holyfield's routine

this is old, but i posted this in the boxing forum and thought maybe some of you guys would like to see it.

http://www.sportsci.org/news/news9709/hatfield.html

i know you guys dont like pro fighter routines, but take it as if someone was posting a

dr squat routine or westside routine, or any other program designed by someone.

 

interesting 3 minute drill

 

Notice all the bodybuilding isolation movements? Fred was I believe the first man to ever squat over a 1000lbs.

 

well evander needed to add weight to fight at heavyweight so he did bodybuilding,and this was evanders routine anyway,what does that have to do with freds strength,he made it to help evanders specific needs

 

It's interesting that some trainers are shying away or at least limiting long slow distance training such as road work in favour of high intensity interval training, to help improve conditioning.

Which makes sense for atheletes that are fighting for 3 minute or 5 minute rounds at a time, with only a minute rest between rounds.

Interval training appears to be one of, if not the best way to improve cardiovascular conditioning and prepare the body for short intense rounds which combat sports such as mma require.

I was impressed with the Holyfield programs structure, it had everything from weights to
Plyometrics but focused on interval training but with no long slow distance training.

I have been using interval training to prepare for my next fight, primarily the Tabata method and I can really feel an improvement in my conditioning.

slayer36 have you got any more info on the Holyfield training program? and thanks for posting a link to the article.

 

Its not only a matter of adding weight , its also a matter of adding strenght , and why would a boxer be doing bicep curls? it goes back to my original point that no muscle should be ignored and that every fighter can bennefit by using bodybuilding isolation movements and power movements , such as bench , squat , deadlift , etc etc,.

 

jun fan lee, dont start hijacking threads in s&p and starting arguments about the merits of bodybuilding training everywhere you go on this forum.

 

How is stating my opinion starting an argument?

 

no one ever said, that isolationwork is useless. almost any kind of athlete does some. so what is your point?

 

u really dont get it? out of everything in that article, you choose to bring up and discuss holyfield's use of isolation exercises in an effort to validate arguments you made on another thread - arguments that, by the way, were pounced upon by every knowledgable poster on this forum. thats called "hijacking a thread" and its generally not appreciated. on top of that, posting the same arguments here will give you the same result - more knowledgeable posters are going to correct you in an effort to keep the boards full of GOOD information.

seriously man, im hope you find tons of valuable information on this board and get you questions answered. i hope this board can help you in all your strength training endeavors as much as it has helped me. but seriously, you're going to need to stop posting your pro-bodybuilding bullshit because, quite frankly, people dont take to that stuff here. they are concerned with how much they can squat, deadlift, or bench - as a measure of overall strength - and how well that transitions to fighting/grappling/boxing/kickboxing. you'll notice that one of the goals of holyfield's program was to put on mass. bodybuilding principals, including isolation movements, are good for acheiving mass gains. that is, imo, why evander was using them. however, isolation exercises are relatively inferior to compound movements for the development of maximum strength - and strength is what this forum is all about. period. i dont mean to get on your case but do you get it now?

 

Obviously you don't pay attention to this forum very much. Isolation movements on this forum are considered heresy by the Strongman/Fatman Church and considered a weakness in character , a moral failing. However, their closed mindedness is their loss.

If Evan Holyfield had posted here when he was coming up from cruiserweight to heavy they would have destroyed him for doing bicep curls...it would be like "train your back heavy and your biceps will grow, don't waste effort on your biceps thats energy that could be better spent by climbing a rope thats attached to the top of your building..."

I do both compound and isolation movements and have never felt anything but stronger for adding them.

 

You all use bodybuilding exercises and go on to say they're useless for building strenght which is pure nonsense , and its beyond me why someone would trian thier biceps only via rows , or climbing rope obviously you would reach a point where you could only row lets say 250lbs and thats it , now if you would do direct bicep work standing curls , etc etc , this would allow you to lift more weight in your row , this isn't debateable its a fact , if you ignore any muscle it will effect you one way or another .

bodybuilders are not strenght athetles , isolation movements are useless for strenght , bodybuidling techniques are uesless for MMA , whats ironic is all your heros of MMA are using bodybuilding techniques and bodybuilding steroids ( among other training techniques ) as a means to their end , I suppose they're wrong as well? your first mistake is thinking you know it all and one someone tries to offer a different point a view , its " we don't take that around here "

 

sure man....im not the s&p forum police and im sure as shit not the most educated or strong person on these boards, so frankly, that was my one effort at trying to enlighten you, as i truly dont give a fuck. you can post whatever you want, just know you're opening up a can of worms everytime.

have fun with your reverse grip curls after deadlifts, but ill be doing heavy bent over rows instead.

 

I'll have fun doing bent over rows , T-bar rows , deadlifts , pull downs , and low pulley rows , as well as barbell curls , dumbell curls . I understand what you're trying to say though and I apologize if I came across as an A-hole.

 

I'll say it. Isolation is a waste of time. In athletics you are NEVER just using 1 muscle. You are ALWAYS doing a compound movement. Thats why we advocate using them around here. Train the movement, not the muscles. Ie, get better at squatting. Don't try to get big quads.

Few people around here care about getting bigger. Most of the light fighters wants to stay light and just get strong. To that end, they do heavy compound lifts and stay away from higher rep isolation stuff that bodybuilders use to grow.

You might have time to do all that shit and train MMA 4 or 5 times a week but most on this board do not.

Fighting is their priority so they dedicate their time to learning the art of fighting.

Lifting is a means to increase athletic performance for these people. So with limited time and a desire to STAY THE SAME SIZE, people here advocate compound lifts.

If you have an hour to work on your pulling movements what would you do?

Curls? T-Bar rows?

No, you use the most effective ones first and sacrafice that other crap because it has negligable benefits.

Therefore, people advocate Bent Barbell Rows because it hits Lats, Traps, Grip, Biceps, Rear Delts, etc. Furthermore, it taxes the core by requiring stabalization which is something NO isolation crap will give you and is yet another thing that FIGHTERS need.

After Barbell Rows, its chins/pullups/ropeclimb because those hit everything in your pulling chain again and they are hard but efficient. They have direct carry over to pulling people and teach coordination between all of your pulling muscles. Another thing isolation crap doesnt teach.

w00t I can contract my bicep. w00t I can contract my lat. Dammit I can't get them to fire together. See the point.

Neways, if you want to do stupid ass isolation exercises and waste time you could be using on the Thai bag, rolling or sparring go for it. The rest of us will learn to fight while you do bicep curls.

Take you ignorant shit and leave. Asshat.

EDIT:

I asked similar questions when I got here. I was always a fan of the big compound lifts but I never understood why people hated on isolation stuff so much. There is too much other stuff that you could be doing with your time that is more beneficial.

 

I'd say anyone discrediting arm exercises for an athlete, say a wrestler, hasn't done much of the sport, or if they did, wasn't very good. Every wrestler I know, trained with, saw trained, talked to about training, read about their training or heard about their training with weights did a lot of arm exercises. It helps build muscle endurance, you don't want to have your arms putzing out on you when fighting for tie ups, turning your opponent, etc.

But if that is someone's believe then all those college & national coaches & athletes are wrong. So I guess someone needs to let Dan Gable know he did it all wrong and all his former wrestlers that are now coaches are passing on improper training.

 

" Few people around here care about getting bigger. Most of the light fighters wants to stay light and just get strong. To that end, they do heavy compound lifts and stay away from higher rep isolation stuff that bodybuilders use to grow. "

High rep isolation movements DO NOT make muscles grow , low rep heavy basic compound movements do , and what ironic is you're all doing them , but everyone is under the assumption that these are bodybuilding movements with no purpose other than to get big muscles , which isn't the case , in order to gain muscluar size you need the right combo of diet , exercise , rest and training frequency , you're all training with bodybuilding movements however you're not getting bigger only stronger and why? because you're not following a high protein ( up to 200 grams a day ) , medium carb, low fat diet , to gain muscular size , you need to eat every 2 to 3 hours and need to eat a LOT of clean foods ,5000 to upwards to 10,000 calaories a day, and from a gaining muscle size prospective you're overtraining with training in MMA 4 to 5 times a week , but your goal is NOT to build size but strenght and thats exactly why you wouldn't get BIG muscles even if you wanted , not to mention genetic abilities for gaining muscluar size .

I fully understand that your ultimate goal is muscle strenght and endurance , and these can all be accomplished by using what most of you are already doing , heavy basic compound exercises , but in my opinion its not wise to ignore any muscle group out of fear of getting bigger muscles and you should never ignore any muscle because they all effect one another , sure in most back movements your biceps are doing its share of the work , but you know what ? climbing rope or rowing will NOT give you strenght in your biceps like standing heavy barbell curls will or dumbell curls , and if you make your biceps stronger , it will in turn make your back stronger because you'll be able to row more .

I'm not saying you should be doing leg-extentsions , pec-deck , cable cross-overs ,etc these movements should be ignored bucause they don't offer the strenght you're looking for , but to ignore a muscle group because you think your biceps will get as strong as they would doing rows or climbing rope is just ignorant and foolish , my whole point is you should never directly ignore a muscle because its getting a partial work-out durring another exercise , and don't ignore any exercise out of fear of getting bigger muscles , because although you're using bodybuilding exercises you're not following a bodybuilding diet , so you have NO worries about getting massive , doing what you're doing.

 

@nerdking: i read your log and know, that you really dont use any isolationmovements. but many people whose goal is just strength not size do stuff like tricepextensions like skullcrusers etc. which are isolationmovements. some people need less, some need more isolationwork. depends on wether you tend to develop weakpoints or not.

 

I've been reading your posts for about a week now and until now I haven't bothered replying, but your persistance in spouting the same crap has now moved me enough to reply.

It depends on your definition of high reps. Anything around 6-12 reps which is what is considered high reps in weightlifting terms (anything above this being more or less useless for size and definitely useless for strength)

Thats exactly what bodybuilding is about, getting big muscles. Sure exercises like curls could be used to train for strength if you lowered the reps and raised the weight, but the weight you would be able to put on the bar would be dramatically less than you could slap on for some heavy rows, which would have the added benefits of training multiple muscle groups and with a lot more weight. If you were to train the way you're suggesting, there just wouldn't be time, as you would have to train each muscle using isolation AS WELL AS compound movements and there just aren't enough hours in the day for most people to fit in this added training and still have time for work, sleep and general relaxation.

Are you fucking kidding me? You think people here don't know what kind of diet they need? You don't seem to have a fucking clue what people here know about lifting and just presume that we're all idiots by default.

As for the MMA, the whole reason that most people here lift is as AN AID TO THEIR MMA in order to make them stronger, they don't do MMA to supplement their lifting. Their priority is MMA and lifting is just a sideshow. Of course it's not the most efficient way to gain strength, but their priority is MMA, not lifting so they do the best they can.

You think people here are scared of gaining muscle size at all? Again, you're presuming you know what people here are like without really having a fucking clue. We have some big guys round here that focus purely on powerlifting and don't bother with MMA, go ask Carnal if he's scared of getting big and see what he says.

As for the second part of the quote, you say its best not to ignore and muscle groups and thats exactly why people here advocate compound lifts, because they give you the most bang for your buck in terms of muscles groups per exercise. You're arguing that we should cover every muscle group, but then advocating probably the least effective way to do it (i.e. isolation for each muscle). I know you've advocated compound lifts too, but most people don't have time to do loads of both and so clearly most people choose mostly compound lifts.

In this case, we'd have to do compound AND isolation movements to cover every single muscle in the body, which is just stupid as hell and massively inefficient in terms of time. Anyway, your biceps and back will be getting stronger just from the Bent-over Row itself, so until you start pulling proper weight and finding sticking points that need breaking, most people don't need any isolation movements, especially if you're also doing things like Deadlifts and Chin-ups as well already.

But you are saying that we should do them as you keep arguing for isolation on top of the compound lifts we already do, or are you saying that we should only do curls out of all the isolation movements because they're somehow more useful than the others? If you look at the number of lifts they're involved in, it would be worthless training them using isolation compared with your lower back, hams or triceps which are all involved in a far greater number of big lifts than your biceps are. I would accept your point more if you'd argued for using isolation for the biceps in order to improve your grappling, but you didn't.

Apply this argument to every muscle involved in every single compound movement and see how far you get in such a training program. There aren't enough hours in the day.

You don't know shit about what people here do or don't know, you've proved that repeatedly in this post alone.

 

Enough with there is not enough time in the day nonsense to train all your muscles , thats pure BS , especially seeing training your entire body only takes about 3 hours a week and thats more than enough , an average work-out should be NO longer than 30-45 minutes a day 2 or 4 days a week, if you can't do it in that time-frame you're fucking-off , in that time you can train your upper and lower chest , all three head of your triceps , both heads of the bcieps ,your entire back upper/middle/lower your quads , hamstrings and calves not to mention abs and all three heads of the delts .

And you cannot fully train your whole body for maximum strenght by ignoring fully any muscle group and you cannot get maximum strenght in your arms by proxy , the secondary muscles don't get maximum stimulation in compound movements as they do with direct isolation movements.

Worse case senario you cannot lose anything by doing isolation movements and have everything to gain , litteraly , I'm not saying you should follow what I say , all I'm saying is you shouldn't ignore any muscle group FULLY because all you're doing is limiting yourself.