Any tough kids here who do some old school training? Those old school greats did over 20+ sparring rounds, because fights were usually over 20 rounders. They also skipped rope like 2 hours a day and ran 15 miles.
Nope, I don't think sparring too many rounds actually helps to improve your movements and combat reactions, at some point you just try to keep standing from tiredness (conditioning routine is better for that), stop trying to use new stuff (drills are better for that) and risk both your partner and yourself to take too much damage.
I think that's true. There also seems to have been way, way more emphasis on traditional defensive boxing skills and head movement which would have made sparring more often (and actually having matches much more frequently) survivable. Then again, now that top level boxing has moved out of the states and is increasingly being dominated by fighters from eastern Europe and Asia (Latin America, too, but then they've been steadily producing great boxers for decades now)...perhaps boxing is returning to its roots to an extent in terms of skills and technique. But maybe that's a different thread
Yes, gloves were 4-6 oz which made blocking a punch for main defense almost useless. Parrying and slipping were almost exclusively relied upon.
Terry Norris and James Toney used to do lots of sparring rounds every day and both have brain damage.
You don't get a faster 100m time by training for the 400m all the time. You might even get worse because of how you would pace yourself. Specificity in training is always going to have the most transfer of training to the actual sport. There are other ways to make things harder like wearing light ankle weights than a 100% increase in time that you are going to use a completely different pace than the fight.
Yeah, and at least they were pro fighters who fought for a living. There's no reason for some hobbyist to spar a lot.
curious where you read this, and the era you're talking about, and who these "old school" fighters were? I assume most people on this forum are amateurs and should not be doing anything close to your suggested "old school" training (fighting less than ten minutes a match would not require roadwork over a half marathon daily).
Hey I'm new to boxing so forgive me if I'm missing the obvious, why would having a 4-6 oz glove make blocking as a main defense useless? I mean, even with a pretty light glove shouldn't blocking be relatively easy?
The gloves were a lot smaller than a 4-6 oz of today because of the material which was horse hair instead of the foam/horsehair combination of today which provides more protection. If you ever look at old fighters like Jack Johnson and Jeffries you can see that the gloves are just absolutely tiny. This content is protected If a fighter were to block with gloves then a punch could slip through rather easily. Not to mention hand injuries (main purpose of a glove) because of less padding. Blocking punches for 25 rds would be absolutely murder on the hands.
because blocking sucks. force is still absorbed past the gloves into the head. blocking is necessary to learn as a beginner, so when that FLASH goes off they know how to do the bare minimum of protect their head and jaw line with their hands up. watch the old fighters and they use more parries, and slips with counters.
