Sources on strength or size gains *solely* from grappling?

[Cross_Trainer]

Hi. Odd question.

I'm doing historical research on early 20th century strength & conditioning techniques.

Most early professional boxers had an almost superstitious dislike of heavy weight training, but they did plenty of grappling as a way of building strength. This was especially true of heavyweights like Jeffries and Johnson. The practice of training wrestling seems to have died out among boxers as the 20th century continued, probably because clinch rules became a lot stricter.

I'm trying to get an idea of how effective grappling would have been for building strength and size for the boxers back then. Are there any sources that address the effects of grappling training without weight training?

 

[corpse]

that's a very special interest.

farmer burns comes to my mind. the sandowplus site has a lot of old resources and a lot of these guys were also famous wrestlers/boxers but almost all did some sort of weight training even back then.

or maybe look up karl gotch (karl istaz) and the catch wrestling dudes.
i believe they are not big into weight lifting.

since ross enamait is a really cool guy i would contact him via email if he can give you some directions. i bet he knows a ton about this topic. or go to his forum and ask there.

 

[Eisenhans]

FWIW, barbells were invented in 1850 by a French Communist named Hyppolite Triat. Before that, there was a few decades of German style gymnastics - meaning: Not the gymnastics we know today (whihc came later), but rope climbing, running, wrestling, etc.

Before that, we kinda enter the mythological age of physical education. There aren't many sources, but it seems that before the Germans invented gymnastics, people just "practiced" and didn't "train". We can see, for example, recommendations for exercises like shadowboxing, shadow fencing with leaden sticks, rock throwing, running and jumping.

Nobody did do push ups (also invented around 1850 by the way, Source: August Ravensteins "Volksturnbuch" which introduced push ups as an exercise for people too weak to do dips; I never found an earlier source), squats or bench press. Everyone just practised what they wanted to be good at, with progressive resistance (which is known since ancient Egypt) and depending on your job, with a special diet. Of course, dumbells existed since ancient Greece at least, but those were very light (iirc, the heaviest found is like 17 lbs or so) and mainly used for swinging exercises (Source: "De arte Gymnastica" by Mercurialis) - however, we know from the ancients that biceps curls and static lateral holds were indeed used. Just not with a weight we'd use today. Romans and medieval knights worked their skills on a Palus/Pell, which kinda is a big stick stuck in the ground (think a makiwara for swordfighting), using training swords and shields twice as heavy as real ones.

Anyway, long story short: If you want to know if you can get ripped by doing just wrestling, boxing or really, just doing your sport, look at any guy before the early to mid 1800s.

 

[Deltafarce]

I’ve noticed a lot of grapplers are super strong but not big, hard to tell if it’s just technique or strength

 

[Badger67]

I’ve noticed a lot of grapplers are super strong but not big, hard to tell if it’s just technique or strength

Both. And once technique is good, whatever strength tbey end up using within it feels intensified if you are on the receiving end.

 

[JustOnce]

My understanding is, building muscle is basically breaking the fibers and then regrowing them or whatever that may be, which is induced by the exercise, and then could be increased in size by putting greater pressure on those fibers as they are building increased resistance.

AT the end of the day, I'd imagine it's similar to the discussion of the body weight vs weights exercise. The question becomes, in my opinion would be, whether it is necessary to build bigger muscles to continue to create stronger force to break down those muscular fibers to rebuild them, as when you grapple, you would eventually sort of be grappling around with similar weights.

However, strength and muscular size might not necessarily correlate. For example, Kimura was considered to be something like Judo God, 7th dan at age 29- wft, and he probably wasn't ripped like a lot of Judokas right now, though he's ripped in normal people standards, but i can't imagine him being ragdolled by anyone his size, no matter how much bigger the other guy is

 

[Lip]

It's not gonna make your lifts go up or make you grow bigger.