 |
| Mr. Muldoon |
Roadwork.
That word, to the combat
athlete, conjures images of pre-dawn runs, breath fogging the morning air and,
to many, a drudgery that must be endured.
Boxers, wrestlers, kickboxers
the world over use roadwork as a wind builder, a leg conditioner, and a grit
tester.
The great Joe Frazier
observed…
“You can map out a fight
plan or a life plan, but when the action starts, it may not go the way you
planned, and you're down to the reflexes you developed in training. That's
where roadwork shows - the training you did in the dark of the mornin' will
show when you're under the bright lights.”
Roadwork has been used
as a tool since man began pitting himself against others of his species in organized
combat.
But…today’s
question.
Has it always been the
sweat-soaked old school gray sweat suit pounding out miles on dark roads or, was
it something subtler, and, remarkably slower?
And if it was, why did
we transition to what, and I repeat myself, many regard as a necessary evil?
The history of early
boxing [bare fist to early glove era] and early wrestling [pre-show, i.e.,
today’s professional wrestling] abounds with accounts of training regimens that
include roadwork, but…this roadwork takes the form of long walks, often with
trainers and a few others side by side in long rambles through the countryside.
These, seemingly,
amiable jaunts would play poorly in a Rocky training montage—men in
trousers and peaked caps wandering the hills engaged in conversation.
And yet, we find
reference after reference that this is exactly the manner most “roadwork” was
undertaken.
I will allow one
account to stand for all as it involves a noted boxer, John L. Sullivan, being trained
by a noted wrestler, William Muldoon. [For those not in the know, Muldoon was a
helluva matman, could throw hands well, and was noted for being a stalwart conditioner
of fighters. With that in mind, we are getting a peek at “roadwork” in
combination fighting.]
Reporter, Nellie Bly,
of rounding the world in 72 days fame to beat Jules Verne’s fictional record,
spent time with Sullivan and Muldoon at The Great John L’s training camp as he
prepared to face Jake Kilrain in Richburg, Mississippi.
 |
| Ms. Bly |
[The extracts come
from Bly’s article in the May 26, 1889 edition of the New York World.]
[Muldoon] “We have
just returned from our two-mile walk” he said.”
[A mere two-miles,
wha?]
Sullivan reports it
thusly…
“Well, I get up
about 6 o’clock and get rubbed down…Then Muldoon and I walk and run a mile or a
mile and a half away and then back.”
[Sounds like a mix of intervals
does it not? Although, Muldoon makes no mention of this.]
[Sullivan again] “After
breakfast I rest awhile, and then putting on our heaviest clothes again we
start out for our twelve-mile run and walk.”
[Again, sounds like a
mix of intervals, at the very least a fartlek approach.
For the uninitiated,
fartlek is “a system of training for distance runners in which the terrain
and pace are continually varied to eliminate boredom and enhance psychological
aspects of conditioning.”]
There is a great deal
of detail given regarding all else that is done—primarily boxing, wrestling, hitting
a variety of bags, dumbbells, Indian Clubs, chest expanders, etc.
Muldoon did not
use the same “walk-run” pace here. He pushed his fighters to use the combat
sports training and the resistance training to capacity.
It seems the walks
[with or without running] were adjuncts, almost contemplative active recovery
rather than what we may see it as today.
This view of roadwork
pops up again and again in old accounts. Walking as roadwork is ever-present,
seldom does it go unmentioned, but…rarely do we hear it pushed into running as
we find it here.
Oh, one more from
Bly’s article, this is Sullivan responding to Bly’s query: “Then training is
not very pleasant work.”
“It’s the
worst thing going. A fellow would rather fight twelve dozen times then train
once, but it’s got to be done.”
Again, Muldoon was a
noted and respected wrestler and trainer of wrestlers and boxers. He emphasized
building stamina via strength and the sport itself as the wind-builder.
 |
| Mr. Sullivan |
A Question
is Raised?
If [if] walking was
considered as roadwork, why did running rise to prominence?
I offer a guess…I
leave it to you divine if there is truth in it.
Pre-automobile,
pre-mass transportation most everyone walked. Everywhere. Often.
Yes, there were horses
in the world but… despite our cinematic images, most horses were used as draft
animals, fewer owned horses for travel than is assumed, and even here, if
anyone has ever actually tended for a horse and gone through the steps of
saddling, unsaddling preparing a horse for a ride—well, if the trip was short,
it was often an easier choice to simply walk.
Most seemingly
preferred to walk.
History and literature
is full of astounding accounts of walks—staggering distances, frequencies of
walks by amblers of all ages and both sexes.
These are found in the
casual off-mentions, not the point of the story, as in this journal entry, “Walked
to Meister’s today for a visit, the 12 miles of heath were a tonic to the eye.”
12 miles. The journal
mentions that they are home that evening, so, our walker did a 24-mile
roundtrip in a single day and that was not the point of the journal entry.
The reason for the visit?
Just to chat.
Today we would post
about it and expect a participation t-shirt for such feats.
And yet, this was the
norm. Poets, charwomen, millers, farmers, publicans, everyone walked, They walked
most everywhere they wished to go.
Round trips of as much
of 30 miles were not unheard of. Most distances came in well under that but…
They walked far and
often, if not daily, almost daily—with distances of 5-8 being considered, well,
a walk in the park.
The world prior to
mass transit, prior to the automobile was a world of walking humans. Not a
chosen few who do so for exercise—but everyone everywhere to spread across the
globe.
Walking
was the base-rate of travel and, I wager, fitness.
“But Mark, you
didn’t answer the question--Why did we see the move from walking to running as
roadwork?”
You’re right, hold the
base rate of walking and daily round trip tallies in your mind as we look at yet
another sport, that of physical culturists [the fore-runners of today’s
body-building.]
The early muscle-men
and women from the stout Louis Cyr to the astonishingly lean Eugen Sandow saw
running as a “strength killer.” An activity that eats into muscular gains.
To Muldoon and other
early boxers, wrestlers, combination athletes and physical culturists running was
anathema to muscular progress, and even kyboshed skill-development.
It “ate” what you
built in the skill and execution area.
 |
| No "Roadwork" for the Elderly |
Wind, stamina, and as
some called it then “bottom” was highly valued, it was simply sought
elsewhere—via the action of the sport in question in most all cases.
That is, boxers
engaged in lots and lots of boxing, wrestlers in lots of and lots of wrestling,
and if one wished to run long distances, well, then it made sense to run.
The “cross-training”
made no sense to the Old-Timer’s mind.
Let us flip the practice
and we can perhaps see it how they saw it.
Let’s say you come to
me and ask me, “Mark, I want to get ready for a marathon, can you lay me out
a running schedule?”
I say, “Sure, first
let’s do 12 rounds on the heavy bag, 6 on the double-end, then some calisthenics
floorwork, then we’ll pause for lunch and follow that with 12 more rounds on
pads and this evening we’ll do 6 controlled rounds of sparring.”
You then reply, “Um,
but won’t that tire me out? When will I have the time or energy to run?”
Exactly. The Old-Timers
saw running-roadwork as a time eater and muscle eater.
This subject is hardly
exhausted, we could delve deeper into the centuries old walking over running
tale, what “footmen” and the “mile” have to offer as insight, the popularity of
the sport of pedestrianism, ramblers and flaneurs, and put that
evolutionary argument of persistence running up against the roaming hypothesis.
Fodder for another
day.
But now, finally, I
offer my answer, guess, surmise.
Why did
running become the modern definition of roadwork?
Simply, we quit
walking. We have such an abundance of easy transportation, easy resources at
our fingertips that walking even a mere mile a day in the course of events is a
rarity.
Where before we were conditioned
by our daily lives, now we must corral all of our beneficial effort into
bite-size regimented exercise portions at the extremes to compensate for the deficit.
If we are not going to walk 12-mile round trips as a matter of course, then
we’ve got to lace up the shoes and develop the discipline to start covering at
least some distance in the quickest amount of time we have allotted for
training so we can hurry back to our conveniences of not walking anywhere.
Just a guess,
but…that’s the horse I’d bet.
[BTW-Sullivan defeated
Kilrain. Knocked him out in the 75th round. 75 rounds? Sounds like his
conditioning was just fine.]
[For more Rough& Tumble
history, Indigenous Ability hacks, and for pragmatic applications of old school
tactics historically accurate and viciously verified see our RAW/Black Box Subscription Service.]
Or our brand-spankin’ new podcast The Rough and Tumble Raconteur
available on all platforms.
 |
| A Fine Tout |
Comments
Post a Comment