Old Traditions vs. Modern Thinking

We live in a fast-changing world often driven by data collection, data analysis and iteration. Technology is ever-evolving and touches just about every part of of lives. We also live in a world with old, time-honored traditions that we still follow. Things we love and things that just continue to work. For instance, a fork is still an excellent way to eat salad. 

So, how do we determine what things can be innovated and what things shouldn't change at all? We simply ask the question, "Why?" Why do we use a fork to eat salad? Is there another tool that might work better? Is there anything we can do to make the experience of eating a salad more easy and efficient? Do we have new technology that could be applied to eating a salad?

When it comes to most modern sports, people are always asking these questions. Especially in the most popular American sport, which is football. The game itself has changed drastically in the last 45 years I have been watching. There are constant innovations to the style of play as well as the training and decision-making aspect to coaching, with many of the latter two things being driven by advancements in technology and data analysis. 

I could give you a billion examples of these changes but one I will just point out is "The Brotherly Shove." Long before the forward pass was even invented, teams would line up against each other and try to run the ball up the middle for short yardage. Then suddenly, a couple of years ago, the Philadelphia Eagles line up a little differently, get lower, and invent a new way to push forward to gain just a yard or two, eventually calling it "The Brotherly Shove" (or the less compelling, "Tush Push"). And here is the crazy thing - it is pretty much unstoppable! For as long as I can remember, teams trying to pick up a single yard or less was always a risky proposition. Defenses lined up to stop it and it seems like at least half the time, they usually did. But when the Eagles started this Brotherly Shove thing, it was almost 100%. Nobody can prevent them getting at least a yard with this play. How did it take over 100 years to figure this out? I have no idea but I know that it happened because somebody finally asked why. Why do we do things the way we currently do and is there a better way to do them? 

One sport that does not ask these questions as much is, unfortunately, boxing. Boxers still pretty much train the way they did in the 1960s. Fight styles have changed a little bit, erring towards being more defensive in the smaller weight classes and of course, the business of boxing has changed too, erring towards having fewer fights in general, particularly among serious contenders. Unlike football however, none of those changes have really improved the product.

For this post, I am going to focus on the training and analytics portions of boxing, which are probably the least advanced and most in need of modernization. Boxing trainers and coaches generally come from an old-school mentality. They teach boxing the way it was taught to them 30, 40, 50 years ago. They train the way Rocky Marciano trained because he had incredible conditioning and was really, really good. They are usually not as open to asking "why” and "is there a better way to do this?" Do all boxers really need to skip rope or is there something that would benefit them more? Is hitting the speed bag really the best use of their time? The answer to these questions may certainly be "yes" but my point is that they are generally not even asked at all. They are just established facts. If you walked into an NFL training camp in 1960, it would be completely different than how it would be now in 2023. If you walked into a boxing gym, it would probably not be too much different because of this reason.

Speaking as an older guy myself, I can understand that change isn't always easy and if legends like Angelo Dundee or Ray Arcel or Cus D'amato said something, who the hell am I to question it? But the world has changed and maybe there is another way of evaluating things. If we don't ask and truly scrutinize, we'll never know. And if those old school training methods are still the best, they will hold up to any scrutiny, just like forks do.

This problem is not just limited to how we train physically. Boxing is not studied to anywhere near the detail that sports like football are. For instance, during fights, there is a system called CompuBox that tracks the punches that each athlete throws. It is the same system that has been used since the mid 1980s. 2 operators watch the fight and record only 4 things - jab lands, jab misses, power punch (any punch that is not a jab) lands, power punch misses. That's it. Other types of punches are not categorized and it is extremely prone to error and bias. To be fair though, boxing can move much faster than other sports. Determining exactly which punch was thrown can be extremely difficult to do live. I've tried to figure this out and always end up having to rewind multiple times. So I don't blame CompuBox specifically, but is anyone else collecting more granular data? Things like how punches are missed (block, evade, etc.), what punches are landed/missed, where specifically punches are landed, single punches vs combinations, punch vs counterpunch, who initiates the attack vs success level, generally what successful/unsuccessful things have in common and so much more. Everything should be tracked, analyzed and learned from. This info could completely change the way boxers approach things. Again, we'll never know for sure unless we study and analyze. Maybe someone, somewhere is doing this but I highly doubt it. Boxing telecasts certainly don't make use of it.

Science and technology can also be applied to our basic movements. If you look at sports like golf and baseball, where the specific mechanics of a swing are so important, they are able to track exactly what muscles are firing when and what body parts move in what order to determine how this swing can be made better, through both targeted training of everything that goes into it as well as the specific execution of the movement itself. A boxer's punch is pretty important too. Perhaps some of these same methods of study and training can be employed but once again, I don't feel like the boxing community is receptive to this as a whole.

To a lot of the old school trainers, which encompasses most of the good ones currently, introducing new ideas like this can be seen as an affront to the gritty, tough spirit of boxing. Technology and science aren't boxing. Boxing is blood, sweat and tears. Nerds in lab coats can't teach us how to fight or even prepare for a fight. I think that was even the whole point of Rocky 4 (that and that communism doesn't work). But boxing is the sweet science and just like those salty sciences, nothing is ever settled, and we should always question whether or not there is a better way to do things. Even when it comes to eating a salad.