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

I respectfully disagree.

There’s always a new fad, a new way to do things that’s supposed to be the new super soldier serum. You check back in 10 or 20 years and the ‘newer’ new thing has replaced it and they discredit what came before.

Ray Robinson ran in army boots and ate steak as a prefight meal — and had the cook bring him the blood from the steak/cow in a glass and drank it. Seems like he turned out OK. Do we really think if he had a nutritionist and lifted weights that he’d be a lot better?

Consider also that the guys in those days were training for a different game. They had to go 15 rounds. They had to weigh in on the day of the fight. Wind sprints are great for short, explosive bursts but try getting ready for a high-paced, 15-round fight without running distances and see where you end up. (And neither Holmes-Spinks fight was high-paced.) Try to get a classic lightweight champ to lift weights and bulk up and find out he’s now a welterweight (or maybe even a junior middle or middleweight) and fighting naturally bigger guys because he’s 140-something on the day of fight when he’d have to weigh in — tell me how that extra muscle and weight benefit him.

And the way Ray Leonard and Ray Robinson trained? That wouldn’t be ideal for the London Prize Ring rules marathons. They’d probably pass out if they had to do what Sullivan and Kilrain did for 70-plus rounds in the Mississippi heat (hell Robinson passed out in less than 15 when he tried to fight a bigger guy who hardly threw 10 punches around).

It comes down to training for the rules of the game as they’re played in your era. These days a guy like Ray Robinson would probably be drained down to lightweight (or lower) with a day-before weigh-in and hydrated to 150-something by the time he got in the ring. But would he be greater? I doubt it.

 

I will say this: weight training and the like seems to be more than a fad that will be gone in 10 years. Shilstone's approach is now over 30 years old, with no signs of going away. Same deal with the nutritionist, except that using a nutritionist seems pretty commonsensical on its face, with no real drawbacks. (I doubt it's going to harm a guy's prep efforts to employ someone who tells him, "Eat healthy, mostly organic stuff.")

 

It is just a waste of money.
I guess it is another person to blame if you lose though, which is handy.

 

Yes, but exactly what they tell people to eat and how to use weights (and what for) shifts like the sand on the bottom of the sea.

There’s no money in a personal trainer/strength coach/nutritionist/dietician saying ‘well just keep doing what they started doing 30 years ago, they figured it out.’ They always have to have an angle that they’re on the cutting edge.

Used to be fighters (like Robinson) and football players and the like ate steak as pregame/prefight meal. Then carbo loading became the fad. Now it’s more eat lean. I remember when wheat germ and riboflavin were the fad in sports nutrition.

It’s no different than fad diets. Scarsdale, AMA South Beach, Atkins… blah blah blah. A few years from now they’ll tell us that the vegan thing and keto (the current fads) aren’t the way to do it. A doctor I know when I was going on a diet and asked which one to try said, ‘I’ve invented the perfect diet: eat fewer calories and exercise more.’ Which is what it all comes down to — there are simply no magical elixirs.

And Shilstone’s program for Spinks was specifically to gain weight and move up two divisions so it’s application wouldn’t work for a bantamweight trying to stay at 118 or move down.

 

Agreed. He just used too many words to say "I helped Spinks lift weights and keep his stamina" It comes off so obnoxious and pretentious the way he worded it all.

 

I forgot how funny this was

Got to get in that fighting stance for your bicep curls.

 

They talk about Spinks’s training at around the 10 min mark here

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This is what I have been trying to say. It’s an advantage modern fighters have the better nutrition strategies they have available now. That along with superior training which was the case here. This was due to greater scientific knowledge and learning from the past.

 

I guarantee you this — history shows it’s true — reply to me with 5 or 10 things we ‘know’ today through sports science are ‘superior’ ways for boxers to train.

Set a reminder and come back in 10 years and you will find most, if not all, of them are considered what NOT to do … they’re regarded as bunk.

Because in 10 years, they’ll have the REAL answers thanks to SCIENCE … and 10 years after that people will be lol-ing that fighters actually believed those were the way to go.

Bottom line is there’s lots of ways to skin a cat. What matters is the talent and dedication and discipline.

Let Ray Robinson eat steak and find a guy on today’s cutting-edge nutrition and send him back in time to duplicate Ray’s accomplishments fighting that frequently with same-day weigh-ins and I’ll take Robinson 100 times out of 100.

Loma is considered maybe the prime example of a modern-science machine, right? He retired with a 18-3 record in his 30s, lol. Let him try it for 200 pro fights like Ray Robinson and see what his record would be, and what he looked like at that age with that kind of mileage on his body.