[Sports Illustrated, 1985]: Article on Michael Spinks and Shilstone

I agree with all this. And yes, Roach relies on other trainers for strength and conditioning.

Are you arguing here that weight training only improves sport performance if you use PEDs?

Do you have any source for this?

 

I think it is well documented that PEDs allow for greater sport performance. There was no real advantage for a fighter weight training before. Seems to me there is a correlation.

Otherwise where was the advantage before?

I have sources where fighters have said that opponents who failed drugs tests didn’t get tired and took punches better.

 

It's an interesting question why weight training didn't cross-pollinate with boxing for so long, but I don't think boxing was unique in not adopting weight training early.

For one thing, I think it simply took a while for people to figure physical training out.

EDIT: This point in particular would be a good subject for a future thread. Will store in memory banks for future reference.

I agree that PEDs improve sport performance.

What I'm wondering about is a source that says weight training alone, without PEDs, has no effect on sport performance.

I mean, high school teams in a variety of sports use weight training quite often. They're not all on roids.

 

There are many sources that say Weight training alone (without PED) is detrimental for boxers. You produced one yourself in the opening article.

Suddenly it has an effect on sport Performance for boxers after so many years of bodybuilders and strong men having to undo everything they did before in order to function as a boxer.

 

mrkoolkevin produced that article.

Weights are basically universal in sports at this point. Are they just a cover for steroids in tennis, track & field, wrestling, judo, baseball , basketball, golf, football, etc.?

If so, I would expect medical studies to exist proving that weight training alone, *without* steroids, has no positive effect on sport performance in any of those sports.

 

No I don’t believe weight training is a cover in all sports for steroid use. I believe weight training without steroids can be beneficial to a great many sporting activities. I am certain of this.

Up to a point weight training can have benefited performance in most sports.

However, Boxing training has always been very intensive, always been a very serious thing that has seen many things come and go. yet ever since the bowels of time anything other than moderate weight training has been frowned upon in boxing. Weightlifting in particular. History has been very clear on this.

Evidence of medical studies proving that weight training alone, *without* steroids, having no positive effect on sport performance in any other sports should not be required. There is plenty of evidence from trainers in boxing saying exactly this until the PED explosion.

 

I agree with this. Perhaps this is what the traditionalist boxing trainers felt too, that weights aren't a replacement for proper aerobic work which is much more important in the long run. They recognised early on that the time an athlete needs to recover to benefit from one session effects what they can fit into the overall training program. That’s why weightlifting was “naturally selected” out of the boxing training regimen.

 

Ok, so it seems we agree that other sports have benefited from weight training, even without PEDs. What is unique about boxing, athletically, that makes weight training useless for it?

 

It's a fair counter that training isn't a monolith, is changed throughout time, and there's always people doing different things. There's still people doing more tradional stuff now.

I've made other points ITT, but the main reason is because the modern conditioning methods, just aren't very good, I've made the argument why, over several post in another thread, and I don't think I could make it again much more concisely. There's other stuff to modern training, but a lot of it I don't object too (though I think some of the benefits aren't that great).

It may have gained popularity, but it hasn't done it through grass routs success either, which makes it much more questionable. If you just work with peoplr who are already the top athletes (likely stick them on PEDs), you're going to get success, and when people are told that's the reason for success, and that it's science, you're obviously going to get people following it.

It's hard to say how much of the longevity is questionable substances. But I think a bigger thing is just career management, a lot of older boxers were thrown into a higher level at a much younger age than a lot are now, and they fought a lot more regularly, plus longer fights. I actually think glove size might play a big part, smaller gloves make you mean open, forcing you to rely more on reflexes and chin, hardly helps longevity. There's examples both ways in all eras too. Guys who go off the rails young (like Broner), and guys who are world class into their 40's (Fitzsimmons, Moore), though obviously that doesn't disproove the trend.

True. For heavyweights, or going up divisions, the benefits are fairly obvious. Otherwise the benefits are fairly marginal, and there's some risks to it. If you do it wrong you can cause imbalances, mobility issues, or make it too hard to make weight. Not to mention just overtraining trying to include it, or missing out something more important like you said. It's really where stuff like periodisation becomes important.

 

For it to be naturally selected out, it would first need to have made it in. When would you have expected boxers to make mass use of weight training, and where would they have learned it?

Bear in mind also that there were myths about weight training reducing flexibility as late as the 80s, when it generally increases range of motion.

 

It's not entirely a myth, depending on how it's done, it can either reduce or increase flexiility.

Your body adapts to the ROM you train.

 

Right, your position, as I understand it, is that the ultimate arbiter of good training are scientific studies.

I wasn't sure what choklab's position was, since he might be arguing that tradition trumps peer reviewed literature.

 

Frankly, the crazy ROMs from turn of the century weightlifting (which is when a lot of the traditional boxing training patterns emerged) were a lot wider than basic lifts today. So much so that a lot of them look unsafe.

In any case, the myth doesn't say that lifting can have a variable effect on flexibility, but that lifting is bad and makes you musclebound, tout court.

 

Not entirely. They're a good source of information, but there's very few long enough term sports science studies, and for some reason they rarely seem to base them off what athletes actually do, so I think coaching knowledge matters too, but I think it should mostly come from people that have proven themselves able to develop athletes from a low level to world class, and that's why I have so much respect for coaches like Lydaird and Charley Francis (not that I think they are always 100% right), even though they are from different sports.

I was meaning that it wasn't entirely a myth, in that it is something that could happen if weights aren't properly implemented.

I think something that is often missed from flexibility discussions is often there is a right amount of flexibility that is the best, rather than more always being better.

With weightlifting there was a lot of different stuff though, like there was people doing a lot of isolation work even early which isn't going to help a boxer that much. And they did stuff like floor press instead of bench press which is shorter ROM.

I think with some of the old weight lifting stuff, they were more intended to be impressive than anything else, like the bent lift, a lot of which was coordination, since they didn't want people to be able to match it.

 

Right, and this is another point that is missing from the question of why people didn't use weight training earlier.

All of the bugs hadn't been worked out of weight training, either. It was the pet sport of fat German strongmen, with all sorts of weird circus performance lifts like the bent press.

And it's not like weights were cheap. As late as the 50s or 60s, you had to mail order relatively expensive weight sets that only weighed 110 pounds. I don't think easily adjustable dumbbells were the norm for a long time, either. Bearing in mind that boxing is a sport for poorer people (who often don't have access to fat German strongmen to teach them proper technique for an oddball fringe sport), that is a problem.

You have to know about stuff like proper technique, which again, who's going to teach it to you? Weightlifting wasn't exactly mainstream, and there weren't weight rooms everywhere like today.

There's also the innate conservatism of all martial sports. Why depart from what works, when the cost of failure is getting punched in the face by a trained face-puncher?