In-House Fight Night - Dec 7th

[WonderMonkey]

First bloody nose tonight. It was bleeding a bit but when I tried to clear it I made it worse. Had to get the mop to clean up and it's a good thing I was on the floor on maps so it came up easy.

I'm sparring regularly against the taller guy who put me on the canvas last week. I'm doing better against him. I'm moving more, blocking better, getting off more counters, etc. Though I eat plenty of glove, he is way above what I'll see in my fight. I am going to manage how many shots I take a week, though. No need to just take too much abuse. I do like he manages his efforts to what I've taken so far, so he's a good sparring partner.

[WonderMonkey]

Fitness/stamina is coming along. 5 1/2 weeks until the fight and if I'm able to keep this pace I feel I can gut it through unless it just turns into a slugfest, which would indicate I've lost control of the fight.

[WonderMonkey]

I've been having trouble letting loose, even in defensive drills, against people at my skill level. Against a much higher level, I'm much faster and snappier. I think the roots of this are that I don't trust my skills and abilities to not mistakenly drill the other person. Against the higher skilled person, I think they can deal with my pitiful attempts.

[WonderMonkey]

Something else I'm running into is finding places to get in a good boxing workout while traveling. I can do all the shadowboxing and resistance training I want, but I also need a steady diet of hitting things. Due to calf/leg I don't go put in the work by sprinting, jumping rope, etc. I generally do sparring, mitts, shadowboxing, rounds of heavy bag, etc.

[Le_Grand]

I've been having trouble letting loose, even in defensive drills, against people at my skill level. Against a much higher level, I'm much faster and snappier. I think the roots of this are that I don't trust my skills and abilities to not mistakenly drill the other person. Against the higher skilled person, I think they can deal with my pitiful attempts.

That's laudable, in the sense that you are watching out for the other person during drills, however try and relax more during training. Messing up during training is expected, it's completely normal. Better to do it in training and learn than holding back and not correcting small errors. Anyway, if they want to improve, your training partners will need to cope with what you throw at them, right? So relax and let loose. Trust yourself more!

[Le_Grand]

Something else I'm running into is finding places to get in a good boxing workout while traveling. I can do all the shadowboxing and resistance training I want, but I also need a steady diet of hitting things. Due to calf/leg I don't go put in the work by sprinting, jumping rope, etc. I generally do sparring, mitts, shadowboxing, rounds of heavy bag, etc.

I'm going to travel from the 12th of December until the 7th of January and am currently planning on how to keep in shape over Christmas. The first week will be easy as there's a boxing gym near my folk's place in Lorient. The other two weeks will be more challenging as I'll be bang in the middle of nowhere. My guess is I'll wake up early and focus on jumping rope, shadowboxing, squats, lunges, push-ups, abs and long runs before the festive eating begins.

[WonderMonkey]

I'm going to travel from the 12th of December until the 7th of January and am currently planning on how to keep in shape over Christmas. The first week will be easy as there's a boxing gym near my folk's place in Lorient. The other two weeks will be more challenging as I'll be bang in the middle of nowhere. My guess is I'll wake up early and focus on jumping rope, shadowboxing, squats, lunges, push-ups, abs and long runs before the festive eating begins.

Each time I travel I search for boxing gyms, then fitness boxing, then martial arts, then this and that all the way to a normal gym that happens to have a heavy bag. I'm about 25% on getting one of those that works. If not then I either find a way to make "whatever" gym work or so the type of workout you mentioned.

[Le_Grand]

Each time I travel I search for boxing gyms, then fitness boxing, then martial arts, then this and that all the way to a normal gym that happens to have a heavy bag. I'm about 25% on getting one of those that works. If not then I either find a way to make "whatever" gym work or so the type of workout you mentioned.

Sounds like the best possible plan for when on the road. Thanks for sharing!

[WonderMonkey]

Sounds like the best possible plan for when on the road. Thanks for sharing!

Don't forget to find any of the local Title Boxing places. While you may want an actual boxing place, a Title Boxing has all you need to get a travel boxing workout in.

[WonderMonkey]

I did a generic fitness boxing class Monday morning. As I've said before I focus on not being sloppy during those classes and generally I don't do all their reps. It's a cardio class, they don't over focus on form. Monday evening we had our Fight Camp class, which is run by an actual boxing coach with a stable of fighters. It's quite good and in addition to fundamentals (always feet first) we get individual attention. Did some controlled sparring focusing on a few things.

Tuesday was a reaction mitts session with one of the resident martial arts instructors. Always a lung-crusher.

This morning I went in and took the next step in working the heavy bags. Previously I'd do xx amount of two minute rounds with a two minute rest between. I was looking to build volume. This morning I reduced my rest time to 1 minute to simulate what would happen in a fight, and did three sets of three rounds. Each set I went through my fight plan and made sure the last round was very busy with the assumption that it would turn into a slugfest. At the end of the first set I didn't think I went as hard as I could have. I could have stayed busier on the outside, engaged more, etc. Either I didn't put myself into fight mode enough or I just underestimated my conditioning. Regardless, I did two more sets of 3 rounds. Set 2 and 3 was a grind, as it should be.

Also I'm a bit disappointed at something. My opponent-to-be gets his work in during the mornings. This morning was the third time I've been around him and I'm not impressed with his effort. His energy is low and he's not pushing himself. It's not that I was putting on a display while there but I warmed up, did my pre-workout shadow boxing, did a bit of bag work, then did my three sets of three rounds. I had full headgear, mouthpiece, etc. and fought as "real" as I know how to do while using a series of heavy bags. During my warmups and minute between rounds, I'm noticing that he doesn't have an intensity or urgency. The fight is on Dec 7th! When working the bag he's just tap tap tapping away. I know during the actual fight he will swing harder but that's just a human swinging harder, not a fighter who has done all they can to survive and succeed in a boxing match. His conditioning sucks and I don't think he has any grit. It's not what I want. He's not sandbagging it because I'm there as I asked some people if that's all he does. Yep. Dang. I'd rather fight someone who will battle me and I lose the fight than beat the hell out of someone.

However, I'm not looking past him. I'm going to assume his plan is to come out and take it to me. He's taller and younger and maybe stronger and I've been told that's his plan. You take someone like that and they come out brawling and they could get lucky. I'm preparing for that approach.

Maybe the guy heard "He's 50 years old, 250 lbs" and just thinks it's going to be easy. He's 31, fifty probably seems like retirement age to him. However would you want to get your ass handed to you by a 50 year old guy? If I was him I wouldn't, and I'd put in the work to make sure my buddies didn't have that over me for the rest of my life.