Sure some of Grebs opponents look good on film, but when Greb beat them the fights were probably fixed. Boxing is a dirty sport you know. All I hear is Harry Greb this and Harry Greb that. Well guess what? I’ve seen a 20 second clip of him sparring, and he doesn’t have the fundamentals necessary to last against a real trained boxer. Its so funny the desperate lengths nostalgists go through to pretend that this mythical like boxing god was any good, when I have a 20 second sparring clip where he looks like Charlie Chaplin.
With a dumbbell curl as an example: Concentric contraction: Pulling the weight up, your arm going from straight to flexed (bent elbow). Eccentric contraction: Letting the weight down from elbow bent to straight. More muscular force is required with eccentric by about 30%. It is actually more beneficial from a muscle building standpoint to do eccentric exercises. Isometric contraction: Pick a point anywhere within the range of the arc of elbow flexion and hold it in that position.
Greb was described as amateurish. Maybe he was, but he was also blazing fast, tough as nails, dirty and durable.
It's a pseudoscientific and largely defunct exercise fad that has no standardized definition, but suffice it to say there have been variants referred to by that term that do involve motion, and most importantly that is clearly what Greb is doing in the video in question. What one calls it is largely irrelevant. It's goofy, but no more so than (say) the backpack/bungee cord contraption Holyfield used instead of simple hand weights.
It is most definitely not "pseudoscientific". That's totally ridiculous. Not defunct. Not a fad. Obviously you dont understand what iso exercises are, because pretty much everything you just said is wrong and based on ignorance. There are no variants involving motion, because at that point the exercise would become either concentric and/or eccentric. Isometric exercises are generally used for stability with core or proximal muscle groups, such as rotator cuff muscles, back muscles. Extremely useful in rehab settings, which is what I do for a living. Greb is playfully sparring in the vid. No iso stuff there. The Holyfield bungee contraption is actually better than punching with hand weights. Can you explain why? I can. I'll wait for your answer, then I'll educate you if/when you cant.
H2H no chance, you can't see what strengths and weakness they have. You can have a opinion on their resume though which can put together an idea.
Very well; cite three papers. I quit reading after your first sentence. Anything that does not cite peer reviewed literature will be ignored.
In my opinion, it's almost impossible to have a educated opinion how good ( Or bad ) fighters with very little film of them. Without seeing them how can one have a valid opinion on how quickly he counters, how he moves, his technique, does he slip punches or jumps out of the way of them. And most importantly in my opinion how good is the opponents. Most of the info on fighters from the turn of the last century, to the early 1930' s are from sports writers , and trainers, and fans. Most of it is opnions, and a lot of those opinions were shaded from the racism of the times... So how can one have an educated opinion? Think about this because of the intense hatred for Jack Johnson, Jack Dempsey wasn't allowed to, or didn't want to face the best black challengers of the times. Yet, even though most of us who love the sport know this fact, some of us today still consider Dempsey a top 5-10 ATG ? Yet a very valid argument can be made of was he the best of his own era? He or his managment avoided Harry Wills like the plague , yet The sport writers , trainers, and fans said he was the best. But most (All) of them that mattered looked like him. How good was Pancho Villa? Battling Siki? Sam Langford? Walker ?Greb ? Most of the trainers, sports writers etc, that saw them were probably deceased by the time R Robinson started to make his name. How many great fighters did they miss from R.Robinson to Mayweather Jr. We can infer a lot of results and be fairly accurate when fighters from past era's vs fighters today when theirs is film. Their is enough film on fighters like H Armstrong, B.Leonard, W.Pep to get a very educated opinion on how they would do in today's era. We have have enough film on R Robinson to have a very strong opinion that he indeed could've been the greatest of all times. Though theirs very little film of him at his best weight. It's easy to infer how good Robinson would've been at welter. Especially when watching him ko Iron chinned opponents at Middleweight. It's easy too make comparison of fighters on film today to fighters on film 70-80 yrs ago . Especially below Heavyweight. It's harder to make comparisons at heavyweight, because they are so much bigger today than 70-80 yrs ago. But it still can be done with very exceptional fighters like J.Louis, especially when considering how far the skill level has fallen off in today's game. Its plainly obvious that J.Louis skill level, and D Wilders is almost as wide as the Pacific ocean. It's on film, we can see it. Wilder looks amateurish compared to Louis. I don't judge fighters I can't get a fill for, an the only way I can do that to see, or what I do is " Study" them. And if others are being totally honest with themselves, no one can. Because if you are doing that comparing fighters not on film or that you've never seen , especially fighters in the early part of the last century, your basically following what we in Law Enforcement call "Hear say". With the real evidence being slim at best.
Cite sources it doesn't work. You 'SITE THE HECKIN STUDIES REEE SCIENCE' guys are the worst, anyway. I guess all those fighters, strongmen etc. just did it for no reason. Meanwhile, look at these. All from one google search, there were way more: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16195033 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11717228 Twenty‐six research outputs were reviewed. Isometric training at longer muscle lengths (0.86‐1.69%/week, ES = 0.03‐0.09/week) produced greater muscular hypertrophy when compared to equal volumes of shorter muscle length training https://www.researchgate.net/public...ngth_intensity_and_intent_A_systematic_review ****ing NASA concluded it strengthened muscles as a side result to seeing if they would work in space NASA has researched the use of isometrics in preventing muscle atrophy experienced by astronauts as a result of living in a zero gravity environment. Isometrics, muscle lengthening and muscle shortening exercises were studied and compared. The outcome showed that while all three exercise types promoted muscle growth, isometrics failed to prevent a decrease in the amount of contractile proteins found in the muscle tissue. The result was muscle degradation at a molecular level. As contractile proteins are what cause muscles to contract and give them their physical strength, NASA concluded that isometrics may not be the best way for astronauts to maintain muscle tissue.[9] https://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/livingthings/10dec_muscles.html Results obtained from this research indisputably confirm existing of post activation potentiation as a phenomenon http://www.sportspa.com.ba/images/june2010/full/rad11.pdf https://bdxshelton.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/art_3a10-1007_2fs13539-014-0145-y11.pdf The results of the current investigation indicate a strong relationship exists between force production characteristics and some offensive performance variables. https://bdxshelton.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/bailey-isbs-cjsb-5s1-448-451-2013.pdf
I didn't say it doesn't "work", because whether something works depends on what the exact conditions are for "works". I said it's pseudoscienticic in the context of its history as an exercise fad. I probably should have been clearer but I was just dashing off a reply. Of course it's better than nothing and has application in physical therapy, but like most diets and exercise machines it has no especial claim to efficacy in athletic training even though of course it does something. On a cursory perusal none of those papers support any claim that isometrics would be useful to an athlete who has other training options. I certainly didn't mean to imply that it does nothing at all and has no application in any context, like (say) "lie detectors" -which are 100% placebo effect, or Rorschach ("ink blot') tests, which are absolutely no better than astrology.
Okay, I just read your comment in full and I'll respond to your last sentence. Yes, I'm pretty sure I can infer why you think the bungee contraption is better than hand weights. You're going to tell me it allows more direct resistance to be applied in a range of motion specific to punching. (But to exactly what effect? There's the rub.)
The fact that you quit reading after the first sentence says everything. I know nothing of its history as an "exercise fad", I only know from years of first hand experience of its effectiveness in physical therapy. I cant imagine anyone who would push iso exercises as a means to build muscle on the level that concentric or eccentric contractions will. Doing planks and iso stability exercises for core can most definitely get you looking fitter and better, so again, what you're saying is absolute nonsense. Iso exercises have their place in an exercise program, but standalone are only good in the contexts I mentioned before.
It says it I didn't read it at that moment and didn't pretend to, which is why my comment says as much. It says no more than that. I'm not sure how your other points are supposed to be inconsistent with anything I've said, but for what it's worth you actually left unremarked (in your most recent comment) the one claim I'm willing to retract: "isometric" may indeed be a term of art in some or other scientific discipline. I was already well aware of what its prefix implies, but that's never a reliable guide to how people actually use a word colloquially (which is all that would be relevant were it not a term of art).
I wouldn't. But I know others do. The problem with rating boxers you haven't seen is everyone disagrees on the scoring of fights WE CAN ACTUALLY SEE all the time. Watch a round-by-round thread on this board the night of a fight, and scorecards of posters are all over the place. And if the guy they want to win doesn't get the decision, the fans FOREVER repeat over and over that the winner didn't ACTUALLY WIN (in their minds). And they don't count those as wins when debating. No one can watch Harry Greb fights and 99 percent of Robinson's fights aren't available, either. So who the hell knows, if we saw those missing fights, if any of us would even agree they won as many big fights as they actually did. We've all watched fights where we think one underdog won the most rounds, and the favorite is awarded all 10 or 12 rounds and a unanimous decision. And Teddy Atlas has screamed his head off. And we all came on the board and bitched and moaned. But if Robinson or Monzon or Greb won 10 rounds over a nobody, whose to say we wouldn't have all watched that and thought it was a robbery? And how many times did that happen? The same people who argue that we SHOULD rate boxers we haven't seen because "LOOK AT ALL THE WINS" so and so has, are often the same people who will argue for days that certain wins of another boxer don't count because THEY didn't agree with the official scorecards when THEY watched the fight. For boxers you can't see, apparently, the judges got it right 100 percent of the time. So boxers you CAN'T watch have a definite advantage. You can't see their flaws. You can't see the crappy decisions they didn't deserve. You can't see if their KOs were legit. You can't see for yourselves if you actually like them as fighters. It certainly isn't fair when rating them alongside boxers you can watch and nitpick to death.
