Are athletes really getting faster, better, stronger?

Very interesting. A few things:

1) I'll take a look at the running history. Looks cool. Thanks. Did you compete in track and field, by any chance?

2) Yeah, I assume that Dr. Hatfield knew what he was talking about because he was a respected member of the sports science and fitness community during that period, and because he had a terminal degree in his field. I take your point that a respected authority can still be a quack, but I think it's up to the person challenging Dr. Hatfield to show that. From what I remember, he wasn't the only guy to dismiss long, slow-distance jogging during the period. He was wrong about that, but science marches on, as they say.

3) Also, Dr. Hatfield was (arrogantly) challenging the consensus within boxing, not the consensus within the scientific community. But you've already suggested that your primary quarrel with Dr. Hatfield is his methods, not whether he was a pseudoscientist. So I guess that's beside the point now.

4) It would be interesting to investigate how much Mackie Shilstone agrees with Dr. Hatfield's methods. Shilstone's harder to criticize as an outsider, since he's been training successful boxing champions since the 1980s.


EDIT: And I wouldn't be surprised if Hatfield knew about Holyfield's steroid use. He was part of the powerlifting community, where steroids are used, and also trained Lee Haney, a bodybuilding champion (again, a steroid heavy field) who handled most of Evander's training earlier.

 

They should install that video game in the Boston tavern that you, I, and the other Bert Sugar wannabes allegedly frequent.

 

Stick to what you know cross trainer.... Cards and dominoes.

 

No, but I do some running now, I've read quite a bit on running training, though I have also read a fair bit on training for sprinting, and weightlifting.

I mean, rather than him being a total quack, it might just be a case of a feild in it's infancy coming to the wrong conclusions. Like I said, a lot of the studies are short term, and look at proxies (often VO2max) rather than performance, which could easilly get you to a misguided conclusion. A lot of sports science studies are pretty flawed

Really it's a bit of a tangent to the fact that there seems to have been a shift to a less effective training method

I should note, I agree the consensus should be challenged, and tradional methods generally aren't perfect, just that after decades there's been a decent process of trial, error and improvement, and you need a good bases for challenging them. I don't think sitting in a chair and going "well boxing is 3min rounds, with bursts of higher intensity, so that's what the conditioning training should look like" is a good reason. Especially considering that they often don't apply that reasoning to other areas. But that more just be them trying to explain to laypeople what they think is backed by science.

I'll see what I can find

 

It's more fun when you're on a trampoline. Don't ask how I know.

 

Looking at Shillstone stuff from when Spinks beat Holmes, he doesn't appear to shun roadwork, but seems to think of it as weight reduction, and doesn't seem to understand aerobic base building, but that was a long time ago, I can't see if his ideas have changed or not.

 

I was thinking about this, and I think weakness here is that the comparison is to 1950. The big running backs tended to come into the league in the 1950's and 1960's, so runners got a lot bigger during that era. They haven't gotten bigger since for the most part.

Here are the top five AFL & NFL rushers in 1964

AFL
Cookie Gilcrist (6' 3" 251)
Matt Snell (6' 2" 219)
Clem Daniels (6' 1" 220)
Sid Blanks (6' 1" 200)
Abner Haynes (6' 0" 190)

NFL
Jim Brown (6' 2" 232)
Jim Taylor (6' 0" 214)
J. H. Johnson (6' 2" 210)
Bill Brown (5' 11" 228)
Don Perkins (5' 10" 204)

This averages out to 217 lbs to the 2016 average of 223 lbs. The 1964 group is quite a bit larger on the average than the 1950 group, and is closer to the 2016 group.

The actual top runners in the NFL & AFL were Brown and Gilcrist. I wouldn't, and I think most wouldn't, be willing to put any money at all on the 2018 NFC & AFC rushing leaders being bigger than those two.

I think this makes a strong case that running backs have not gotten that much bigger over the last 50 years. Any increase would be more a slight one in average, but that might well be due to changes in team strategy and rules. An Abner Haynes or Lenny Moore type today would probably be exclusively a receiver rather than a runner at all.

As for Jim Brown lacking explosiveness, I question it. Doing research, I discovered a claim that he was timed at 9.8 for the 100 hundred yard dash. Not the fastest, but fast for such a big guy, although on the football field you get hit even on many long runs, so strength and balance might matter more than sheer speed.

 

I couldn't find a 40 yard time for Bob Hayes,

but his time in the 60 yard dash was 5.9

 

Why do you consider boxing “mostly aerobic”? Is that the conventional wisdom? I’m not sure about that one. Maybe back when guys fought 40 rounds, threw one punch at a time, and spent more time tussling than punching.

 

Bob Hayes may be the fastest guy to ever play the game on the pro level.

His anchor leg on the 64 400m relay was reportedly timed at 8.9 seconds...

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What reliable sources did you find for Jim Brown's 100 time? I briefly looked into this once and couldn't find any.

The time you found is faster than what I'd read but still would probably put him somewhere in the middle of the pack of the guys I mentioned. A man who was considered an absolute freak-of-nature athlete in his day in terms of size, strength, and speed, would seem a lot more ordinary (physically) if he teleported into today's league.

 

So each round is 3 minutes.

The energy systems in running have been well studied
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11194103
In highly trained people
200m 29+/-4% aerobic
400m 43+/-1% aerobic
800m 66+/-2% aerobic
1500m 84+/-1% aerobic

https://researchoutput.csu.edu.au/ws/portalfiles/portal/8692449/PID+8029.pdf
400m male 41% aerobic
400m female 45% aerobic
800m male 60% aerobic
800m female 70% aerobic
They also found that a larger anaerobic contribution was linked to worse performance

https://www.jsams.org/article/S1440-2440(04)80025-2/abstract
100m male 21% aerobic
100m female 25% aerobic
200m male 28% aerobic
200m female 33% aerobic

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02640410400021963
1500m male 77% aerobic
1500m female 86% aerobic
3000m male 86% aerobic
3000m female 96% aerobic

Looking at the times for these, as well as the fact these are single events, not repeated bouts, let alone 12.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00421-011-2071-4
For taekwondo, and only 3 2min rounds, they found it to be 66 ± 6% aerobic. This seems surprisingly anaerobic compared to the runners, however 30 ± 6% of the anaerobic energu is the alactic pathway, and only 4 ± 2% is lactic.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00421-007-0501-0
Or how about rock climbing
For an indoor climb (so pretty short though it doesn't specify how long) by elite climbers

Easy route 41.5 aerobic, 41.1 alactic and 17.4% lactic
Moderate route 45.8 aerobic, 34.6 alactic and 21.9% lactic
Difficult route 41.9 aerobic, 35.8 alactic and 22.3% lactic

So while it's mostly anaerobic, the aerobic pathway is still the biggest of the contributers, and most of the anaerobic is alactic, so not what the hard intervals even train.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17461390300073103
For repeated bursts of swimming 10x1m with 30s recoveries, 20s recoveries, or 10m of swimming with no recoveries, it was 67.4±8.5%, 81.0 ±10.4%, and 93.3 ±1.1% aerobic respectvely

https://journals.humankinetics.com/doi/abs/10.1123/ijspp.2015-0750
For Judo matches of 1-5mins (single bout), they found that they were consistently mostly aerobic

Or if we want to talk about scientific training
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1600-0838.2010.01184.x
"Performance in intense exercise events, such as Olympic rowing, swimming, kayak, track running and track cycling events, involves energy contribution from aerobic and anaerobic sources. As aerobic energy supply dominates the total energy requirements after ∼75 s of near maximal effort, and has the greatest potential for improvement with training, the majority of training for these events is generally aimed at increasing aerobic metabolic capacity"

 

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Annoyingly this has a French voiceover.

An interesting fact about Percy Cerutty, was he was one of the first get runners weight training. You can see one of his exercises is a "cheat curl", which I think is probably better described as a muscle clean. I've heard he favoured low rep weight lifting, I notice it only shows a few reps then cuts, so I wonder if the editors wanted to make it look like they were doing higher reps, but actually they were only doing 3s or something, supposedly he never had them go over 5 reps.

He was actually involved in the training of boxer Jimmy Carruthers for his unsuccessfull comeback after 7 years out. I don't know much about how involved he was, or what his training looked like. But Cerutty's training ideas were part of his Stotan philosophy and lifestyle (combination of Spartan and Stoic), and to a large extent the athlete's training was pretty autonomous.

https://www.scienceofrunning.com/2016/11/percy-cerutty-the-eccentric-stotan.html?v=79cba1185463

Here's some stuff on Lydiard training. Though his views changed over the years and there's a fair bit of debate on the details, this contradicts some of the stuff I've seen on his training elsewhere, but the gist is the same.
https://www.scienceofrunning.com/20...father-of-modern-training.html?v=79cba1185463
http://www.fitnesssports.com/lyd_clinic_guide/Arthur Lydiard.pdf (I'm going to go through this later.)

A more recent coach that's worth learning from is Charlie Francis, the coach of Ben Johnson, A pretty good case of innovation with his short to long training system
Here's some stuff about his training thoughts, I'll try and dig up some other stuff if people are interested, and find something to give more of an overview of his training
https://www.t-nation.com/training/high-octane-training-1
https://www.t-nation.com/training/high-octane-training-2
https://www.t-nation.com/training/high-octane-training-3

Edit: A pretty surprising comment from Charlie Francis in the second one
". . . I've always had a significant aerobic component in my running programs (about 35% anaerobic, 65% aerobic). These runs act as an "active recovery," enhancing blood flow and increasing capillary density (the enhanced microscopic network slows down the flow of blood past the cells, allowing more time for complete nutrient transfer)."

 

Disagree slightly on this notion. I believe Brown in a once in generation type of athlete, and with modern training and equipment, he wouldn't be middle of the pack. You can't give somebody the benefits of Modern training, that can even focus extensively on things such as explosiveness (not so much during Brown's time), and not allow the other to do the same. Football is much more about gym work and specialized training than other sports. So Brown would be at a bigger disadvantage in a time machine scenario. For me, he separated himself so much further than other backs have with their peers across all eras, that imo means he's special and transcendent. He won the rushing title 8 out of 9 years. That's unheard of. The next best run is O.J.'s at 4 out 5 years. Everybody else, Payton, Smith, Sanders, Dickerson, Campbell, Petterson etc etc, never came close to that level of dominance. There are special athletes, and Brown might have been the most special in many ways.

 

I think I ought to post something to put this together.

So looking at that studies on energy system utilization, and at the training methods of coachs from different sports including Lydaird and Charlie Francis, I think a sensible conclusion is that on the fitness side most of the training should be aerobic, with alactic power training, and only doing a short period of lactic tolerance work to help peak for fights. Obviously, this may need to be comprimised somewhat for skill work, sparring etc., but for the majority of training avoid lactic acid as much as possible, and focus developing your aerobic system, and include alactic power training (up to 7 seconds, full recovery), though I'm generally not sure if the latter counts as conditioning.

So, what do all the broscientists say everyone should do for conditioning? Focus on hard intervals! Lots and lots of lactic acid! No steady state aerobic developement, other than maybe a small amount for active recovery.

This is why I say tradional is better than fad, tradional generally is a bit off, this fad stuff is often as wrong as you can get.