Well dammit all!

This was supposed to be the post about how the fight went, but instead its about how it did not go.

Friday night, after sweating it out all day, I show up at the weigh-in. I feel good mentally, having cut effectively and rapidly, but pretty lousy physically at 24 hours without water. I get on the scale and it reads 151.4, which is a shock after two separate scales put me at 149. Its also not good as 151.0 is as high as I can be. So off come all the clothes (except my underwear) and, whew, 151.0. Made it and now to re-hydrate and eat, everything is on track with 24 hours to get back to normal.

Then I get home and right around 11 the promoter calls me, the other side says if I am an ounce over 155 tomorrow afternoon then there is no fight. They think the promoter is suckering them into a fight with a bigger guy, and my close weigh-in hasn't helped. Normally I would not worry, but after an almost 2.5 lb error from my scales I realize I don't have much margin for error. So limited food and water for a second day. To cut to the chase, 4:00 on Saturday afternoon I am at 153.2 and everyone is happy. The other guy's coaches seem like nice guys and we chat a bit. And back to the re-hydrating and fueling up.

So then the waiting starts, they are building the cage in front of us and rumors begin to float around that the expected 10 fights are down to 5. More time passes, no rules meeting and no ring doctor are in evidence. Around 5 the doctor shows up, and they commence with the rules meeting and the pre-fight physicals simultaneously. I am definitely feeling it at this point, I like to think I am cool on the outside, joking with the other fighters, but the excitement is building. My turn comes up, and the ring doctor and I start joking about doing one for the old guys. He looks me over and seems happy. then I stick my arm in the blood pressure cuff, and he doesn't look happy. "There is no way I can clear you." My blood pressure is at 197/79! We talk, he rechecks it, still right there. He has me go drink water, hit the pads for a few minutes, and try to bring down my heart rate (which unsurprisingly has jumped a bit). I come back, and its 201/78. No arguing with that, he tells me that this is hospitalization level blood pressure, and I am out.

Here's the thing, I don't have high blood pressure. I never get a reading above 130ish/75-80, and even that is rare. Today as I write this its at 121/70. So WTF! After a visit to the emergency room and my doctor the conclusion is a combination of dehydration, the stress of the situation and (possibly) overproduction of adrenaline (its a superpower not a problem).

So we are working on it and I should have it under control the next time out, but I am not sure I can convince my coach that I will be able to do this, much less anyone else's team. Who would schedule a fight with me at this point? It is bitterly frustrating to be so close and be denied.

I feel like I am the Jonah of kickboxing shows as the event was down to 4 fights when my results came in and finished with 3 total (this after the first event I was offered a fight for was canceled because of a sanctioning problem, and the second one had my opponent drop out and then a snow storm force rescheduling of the event). I apologized to my opponent and his team (who were very gracious) and the promoter (less gracious).

Okay, time to start pushing that boulder back up this damn hill.

Mix it Up fight

All right, all right, all right. Just when it looked like November would yield no fight, I get an email from a local promoter who I spoke with last year saying they had a event the weekend before the one I had hoped to get in.

My coach was cautious, he doesn't know this promoter and his reputation is not sterling, but he was as forthcoming with detail this time as he was withholding of detail the last time we talked. He offered a Glory rules fight at 145 against a 0-0 fighter from down in Charlottesville, VA. We went back and forth for a bit before settling on Muay Thai (with limited rules, no elbows or knees to the head) at 150lbs. They are very concerned about my weight and I had to make repeated assurances that I don't stand at more than 155.

So its hard training for  a few weeks and then on November 5th, I will fight in the Mix-It-Up Promotion.

A Bit of Friday Night Sparring

I love doing a little sparring on Friday night.  It feels like it caps the week of more organized training and I always get to try out something new, regardless of whether I am sparring someone much more skilled or a bit less so. Here is some video from a Friday night sparring session with another game older guy. (I am wearing the gold gloves).

Worth mentioning that it always strikes me (pun intended) by how light everything looks when you watch it on video versus how it feels at the time. This was definitely us going at it at 10-15%, so not too hard but its not nothing either. Also although overall I am not unhappy with how my skills are coming along in sparring, I always find video of myself a little cringe-worthy.

Injuries

The training goes on and in order to avoid repeating myself too much let me just say I am impatient to fight and have nothing much scheduled. But that's not what this post is focused on, its about all the ways I have found to injure myself as I have been doing this training stretching from the earliest days of basic classes to the present hard training and sparring.

It was specifically inspired by my latest injuries one to my foot and one to my knee.

The foot injury was the result of me being pushed off the mat while I was clinching a much larger partner. He put his head down and slid me right into a exterior loading bay door and I cut my heel very nicely on a bolt on the door. I bled all over everything and it took quite a bit of effort to tape it up and let me continue to train.Urgent care the next day and a tetanus shot were required, but I was back on the mats on my usual schedule and it healed very quickly. The urgent care doctor really captured my whole Muay Thai experience when he said, "wow these are excellent vitals for a guy your age..(long pause)..can you explain again exactly how you managed to hurt your foot."

I managed the knee injury by throwing a slapping knee straight into the point of an elbow. I was so hyped up that the instructor asked me if it hurt and I couldn't figure out what he was talking about at the time. I trained the next day but that was probably a mistake as I have been limping around a bit since, no swelling and its recovering quickly, so I am guessing I dodged serious injury this time. This is the third significant knee on elbow hit I have managed this year all during sparring.

These experiences got me wondering as to whether I am injuring myself more frequently than might be expected (and might therefore need to consider doing things a bit differently) or whether I could continue reasonably on my current course (the "suck it up buttercup" approach). I am not an especially young guy nor an especially tough guy so it was a real question around the sustainability of all of this effort.

So the first thing I did was see if there was anything definitive about injury and injury rates in Muay Thai and quickly stumbled into a very helpfully named article called Injury and Injury Rates in Muay Thai Kick Boxing, leading me to conclude the knowledge of the whole world is really just a matter of a precisely correct search term.

As a brief digression, it was a real treasure chest of key data and included a couple of tidbits not directly related to the question I had started with that are worth mentioning 1) they estimated in 2001 that about a million people worldwide are doing Muay Thai. I doubt this included everyone in Thailand (nor those practicing related forms in SE Asia) where there are nearly 70 million people alone, but its probably a good order of magnitude guest-timate of those outside the region training in Muay Thai. So not a lot of people in the greater scope of things. 2) the rates of injury are lower for Muay Thai than for Football, Wrestling, Gymnastics or even Women's Soccer. In fact, the injury rate was lower than for Golf or even general exercise. This suggested that Golf is a much tougher sport than I thought, and that the definition of injury may be a little shaky. Still I have repeated these figures to my unenthusiastic-about-kickboxing wife, who was unimpressed.

So here's my math on this one. The researchers found that there was a rate of injury of 24 injuries per 1000 minutes of practice. These can range from bruises to broken bones. They acknowledge that the rate of reported contusions is undoubtedly low because people just get used to bruises, so I am assuming that reported bruises are those really nice ugly ones. The required time for belt rank advancement at the main place I train is between 600-900 per rank, so this can be used to estimate how many minutes I have practiced and yield a prediction of how many injuries I should have seen. The result is probably a minimum of around 240 injuries with 60 (25%) being substantial ones during the course of my training.

This left me with a new problem, I walk around bruised all the time and can't really accurately recall any but the absolutely nastiest ones. I tried to recall all my injuries and leaving aside serious bruises and similar bumps ended up in the range of 30 or so, but clearly this leaves out a whole significant category. Fortunately, there was one additional piece of data, between 4-7% of the significant injuries actually required significant time off from training to recover. These were injuries where you could not train, and the predicted number for me was 3-4. Now this is a really subjective thing at some level, I know that a number of injuries I have had and trained through would have seen a smarter person sitting out for a few days. That said, I have actually had 3 injuries serious enough to sideline me for a week or more: two ankle sprains and a back strain. My current injuries have seen me modify my training a bit, as have some earlier ones, but keep to my schedule.

So it seems like I am right where I ought to be, I am going hard but not crazy hard. Which leads me to the conclusion that buttercup had best suck it up.

Ironic obstacles

I find some irony in three observations about this whole process:

Fears, it seems to be a common thing among those who fight that they are less afraid about getting hurt than they are about embarrassing their team with a poor performance. I have felt this but was surprised to read that others had the same feelings. Its not that I am fearless about injury, but I do feel like I have that concern appropriately assessed. I am not anymore likely to get injured doing this than I am doing any other intense physical activity at my age (the level of injury of my "old-man hockey" friends being a nice benchmark). The fear of embarrassment though is at a very different level because during the fight you are at the center of everyone's attention and defeat can be so swift and utterly decisive (as opposed to say quietly dropping out of a marathon mid-way because you cannot go on).

Opportunity, it remains funny to me that there aren't people lining up to pummel me in the ring. I would love to get a shot at an old inexperienced opponent like myself, and after some initial interest by a somewhat shady promoter I cannot say there has been a rush to fight me. Let's go with I am a too fierce.

Time, I always assumed that it would be a question of difficulty in reaching a fitness level or some level of technique that would be the real challenge, but it turns out the real challenge is much more banal. It's just having the time to do the training in competition with family and work time. Again, this is apparently a very common theme for everyone who fights, even the professionals. There just isn't much way to add a whole separate non-paying (or poorly paying) career on top of full lives.

Nothing deep here for anyone who has done his, but its been a revelation to me.

Good night of sparring

I had a great evening of sparring last night, which was a real relief because sparring has been a hard thing to come by lately. There were seven of us and for the core of the work we did a continuous rotation through with one person out in each round. This meant 6 three minute rounds with a new partner in each round. Some of my stuff was working but other things less so, and as always the only real way to determine what works is put it to the test intensely with someone else.

Things that worked:

Movement - I was able to use lateral movement and angle cutting to maintain pressure and push back even fairly aggressive partners and drive less assertive partners straight backwards. This was the case even when I wasn't pressing them very hard.

Low kicks - Even when I was over-matched by my opponents' boxing or straight-line kicks, my low kicks to the legs kept them off balance. This is something I have been focusing on so it was nice to see it work.

Clinch defense - For the most part, I was able to choose when to clinch and when not to clinch. I wasn't always as successful in the clinch as I would have liked but it was mostly my call whether we were in the clinch.

Things that did not work as well:

Combinations - A lot of the 4, 5 and 6 step combinations that I had worked hard on just haven't been working out, in part because they are too static. I fire from a position then cut an angle and fire more. The problem is that if someone goes backwards, as they tend to do, then the last half of the combination has nowhere to go. I think I need to adjust my approaches and movement to stay more closely in contact throughout. This is exactly what I faced in the Battle of Baltimore when my opponents simply retreated out of the fight area.

Pacing - I can't help myself and go flying into the first round, and (though my conditioning is good) I definitely have less left in the late rounds than I would like. Not sure what to do here, I feel like strong early rounds establish the "narrative" of the fight and I don't want to give that up. It may just be a question of more conditioning.

Altogether a really good evening's work, and judging from all the cuts, scratches and the bloodied nose probably something not to try to do every night.

The math of the thing

Not a great deal to report, I continue to train but its been a bit of a slog with nothing much on the near-term horizon. I started wondering whether the problem I have with getting (and keeping) a reasonable fight might be as much about the math as anything. Here is how I figure it:

Total universe of  amateur fighters reasonably available to fight somewhere hereabouts:

"Serious" Fight Gyms with teams, maybe a dozen with roughly ten fighters each (12 x10=120)
Other Gyms, Martial arts schools, basement trainers (very roughly another 120)
"Drive-in's", fighters who will travel here to fight (lets say roughly 120 again)

120+120+120 = 360

But lets be generous and say I am missing some source or underestimating one or more sources and call it:

500 fighters

This is probably wrong but not by an order of magnitude, there are definitely hundreds and although there are thousands of talkers only a fraction will ever fight in any circumstance. So how many of those fighter might fight me? 

Let's assume 10% are women (which is probably low but lacking any basis for the calculation the number works). So, we are down to: 450

Probably half of the fighters have serious experience and 5 plus fights (based on the number of fighters using "early fights" safety equipment in amateur bouts I have watched). Serious fighters are likely to build up over time (as they stay active for a number of years). Fighters who hope to fight or have 1 fight are going to turn over in the active pool as they realize this isn't for them or accomplish goals like fighting at all. I remain in that second group, so, 450/2= 225.

Then there is weight, which is a tough one because its fluid (there's a weight cutting joke for you). Presumably there are fighters across the full range of weight classes but 140-160 lbs where I generously place myself is pretty well represented. I am guessing that 20% of fighters would fight in this range. Given that its more realistic that I would fight between 145-155, this seems like it may be a generous estimate. So 45 fighters left, which is not bad.

Finally though, there is age. I am (again) guessing that perhaps 10% of the fighters are somewhere from their mid-thirties on up. This may even be a generous figure. My suspicion is this is distributed more heavily to the experienced fighters because they have hung around and fought either intermittently or have been out and want back in, but let's just say 10%. That is around 5 guys, of which I am one.

So patience, grasshopper, patience. This is going to be a slow process.

Inspiration

I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times. – Bruce Lee

Team sports

"Fighting is the most solitary form of competition; you are all alone out there. But what I hear again and again is how important the team is...The team is what gets you there.Team members train and spar and cajole you, push you through the rigors and hellish boredom of training, and they support you and protect you from nerves in the days and hour leading up to a fight, Fighting is, strangely enough, a team sport." ("The Fighter's Heart" by Sam Sheridan, p. 119)

I didn't ever really get this until the run up to the fight that didn't happen (as I am calling it).

I had prepared hard for my tournament fight but had largely kept my plans to myself because I suspected I would get resistance from some and honestly I was worried that I would fail in a spectacular fashion. The result was that all of my friends, trainers (with a couple of exceptions) and sparring partners asked for little notice next time. So I let them know as soon as the fight card was announced, and the result was kind of spectacular.

My trainer, Matt, and training partner, Gordon, were obviously all in and we worked very hard. But beyond that my bout became everyone's project. In Friday night sparring, Nick (the Professor) started by working hard on the game planning against a primarily TKD opponent and got the other students to work a variety of body tempering drills on me. The head instructor at BBMAC had me doing additional repetitions of the conditioning drills. Sean, a fellow student who had boxed as a younger man, focused on my boxing and stance. Elliot, who has been one of my longest running training partners, worked hard in the sparring and particularly on the clinch. The last Friday sparring I fought continuous rounds against new partners (including the Professor) throughout. I think all of this was in part purely out of friendship and support, but it also gave everyone a chance to participate in a fighting competition that they might not otherwise be able to participate in. As a team Matt and Gordon had me up to a really sharp edge, but when you added in the rest of the team I was as prepared and ready as I have ever been. 

I may not have gotten to do this fight but I am absolutely confident that I can do it in large measure because of the people around me.

Explosion and endurance

As my conditioning has improved and my training has progressed I have realized something: I am still working as hard as ever at the end of a round of pad work or sparring. I was concerned about this for a while wondering when it would be that I could get through a hard round and not be panting and pouring sweat at the end. Then I realized that the level of output in a round had increased dramatically. I was still clinching and delivering hard knees after 3 minutes and firing round kicks at the pad at full force and rapidly. That's when it occurred to me that the real goal is to be able to funnel as much explosive power through myself as I needed in each round. Previously, I was just as winded but the output wasn't much. Now I am exploding through my rounds and still able to go to the next round afterward. That's the other side of the equation of course and really where I see the improved conditioning in that I am able to repeat that explosive process through many rounds whether sparring, clinching or doing pad work. That's what I will need deep into the late rounds. And its coming along.  Progress, real progress.

The fight that never happened

One week before the fight I had scheduled for tomorrow, my opponent withdrew without much explanation. Then the day before the fights, the whole mid-Atlantic got hit with a massive snowstorm and the event was postponed anyway. So, that didn't happen.

I felt unhappy about it but also really good about my initial reaction which was 100% disappointment and 0% relief. I was ready, really ready, physically and mentally. I am ready to go.

Why fight? Today's answer

I forgot to add that I told everyone about the fight this last week. My friends had been unhappy that I had waited until the last minute to let them know I was fighting. I promised I would do so earlier this time, but I found myself hard pressed to do so. The thing is that I am ambivalent about the attention it brings me. I really love the support they have given me and wouldn't be able to aspire to this without it, but I am not doing this for that attention. This is about something I need to do to improve my martial arts and myself. It is to test both of these in a tough environment and it may end badly. I am not going to be unhappy from that perspective if I lose (although I would prefer not to) as long as it instructs me in useful ways. But having shared widely, I feel like I am fighting for all my friends who I train with. Much like the early post about my health in training, life is not perfect so I am going to embrace the idea that I am fighting for my friends ("The Greying Hope" for us older folks) and get out there and beat my opponent.

training and thinking

And I suspect the ratio of one to the other is too heavily weighted towards thinking. I wake up thinking about my upcoming fight in the morning, think about it as I drive, when I am running, and pretty much every other moment that I am not fully engaged in something else. Its ironic but the moments when i am not thinking of it at all is when I am training, particularly sparring or hard pad work, I am all there for those things. Office work, less so. My thoughts oscillate wildly between confidence and excitement, tactics, to-do in advance of the fight, fear, and certainty that I am in over my head.

Training is going well, and I am starting my last hard week before my weight cut. Friday was particularly tough when I sparred with other students, clinch sparred with my trainer (and he beat the hell out of me), had hard pad work, and some serious "body tampering" wherein my fellow students took turns throwing round kicks and shovel hooks to my unprotected mid-section. I suspect my trainer is going to take it way up this week and I need to arrive really ready for as hard a training session as I have ever experienced. I have no way to gauge his confidence in me, but he is damn sure doing his best to prepare me for the fight.

Busy Holiday Season

My next fight got scheduled over the holidays, January 23rd in the Thai Championship Boxing promotion in Virginia. A full three rounds with modified Muay Thai rules (no elbows, or knees to the head) against a 20 year old who went 1-1 in a Taekwondo tournament a year or two ago. He is slightly taller than me and training with someone who both my trainer and the promoter know personally. Obviously there is some risk in fighting someone this much younger but I trust the guys who are making the fight and am going for it.

Speaking of which, training is going hard again and it was tough because of a combination of illness and family responsibilities over the holidays. My runs have been shorter and less frequent than I would like, but I am really kicking it up today. My training sessions with Matt are going well but he is leaving me soaked in sweat and completely wiped out at the end of each (and I feel like I should be holding up a little better). Still you are never truly 100% and I am pushing hard. On the plus side, the flexibility work is really showing results and I am whipping my kicks higher, faster and harder than at any point.

Two weeks of hard training left and then the taper and weight cut week.