![]() ![]() Any time you’re seated, you’ve got compression of the discs in your lower back, anyway. That’s actually more dangerous than the last exercise that you saw. MN: “We absolutely would never, ever, ever do that. If it doesn’t get easier, then maybe fighting’s not for you.”Įxercise: Drago is grimacing through a seated abdominal crunch. If you do this stuff every day, it hopefully gets easier. There’s a calculated risk in doing some of these activities … There are some athletes who could tolerate this, but for a lot of them, it would do more harm than good.” A lot of the traditional abdominal training like that, there’s lots of research that’s come out in the last 10 or 20 years - and I actually did my master’s thesis on this - that shows even though you’ve got a great deal of activation of the abdominal wall, it comes at the cost of a lot of compression and sheer force on the spine. We don’t do it hanging from a loft in a barn, or in the gym, for any reason. ![]() As a boxer, you step-punch, step-punch, step-punch.”Įxercise: Rocky is doing sit-ups hanging from a loft in the barn, with Paulie keeping Rocky’s feet in place. The hands are turning, the feet have got to work with your hands. Also, with the skipping, you want your hands and feet working together. ![]() Because the higher the knees go, the harder the heart works. Johnny Kalbhenn (JK): “It’s great cardio. In addition to being just good cardiovascular warm-up, it also incorporates timing, balance, rhythm, and it’s an intro to biometrics for us.” It doesn’t matter if they’re young kids or pros. And it doesn’t matter if they’re hockey players or football players or basketball players. Matt Nichol (MN): “We incorporate jump rope - or skipping rope - literally every single day into training with our athletes. On separate visits, The Athletic sat down with each expert to answer two simmering questions: Are the exercises Rocky Balboa and Ivan Drago employed during the critical training montage in Rocky IV legitimate? And if so, which fighter was preparing better for the big fight?Įxercise: Rocky is jumping rope in a dusty barn somewhere deep in the Soviet Union. It is spare and clearly focused on one thing: Boxing. Johnny Kalbhenn represented Canada at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, and he is a coach at Cabbagetown Boxing Club, working in a space that is not far removed from the films. Nichol insists they watch “Rocky” movies. He makes a point of instructing his young clients to familiarize themselves with a canon of Hollywood movies that praises such dirty work. “But I like to remind them: Sometimes, when your training environment gets a little too soft and comfortable, you get a little too soft and comfortable.” Rocky may have seemed like a "piece of iron" to Drago, but he was also ready to take down the Iron Curtain.“It’s a dungeon,” he said. But the montage in "Rocky IV" literally climbs higher than the steps Rocky had already scaled, sending the champion off of American soil to fight the unbeatable Ivan Drago. It creates momentum and it tells the audience that Rocky or Adonis is finally mentally and physically ready for whatever's coming next.Īdmittedly, the OG "Rocky" montage is a hard one to eclipse. ![]() Both the "Rocky" and "Creed" formulas are largely crafted around the montage trope. Most importantly, we saw him scale the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art in a triumphant training montage to the tune of Bill Conti's rousing anthem "Gonna Fly Now." That sequence invented the modern sports training montage and never looked back. The audience watching "Rocky" already knew his true character way before he ever entered the ring, because we saw the struggles of his solitary, lonely life and the internal battles he was already fighting. ![]()
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