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11 year old sparring partners wanted!
10 Jan 2009 9:52PM
I’ve not been to Leicester this week unfortunately, though I’m hoping to get the chance again in the next few weeks. Ross Pointon kindly invited me to train in Stoke with him at some point as well, an offer I will try to take him up on (after all he is promoting my next fight as the main event on his card – see poster). Nevertheless I have tried to use Nathan’s tips and advice in this week’s sessions with some success. My footwork was slightly improved through conscious effort and consequently I didn’t feel as flat footed, very pleasing considering how little sparring we’ve done in the last month. My wrestling felt pretty good on Thursday as well and I actually managed to use some genuine wrestling techniques rather than ‘spazzing out’ and using my ‘dad strength’ to overpower people.
There were very few of us on Thursday and participation was limited. Will has a broken collar bone, but continues to train anyway?!?!?!?! Pep has a broken cardio vascular system and Matt knackered his foot by repeatedly kicking me… that’ll learn him. So consequently the session was slightly shorter than normal. In fact we knocked off about 20 -25 minutes early which is unheard of. Matt asked me after if there was anything else I wanted to cover towards the end of the session and I couldn’t actually think of anything. This may not seem significant, but in the past I (we) have forced ourselves to use every last minute of every session. Thursday I realised that I’d had a positive night and had practised and implemented everything I had wanted to. Put simply, I didn’t feel the need to force the issue. I was confident I’d learned and drilled what I had planned to and felt that any more training at that point would be forced and unnecessary so we finished early. Very much a case of less is more.
I have adopted a similar approach to my conditioning, which I am gradually going to build up over the next few weeks. Rather than do my usual three a week ‘arse knockers’ of brutal cardio/interval training supplemented with additional aerobic/light cardio workouts I’ve set out a different programme. I’m fortunate enough at work to have equipment immediately available to me so I have been slotting very short sharp sessions into my days. So instead of a 1 -2 hr gym visit I’m knocking out 2 – 3 fifteen minute workouts a day. These may be a couple of intervals on the rower, some shadow boxing in the gym, bag work, weights or even a full blown circuit if the chance arises. The idea with this is for me to spread the impact of the training and allow myself more recovery and opportunities to eat and take on fluids. Thus far it has worked very well. I don’t feel as sore or as tired and I’m much more positive about training (I’ve not had that post workout dread). I’m hoping in the long run this will be as beneficial, if not more so than the long sessions and it’ll put me in a much more positive frame of mind – as in I won’t resent the training.
The kids at school are intrigued by my MMA and ask about it daily. It’s been good fun to involve them in my preparation and I’m sure they learn plenty from it. Currently the year 7’s are trying to get me on the rower as often as possible as they either like encouraging and pushing me, or they like the look of agony and sweat on my face. More than likely the latter. They often join in with my training (which I squeeze in before and after school, at breaks and appropriate slots in the day – I wouldn’t want anyone to think that I’m doing this training when I’m supposed to be teaching!!!). They also absolutely insist that I join in every single cross country run, which while short when done once, racks up plenty of miles when there are 6 classes doing it twice a week! I would love to know what they really think about my training and fighting. What they do say is that they’d love to see me get hammered and they always laugh at my bumps and bruises. But I often see something else – I hope it’s recognition of the time and effort I put into training and preparing (they see what I eat as well). I’m positive they learn as much from that as any health related fitness lesson. I’m far from a paragon of virtue, but in some way I hope I give them a yardstick for future reference, after all that’s what I get paid for.
So fingers crossed my 11 year old training partners will be helping me out plenty over the next 6 weeks, if my adult training partners keep getting injured little Jimmy in year 7 is going to have to pull on some gloves as well. He’d love it I’m sure.
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