By Juan C. Ayllon – CHICAGO – Doctor James Stoxen, DC is a chiropractor that enjoys notoriety working with athletes and show business people. He owns a clinic called Team Doctors on the Southwest side of Chicago and, as an expert on the foot, he’s given lectures around the world to medical doctors on his techniques for strengthening the client quite literally from the ground up..
Dr. Stoxen has been helping local middleweight boxer, Miguel Hernandez (20-8, 10 KO’s) prepare for his fight this Friday against vaunted slugger Luciano Perez (16-9, 14 KO’s), who in November 2007 nearly beat ex-World Boxing Council Welterweight champ Carlos Baldomir little over a year after Baldomir upended Arturo Gatti in nine rounds and has campaigned at welterweight most of his career, but recently moved up to middleweight, or 160 lbs.
A popular Chicago boxer, Hernandez won the Illinois State Middleweight Title in April 2005, the WBC United States Middleweight Title in February 2006, was stopped in fights versus former champions Raul Marquez and Yory Boy Campas that same year, and participated in the boxing reality show “The Contender” in 2007. Their showdown will be held at the UIC Pavilion in Chicago.
About a month ago, Dr. Stoxen spoke candidly via telephone about his work with Miguel, who’s been a longtime client of his.
On having both fighters as clients:
Well, you know that his fight is with Luciano and both of them are clients of mine, in some respects. Miguel has been a more active participant in our office than Luciano [who] used to come some time ago – I haven’t seen him recently.
[Still,] I have worked with Luciano. He’s a great guy. One time, he came to our office and we gave him a treatment, told him that we would sponsor him. About an hour later, he came back with a whole big pan full of ribs – you know, short ribs. He showed he really appreciated it – he’s a real nice fellow. He was really grateful for the work we had done in the past. I have nothing bad to say about Luciano – I wish him all the best. If he needs anything from us, we will certainly extend that courtesy to him.
On weighty issues:
I have been talking to Miguel about his fluctuation in his weight over the last couple years. He has not been training with us for the last year, so he’s had some difficulty making weight and I had asked him if he would just come in and go back to the old days where he used to do exactly what we told him.
He really likes the ab routine that we setup for him, but what we really setup for him was a full routine that had from the tip of his toes to the top of his head. It started from the arches of his feet and developed all the muscles from the bottom all the way to the top to get a linkage of power, you know, incorporating all the muscles from the different floors of the body and improve the summation of force to have better quickness and punching ability.
But what’s happened is that he goes to Sports Fitness and he does some training there, and he goes to our office and he would do some abs – he didn’t do the full routine anymore and his performance wasn’t as good as it was in the past. He didn’t have more knockouts.
About four years ago, when he first started to lose the weight, he was at 220 and then he went down to like 180, and then he came to me and said, ‘What should I be?’ And I said, ‘I think we should do it scientifically, where we evaluate your weight with electronic scale.’ And then we did, and we found out that if he cut himself down to nine percent body fat, which is what we like to see our fighters at by fight time, then his weight should be at 147. I told him that and he said his trainer said his weight should be 175 (he had been at 220 before). I said, ‘we can get him a lot slimmer than that and safely, not where he’s really having to put his health at risk.’
So, I said to him, ‘Let’s go to 147.’ So, he got to 155 and he won a fight and said, ‘Well, I promise you the next fight, I’ll fight at 147.’ And then he went up instead. He fought at 165, I believe for ‘The Contender.’ So, he’s really 18 pounds heavier than he should be. In ‘The Contender,’ he was fighting guys that were probably walking around at 175 and dropping down to 165. He really should be at 147.
So, you see what I’m saying? He really has never fought at the weight I think he should fight at. But, he’s fighting at 160, which I think he’ll be 13 pounds heavier than he should be, and Luciano’s a hard puncher, and so Miguel can’t just exchange punches just like he used to cause Luciano can hit pretty hard.
And Luciano’s got to think about the same thing. So, these guys can knock each other out at any given time.
So, mainly, we’re going to get through this fight and then he promises me that he’ll go down to 155 and then 147. So, we’ll see how it works out.
On Miguel’s motivation:
One thing is he’s fighting this one for his son – he’s got two titles, one for each son, and they have one more – and so he’s got motivation. He came in the other day and trained real hard and he was sweating real good. He felt good, and his attitude is good, so I think that’s a good start, right?
More on the sticky weight issue:
But you know, the weight thing is what throws you off. If you do all these fluctuations all the time, up and down, the body doesn’t really like that very much. All these ups and downs, diet changes – it’s best to hover within 10 pounds of your [fighting] bodyweight. It’s not good to go up and down.
But that’s the main thing I’ve been asking him, like last fight at the weigh-in at our office; he had such a difficult time on the weight that he was maybe not as strong as he should be because he had difficulty making weight. I think he weighed-in at eight pounds over. I’m not sure. That was at our office about a year ago.
On mitigating factors:
Miguel’s got two jobs, you know? He’s got a full family to take care of [and] he’s got two jobs now. Before, he used to be able to train at will when he was a professional boxer, but now he’s working full-time and has a part-time job on top of that. That’s what makes it difficult on him, more than it was before. There’s not a lot of time to get the training in.
On Miguel being in the twilight of his career:
He’s got a few losses in a row, hasn’t he? You know, he’s got a lot of experience, which helps and he’s got a pretty tough chin. I mean, he’s weathered a lot of tough fights and never been dropped very often. He knows what to do to prepare for the fight.
Honestly, though, I have a feeling if he would drop down to 147, it would make him train a little harder, and he’ll be in better shape at fight time, and also he will be fighting people that are more along his [natural] weight level – his true weight, which would be a lot easier for him.
So, we’ll see what he does from here. I mean we can only see what happens, you know?
On Team Doctor’s New Facilities:
Team Doctors is excited that we’re hosting the weigh-in. It’s a new facility. We finished our shoe store and our sports wear store, and we’re going to try and stock it for the big event. It [includes] shoes that are helpful for taking care of painful conditions from bunions and backaches, to shin splints, to sciatic nerve problems. This project has been going real well for us. We also built a larger training center in our facility to accommodate more training equipment – treadmills and cardio equipment in our training center, so that’s been some additional things that we’ve been doing.
We’ve [also] put in an online shoe store called Teamdoctorsstore.com and people can pick up footwear that is good for diabetes, more sure-footedness in sports, everyday work boots and things like that for hard-working people. [I did this] because of my affinity for the foot, the way the foot strikes determines the fate of the rest of the kinematic chain. I found that that’s very important, so instead of having people running around town to find a pair of shoes to start the healing process, I built a store right there in the facility so we can get them fit in the right pair of shoes and get that foundation nicely anchored so that healing process can happen faster. The results are much better now that we can fit them with the right shoe and the exact fit…that’s extremely important that people don’t end up in the future with medical problems.
On whether Hernandez uses his gear:
Miguel just started training with us about two days ago, and so we mainly focus on full training and not just the ab work – he just mostly trains his abs, which I’m not a fan of – one area. He does the rest of it at another gym. I told him it’s not a good idea, so we’ll see what happens. We’ll see how it shakes out. We’re going to work him hard, though!
On whether he has a prediction on Hernandez’s fight versus Perez:
No way! I would say that it’s going to be like a slugfest between those two and it’s unpredictable what’s going to happen because they both can hit real hard and, seeing that they’re both clients, I’m not going to make any predictions.
I know that we’re going to be monitoring very closely. We’ll work with anyone who’s really interested in working really hard and puts their all into it. And so, right now, Miguel is plugged into our system of training, so that’s who we’re watching now.
On Friday’s boxing show at the UIC:
It’ll be a good group at UIC. I talked with Dominic at Andre’s party. Andrei Arlovski celebrated his 30th birthday yesterday. And it was quite an event. It was about a hundred people. There was a band and a singer came in…wow! It was very extravagant.