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

I've been running competitive and non for 40 years. Its certainly possible but I think 2 things would happen ... Either you would get injured or you would lose a bit of that weight.

Again, my thought is that doing 70 to 90 mile weeks is effort misplaced for boxing and would detract from performance. And again, the contemporary reports are extremely consistent that he did around 40 miles a week.

 

So this would just be common, accepted experience within competitive running that heavier guys either lose their weight, or get injured regularly?

Just because he'd get injured? Or are you also talking about diminishing returns?

At the moment, I'm focusing on the question of whether it's even feasible for Marciano to do 70-90 mile weeks, leaving aside the question of whether he actually did it in reality. If it's basically impossible for a heavyweight to do that volume of running, then the orthodox view is already starting the debate with a serious handicap.

 

I do not speak for the running community. Some among them can be a bunch of prissy backbiting elitists who sit around and lie about their times and workouts, to be honest. You can never say never but 99% of guys with Marciano's frame would break down trying to do that many miles... or would naturally atrophy to a lighter weight... My caveat would be if he were mixing running and walking...

But again, a heavyweight championship boxer is training to box, not run. 90 miles a week is just unbalanced in the grand equation of what is needed in boxing training.

 

The guy didn't have the best stamina and work rate in history for nothing. To run 5-6 miles every day, to run 10 miles every day during training camp and to run 15 miles per day a week before the fight.

This is in addition to punching the bag, sparring and other excercises.

No wonder he was able to throw unlimited punches and get the ko eventually.

 

To put it all in perspective, there are people on Letsrun who've ran 200miles in a week, yeah they are people that are built to run, but that's still well over double what Marciano is said to have run.

 

Towards the end of my competitive fighting and athletics I had been working in a meat packing plant from the age of 18 on fleshing cow hides, loading trucks either carrying quarters of beef, loading boxed beef etc.....and my body was just beat up after a morning run of 2-5 miles work (manual labor from 8-12 hours) then the boxing gym in the evening for 2-3 hrs of exercise, bag work, jump rope and sparring.....doing manual labor like that and keeping healthy and uninjured is tough my back hurt and would lock up on me, my hands ached, and my muscles were fatigued I didn't reap many benefits from the manual labor WHILE still fighting. But if I was just a fighter without the physical stress of day in and day out hard labor plus training I wouldn't think the extreme version of his training would have been that out of the question with rests ad proper eating the 15 miles seems extreme for a boxer which I would doubt it seems time would have been better served and more along the lines of shadowboxing etc......

 

This definitely do not seem conducive to great stamina on match-day. Do you mean that he ran as much the week leading up to the fight or up to the week before the fight? If he rested the last week it's of course a different thing.

 

That is the literature out there on him today. Imagine if people like Tyson or Wilder had the stamina and fitness to throw 80-100 punches per round over a 12 round fight. Marciano never got tired from throwing punches from round 1 to 12 and eventually opponents who were comfortably outboxing and outpointing him got caught late in the fight.

 

Have to say that I trust the contemprorary media reports more. I don't doubt his stamina, rather that the kind of training you describe would build great stamina on match-day.

 

When did Marciano throw 80-100 punches a round for 12 rounds? Point me to that fight.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if Marciano did do some of the long mile runs (i.e. 10 + miles). If he did this though, it was probably periodised out of training camps / in between bouts, especially later on in his career. Some of this would also include walking, like the older eras before him. Periodisation has always existed (despite what some may think).

I know that Salvador Sanchez, as a Featherweight, used to run around 8 miles a day.

In any case, Marciano was doing something right. There is no boxer today as fit as Rocky, and that can't be denied.

Thais do indeed run around these miles, as you said. They usually do a 6 mile run in the morning before morning training , followed by around a 2 mile run to warm up for afternoon session. They also have some notorious weight cutting.

However, Thai sparring is very light, basically drill based. They are much more focused on pad drills. This isn't surprising, due to the frequency of bouts they have. Quite a few retired Thai legends also do not seem to be damaged from their careers, despite hundreds of bouts.

 

Did Marciano's diet including fighting old men, bums, and mob controlled fighters? Yeah I think it did.

 

Silly Marcianista propaganda. There have been plenty of boxers as fit or more fit than Marciano in recent history. Great champions don't happen by accident. This idea that Marciano was some outlier in regards to his regimen is nonsense. What I found earlier in this thread doesn't even sound especially difficult if it were one's full time job.

 

*Wilder eats cheesecake at weigh in*

Omg what a funny lad!

*Marciano has milkshakes after a fight*

Wait, is this guy really as great as it seems!?!?