Up at 5am...

...doing roadwork, because I have a fight scheduled for September 26th with a 38 year old 0-0 fighter.

Training harder yet.

Why fight? Today's answer

So we get to this question, why do I want to fight at all? The funny thing is that to my non-kickboxing friends no answer is sufficient and to those who fight no answer is really necessary, so any answer has to be to the folks that I do this sort of stuff with:

That is who practice Muay thai (and "advanced acting for action movies") but not really with plans to ever compete.

So here are the reasons I think I am doing this: reach and focus.

Reach, one should not just do things that you know you can accomplish and I don't really know that this is doable. I have set this goal to do something hard because that makes me better at everything I do. There are moments, a lot of moments, when this seems stupid or undoable and I have to remind myself that this is precisely the point.

Focus, this goal is making me better at the things I can already do by forcing me to consider everything I do in training in light of whether it is viable in an actual bout. If it is silly or stiff or too complicated, then its back to basics and practice, practice, practice until I can't do a move wrong. When I don't want to workout I ask myself if my potential opponent is doing the same. Turn's out that bastard is working and so I have to as well. All of this is disciplined by the fact that what lies at the end of this road is a set of ropes that I have to climb over to stand across from someone who is there with the specific purpose of knocking me unconscious. That's an attention holder.

Another call, another pass

I got another call over the weekend for a fight, and again had to take a pass. My trainer recommended I do so and honestly i knew he was right, but it was much harder than the last time. I am really ready to get in the ring, mentally, but the problem wasn't mental this time. The problem was it was a fight with a more experienced fighter in 6 days. I realized I would have to start the weight cut immediately and would have no time to prep at all. This would be straight "off the couch." At the same time, it was a reputable promoter and a good opponent so it was hard to listen to the good advice that I couldn't realistically be ready...dammit.

I don't know how I will discipline myself to reject whatever offer comes next, regardless

2 minutes at a time

I have been running for a long time, since high school on and off, and very consistently over the last several years. I run a reasonably fast mile and 5k (7.5 to 8 minutes) but I have felt like my endurance in sparring has been on a plateau for some time.

I decided to take a look at what trainers were saying about the subject and discovered that most seem to have moved off the straight road work to interval training. At the same time, one doesn't just abandon the aerobic training that has worked very well over the years. The thing is that fight sports are almost universally anaerobic exercises, short bursts of only a few minutes requiring peak effort. Interval running, hard dashes or climbs at speed, train for the ability to expend the energy very quickly and with power. This expenditure can go from seconds up to a maximum of 2 minutes or so. apparently as you get to the 2 minute mark the exercise begins to become more aerobic. So I realized that my running has been oriented more towards training for distance running than to kickboxing.

Here's what I have started doing to improve it. Any day that I am not in the gym sparring or on pad work, I run on the following pattern. I am continuing the running at distance but am adding a series of interval dashes in the first couple of miles. So the pattern goes: .5 mile warm-up jog, 2 minutes sprint, 1 minute jog (repeated 4 times, 1 round longer than any amateur fight I am likely to be in), then finish at normal 7.5-8 minute mile speed for the remaining distance, generally 5K. I am enjoying this new pattern (well enjoying is probably a strong word) because it is preserving my aerobic training and improving my anaerobic training. I think I detect improvement when sparring, but its early days.

Always wear your mouth guard

I was knocked to the ground while doing some clinch training the other day. No gloves or other protective gear on, except the cup and mouth guard. My training partner tried turning hard out of my clinch and I basically ate a spinning elbow (I am still trying to figure out exactly how this happened as it would constitute a very nice move if I could work it out). The upshot is that our trainer has told us to always wear our mouth guards, even when it does not seem like a necessity. I am fairly sure it would have cost me teeth without it.

Also the fifth time I have been legitimately knocked down while training (adding the elbow to a sidekick, a low round kick, uppercut to the liver, and nicely executed jab). And so it goes