February 22nd

Good day in some ways, frustrating in others…

Diet
Normal. Back at work so back to eating properly. Had chilli for lunch and grilled chicken in the evening.

Exercise
Warmup: Stretches, speedbag
Sparring: Similar as before, 2 rounds of 2 minutes with a longish break between. We were told to go at 50% and concentrate on footwork, movement and technique. I think everyone tried to slow it down a bit, but the punches seemed just as fast and hard as before!
Set 1: 10 pressups, 10 crunches, 10 Russian twists, 10 squat thrusts, 10 burpees, 10 ring jumps. Repeat.

Sparring went well. I concentrated really hard on keeping calm, not overreaching with my jab, and maintaining my guard. I think I improved on all 3 over my first outing, and asking around afterwards the guys  said I looked a lot better and more in control. Really pleased with the compliments, but then again, they're far too polite to say "You were shit." :)

The guys I fought, Simon and Sparky, were quick and powerful, and landed some good shots on me. I got in some solid hits of my own though; a neat double jab on Sparky’s nose, and a good right to the body on Simon. I fought Simon last time as well, when he caught me with some wicked combinations. This time though I defended a lot better, got my guard up quickly, and blocked his flurry while moving out of reach.

On the negative side, I still didn’t land many combinations. I need to get into the habit of following a good connecting jab with a hard right and stepping close to throw a flurry. As it is I’m hitting with a jab and often already moving away. That sort of thing has a place in a fight, but I should be able to mix it up.

We didn’t get much feedback from the trainers on the session, mainly because Andy was taking the class on his own, and had more than enough to do refereeing the sparring and organising the non-fighters. Not his fault and he did a great job, it just would have been nice to get some pointers on where I went wrong during my rounds.

When I got back from the gym I tried to put my punching bag up, but either the wall is too hard or the masonry bit I bought is the wrong type, and it didn’t work very well. I’m going to buy a new drill-bit and try again. Failing that I’ll stump up 70 bucks for the installation service, it cheaper than a new powertool.

47 days to go… (this number seems to have suddenly started falling extremely quickly!)