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

Why must there be another reason? Are you saying that lifting heavy things *in general* was selected out? If so, why on every old time vs modern thread do we see people extolling the virtues of old timey farm work, Marciano tossing boulders, wrestling, Willard allegedly lifting 500 pound hay bales over his head, Sullivan with his barrel of nails that you mentioned in this thread, etc.?

If anything, these examples suggest to me that boxing trainers realized they *did* need something like weight training, but were too ignorant of it, or prejudiced against it, to reach out and grab it before Spinks burst the dam in the 80s.

Thing is, boxing wasn't the only sport to adopt weight training. Others adopted it too; the "musclebound" myth wasn't just boxers. Boxing just lagged behind in realizing that it worked. Which is exactly what we would expect in a tradition-heavy, conservative sport like boxing.

 

Also, was Carnera on PEDs? He had great stamina and was also flexible. Was Jeffries? That guy was huge too. And again, great stamina.

I don't see why the muscles built by weight training would be different from the ones that people already have. Jeffries and Johnson were big, muscular guys. Sharkey stacked as much muscle onto his frame as it was reasonably feasible to have. Those muscles didn't tire out quickly. Why would muscles suddenly get tired and oxygen-deprived *just because* they were built by weight training?

 

Presumably non-weight-trained athletes, who are a very rare species these days. Spinks, I'm guessing, hadn't trained with weights before, which would have given him the advantage in building strength and muscle that novices have. That might partly explain Shilstone's results.

 

"heavily muscled strong men" probably gassed out because they were strong men first and had recently started boxing. The ones you're thinking about probably fought "tight" and had not learned to relax in the ring.

Even strongman Paul Anderson was able to start boxing at 27, with probably little to no boxing skills and go 2-2. He probably never had good training and he probably never learned to relax. The ones he lost were due to a disqualification for throwing a guy down, and he gassed after flooring his opponent 3 times in the other loss. The guy he knocked down 3 times later went the distance with Bobby Halpern, a good amateur who was making his pro debut, so the opponent had some skill. Although Anderson was listed at 5-9, 290-300 pounds, with short arms, his strength/explosiveness allowed him to at least be a dangerous opponent.

Then there is Leif Larsen http://boxrec.com/en/boxer/215380 , he started at 28 and was more successful than most would expect from a person who started that late. He was a big, strong athlete who beat some decent fighters and gave Odlanier Solis a tough fight despite having little experience. Larsen at one time held the NFL Combine record for most bench press reps with 225 pounds.

These people started late, didn't really have a good base for boxing, but strength and explosiveness allowed them to at least be dangerous and in Larsen's case, he even became a decent fighter. Guys like them, along with Louis Monaco, show me that strong people can compete better than others who lack boxing skills and can be dangerous to even people with good boxing skills. For a person who has boxing skills, getting stronger has to help.

 

A professional strongman literally became heavyweight champion of the world, pre-steroids. What more could the community of strongmen reasonably be expected to accomplish in a completely different, and much more talent rich, sport?

 

There will always be exceptions to rules. I agree there have always been bodybuilder looking fighters who were proven to have decent endurance. I certainly accept this. But for a very long time, perhaps historically, for each of those exceptions countless others did not make the grade because of all the usual flaws associated with being too muscular. Do you think this is what the trainers based this bias on? The numbers showed that most were hindered because of being too muscular. If the numbers were the other way around pre PEDs I guarantee weight lifting would have been embraced within boxing hundreds of years earlier.

Today we say that’s how it used to be. Now heavily developed muscular fighters fare as well as anyone else. I guess the numbers show that weigh training is beneficial. But then there has also been a change in sports science hasn’t there?

 

This is a good post.

Yes strong guys really do have the power edge. But like everything else too much of anything and not enough of another is not good.

To truly master boxing, like anything else, the focus has to be on being able to box. If any student is devoting more time to anything else other than first learning the noble art in the beginning he will suffer once the bell rings. And like all things that are mastered you have to continue practicing all of the time.

 

What numbers would these be?

Do you have statistics from the pre-steroid era about the relative boxing success of weight trained people versus untrained people entering the sport?

Because the only evidence I've seen so far is the widespread belief among boxing trainers that weightlifting was bad, without any numbers at all backing it up.

 

Boxers embraced dehydration among heavyweights for over a century, as a way of improving performance. They were dehydrating fighters as late as Foreman. By your reasoning, it wouldn't have been widely accepted if it wasn't true.

 

I have no numbers at all to back up the well known thought that strength alone is not enough. that an incorrect balance of strength over endurance is not good.

As Pat says all newbys gass early. Even the ones that never did weights. Big strong guys new to boxing gass out too. Maybe it is equal?

Professional boxing has always been financially lucrative for successful managers and trainers. Anything new that could be seen as something to get an extra edge has been thoroughly explored to exhaustion. Hypnosis, Yoga (Remember Lou Nova and his cosmic punch?) Dynamic tension, pulling weights on cables, dieting fads, leapfrogging, skipping, wood chopping, etc etc... and the very first thing was weight lifting. It’s as old as boxing and was there at the very beginning.

Then sports science, and everything changed.

 

If all you're saying is that it's a bad idea to exclusively train with weights and ignore endurance, I agree with you. But I thought you were arguing a lot more than that.

Right, which is why the old distrust of boxing training looks more like prejudice than an accurate position.

Same could be said for all the other sports that adopted weight training. Why is boxing unique?

Also, what is the evidence that 19th century boxers were experimenting with resistance training close to what a modern person would use? There's William Miller and some of the early physical culturists who would use gymnastics and a REALLY primitive bent press in the 1880s. Then what?

 

I think part of why weight training took so long to catch on is that you have to do it right. If you do it like body builders and others who just want to be big, then it's going to be bad for your performance in boxing. The kind of mass you put on with that kind of training better fits the old prejudices about becoming unflexible and muscle bound.

But they are prejudices since you don't have to work out in that way. If you work composite muscle groups instead of isolated and do fewer reps and of course combine it with calisthenics and endurance training, you will generally see good results.

My guess is that perhaps some fighters pre sports science went into the gym and trained like the guys who were in there. But the problem is that those guys generally trained to become big, not to excel in any actual sports. So the results for boxers doing the same kind of work out weren't good and therefore the word spread that you shouldn't touch weights. Could be something like that.

 

Boxing fans are funny. I don't think there's a wide spread belief among any other set of fans that the old timers had it right and more modern practitioners have lost the plot. Even sports with lots of traditions and often conservative fans like football, tennis and golf accept that the newer metods, which includes weight training, are superior. Very few would look at C. Ronaldo and then Dagliesh and say that Ronaldo's muscle bound frame would make it impossible for him to compete in the Liverpool team of the late 70's early 80's. Instead they conclude that, yes, times have moved on.

 

True.

 

True. Except in some martial arts, which is what boxing (more or less) is. Whatever makes people say that Rickson Gracie beats up anybody today is probably at work in boxing's debates as well.

But to be fair, I think there really *are* differences between combat sports and everything else, which makes the claim that Louis beats Klitschko less obviously ridiculous than the claim that Donald Dinnie outperforms top decathlon guys.