Most every pro boxer iv seen has an extremely underdeveloped chest relative to their other muscles. This doesn’t make sense to me, isnt the chest important for hooking motions? Anyone care to explain?
They don't do dips enough and rarely work on their full body strenght. Boxers need everything including strong chest, soulders, traps, lats, core, legs,neck...you need full strenght training.
Think about it like this - your arm takes the shape of the “tool” hook, straight, uppercut… your body “swings” that at your opponent. You shouldn’t be punching or pushing with your arms, it’s in the hips, the power starts from the floor up it’s a violent twist, Take a look at Bob Fitz no chest to him.
"Whilst physicians were examining him, Ruhlin (200lbs) opened his eyes and faintly asked for water. This was given him as he again lapsed into a sort of stupor. Blood at this time was trickling from his ears and nose.”—The San Francisco Call (HOFL Thread) Bird Chested Bob was around 158-170lbs here - what he weighed wasn’t known, heavyweights didn’t need to step on the scale but the writers estimated it was more 30lbs then 40lbs difference.
Honestly, I’d say most boxers, even at top level don’t know how to train, most are of the old school mindset of ‘Heavybag, run, spar’ etc, or thinking all they need to do is boxing itself, hitting the bag, sparring, hitting pads, but there is a great benefit to be had to implementing these things, sprinting, lifting and cardio (as in over a longer period of time), they’ll all come in handy at some point. Your chest is important in boxing as is every single muscle in the body, your chest for turning opponents, hooks, even straight punches to a degree. You need to train every single muscle in the body in boxing for peak force generation (heavier lifting), rate of force production (plyometrics) and endurance (light weight lifting).
How do you turn opponents with your chest? Describe to me exactly how a hook is to be thrown, the proper technique, from start to finish. Tell me how to throw a straight right hand, start to finish. Do you seriously think that boxers have not been sprinting, doing intervals, etc...since forever?
Because the chest perform arm adduction, which is the movement pattern which is being performed when you turn an opponent. A hook, you rotate your hips, twist your front foot with the ball of your foot and finally, your adduct the arm, and you do all of those things at the same time during a hook. A straight punch, you twist the ball of your back foot, twist your hips as well, you extend the arm, and in the movement pattern the arm performs elbow extension which is done by the tricep and arm adduction which is performed by the chest. I only mentioned sprinting and the other stuff whilst mentioning what fighters should do to benefit performance.
Throwing straight punches with a bodybuilder developed chest is not optimal for throwing straight punches.
True, but I think calisthencis built chest by doing weighted dips and pushups won't hurt your punching form tho.
Push-ups and full body workouts are rather common. I'd accuse modern boxers of many things, but not of neglectic the nutrition and sports science part of boxing.
I was about to add to this that weren’t most boxers from the 30s-70s all prescribed daily push ups? Lyles 1000 in an hour, Patterson could do a clip of 158, Lipton said Carter was a push up machine, Jersey Joe did 200 everyday as did Liston I believe, Foreman did archer push ups etc not that I think they helped but what do I know lol.
Boxing, hit without getting hit. No exact formula on how to train. I would rather have great reflexes than concentrate on my chest.
