wilder nearly as impressive as old Roy when he was playing professional ball in the afternoon and defending his title in the evening.
A person can be agile and not be very powerful and vice versa. The definition of power is: The ability to produce strength (force) in the shortest possible time. The definition of agility is: How fast someone changes direction whilst maintaining balance. Wilder is very powerful. But he is far from the most agile boxer. Vasyl Lomachenko and Oleksandr Usyk are extremely agile. But they are far from the most powerful boxers. Do you see the distinction? I'm not 'confused', nor am I changing any definitions. I happen to have a thorough and a deep enough understanding of what 'athleticism' is. Meanwhile, your understanding of athleticism is very limited and narrow, as it's only confined to explosive abilities and power. Agility and balance are NATURAL and PHYSICAL abilities, just like power and speed. Ergo, they're both athletic attributes. It's really as simple as that! Since all those attributes are attributes every athlete has, in every athletic sport. Your definition of athleticism is: explosiveness and speed only because they are physical abilities and because they are easy to notice. Which is far from a scientific definition and to then exclude agility, balance and coordination from being athletic attributes (when they are proven to also be physical abilities as much as explosiveness and power are) makes your entire definition of 'athleticism' incomplete and moot. As powerful as Deontay Wilder is, he doesn't have the natural 'ATHLETIC' ability of agility and balance of a Vasyl Lomachenko or a Roy Jones Jr. And I doubt any amount of training will ever enable him to reach their levels of agility and balance. And your excuses for Wilder has clumsy movement, based on lack of learnt skills doesn't apply. Since Roy Jones Jr was just as bad when it came to the fundamentals and basics of boxing. His commitment to the fundamentals and the basics of boxing was equally lacking. He didn't develop those 'learnt' skills compared to actual 'masterful boxers' like Bernard Hopkins and James Toney. So why is it that Roy Jones Jr has far superior agility and balance than those 'masterful boxers' like Bernard Hopkins and James Toney? Why is it that his agility, balance and hand eye coordination are far superior to Deontay Wilder? Since you can't apply the excuse of Wilder not developing 'learnt skills' of movement as that also applies to Roy Jones Jr who was also mostly an athletic boxer who didn't develop as much 'learnt skills' himself. You never see Roy Jones Jr falling all over the place, going off balance after throwing more than one power punch at a time like Wilder does. You don't see ever see Wilder punching from the insane number of angles a prime Roy Jones Jr was able to. You don't see Wilder being able to throw 3 or 4 power punches in a combination flawlessly from different angles whilst maintaining perfect balance. Yes, I know Wilder is a heavyweight and Roy Jones Jr was a light heavyweight and much smaller which gave him the advantage. However, even when Wilder faces fat, nonathletic scrubs like Duhaupas or Eric Molina who are much bigger, fatter and clumsier, you still don't see Wilder displaying the same overall athleticism on them that prime Roy Jones Jr used to on his (better) opponents. The reason for this is simple! It's because Wilder in all honesty, lacks OVERALL athleticism. All he has that are special are his power and explosiveness. Outside those attributes, Wilder is lacking in pretty much every other athletic department.
