Early 50s and I just had by ass handed to me sparring, getting slow!

B

Bugenhagen

Well OK, age catches up with us. I was sparring with a friend of a friend who is amateur but very promising boxer of 21 and I got hit three times for every block or return hit.

He is 6'3, huge for a Colombian, I'm 6'6 so we were close enough for a real fight but I was just slow, and not just slow punching but even seeing his swings fast enough to block.

I have never experienced this :) I always used to hold my own. I stay fit and have plenty of power but not speed. Maybe it's a magnesium or other deficiency?

I have to rematch, honor demands haha ;) Anybody recovered their speed that was failing?
 
Well I ordered a boxing speed bag on Amazon. I figured my hobby forging which is a lot of hammer work was keeping me quick but not so much.
 
Bugenhagen said:
Well OK, age catches up with us. I was sparring with a friend of a friend who is amateur but very promising boxer of 21 and I got hit three times for every block or return hit.

He is 6'3, huge for a Colombian, I'm 6'6 so we were close enough for a real fight but I was just slow, and not just slow punching but even seeing his swings fast enough to block.

I have never experienced this :) I always used to hold my own. I stay fit and have plenty of power but not speed. Maybe it's a magnesium or other deficiency?

I have to rematch, honor demands haha ;) Anybody recovered their speed that was failing?
More...

Your reaction time can be improved or maintained to about 10 years or so below your chronological age through exercise, especially exercise related to actively maintaining balance and rapid problem solving. Table tennis can help, assuming your knees can take it. The pupils of the eyes shrinks from 7mm when young to 4mm in the elderly, reducing effective field of vision. I would imagine a counter punching strategy might narrow the gap, assuming you are not doing this already. Perhaps performing exercises that emphasize fast twitch muscles might help.

There might be some benefits gained through optimized diets and sleep schedules, but not enough to take you to your 20s. There are research articles out there on this for the Googling, of course.

A benefit of getting older is gaining the wisdom of not getting too serious with athletic competitions against the young! You have seen how older professional fighters looked on TV, right? Larry Holmes and George Foreman come to mind.
 
Bugenhagen said:
Well OK, age catches up with us. I was sparring with a friend of a friend who is amateur but very promising boxer of 21 and I got hit three times for every block or return hit.

He is 6'3, huge for a Colombian, I'm 6'6 so we were close enough for a real fight but I was just slow, and not just slow punching but even seeing his swings fast enough to block.

I have never experienced this :) I always used to hold my own. I stay fit and have plenty of power but not speed. Maybe it's a magnesium or other deficiency?

I have to rematch, honor demands haha ;) Anybody recovered their speed that was failing?
More...
Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands (SAID principle) comes to mind. He's a promising amateur boxer who I imagine practices a lot of blocking and punching several days a week along with his other physical regimen. I'm guessing you haven't been practicing blocking and punching all that much. Mystery solved! (Along with the age difference, which, all else being equal, solves yet another mystery.) :D
 
Frederick Foresight said:
Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands (SAID principle) comes to mind. He's a promising amateur boxer who I imagine practices a lot of blocking and punching several days a week along with his other physical regimen. I'm guessing you haven't been practicing blocking and punching all that much. Mystery solved! (Along with the age difference, which, all else being equal, solves yet another mystery.) :D
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Indeed, I was always able to take on skilled boxers and anticipate as they do without specific boxing training. You can't see and react, you have to be already moving to block on probability. To do that you have to be ahead of them in your head. I was once given a great compliment on my from by "Bolo Yeung" (Enter then Dragon baddie) real name Yang Sze in California on my speed for my size.

Hitting steel with a hammer to get a specific shape and consistent thickness requires some of this. I think I was good at boxing because as a sniper (anti-materie not people so much) along with everything else at distance one needs to keep a subconscious eye on two to three things that indicate wind between you and the target. See the flow of the air currents / air density.

This is why I was a good futures trader, I would integrate three charts, S&P, Nasadq and Dow or Russell in my head. Anyhoo, you are right, I stopped trading in 2020 and this parallel skill to boxing unpracticed I am slower :)

But maybe I need to take more magnesium and magic mushroom microdoses too... Always need an excuse for that haha.
 
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BeautifulStranger said:
Your reaction time can be improved or maintained to about 10 years or so below your chronological age through exercise, especially exercise related to actively maintaining balance and rapid problem solving. Table tennis can help, assuming your knees can take it. The pupils of the eyes shrinks from 7mm when young to 4mm in the elderly, reducing effective field of vision. I would imagine a counter punching strategy might narrow the gap, assuming you are not doing this already. Perhaps performing exercises that emphasize fast twitch muscles might help.

There might be some benefits gained through optimized diets and sleep schedules, but not enough to take you to your 20s. There are research articles out there on this for the Googling, of course.

A benefit of getting older is gaining the wisdom of not getting too serious with athletic competitions against the young! You have seen how older professional fighters looked on TV, right? Larry Holmes and George Foreman come to mind.
More...

Yep, actually I must watch that new Foreman movie tonight. There is something less in my vision, I should have a check, I have always been better than 20/20 but one eye is weaker lately so that's actually something to measure.
 
Bugenhagen said:
This is why I was a good futures trader, I would integrate three charts, S&P, Nasadq and Dow or Russell in my head.
More...
Just curious, did it provide a lot of value to follow a number of the indexes in order to better time the one you were principally trading? I ask because I've looked at that in the past, but didn't really find incremental value over just following the instrument traded. I imagine most people would likely disagree with me, but I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a particularly dynamic trader.
 
Frederick Foresight said:
Just curious, did it provide a lot of value to follow a number of the indexes in order to better time the one you were principally trading? I ask because I've looked at that in the past, but didn't really find incremental value over just following the instrument traded. I imagine most people would likely disagree with me, but I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a particularly dynamic trader.
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I think we discussed this before and you are not interested in my style :)

My view of the market is one of multiple currents that make up a larger whole/river. A friend described it as walking four dogs of dissimilar sizes with bungee chords as leashes? It's disorganised but has an order.

The four indices move as one largely speaking. So I learned to watch for things like the slower reacting as they are highly correlated. Technical trading becomes less random walk once you have the sweet spot of enough but not too much.

Two instruments are enough but three got me to a 1-10 ish tick hit rate with an average of 94.7 percent 'wins'. Success at this is very much like a sport, if you feel in the groove you are unbeatable, if you feel shonky, take it easy.

But one must swing trade larger time frames also. Like a great sniper does (or just one without a spotter)you learn to look with one eye through the scope and one to see the larger picture figuratively speaking though somewhat literally. I gave up on a load of screens and became good with just two 15.4 inch usb displays. I used to have a layout worthy of a Space X control room :) less is more.

The important thing though I have always said to make fuck everybody money you need support (or spotter(s) to stick with the sniper analogy. This his where lone wolf retail traders fail, they don't find good people and build up a rapport that eliminates virtually all error or catches anything going south. Three heads are truly better. There are cues to take off the stocks, knowing the news and special days line earnings and stuff is best wrangled by a team.

I know one other trader who operates very much like I do, we bounced a lot of ideas. That said, I never see anybody talking trading in a non-competing team at the retail level you see here on ET.

Most are just faking it until it breaks them.
 
Bugenhagen said:
I think we discussed this before and you are not interested in my style :)
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I recall that I couldn’t quite understand how you could scalp off of the chart time frame you were using. I have a way of looking at things that I cannot quite shake, perhaps to my detriment.

I’m fairly sure we touched in this in the past, but let me ask you again. With such a high hit rate, how many ticks did you typically risk on these scalp trades? Because, if I recall, you only risked a couple of ticks or so. And I just cannot fathom how you could finesse it using your chosen chart interval. I’m impressed, but I can’t quite wrap my head around it.
 
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