Interview of Dr. James Stoxen DC by Jatinder Dhoot
on CHRY 105.5 FM Toronto, June 6th, 2005
Interview Transcript
Jatinder: Of course main event Andrei Arlovski defeats Justin Eilers. The man working in his corner and helping him a lot with the chiropractic is Dr. James Stoxen who is joining us now. How’s it going James?
Dr. Stoxen: Everything’s beautiful when you win.
Jatinder: Yeah exactly, pretty impressive victory overall. What are your thoughts overall?
Dr. Stoxen: Well, like I had in my website, who elects to kickoff and who elects to receive? When you put a couple low kicks on the inside of that knee–I don’t know if he’s ever felt those low kicks to the knee before, but they are very painful.
Jatinder: Oh yeah.
Dr. Stoxen: And you are going to go down.
Jatinder: Yes, it was definitely a great victory for him. You’ve been working with Andrei for quit a while.
Dr. Stoxen: Andrei came to me and was assigned to me by the manager, when he first came here to the united states from Belarus, Russia. I think it was 5 or 6 years ago he was in his early twenties. He had just done very well in the Sambo World Championships. We were really impressed with him because he had tremendous genetics, had a great work ethic, and did exactly what we told him to do–which is something to look for when you are trying to make a world champion. So he came to us very young, and he was moldable–which is some of the toughest things when dealing with these athletes–is that they become a national champion and they have worked with one national champion which is themselves and guys like us have worked with or talked to 2 – 300 national and world champions or more and we are able to sample information from these champions and pass on that information to the next athlete, and if they get a little cocky when they don’t learn and they don’t absorb and when you are stubborn you always lose.
Jatinder: yes definitely, now overall working with Andrei what do you do with him?
Dr. Stoxen: When he first came here we decided to give him an overall evaluation to determine his biomechanics and what his weak points were. And then, we found that in the Soviet Union there really wasn’t good footwear, and his arches were a little weak even though he has very powerful legs. I started working on his feet all the way up to his legs inch by inch by hand, removing every spasm from his frame. He would come in three days a week with his manager, and we would sit there for one hour to an hour and one half a night, going through him meticulously–through his entire body removing every spasm, every joint restriction, and theoretically making his frame as perfect as possible. The reason why I did this was to set up a nice solid founding for the future so his body wouldn’t have all the injuries. In this game it’s basically the longer you stay in it, the greater the opportunity to be a world champion.
Jatinder: Everyone talks about all the striking you have to learn, all the grappling you have to learn, and the wrestling you have to learn. What about things like this, the chiropractic, do you think that this is something that is sometimes overlooked by people?
Dr. Stoxen: Well you know what, like i said before, if you want to be a world champion, you have to go through a lot of fighters. If you have an injury you are out. you have to take sometimes 2 – 3 months off. Guys who are looking to make it to any position in any sport in the world–they have to do the preventive and plan for the future. In other words, if we have a powerlifter who has broken a national record and is looking at breaking a world record, or even if they haven’t broken any records, you need to build solid muscle tissue on a framework that is moving correctly and is structurally sound. You have to start with a solid foundation and then you apply muscle to it. That is the premise of what we did with Andrei. We realigned his entire frame, We took every muscle spasm we could find out of him, and he had a training program that would put on solid muscle tissue to make sure he could endure all the punishment he was going to take.
Jatinder: Andrei has come a long way in the past few years, what do you think is the key to his success?
Dr. Stoxen: The key to his success is that the decision making that has taken place in his career–such as who his juditsu trainer is, Dino and who his boxing trainer is Mike Garcia, and once you find something that works you stick to it. A lot of times i see professional fighters will knock out 4 or 5 people in a row and they move up in the rankes to be ranked 5th in the world, and they think the grass is greener on the other side of the hill, and what they need to do is think of what is working right and tweek it a little bit and improve and stay with what you are doing. I got a text message from Andrei from the Soviet Union after he won his world title and he said, “Why should i come back to Chicago?”. I said, “Because you are a world champion and it’s because of what you are doing right that has made you a world champion, and everybody wants to be like you. Why would you change to try to be like them when they are trying to be like you?”.
Jatinder: Right, right.
Dr. Stoxen: Guys will be on a strength and conditioning program and it’s knockout after knockout and it’s tremendous success, and then they will come to me and say that their manager wants them to go to California and run in the hills–and they will be gone for a month and a half, and they are not planning on doing their strength and conditioning, and i look at them and say, “Why are you doing that when everything is working great.” And now you don’t know what the outcome is going to be because they are changing everything, and sure enough they get a decision instead of a knockout, go out of town for a fight, and the next time end up losing. What I can say–don’t change everything completely, just tweek it a bit.
Jatinder: Definitely, definitely. Now we really appreciate you taking your time and you can find out more information at www.teamdoctorsblog.com
Dr. Stoxen: Right.
Jatinder: We look forward to chatting in the future.
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