Quote:
Originally Posted by
hitmandonny
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Bomp
Was about to post this. I agree that leg strength is vital. One old school example is Marciano who did ridicilous road work and was never unsteady on his legs.
Great point Bomp.
Take a close look at Marciano's physique.
He would have been a middleweight if it were not for his legs!!!
In this case it has more to do with his God given genes than as an effect of his roadwork. For more examples, just look at tree trunk legged fighters such as Liston or Tua. The strong legs were already there, it just needed to be conditioned for the long haul.
Marciano was one dedicated son of a gun, reinforced by other dedicated son of a guns.
From a biography that on him that I found, he'd get up as early as 3:30 a.m. to do his roadwork, and the distances would get progressively longer as the date of the fight closed in. He was also a big on going for long walks, covering many miles at a time to the point where his friend and confidant Al Columbo would get too tired to keep up with him. While on these walks he also had a habit of squating down to pick up a pebble the tossing it aside which worked his legs further.
Right before he was getting out of boxing his trainer Charlie Goldman saw it coming. He knew that because Rocky was getting tired of going for his long walks that it would only be a matter of time that he would get tired of boxing, and wouldn't you know it.
Anyways on the other end of the leg spectrum you have guys that are light in the ass. Guys like Bob Foster, Tommy Hearns, and even way-back oldtimer Bob Fitzsimmons all had legs like spiders, but conditioned legs are conditioned legs and that's what matters.
I remember Grey/Joe saying in reply to when the subject of leg conditioning came about that your legs just need to strong enough to keep you from falling. Grey often referred to windsprints an idea that's been around for a long time way before tabata intervals, or HIIT was proposed. Simply it was alternating between a walk, sprint and jog, the varieties are endless, and the idea has been around for ages. Why if I'm not mistaken, I remember reading in Bob Fitsimmons would alternate between sprinting and walking between evenly spaced electricity poles, and that was 100 years ago.
I have nothing against the steady jog, it's a good way to burn fat, but I'm more in favor of types of running to trigger the right adaptions in the muscles and the way that body works. Props to Scrap on that one. :)