Harold Johnson - Frightenly Muscular

I don't believe he was on anything stronger than grape juice.

Boxers and trainers are notoriously resistant to radical new ideas. They may have broadened their horizons a bit in recent years, but in Johnson's time steroids were practically unheard of, in the west. ****, weight training was practically unheard of back then, especially in boxing.

Do you honestly think old-school guys like Johnson would happily let someone jab them in the butt once or twice a week with a needle? Or maybe swallow of few odd looking pills with their coffee in the mornings?
Come on.

 

Either way it didnt do Harold much good against soft Willie Pastrano.:good

 

I agree completely. Some guys are ripped like Johnson, Holyfield, etc, but i don't believe for a second that the less "impressive" looking guys like Marciano, Johansson, etc, train even a bit less hard. In boxing, looks are more deceiving than anywhere else. Or Briggs would've knocked out Ibragimov with ease.

 

I recently met Dutch road warrior Raymond Joval (great guy btw), who would probably be classified as a journeyman or fringe contender, but even he was on a pretty strict diet. I think it's safe to say that championship level boxers have the right diet but genetics is ultimately the determining factor when it comes to looks.

 

It is. And as you and McGrain say, a well-built fighter isn't necessarily physically better than a rather smooth looking, less muscular guy.

 

Then they were juicing, simple as that. The myth that scrawny guys can get huge, big muscles without drugs is just that.

 

Stop talking out your ass, consistantly high protein diets and resistance training builds muscle. If you build 4lbs of muscle a month you gain 48lbs of muscle in a year, IE a load of muscle. Now imagine that constantly over a period of years

 

True ... but one can only have so much genetic potential for growth, even if one follows all the right training, dietary and rest guidelines.

Eventually, everyone will reach plateaus and then getting through each one becomes more and more difficult ... yes, it is easy for a novice to gain some 40lbs of muscle in a year/year and a half, but once they start getting into above average weight lifter/bodybuilder territory ... those gains slow down significantly.

In my training experience, I've found that many very skinny people get to a certain size and then when the size gains start to slow down immensely, they become prone to seeking the 'benefits' of 'artificial assistance'.

I do believe that ANYBODY can put on size, but genetics do have an ultimate say in just what one can do training clean.

 

i guess he only watches amateurs then

 

But it doesn't happen like that. Meta5 has pretty much summed it up already, and I agree with what he said.

Even pro bodybuilders will struggle to put on just 20 pounds of muscle a year after several years, and they're the genetic elite.

Cast your mind back to 1992. Dorian Yates enters the Mr. Olympia weighing 242 pounds, if memory serves. The next year he came in at 257, which represents only a 15 pound gain in muscle mass.
People could not believe he had put on that much size in only a single year.
Yes, guys like Coleman and Cutler have also done it. but it's rare...very rare. And again, these guys are the absolute elite in building muscle and are also taking copious amounts of steroids. They were never, at any stage of their lives, the proverbial 98 pound weakling. Never.

Seriously, I can't believe you think any old body can just ingest a lot of protein and do weight training and get big. Bigger yes, but that's relative to the person concerned.

If that were the case, there would be legions of big, muscular guys walking around. The opposite is the case. Most gyms have a small minority of big guys, while the vast majority of trainees are struggling to add just 5 pounds of muscle to their physiques, let alone 48.
Thousands upon thousands of guys flock to gyms every year to get big, yet how many big guys do you see walking around?
The percentage is tiny compared to the amount of people trying their butts off.
I'm talking about people not on steroids.

Sure, in a lot of cases you can write it off to lack of effort or a bad routine or both, but many are ticking all the right boxes yet still struggle to add serious size.

As Meta5 said already, the gains become harder to come by year by year. Almost anyone can gain muscle pretty quickly initially, but after 3 or 4 years you hit a plateau and thereafter it is that is extremely difficult to add meaningful size without resorting to drugs.

In addtion, I've yet to meet anyone who gained significant size without gaining a fair amount of bodyfat. There are few exceptions, in my experience.
So you may after a number of years have the size, but not the shape. That's another story.

 

Genetics are a help, but hard solid work ethic can get you damn close if you desire it badly enough....











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