First-hand account of Marciano's diet and workout regimen (1952)

I'll just throw out something for the orthodox Marciano side...

9 or 10 miles a day may not be as ridiculous as it sounds. Muay Thai kickboxing champions in Thailand are apparently putting up mileages like that, including sprints, and also doing tons of sparring on top of all that. Thai camps have a very masochistic training philosophy, which basically weeds out people who don't have freakish abilities to survive overtraining. Marciano might have just been one of those guys who could survive really high volumes of exercise.

It's still ultimately going to depend on who has the more reliable sources. Still, I wouldn't say that the high-end stats are impossible.

 

How many threads have I started attacking a modern fighter?

Has there ever even been one, I am not sure?

You claim that Marciano fanboy's are the problem!

So who is starting the threads?

Who is waging the war here?

 

Incidentally, I have offered to match Marciano's claimed mileages, multiple times.

 

You'd need to include some sparring as well.

But yeah, it would be an interesting adventure in experimental history. Start a thread. Go for it!

 

For example:

Claimed training volumes for one Muay Thai champion, when not preparing for a fight:

Monday thru Saturday, morning: Run 6 miles with sprints, followed by 2 hours Muay Thai
Monday thru Saturday, evening: Run 3 miles with sprints, followed by 3 hours Muay Thai
Sunday: 30 minutes relaxed training.

Fight prep was similar, except that Sunday was the same as the other days.

From: Muay Thai Training Exercises, Christoph Delp, p. 174.

You can find other articles online where people who trained in Thailand will mention daily mileages in the 9 mile range. Some closer to 6 miles, some above 9. And that's aside from the sparring, bagwork, etc.

EDIT: This is probably a bad idea for most people, and would result in burnout. But the Thai camps apparently grind up people who can't handle these kinds of volumes and spit them out early, anyway. Marciano wouldn't be the first guy in history who won the genetic lottery; we already know he was athletic enough to become heavyweight champion.

 

I am confident that I could match any roadwork claimed for a fighter, by a primary source.

No sparring, but would it count if I held down a job?

The problem is, that it wouldn't really p[rove much.

The new wave of Marciano fans, would say "so what."

 

A manual labor job?

 

OK, so you don't rate him very highly as a fighter, but you are obsessed with the minutia of his training regime?

 

No, an office one.

 

I ask because Seamus et. al. are making a slightly more subtle claim. I don't think they're saying that no human could put up those kinds of mileages. Instead, I think they're saying that Marciano couldn't put up those mileages and also train enough in boxing to compete at an elite level.

 

Janitor is one of those loons (actually I have much respect) who does ultramarathons so I'm sure he could do nuts numbers. I am in my dotage and do a sensible amount on the road... About what Marciano did...40 miles a week.

I'm also guessing that janitor is not 5-10 and 190... That frame takes a lot more of a beating over the miles.

 

Ah. Interesting. So your argument also bypasses a lot of the data from the Thai camps, because they're all light, small fighters.

Just for the sake of completeness, do you have any sources about Marciano-sized guys being unable to do tons of roadwork?