Ray Peats Ideas Applied To Boxing

[Anthony]

I am an aspiring boxer and I find a lot of Ray Peats research very fascinating I was hoping for people more knowledgeable than I to help me apply some of his ideas to my sport.

 

[answersfound]

No offense, but boxing and any other fighting sports are really dumb. These sports are very violent and have no place in society. And your basically signing up for brain damage.

 

[Sheik]

No offense, but boxing and any other fighting sports are really dumb. These sports are very violent and have no place in society. And your basically signing up for brain damage.

No offense, but that statement is really dumb. Learning martial arts, for example, can have many benefits, such as a greater sense of wellbeing, self discipline, not to mention being able to protect yourself.

Violence has a place in nature. Don't expect that to change. Don't deny the reality. I don't like pushed around, but no amount of complaining or judgement is going to make the world change for me. All I can do is be stronger.

 

[answersfound]

No offense, but boxing and any other fighting sports are really dumb. These sports are very violent and have no place in society. And your basically signing up for brain damage.

No offense, but that statement is really dumb. Learning martial arts, for example, can have many benefits, such as a greater sense of wellbeing, self discipline, not to mention being able to protect yourself.

Violence has a place in nature. Don't expect that to change. Don't deny the reality. I don't like pushed around, but no amount of complaining or judgement is going to make the world change for me. All I can do is be stronger.

Well Martial arts are for defense purposes for use in dangerous situations. That is completely different than engaging in fights for no reason.

 

[you]

No offense, but boxing and any other fighting sports are really dumb. These sports are very violent and have no place in society. And your basically signing up for brain damage.

No offense, but that statement is really dumb. Learning martial arts, for example, can have many benefits, such as a greater sense of wellbeing, self discipline, not to mention being able to protect yourself.

Violence has a place in nature. Don't expect that to change. Don't deny the reality. I don't like pushed around, but no amount of complaining or judgement is going to make the world change for me. All I can do is be stronger.

Well Martial arts are for defense purposes for use in dangerous situations. That is completely different than engaging in fights for no reason.

Oh come on. For fun is just as valid reason as self-defense, if both participants are voluntarily doing so .

 

[Daimyo]

Hi Anthony,

the standard recommendations would be something like:
-Eat plenty of protein (milk, cottage cheese, gelatine). Aim for minimum of 100 g of protein a day.
-Avoid PUFAs (vegetable oils, nuts, fatty fish)
-Eat beef/lamb liver once a week (at least)
-Eat clams other seafood weekly
-Eat coconut oil
-Eat plenty of simple sugars in the form of fruit, milk, orange juice
-Make sure to not train in fasted state (drink orange juice during the training)
-Eat a lot of salt
-Try to KO the other guy in the begging of the match, so you won't get hit in the head too much
-Use aspirin as painkiller

 

[burtlancast]

Oh come on. For fun is just as valid reason as self-defense, if both participants are voluntarily doing so .

https://youtu.be/waJTKs_Uv-8?t=16m8s

 

[you]

Oh come on. For fun is just as valid reason as self-defense, if both participants are voluntarily doing so .

https://youtu.be/waJTKs_Uv-8?t=16m8s

I don't see how this matters unless the fighters are forced to box.

I haven't watched the documentary " Unfortunately, this video is not available in your country because it could contain music from UMG, for which we could not agree on conditions of use with GEMA. " but from reading a quick bit of a transcript online I can see how it just discusses the damaging health of effects of boxing.

Well, that's a bit obvious? You get hit, you get hurt. Though it is very important to be educated before making decisions, OP should watch this documentary.

 

[burtlancast]

Dying to Fight: The Tony Bruno Story
http://www.amazon.com/Dying-Fight-Tony- ... 1432725017

Pete Bruno and his family grew up around the sport. His son, Tony Bruno, was an amateur boxer and college scholar who made the unfortunate decision to fight in a “smoker” style of brawl. After a series of blows, his only son ended up in the hospital with no happy ending. Outside the screening room, I met the father-son duo. Tony has made a partial recovery only after enduring 25 years of intense rehab. His father Pete is now obviously and deservedly critical of boxing and has even penned a book about his son’s tragedy. But he offered, “You see the good, the bad and the ugly of boxing. Let the viewers–you–decide for yourself!”

 

[Amazoniac]

No offense, but boxing and any other fighting sports are really dumb. These sports are very violent and have no place in society. And your basically signing up for brain damage.

No offense, but that statement is really dumb. Learning martial arts, for example, can have many benefits, such as a greater sense of wellbeing, self discipline, not to mention being able to protect yourself.

Violence has a place in nature. Don't expect that to change. Don't deny the reality. I don't like pushed around, but no amount of complaining or judgement is going to make the world change for me. All I can do is be stronger.

Hat tip.
Ironically, most professional fighters I've met are really calm and peaceful, to the point of doubting that they can be violent. Their agressiveness stays at the training/fights and what remains outside of that is a sense of self-assurance and control.

 

[jaa]

No offense, but boxing and any other fighting sports are really dumb. These sports are very violent and have no place in society. And your basically signing up for brain damage.

Athletics is very integral to human society, even the contact sports. It may be difficult to understand if you've never participated or excelled at them. Do you recommend people don't play soccer? Heading the ball repeatedly has been shown to cause TBI. It's all about understanding the risk and risk management.

If two people want to fight, they have every right to. It's in our DNA. And boxing and other forms of martial arts take a tremendous amount of skill and can be very celebral technique and strategy wise and are very rewarding activities. It's not just 2 brutes slugging it out. It's like dancing, but against an opponent who you must react to in real time, while getting hurt. It's very meditative and you learn a lot about yourself and other people.

All that praise said, you do end up sacrificing your mind a little or a lot depending on how you train and fight and how you recover. I don't have much experience with boxing, but I know with Muay Thai there are some gyms that do light sparring (or a bit harder if the fighters want) and some that do hard sparring only. You want to find the former gym.

I know fighting styles are dictated a lot by a fighters personality, but you want to be as defensively sound as possible. Good posture to dissipate as much force from your head to the ground as possible. Good blocking. rolling, and just avoiding punches. Look at boxers with sound defence and long careers with no signs of brain damage like Hopkins and Mayweather.

Cannabis has shown some promise in aiding recovery from TBI. Check the Methylene Blue thread on this forum, I think that may have shown promise as well. If you get hurt in sparring or a fight, take some time off or a lot depending on the injury. The same goes for calling it quits. It's better to get out too early then too late.

 

[jaa]

Dying to Fight: The Tony Bruno Story
http://www.amazon.com/Dying-Fight-Tony- ... 1432725017

Pete Bruno and his family grew up around the sport. His son, Tony Bruno, was an amateur boxer and college scholar who made the unfortunate decision to fight in a “smoker” style of brawl. After a series of blows, his only son ended up in the hospital with no happy ending. Outside the screening room, I met the father-son duo. Tony has made a partial recovery only after enduring 25 years of intense rehab. His father Pete is now obviously and deservedly critical of boxing and has even penned a book about his son’s tragedy. But he offered, “You see the good, the bad and the ugly of boxing. Let the viewers–you–decide for yourself!”

Yeah there are risks, like anything. And those smokers should generally be avoided. But don't pretend that those kind of injuries aren't extremely unlikely. And if OP trains and spars smart, he can reduce those unlikely odds even more.

 

[burtlancast]

But don't pretend that those kind of injuries aren't extremely unlikely.

The most successful heavyweights champions of the seventies were Ali, Frazier, Norton, Foreman, Holmes, Spinks.

Out of the six, 3 died while afflicted with a degenerative brain disease, and the remaining one, Ali, has been a legume for the past 10 years and will join them imminently.

That's a 67% ratio.

 

[johns74]

It's like saying football players shouldn't play. Then they'll release their energy and violent impulses elsewhere and more people will be raped. What's better, playing football or raping?

 

[oxidation_is_normal]

Haha, and some "intelligent" user here immediately judges the OP basically calling him dumb...

lookingforanswers, one thing boxing will do for you is make you more calm and focused so you will not insult strangers as often for no good reason.

Anthony, in terms of apply Peat philosophy to boxing. I don't know that it has specific applications. Peat is a systems thinker, so he might go about breaking down all of the history of boxing, the mindsets of winners, the causes of those mindsets, the physiques of the winners, the causes of those physiques, the individual skills they had, and the causes of each of those skills. Studying the boxers, their coaches, their beliefs. This is nice because you can really build up confidence about what works and in the ring you are either right or wrong :)

 

[jaa]

But don't pretend that those kind of injuries aren't extremely unlikely.

The most successful heavyweights champions of the seventies were Ali, Frazier, Norton, Foreman, Holmes, Spinks.

Out of the six, 3 died while afflicted with a degenerative brain disease, and the remaining one, Ali, has been a legume for the past 10 years and will join them imminently.

That's a 67% ratio.

Those guys are life long boxers at the top of the sport getting hit by the hardest hitters on the planet. That's not representative of the average person who takes up boxing.

People are also much more aware of brain injuries now and steps can be taken to mitigate the damage and training methods reflect this.

 

[Such_Saturation]

But don't pretend that those kind of injuries aren't extremely unlikely.

The most successful heavyweights champions of the seventies were Ali, Frazier, Norton, Foreman, Holmes, Spinks.

Out of the six, 3 died while afflicted with a degenerative brain disease, and the remaining one, Ali, has been a legume for the past 10 years and will join them imminently.

That's a 67% ratio.

Those guys are life long boxers at the top of the sport getting hit by the hardest hitters on the planet. That's not representative of the average person who takes up boxing.

People are also much more aware of brain injuries now and steps can be taken to mitigate the damage and training methods reflect this.

Don't you wanna be at the top?

 

[Brian]

I am an aspiring boxer and I find a lot of Ray Peats research very fascinating I was hoping for people more knowledgeable than I to help me apply some of his ideas to my sport.

Don't boxers need something like 6-8,000 calories on training days? What have you been fueling with so far in your athletic career?

I think Ray's general ideas that help reduce inflammation and stress hormones in non-athletes would be equally helpful to you as well. They're kind of no-brainer's though that you are probably already doing intuitively. Probably best to fuel with quality fruit juices, refined well cooked starches like white rice, potatoes, and saturated fats (coconut oil, butter).

Good quality dairy, beef or lamb cuts with connective tissue, seafood are the preferred less inflammatory animal proteins that Ray recommends. Supplementing with boiled/dissolved gelatin powder or glycine can also be very helpful for reducing circulating methionine and other inflammatory amino acids.

Some other supplements to consider: Magnesium, zinc, B complex, Fat solubles A, D, E, K, beef liver, egg yolks.

You may also find that regular red light therapy or some morning/late afternoon sun bathing after training to help in recovery as well.

There's a lot of other things but these are some of the basics that might apply to athletes.

Also, I apologize in behalf of the forum members that they decided to turn your post into a philosophical discussion about the morality of boxing instead of answering your question :)

 

[jaa]

Don't you wanna be at the top?

That's the tricky thing with head injury sports - changing end goals can end up in direct conflict with each other. I think it's best to go into it with the goal of keeping your noggin as safe as possible as your skills improve. If you get good enough, then you have another decision to make. I know in MMA there are top level pros who are very aware of the danger of head injuries and structure their training and exit plan to minimize future suffering as much as possible, so it could be doable in boxing as well.

 

[Such_Saturation]

I want to stay in the physical side of the matter because that is where the point lies; so basically I've seen that being the best at any sport involves sacrificing a part of your life, from family to school to free time and, why not, health. It's not so outrageous if you think about it.