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The Karl Gotch Story
Below is a classic video about former wrestling legend Karl Gotch. The content portion of the video begins at approximately the 3 minute mark (here).
If you aren’t familiar with Karl Gotch, you may wish to start with the previous entry:
He shares plenty of wisdom within each of the videos. Any fan of low-tech/high-effect exercise will enjoy his material.
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The simplest things are often the truest. – Richard Bach
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I guess it’s only fitting that this video had a shot of the old Tanga Lounge. If there is anything Cigar City aka Tampa is known for it’s nude clubs, sunshine, and wrestling. Countless pro wrestlers call/called the Tampa Bay area and Gulf Coast of Florida home. The legendary Gordon Solie lived in the area, and of course Hulk Hogan and Paul Orndorf aka the Brandon Bull grew up there. The late Randy “Macho Man” Savage lived in Sarasota. Former WWE wrestler and former UFC champion Ken Shamrock would travel to Tampa in 1990 and perform 500 non-stop bodyweight squats for a Japanese talent scout for a Japanese fighting circuit. If you ever lived or visited Tampa, Florida especially from May thru September you just can’t imagine how much the sun and humidity would drain you especially performing 500 squats on asphalt with no shade. I think of how brutal it must be for prep school football teams and the Dolphins, Bucs, and Miami Hurricanes to go out and scrimmage in full pads in 90 degree heat and smothering humidity. Kind of perplexed at how Gotch says he is certainly not a fan of weight training and yet he has an assortment of weights in his garage gym albeit just a small amount, but he still has weights. It also looked like he had a squat rack. It’s like former fighter Earnie Shavers, who did in fact lift weights while he was boxing, but in a recent interview he tells aspiring fighters to forego the weights in favor of wood chopping and other more natural forms of exercise. I kind of think a lot of old school athletes like Shavers and Gotch competed at a time when weight training was akin to steroids today. Some used weights but for whatever reasons they would never admit it. It’s like former heavyweight champ Mike Weaver. Weaver had an outstanding physique, but yet in interviews when questioned if he lifted weights he stated he had never touched a weight, but later he would admit he lifted just to “tone” his muscles.
Agree with you Eric it was a different era back then when doing weights was somehow considered cheating.
Yeah I think weights were indeed the steroids of the fifties, sixties and even early seventies. You still had many coaches or trainers from all sports who associated weight training/weight lifting with being slow, muscle bound, clumsy, etc. Kind of hard to believe now but until probably the mid to late seventies weight training was hardly practiced at all in most sports even in pro football. Maybe you had some track and field athletes, namely the throwers lifting weights, and that was about it. You were really an odd ball or weirdo if you lifted weights back in the day. Now weight training is used in just about all sports and even in sports like golf and tennis. Even marathon runners will lift weights and not just light weights for multiple reps, but heavy squats in the 5-7 rep range. But boxing has been one of the few sports that has still really not embraced weight training. Most boxing experts will point out that large muscles will require more oxygen and thus will affect a fighters stamina. And then you have the dilemna of maybe a fighter gaining too much muscle mass and how it might cause him to fight in a heavier class against “naturally” bigger men. Nearly all the old school boxers and trainers are vehemently opposed to weight training. A lot of trainers are saying that the reason a lot of fighters are “gassing” early in fights is due to too much time in the weight room. Many trainers and fighters will cite how all the great fighters did quite fine without any weight training whatsoever. Baseball was another sport until the Sammy Sosa-Mark McGwire steroid era that never really put much stock in weights but now you have baseball players hitting the weights as hard as football players.
I had a magazine that was doen by Matt Furey a long time ago. It had a lot of old phots of karl Gotch. He said that he did workout with weights for a year.He said that he got strong but he found them not valuable for wrestling so he stopped.He also said that if he had not lifted he would not know if it was any value to him.I can’t find this magazine in my house and I doubt it’s in any print.
Found this vid on Youtube. Great vid about Indian wrestling. Youtube: The Physical Body: Indian Wrestling and Physical Culture. These guys do it all from the traditional exercises like Hindu squats and Hindu pushups, bridging, primitive looking weights, rope climbing, and they even do moves on some sort of pole that would put most strippers to shame.
The thing about Matt Furey is he only tells partial truths. Hell, he probably would be a good politician for that matter. You will see in the aforementioned video on Indian wrestling that the wrestlers do perform weight training in addition to their other forms of physical exercise. It tells how Gama would put a large circular stone around his neck and run a mile or so daily. I’ve also heard that Gama would put this stone around his neck when doing squats and pushups, plus swinging the clubs and mace can very well be considered a form of resistance training like weights. You will in fact see Indian wrestlers performing slower squats when they use the circular stone around their neck, while when performing bodyweight Hindy squats they do them at a brisk pace.
This issue was very good and had some very good photos and training pictures of karl when in his prime.It would be nice if I could find it in my house but I think it’s lost.
I’ve seen a couple of photos of Gotch when he was younger and he certainly looked like a formidable athlete. There is no doubt that bodyweight calisthenics provided the bulk of Gotch’s workout routine, and certainly demonstrated that if one has the time or inclination, you can build a tremendous physique with nothing but your bodyweight. The “Royal Court” as Furey describes the three exercises of the Hindu Squat-Hindu Pushup-Back Bridge do certainly provide you with a good workout, but you would definitely need to incorporate some sort of pulling movement to the program. Probably one of the greatest Olympic wrestlers ever, Dan Gable, would perform weights, running, rope skipping, bodyweight exercises, you name it Gable did it, and he was damn near superhuman on the mat.
Its all about controlling your body..
Or better, on what’ sequence’ your muscles learn to work and how long.
If you lift weights dont need to lift max kg. I think muscle need to be elastik and strong same time.Also why is it ok to do 500 bodyweight sqwots, and not good to perform on bench press for example: 500 reps with 50 kg barbell? And goes on…
My opinion is ,if someone need specific weight training for the boxing,there is non!
The best one is to take small dumbels in both hand and perform punches…
The rest body weight or weight exersices are for body conditioning only.( wich is not bad)
Now talking about body conditioning for martial artists.
Fighters muscles should keep elasticity. Thats why in my opinion performing same weight everytime engage weight training and trying to perform as much reps is good. Talking about 20 reps -max is good..
Working muscle on same weight start adapt in time and you will feel that you perform same weights easier and for longer … That mean your muscle can lift same weight for more time than before..wich mean you became not only stronger but also your muscle adapted to same weight and control it .
when i say 20 -max reps i mean minimum 20 and max 1000 if you prefer…