Does a prime Jack Dempsey beat the Joshua of today?

Why all the ad hominem venom, little buddy? I’m going to post a video the next time I’m in front of a heavybag. Just for you!

Haven’t been in an actual boxing gym in several years (probably since before you started following the sport) and I still won’t look half as novice-like on the bag as your pal. Why you care so much about this is beyond me. Wish we could just stick to the topics that have been raised in this thread...Peace.

 

Do you consider yourself highly knowledgeable about the training regimens and workouts used by boxers throughout history, from the early years of the sport through the present?

 

I consider myself highly knowledgeable about science and the scientific method(s), and I know science contributes absolutely nothing to the training of athletes.
As always, if anyone thinks this is a bold statement, start citing peer reviewed papers.

If by "modern training" you mean simply that practices change somewhat over time, then sure, there is such thing as "modern" training, or at least currently fashionable training. But this is true in the most trivial possible sense.

If on the other hand you mean that modern science provides the slightest good reason to believe that ridiculous metal-frame contraption with the elastic bands that Holyfield strapped to his back is any better than simply shadow boxing with hand weights, I will rather ungently yank that rug right out from under you.

 

Ok. Assuming arguendo that everything you write is accurate, it still seems that you may be conflating the absence of evidence with evidence of absence. The fact that nobody ever bothered to randomize boxers' training and nutritional regimens for clinical trials (or even come up with any clever natural/quasi-experiments) obviously tells us nothing about whether modern training approaches are superior to those used in the past. BTW, do you have a theory about why certain training and nutrition approaches come into favor in the first place? Boxing is full of knowledgeable, experienced, savvy individuals who have extremely strong incentives to optimize these things.

 

Of course it's possible that modern training methods are superior by sheer serendipity, but it's also possible that there is a German shepherd in my back yard at this moment. It's not absurd or even terribly implausible, but there is no active reason whatsoever to believe it.

 

There are plenty of reasons to infer that modern training and nutrition regimens are likely superior to those used many decades ago. Before I get into them though, is your skepticism specific to boxing or does it extend to other sports too, like basketball and (American) football? Do you have any other explanation for why so many experienced, motivated, well-informed fighters and trainers have come to embrace certain approaches and tactics over time? Do you believe that it's just some kind of mimetic isomorphism?

 

Yes, my skepticism extends to all sports, and yes, I have an alternative explanation. I'm about to go to bed, but very briefly, your pointed question could just as easily be asked of leeching and mercury treatments in the eighteenth century -and yet medicine was, on balance, literally worse than worthless until at least the very late nineteenth century. For god's sake boxers *still* hit speed bags, and that useless contraption is based upon a premise that is demonstrably false (i.e., that you can train coordination and reflexes in a generally applicable sense like you can strength or endurance).
Hitting a speed bag will only ever improve your ability to hit a speed bag. (Well, it will burn calories too, but that's about it.)

As for nutrition, scientific research on that subject is limited almost entirely to how diet affects health and longevity, not athletic performance, and even there the results are highly inconclusive and hotly contested.

 

http://www.sportsci.org/news/news9709/hatfield.html


Whole article on "modern training methods", funnily enough, referring to Evander.

Don't care about either side of the debate, just an interesting read from a trainer.

 

He wouldn't get up off the canvas.

 

Did you notice what this self-promoting "conditioning expert" did not do at any point in that article?

 

I dunno. What? I really don't care for the argument either way. Just posting an interesting read.

 

He never provides the slightest evidence for what he says. A real expert will always - no exceptions - spend at least some time explaining how he knows what he claims he knows. A person who doesn't is either a crackpot or a charlatan. Always.

 

He gives before and after results of the training