March 15th

Monday means sparring at the gym, which is good. I still got nervous before hand, but less than last time so its fading. I also found out that they didn’t do any sparring at the Saturday session I slept through, so I didn’t miss out too much.

Diet
Breakfast: Oatmeal, nuts, sugar
Mid-morning: Tuna, ricecake, boiled egg, apple
Lunch: Chilli, rice, steamed veg
Mid-afternoon: Tuna, ricecake, boiled egg, apple
Pre-workout: Oat bar
Post-workout: Strawberry milk
Dinner: 1 fish fillet with baked beans

Usual weekday food. I’ve started doing 6 boiled eggs at a time so I don’t need to go through the hassle every night.

I felt really sluggish at training, and I think eating the oat bar 1 hour before training isn’t working well. I always feel better towards the end of the session, roughly 2 hours after eating. This week I’ll have my bar an hour earlier and see if I feel sharper.

Exercise
Warmup: Shadowing, 3 x2 minutes, skipping 3 x2 minutes
Sparring: 3 x2 minute rounds, 2 opponents, usual drill.
Set 1: 10 pressups, 10 squat thrusts, 10 crunches, 10 burpees. Repeat, rest 1 minute. Did 2 sets.
Set 2: One arm planks with twist. 10 each side, rest 1 minutes, 10 more each side.
Stretches.

Sparring was pretty average. Before we started I was telling myself to stay calm, pick my punches and relax, which I managed reasonably well. I stayed quite aggressive, moving in to throw right hands when I could. I got in some good solid shots, but I also took a few to the nose. As I said above, I felt slow and sluggish, so I know I could do a lot better.

Interestingly, either my style is more economical, or I’m in slightly better shape than the guys I’m fighting, because in the later rounds I still felt good with respect to punching power and movement, whereas they’d slowed down noticeably. They come charging out of the corner and spend their first 2 minutes throwing punch after punch and circling like mad, but can’t keep that up for 6 minutes. This could all change when we do 1 minute between rounds rather than 4, but its potentially the basis of a fight strategy; weather the storm in the first round, let them get tired and then have 2 rounds of hopefully heavy scoring when their guard drops and they stop moving so quickly.

26 days to go…