Fight Night. Boxing, almost as good as it was on the telly! Blog Discussion

Former_MSE_Andrea

This is a chat forum discussion on Martin's 'Fight Night. Boxing, almost as good as it was on the telly!' blog which you can read here.

Glad

why would you be told off for eating crisps?

do you make a lot of noise eating

dougrose60

How on earth can you moralise about Carol Vordermans supporting the rip off of the low paid/debt ridden or young, by loan companies. when you write a blog supportive of the barbaric practice of Boxing.

i'm fairly new to your site and this is the 1st time I've felt totally dissapointed.

Peace & Love!!!

Colenso

<[FONT=&quot]What’s very difficult to work out is how some of the boxers can weigh less than 8 stone and look bigger than me (I weigh 12). As the weight divisions increased, it was intimidating to work out I’d have been in the third heaviest division, which was peopled by seemingly massive blokes - I thought they said muscle weighed more than fat?[/FONT]>

Boxers need to have a good reach, so the boxers probably had longer than normal legs and arms for their torso length. The weight division in which boxers, grapplers and lifters compete is crucial for most of them to have any chance of success. So they take great care to minimise their body fat. Even in the unrestricted weight category, their power to mass ratio is critical. When athletes are carrying very low body fat levels, they look mean and lean fighting machines because their waists are very narrow and their backsides very small. This makes their chest and shoulders appear broader, their arms and legs, especially, more massive. Their long limbs, thick necks and highly developed trapezoids, their speed, agility and sinuous, powerful movements in the ring, make boxers appear to be more massive than they probably are.

Muscle is denser than fat, but most of us are far fatter than we realise. Take my example. For the last year, until recently, I too weighed about 76kg, almost 12 stone. I’m 1.7m tall (about 5’7’’). Body Mass Index (BMI) is defined as one’s body mass stated in kilos, divided by the square of one’s height in metres. Hence, at my recent body mass of 76 kg my BMI was about 26.3. That put me in the overweight category (BMI of 25 to 30). If I had continued to pile on the excess calories at the same rate, it would not have taken me too long to put on another 11 kg. My body mass would then have been 87kg and my BMI more than 30. That would put me in the obese category.

However, until a couple of years ago, I used to booze less and run more. When I was running competitively, I was still a fairly stocky 63.5 kg, about 10 stone. So my BMI was about 22. There are photos of me at the time. My backside was smaller, my waist narrower. There was less fat on my face. So everything else looked larger. I looked leaner and meaner. I had a better shape. I almost looked like an athlete.

Now, if I had been less lazy and had had clearer goals, then I would have trained and eaten with more discipline. And I have no doubt I could have got my BMI down to a lean 20 like most of the better runners I was racing. A BMI of 20 would have given me a body mass of just under 58 kg, about 127 pounds, or just over 9 stone. To sum up: until recently I was about a third over this, my “fighting weight”, and thus had I boxed or wrestled or lifted, I would have been “weigh” out of my league – literally.

In simple English, like most Yanks, Poms and Aussies, I’m currently far too fat and so I'm a rather shapeless blob rather than a well sculpted David. Up until a couple of years ago, I used to look quite muscular, even though I was still too fat to be as competitive a runner as I wished. But buried deep, deep within me always was and still is the same mean and lean, fighting machine buried within all of us, including Martin. The machine is there waiting to be revealed. We just have to unveil it.