March 17th

Second sparring session of the week today, turned out to be pretty interesting.

Diet
Breakfast: Oatmeal, nuts and sugar
Mid-morning: Double tuna, 2 ricecakes, apple
Lunch: Butterbean stew, steamed veg
Mid-afternoon: Double tuna, 2 ricecakes, apple
Post-workout: Chocolate milk
Dinner: Baked tandori chicken, boiled rice

Didn’t have my usual pre-workout food, and felt better for it. I eat my ‘mid-afternoon’ food about 3.5 hours before the gym session, which is easily long enough to get it digested, but not so long that I don’t have any energy.

I’d run out of eggs as well, hence the extra tuna.

Exercise
Shadowing: 2 x2 minutes, rest 1 minute between sets.
Sparring: 4 x2 minutes, rest 1 minute between sets. This was the interesting bit; there were only 3 of us there in our weight class, so our rest times were much shorter. 1 minute is exactly what we’ll get on the night so it was interesting to see what that’ll be like.
Circuit 1: 15 pressups, 15 squat thrusts, 15 crunches, 15 burpees, 15 ring jumps. Repeat, rest 1 minute.
Circuit 2: 10 pressups, 10 squat thrusts, 10crunches, 10burpees, 10ring jumps. Repeat.
Planks: 2 x1 minute, rest 1 minute between sets.
Stretches

When we were sparring Andy told us to go even easier than usual, about 40%. I think the reason for this is that with the shorter rests we’d get tired, and when you get tired you can easily get sloppy with your movement and guard and get hit extremely hard. We stuck to it well and had some good rounds.

I got in some good shots and got hit pretty rarely so I’m happy with how it went. I felt like I was moving well. After the session the guys I fought complimented me on my defence.

After the session I asked Andy for some tips, and he recommended that with my height advantage, I should try to stay on the outside, throwing lots of jabs, then when my opponent moves in to get past my jab I should be throwing hard rights. At that point I can either move out again or take the opportunity to land a combination. Seems to me that this could be an excellent tactic that suits my style and strengths. Next sparring session I’ll try it and see what happens.

The 1-minute rest made the sparring experience very different. Even at 40% we were all getting very tired by the end of our second rounds. It seems like it’ll be impossible to keep up a 100% work-rate for the whole fight, but adrenaline is a funny thing, so we’ll see. One thing’s for sure though, in the later rounds guys will be landing some big punches as arms get tired and hands drop.

With regards to the nerves I was experiencing before sparring, they’ve now mostly gone. I felt relaxed before the session, and wasn’t worrying all afternoon about it. Like anything, doing it over and over takes away the fear-of-the-unknown aspect.

Only bad part of the night is my right foot, I’ve got blisters on top of blisters and it’s a right mess at the moment. I’ll patch it up with plasters for personal training tomorrow and hopefully it’ll be okay.

Lastly, I weighed in at ~75kg (11 stone 11 pounds ) today, so I'm down 7kg from where I started. That's the equivilent of a full set of golf clubs, 3-SW. That's quite a lot!

24 days to go…