This is why I keep a word document for all the big brain and helpful posts guys like you drop for us looking in from the outside. Cheers brother.
Rocky Marciano walked a lot- some biographies say that he walked everywhere while preparing for a fight. Some things that I have read about those long walks are interesting. Several guys would walk, and play leapfrog for long stretches, or pick up large rocks- small boulder?- and throw throw them. I can't cosign about the effectiveness of this, but some of those guys fought a lot of rounds.
Crisanto Espana was supposedly an excellent marathoner but I have never found a time for him. Bob Fitzsimmons challenged any boxer to a race over any distance from a quarter mile to ten miles. He was highly confident in his speed and certainly looked the part of an excellent runner.
I like sprints for amateurs and interval running for pros once they get beyond four or six rounds — easiest way is to jog from one telephone pole to the next, sprint to the next, jog to the next and so on.
Great thread, dont mean to get off the topic of boxing but you mentioned ufc.. the Diaz bros in ufc who always trained boxing under Richard Perez always said it was their swimming sessions (and that they started swimming at a young age) is where most of their stamina, endurance lean muscle and cardio came from. Even though the Diaz bros are known runners and triathletes they always stayed true to swimming. It was a couple of years ago I heard of a boxing coach that was implementing swimming into his training with minimal running and I thought that was a great idea. But this method isent that popular in boxing as far as I know. As far as running I would say explosivness and more muscle with sprints forsure.
Ah, swimming eh? The great Juan diaz was a swimmer, a 100 punch per round volume puncher. Also Roy Jones has been known to box underwater/ shadow boxing. Speaking of MMA, rampage used to say he'd rather play video games all day instead of training, he had a great big treadmill underwater in his lair. Also speaking of MMA cats, there was that one episode of TUF where those fighters taped a snorkel onto their face and solely breathed out the snorkel! They were saying Ty to the coach for killing them in training like that! Those are some crazy mofos!
Yea forsure, I can see a boxer/swimmer being a high volume puncher. Nick Diaz at 38 yrs old in his last fight with Robbie Lawler threw 176 punches in round 1 and 145 punches in round 2 (but then quit in round 3) im sure a couple of those were kicks but not many. I think swimming could take a boxer to another level without a doubt. I liked Rampage too but not sure about putting a tread mill underwater, sounds like an electricution waiting to happen.
Are you joking? You build an aerobic base from it. Sprints have their place. But they aren't the be a and end all, and neither is running. It's about heart rate, IMHO.
Juan also used the Stair Master for 5 miles every day. Anyone who has used one will agree on how quickly they jack your heartbeat up and how exhausted they leave you. Juan was an animal when it came to endurance.
I know Waldo turned to swimming as he aged. It's understandable for athletes of that size. Anecdotally I've known two serious amateur boxers who discovered by their roadwork that their real talent was running. One broke 30 minutes for the 10k, the other became a top level XC runner in college.
