Detailed sources on modern heavyweights' training or nutritional regimens?

For Evander Holyfield, the best part about moving from cruiserweight to heavyweight was the new diet. He was now eating four to five times a day, compared to his cruiserweight stage when he was only eating twice a day. He described a typical daily meal plan to The New York Times:

I have breakfast before the morning workout. Four eggs, grits, toast, orange juice and milk.

After the workout, another breakfast, pretty much the same thing.

After the boxing workout, I have lunch. Green beans, macaroni and cheese, chopped steak, corn bread and tossed salad, cold tea and/ or water.

After the evening workout it’s usually fish, black-eyed peas, string beans, cabbage, corn bread, cold tea and/or water.

Back in the apartment, while watching films on the v.c.r., I’ll have peanut butter and grape jelly on wheat bread, with milk.

 

Riddick Bowe installed a kitchen in his bedroom and ate whatever was in there

 

Michael Spinks heavyweight diet for holmes I

heavy daily doses of vitamins B, C and E

For breakfast Sprinks had three poached eggs, shredded wheat, wheat toast, tea and fruits, or oatmeal, wheat pancakes, tea and fruits.

For lunch he had broiled fish, green vegetables, baked potato, wheat toast, salad with lemon juice and vinegar, fruit and hot tea.

At 4:30 p.m. he did his regular boxing training at the gym.

At 7:30, he had dinner, which was the same as lunch except that broiled chicken or turkey was substituted for the fish.

The meals provided 4,500 calories a day, and consisted of 65% complex carbohydrates (from the fruits, vegetables and whole grains), 20% protein (mostly from the meat and fish) and 15% fats.

 

Joe Louis from Chicago Tribune


Breakfast: orange juice, stewed prunes, two soft boiled eggs, buttered toast and green tea.

dinner: beef boullion, pound and a half broiled chicken, spinach, platter full of celery, stewed tomatoes, green beans, corn muffins, green tea and ice cream.

"He stays away from starches, which explains why there were no potatoes "


Joe Louis from different article


'My days were routine. I'd be up at six and run at least five miles before breakfast. Come back, eat a big hunk of cheese, and drink some fruit juice, take a shower and a short nap. Get up and have a big breakfast, oatmeal, half a dozen eggs, ham steaks, bread, and milk.

Dinner time, I'd eat a three pound steak and salad. Bill Bottoms would see to it I got a dish of black eyed peas whenever I wanted it. He made sure I had plenty of protein. Loved ice cream, usually ate a quart a night.'

 

Rocco Marchegiano loved his Pasta Faagioli!, rich lasagna, and homemade spaghetti! LOL

Marciano's brother told me he would go on extraordinary long walks every day. Not apart of his training, on his own time. 6-10 miles per day in hilly county. 6-10 miles slow pace walking daily is a **** ton. imagine how long that took? Take note he had already ran 4-5 miles earlier usually on hills. By 1955, Marciano cut down the hill running and mostly did flat running. He stopped going on walks all together in 1956 and thats when goldman "knew".

He hit a 270lb punching bag to get used to moving big men around in case he fought one, footage of him doing it on youtube. He also had a 150lb bag that he punched more often.

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0:40 look at him crouch under the heavy bag LOL

Rocky was obsessed with NOT losing and if anything, this is reflected in his inhumane training. He wouldn't take mail or phone calls 10 days prior to a fight. 3 days prior to a fight, he wouldn't talk to anyone, have any visitors, or shake hands with anyone.

Marciano never lifted weights

Rocky had a small ball suspended on a length rubber over his bed that he would swat when lying down.

 

I think one reason you don’t see so much of this kind of thing (if I’m understanding the question) is that top-end fighters use nutritionists and strength/conditioning coaches in addition to their boxing trainers, so the boxing trainer might not know exactly what the eating plan is for the fighter or exactly how the weight program is administered.

Usually that person isn’t a ‘boxing person’ — they’re nutritionists who work with athletes of all sorts (football players, basketball players, track athletes) — so they basically sit down with the boxer and his boxing coach and say ‘what are we trying to accomplish here’ and they take it from there using the knowledge they have amassed from study and working with athletes.

If someone is moving up a division, the plan may be ‘we want to add 10 pounds of solid muscle through diet and strength training without losing any speed or explosiveness’ and the experts in those fields try to help them achieve that goal.

Most of those people don’t get interviewed, and if a reporter seeks them out since they are privately hired by the boxer (through his team) they probably don’t feel they can divulge that without permission. It’s not something they give away — other boxers will copy it and not employ them or someone in their profession.

 

These things change and cycle all the time. We always think we know more than we used to know.

To me other than bulking up (say light heavyweight to heavyweight) there’s not any magic secret formula.

At one time, it was all carbo-loading — that gives you fuel to burn when you train, which makes you train better/be able to train harder, which leads to better results.

Then it became something else, and something after that. Whatever is cutting edge today, guaranteed in 10 years an expert will tell us how that was all wrong. Yet guys get results.

Ray Robinson ran in Army boots and ate steak as his prefight meal and drank a glass of blood from the cow. He turned out OK. Do we really think he’d have been that much better if he was on a ‘modern’ diet?

Ali ran distances (when he was in his peak and seriously training). He didn’t do sprints. Now some guys do sprints. Are they in better shape than the Ali who fought Foreman or the Ali who fought Liston? I doubt it.

 

Tactical stuff, of course, is different. And trainers differ in methods; and the same trainer may use different methods with different fighters (depending on their style or what they respond best to) or with the same fighter for different fights (to prepare for specific opponents … you’d probably train differently for Joe Frazier than you would for Wlad Klitschko, right?).

I remember reading about Holyfield’s prep for Tyson and here are a few things I recall:

They did repeated 30-second rounds with opponents rushing out and trying to take Holyfield’s head off to prepare for Tyson’s fast starts and penchant for going for broke early. They’d ring the bell, send the guy out like he’s shot out of a cannonball and ring the bell to stop it after 30 seconds. Then rotate a fresh guy in and do it again. And again. And again.

I remember the trainer (was it Don Turner?) said up until about two weeks before the fight, it wasn’t going well … Evander was just a slow starter and he’d get battered. Then finally the light came on and Evander started handling it. They thought at that point they had the edge, that if the did that in the ring he’d probably survive the early rush and win.

Another thing they did was have Evander push Tyson back — not many had actually man-handled Mike up close and made him back up. They wanted to make Mike feel like Evander was the stronger guy and could push him around. But there was technique to it. They’d have him plant his back foot, put his left knee in between Tyson’s legs and work the angle so Tyson was positioned with his legs even now as compared to Evander — he didn’t have his left foot in front and his right foot back, which gives him an anchor and makes it harder to push him backwards. But if his feet are even, then Evander would step forward with his right foot (closing the distance between his right and left) and then push off that to take a step forward with the left foot. That would move Tyson back. Watch and see how often Evander is able to move Tyson backwards in the clinches.

So what they did was put Evander in several rounds a day with big, strong guys to practice this with no punishing - like just to work on moving a guy back so he got the technique down and was spending part of his workout each day practicing this without worrying about punching. Then he started doing it in full sparring. Then he carried it over to the fight.

 

Pretty sure I remember Larry saying he sparred about 300 rounds for Cooney. Larry of course came up as a sparring partner for Ali and sometimes Frazier, so he valued sparring.

 

One boxer. In the Jack Johnson book by @apollack could “handle 500lbs dumbbells like toys” according to an account. Sure.

 

Bernard Hopkins used to have someone count his shots, which sorts he threw hook, straight etc and how many seconds he skipped, sparred, ran etc. He spent time finding the Goldilocks zone for all these things.