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James Doolan
Blog 2026 Jul 2010 6:11PMBeen a crazy week for me and the DNFT.
My girlfriend left on Thursday for Bangkok, shes off to train at
Sasiprapa gym for a few weeks before fighting for the WPMF title on the
massive Queens Birthday show. Unfortunately due to my fight on August
28th I wont be joining her on the trip, I'm not mega happy about not
being able to corner her but I've got no doubt she will be awesome.
Friday me and Alan 'NO' Love headed for Dublin with Paul McVeigh for his
fight with my pal Artemij Sitenkov, both guys made weight cool. Cage
Contender the show that staged the fight was brilliant to work with,
treated us really cool and done an awesome job of selling out a big
venue and filling it from top to bottom with good fights. There was a
fair amount of hype on this fight with both guys being in the top 3 at
bantamweight in Europe, a lot of talk about the winner going to WEC and
the fact Artemij had a win over me maybe putting more pressure on Paul.
If Paul was feeling any extra pressure no one noticed, he was pretty
awesome in the fight and battered Artemij everywhere, first round was
like a 10-8 round and then Paul quickly finished in the second round
with a weird pushing armbar form reverse triangle in side control, a
move we are still deciding what to call, either going to be wanking the
zombie or the jedi.
After getting no sleep due to boozed up mates we flew home and straight
to a Scottish show called Brawl at the bay, we had 2 fighters on this,
both guys fought well and took home the W. Martin Delaney won 2 fights
in a 4 man tourney, despite being the least experienced guy in the group
which was cool. Our other fighter Jordan McCool appeared to have been
possessed by the devil for a few minutes and pummeled his opponent in a
prison style beating. Cool and scary at the same time.
Most difficult thing over the 4 day period was trying to stick to my
training programme, ended up with a bit of winging it, training in
things I hadn't planned just to get a session in. I seem to have have
got a lot more wrestling in than normal which isn't a bad thing. Also
eating decent wasn't really on top of my agenda, so I'm now sitting at
72.5kg with less than 5 weeks until the fight. Back to the programme
today however and with Joanne not around I'm about to go into a horrible
3 weeks of intense training along with a couple of my team mates who
have fights around the same date.
These three weeks should get me sharp and should bring my weight down to
the better side of 70kg before I need to start cleaning up my diet,
fitness wise this coincides with the strength programme I'm on just now
ending so I can change up the heavy weight for plyo training,
technically I'm cutting down on the number of stand up sessions and
focusing more on wrestling and BJJ. One thing I'm really getting into
just now it some of the ground aspects of wrestling, before I was pretty
much a straight BJJ guy with obvious modifications for ground and pound
on top and defending against shots while being aggressive on bottom but
some of the stuff my wrestling coach Kieran Malone and other guys in
the gym like Paul are doing is more wrestling and for some reason it is
coming pretty natural to me. This mixture of BJJ for MMA and wrestling
should hopefully push my grappling level up a bit.
Off to the gym
Blog 1904 Jul 2010 10:43PMSo after 8 weeks of training, and 3 weeks of dieting I was already to go (bar cutting about another 2kg of water) for my fight with Leigh Remedious at Knuckleup. Picture the scene, I stopped training after hammering myself for weeks and been really tight with my diet, I had literally no carbs for 20 days and had been living on 4 tiny little protein based meals a day, I've not ate or drank anything in 8 hours and I've got another 17 hours to go until the weigh in, I'm lying asleep in the back room at our gym, everyone knows its best to stay away from me as I'm a grumpy fucker. Some where in the distance my phone is ringing bringing me out of a dream about peanut butter sandwiches, by the time I reach it, its rung out. When I see its Matt from Knuckleup, the promoter of the show, nothing bad crosses my mind, I'm sure Leigh is going to turn up, the guys a professional. Then I phone back and I can tell straight away stuffs not good. To cut a long story short the whole show called cancelled, for reasons I'm not going to go into. First I feel sorry for the promoters, must have been a nightmare for them putting work into something and then having to make the decision the night before to cancel it entirely. Then I start to feel sorry for myself, all the work for nothing, all those rounds hitting stuff, wrestling, rolling, sparring, all the conditioning stuff that made me sore for days and dread going to the gym for nothing. Not to mention the money I lost holding back on work, and the shit I put Joanne through. This might have been the closest I've ever came to hating the sport. People started feeding me thinking that would make me feel better but even that didn't help.
I've not written a blog for a while as I'm still trying to get over losing 8 weeks of my life for nothing, sounds a little melodramatic but I needed some time out or I might have went mental. I decided that after I cornered Graham Turner at SFC I was gonna take nothing to do with MMA for a week to re-charge my battery's and hopefully start enjoying the sport again. Turns out a couple things happened at SFC which made me want to get straight back to training, My team mates Kieran Malone and Graham fought on the show and with out sounding bent they made me want to train and fight as soon as possible. I guess they inspired me, it wouldn't be the first time. Kieran made his pro debut against a tough guy in Dave Gilbraith and somehow drew after 2 rounds despite winning 7 minutes out of the 8 and finishing tired but with no damage compared to his opponent who was marked up and bleeding. There was some pressure on Graham as his opponent looked spectacular in his last fight and had put a video online talking about beating him and wanting to fight me. Graham put a bit of a one sided beat down on his opponent in one his best performances to date, I went away wanting to train after watching it.
I'm back in the gym with fights coming up August 28th in Manchester and then December 11th in Edinburgh. The August fight I'm still waiting on a name, the show Cage Contender announced their main event as Danny Mitchell v Gunnar Neilson, being on the same card as that fight is going to be awesome, expect big things from this promotion. The December fight is main event on Ian Freeman's Kudegra show against Vaughn Harvey, this should be a good fight, Vaughn has been on my radar for a while, I enjoy watching him fight and thought it was only a matter of time before he dropped to banatamweight after taking on so many big name guys at feather. December cant come soon enough.
Training wise I'm back on the devil weights with a horrible 6 week strength programme, still have a few cardio days out with the sport specific conditioning stuff I do in the gym, Striking wise I'm focusing on elbow and knee stuff along with thai clinch as it might be the weakest area of my stand up game, wrestling is my biggest priority in training just now as I've probably neglected it a bit in the past and really should take advantage of Kieran's coaching ability before he gets punch drunk like Paul.
Outside my own training I've got my coaching hat back on and spending time with our athletes, making sure they are developing at the right rate and in the right areas and I've scheduled a few seminars at some MMA and Thai gyms, looking forward to getting out and about again and working with different guys.
Blog 1815 Jun 2010 2:25PMIn just under 2 weeks Ill be involved in the main event at Knuckle up, just now I'm starting to taper off in terms of training intensity after over 4 weeks of training like a maniac. The next week and a half Ill be looking at covering technical aspects which should help me implement the game plan my coaches have devised way back when the fight was first confirmed.
I'm doing this for a number of reasons, the first is after 4 weeks of training, 6 days a week, 2 sessions a day I'm more likely to pick up niggling injury's now due to wear and tear and punishing my body for the last month. The second reason is I'm dieting just now to bring my weight down so my body is functioning on less energy in the run up to the weigh in.
The magnitude of the knuckle up fight has brought me a fair bit of attention, I've been interviewed a few times recently and a question that keeps getting asked is why do I fight? My usual answer is simply that I enjoy fighting, I see the fight as a reward for training. However I'm just finished reading some stuff written by a legendary Olympic coach called Frank Dick, when referring to why athletes compete he said '' The purpose of competition is too improve performance''. That sums up why I fight more than simply because I enjoy it. I want to get better at fighting so I fight, and the better quality of opponent I face the better I should ultimately become.
Frank Dick also had a famous spat with Sven Goran Errikson, the dude who looked like Mr Burns from the Simpsons but managed to bang Ulrika Jonsson while she was still relatively hot. The argument invoked the level of competition the English national side where playing in warm up games for some major competition, euro's or world cup I cant mind, Dirty old Sven was putting England against lesser teams like Malta, Frank Dick roasted him for it, saying the England team wouldn't get much competition out of Malta team of part timers, if the purpose of competition is to improve performance, the better the competition the more improvement of performance, this is something else that's got me thinking. Fight management is crucial especially with younger fighters and guys coming up through the ranks, so it makes sense to pick fights that will test them and bring them on, but established fighters shouldn't really be looking for easy fights, I've had guys ask me to get them an 'easy' fight, I cant get my head around that type of mentality really. Personally I want to fight any one who is decent in my weight class.
Its pretty telling that in the same year Erriksons England team bombed out of another major competition, Franks Dicks athletic squad cleaned up in almost every competition they entered. Regarding my next, Leigh Remedious has done everything in the sport, he is a great fighter and has fought some of the best guys around like Mike Brown, Genki Sudo, Emanuel Fernandez, Robbie Olivier and Jean Silva, at the same time I was asked to fight Leigh I had been offered a fight in Scotland against a good Slovenian fighter Miha Utrosa. Utrosa at 6-1 is a dangerous fighter but is relatively unknown and isn't really of the same caliber of Leigh so I took the harder fight because Ill get more out of the fight.(Nothing to do with the fight being on Sky Sports and the money being better honestly)
Blog 1726 May 2010 3:46PMI was meant to be fighting in Hong Kong, but a couple things stopped the fight from happening. The promoters wanted me to leave Glasgow on Tuesday afternoon and arrive in Hong Kong via a long stop over in Hong Kong on the Wednesday evening, weigh in on the Thursday afternoon and fight on the Friday before flying home on Saturday. This would have meant me cutting weight from Tuesday while traveling, I'm not really a small bantamweight by any means so this would have effected my performance as well as having to fight while under the effects of jet lag.
So after discussing the issue with my coaches I didn't take the fight. Turns out Artemij Sitenkov took the fight. I watched Numijiri's fights and obviously I know Artemij having watched him and having lost to him, I'm was pretty sure Artemij would beat the Japanese fighter. Artemij was unfortunately beat by the Japanese guy after gassing out and getting submitted, I'm pretty sure the travel, weigh in and Jet lag would have played a part in his performance, this has reinforced my decision not to take the fight under the circumstances.
Just now I'm into the second week of my fight prep for Knuckle up June 26th, I've made a couple alterations to previous 6 week programmes, I'm working on building up the work load and intensity from week one through to four with a slight tapering off on week five and then again on week six.
This should allow me to be at my best peaking on the night of the fight and should also make the last bit of dieting and the weight cut a bit easier. Trying to train hard while living on reduced calories is a nightmare. This also tends to be the period where fighters pick up injuries or illnesses which can lead to them pulling out of fights which is a pet hate of mine.
Another change I've made in this programme is the amount of sparring I'm doing, I've substituted some conditioning sessions with extra sparring, the guys I'm sparring with have all been picked to push me, really go after me and try and work me over. They expect the same back. This is about as close to sport specific conditioning as a fighter can get, also sparring is my favorite form of training so I'm enjoying it.
I'll write up more about training next time, best of luck to my boys Allan 'No' Love in his title fight at Strike and Submit, also representing the ninjas with be unbeaten Featherweight Dean Reilly (English crowd are going to love his exciting style) and Ally left leg McCrae at the weekend.
Blog 1611 May 2010 11:07PMI had signed a contract to fight against a Japanese fighter in Hong Kong
in 2 weeks but due to circumstances I'm not going to go into, the fight
is not happening. Bit of a shitter that but ah well I'm sure there will
be more opportunity's. It's pretty cool I'm fighting at a level now where opportunity's like that are coming up I guess. Normally I would be
pissed off at losing a confirmed fight but I've got another fight lined
up in just over 6 weeks against Leigh Remedious at Knuckle up.
The Hong Kong fight had been fairly short notice so I had to jump in at
the deep end with training, I've just completed 2 weeks of intense
training, sparring a lot and hammering conditioning and not having a day
off, to avoid over training and boring myself, I've slowed down this
week, took a couple days off and trained light. Tomorrow I start back
proper with a 6 week fight camp for the fight.
My gym in Lanark has had to move again, we are now settled in a new hall
which should hopefully be the last hall we ever need to rent before
getting our own gym. Lanark MMA has a good group of students and some
really talented fighters including a couple of Pro British champions in
Graham Turner and Andy Snape, the only thing that's stopped us moving
into a gym of our own so far has been my need for getting pushed in
training. I have a 70 mile round trip into Glasgow 4 times a week to
train at the Griphouse gym, there I can get pushed in training and work
out with the best Pro fighters and coaches in the country. A big problem I see in fighters is when they become top dog in their own gym no one
is pushing them anymore, they are never really uncomfortable in training
and stop developing as a fighter. As long as I'm fighting I'll be working
with better strikers, better wrestlers and better grapplers so I'm always
getting better, same as my students. Once I stop competing I wont need
to travel for my own training as much, so I can concentrate on a full
time place in Lanark.
Just now I've no idea when I'm going to give up fighting, I had my first
proper fight at 18, a full contact kickboxing fight. Before the fight I
thought I'll do 1 fight so I can see if I like it then sack it. I'm 31 now
and had over 40 fights, now I'm more worried about what I'm going to do
when I cant fight anymore or stop enjoying it. I've had this vision or
idea of a perfect fight, a fight I want to be involved in more than
anything. What I want is a proper fight, back and forth up and down war.
Me and the other guy being hurt, both coming back from the brink of
defeat, both fighting to the best of our abilities. I get jealous when I
see other guys in these fights because they normally come out of a
fight like this better than they went into it and if a normal fight is
fun, a fight like the one I want will be awesome. Maybe I'll give up
fighting once I get my ideal fight until then as long as I'm enjoying the
training and winning more than I lose I'll keep going.
Blog 1503 May 2010 11:49PMBeen another big week for the Dinky Ninjas, we had four semi pro fighters on a show in Port Glasgow last weekend, came away with 3 wins and a loss. Good performances from Martin Delaney, Ally McRae and Steven McCreadie, 3 guys to look out for in the future.
Scotland's biggest MMA show Absolute Combat returned to Meadowbank arena at the weekend and was packed with GOOD fights, the match making was really good and it provided for some real tear ups. Again there was a bunch of the Ninjas fighting, all winning but having to work for the W's. Good performances from Andy Glenn and Kieran Malone under semi pro rules, this was Keiran's last semi pro fight before making his pro debut at cage Kombat in a months time. Fight of the night was Alan McCauley v Bobby McVitie, it was nuts back and forward good exchanges on the feet and on the ground, both guys where hurt at points but both kept on fighting, was cool to watch. Dan Hope moved to 7-1 against a good fighter in Chris Carmichael also. Main event was Scotland's most experienced pro fighter (despite being only 22) Graham Turner taking on french fighter Olivier pastor. Pastor trains with the Fernandez brothers and is a good striker and real good grappler. Turner himself has an under rated ground game and is a good wrestler but went into the fight planning to keep Olivier up and play to his strengths. Good fight between the two of them, Graham stayed really composed and picked Olivier off on the feet while stopping his attempts to wrestle. Graham won on points 30-27, 30-27 and 29-28. Pro record is now 16-5-1. All in all Absolute Combat was a big success, raised the bar of MMA in Scotland again. Absolute Combat was a tough night for me, as well as my team mates fighting, Joanne was fighting against an experienced South African fighter on power of Scotland. I couldn't make it over to corner her due to my commitments to Absolute Combat but my mind was never really off her fight, I knew she would be fine due to the work she put in and training but I had some natural apprehension. Turns out I didn't have much to worry about as she dominated the girl dropping her twice for 8 counts and moving her unbeaten record to 15-0. Next fight for her is on the Queens Birthday show in Thailand for the Wmpf world title, if Thailand doesn't go into a state of civil war by then. Joanne and the rest of the ninjas winning made my weekend.
Gyms been real busy the now as this month is big for our team, I'm off to Hong Kong in a little over 2 weeks, Paul is defending his CWFC world title against American Frank Sharipov and John Quinn is fighting for Dan Hardy's old CWFC welterweight title at cagewarriors, big weekend for our team. The week after we are at the North Easts biggest MMA show Strike and Submit, Alan 'No' Love fights for the first of what I'm sure will be many titles and have guys on Cage Kombat in Edinburgh.
With all these high level fights coming up the training in the gym has been awesome, everyone is getting pushed, everyone is getting better, the whole 'iron sharpens iron' thing is really evident just now as it seems every fighter in the team is developing quick.
Training wise I'm still trying to fit in as much pressure work as possible to get sharp and fit, a lot of sparring and conditioned drills.I've not had the chance to get a proper 6 week fight camp in so I'm squeezing as much in the 3 weeks as I can because the fight is on short notice, but I'm cool with it, UK fighters don't really get too many opportunity's to travel and fight abroad too much especially not to Asia so you have to take the opportunity's when you get them.
Blog 1428 Apr 2010 1:42PMStraight after losing my fight at Bushido Challenge fight Iain Dean said
''at least it might make it easier to get you fights now'', I was too
pissed off at the time to even think about.
A day or two passed of me feeling annoyed at myself and hanging about in
a mood like a shitty teenager when I decided the only way to make
myself feel better would be to fight again as soon as possible. So I've
been trying to get fights since, in general I do struggle getting
regular fights, which was making me think about going back up to
featherweight to compete in MMA or going back to Muay Thai and making a
run at some titles. Thankfully somebody up there is looking out for me.
Out of the blue, I've ended up signing a contract to fight in Hong Kong
May 21st on a new show there called Fury-1. Shortish notice but I'm not
really one for turning opportunity's like this down. My opponent is a
Japanese fighter called Takeshi Numijiri a Deep and Sengoku veteran with
as many KO's on his record as submissions. So now I'm back in training
full time, to prepare for this, hardest part is going to be getting my
weight down taking into consideration the flight over and stuff.
Training wise I'm having to cram my usual 6 weeks into about 3 and a
half, my plan is to spar a shit load to bring my fitness up and get
sharp quick. Cool thing about going to Hong Kong is it means I've been to
Japan, Thailand and now China.
Not so out the blue I've also ended up fighting on Knuckle ups June show
in London. I was contacted a while back about availability for their show
and have been pretty keen to fight on it. Big thing is the shows on sky
sports which is cool, makes for some good exposure, getting matched wasn't so easy, initially i was matched with ATT fighter Chris Manuel but
due to issues I wont go into that fight never came off, then I was
asked to fight Knuckle ups featherweight champion Greg Knapp as he is
dropping to Bantamweight, I thought that fight was going to be a goer,
until Knuckle up got back to me and said I would be fighting Leigh
Remedious for their BW title. This will be my biggest fight to date,
Leigh has done just about everything in the sport, in some ways he is a
pioneer in UKMMA and someone I always looked up to when I was getting
into the sport. Just now I'm trying to put the fight with Leigh to the
back of my mind until after the fight with Takeshi, then I can
concentrate more on it.
Big few weeks coming up for me and for the rest of the Dinky Ninjas,
Graham Turner headlines Absolute Combat this weekend against tough
French FW Olivier Pastor, Paul's got a defense of his cage warriors world
title may 22nd and John Quinn and Alan Love have big fights coming up.
Pretty much knew this was going to be a big year for the dinky ninjas,
could end up being a massive one.
I'll keep this updated now in the run up to the Hong Kong fight and then
Knuckle up.
Blog 1313 Apr 2010 6:45PMSo the fight at Bushido Challenge didn't go to plan. In fact it couldn't have went as bad as it did if I had got choked out and shat myself in the cage in front of everyone. I got caught very early with a freaky flying armbar, now I'm going to be part of a highlight reel finish on the other end of it for once.
I knew going into the fight Artemij was a slick submission guy, what I hadn't accounted for was just how unorthodox he was in his set ups. The amrbar was super cool, I appreciate technique and technical ability in a fighter and Artemij has it in abundance so really there is no shame in me losing to someone of his caliber, whats eating at me though is the fact I never got to perform. I never really found out much about myself after training like a maniac for weeks i feel like I've had no outlet.
The positives form the experience was I had a good training camp, I made weight again and I've got some ideas of what I would do different if I can get re-matched with artemij. Just now its looking like my team mate Paul Mcveigh is going to be fighting Artemij so I'll have some knowledge to help prepare Paul for that. Another positive is that maybe now other fighters wont be so reluctant to fight me, getting matched has been tough for me in the past, hopefully the other bantamweights will be quicker to fight me and can get busy. The sooner I can fight again the better, I contacted some promoters straight after Bushido Challenge to see if I can get something sorted but so far nothings got past early stages.
I'm not used to losing fights, if I combine my kickboxing, muay thai and mma record I've had 41 fights, 5 losses. I hate to lose, to fail, but the loses I've had have shaped me more as a fighter than the wins, the biggest lessons come with the losses, the biggest improvements come from the biggest lessons. I've picked myself up (after some comfort eating) and I'm looking forward thinking if I learn from a the loss then its not really a loss. Muhammed Ali once said ''the only thing losing a fight done to me was convince me more I was unbeatable'' that's how I'm going to deal with bushido challenge.
Blog 1229 Mar 2010 2:34PMLess than a week until Bushido Challenge now so things have slowed down for me. Hard training is all done now i'm just drilling specific stuff and doing a little bit extra cardio to help bring my weight down.
Im not really a superstitious person, i don't have lucky shorts, don't get mad haircuts before fights, i don't even really bother with entrance music but i know training is going well when i start feeling certain things during preparation. For example i'm fed up with training, cant bare to look at boxing gloves, thai pads, weights, i'm fed up with rolling all i want to do is fight. This is good for me, its like déjà vu to when i've performed best in the past so i'm happy with that.
My diet has kicked up a notch recently, im dropping down to around a 1000 calories a day which is half the RDA for a normal person, never mind an active athlete. Im not eating much in the way of carbs and between that and some natural pre-fight anxiety im a moody crabbit fucker to be around just now. My weight is right on schedule for the friday weigh in, so the final bit of the cut shouldn't be to drastic.
I mentioned last week that id post up my programme for this fight camp, this is it it:
Mondays: Morning 4 mile run. Afternoon sledge hammer/tractor tyre work out. Evening Lifting set with plyos or hillsprints.Boxing pads/drill/spar
Tuesdays: Morning 4 mile run. Afternoon density circuit. 5 min rounds push press/pull up.Kettlebell snatch/burpees/chin up. Evening circuit Thai pads then BJJ session.
Wednesdays: Morning. Pads with wrestling. Afternoon. Lifting and plyos. Evening. Bjj session
Thursday: Morning. Sparring Thai, Shoot boxing, Rolling. Evening. Circuit training Thai session
Friday: Morning Pads with wrestling. Afternoon. Force development work. Evening. MMA sparring
Saturday: Team sparring session or day OFF
Sunday: Team Sparring or day OFF. Evening session Pads then BJJ session
There is a fair amount of adaptation to this that would takes ages to explain, for example the lifting session i done changed from strength to force development 2 weeks out, rounds and sparring build up gradually to week 4 then came down again, as did the number of rounds i done at the team sparring sessions.
Guess il see if it pays off on saturday.
Blog 1122 Mar 2010 11:27PMI'm just under 2 weeks out from Bushido Challenge, the hard training is
just about finished and my attention is about to switch to making the
weight for the fight. This for me and for most fighters is the shit part
of fighting.
Before I start going into details about how I get down to the weight,
let me throw this out there, fighters lie a lot, most fighters are good
liars and the biggest lie's fighters tell are usually about their weight
and their training. And possibly the size of their tadger, well in our
gym anyway.
I agreed to fight on Bushido Challenge back in January at this time I
was 89kg (truth 73kg). As I've stated before I train 7 days a week, 8
hours a day for 12 weeks for fights (truth 6 days a week, 2-4 hours a
day for 6 weeks). I also killed 3 of my training partners getting ready
for this fight.
I weighed 71kg 6 weeks out from the fight and my weight has slowly came
down over 4 weeks of hard training (no dieting just eating clean) to
around 68kg 2 weeks out from the weigh in. This is ahead of schedule for
me actually. So I've got 2 weeks to cut 6.8kg. My plan is, and this is
now tried and tested is to get to 66kg one week out from the weigh in,
although I'll be happy with a kg either side of that, (I cut over 5kg in
Japan in 24 hours after refusing to bin some meals I had made for after
the weigh in on the plane because of stupid rules about bringing certain
food into foreign countries). I'll be dieting down slowly to make the
water loss period easier. The diet should have me around or under 65kg,
24 hours before the weigh in and then I lose water to make weight. Again
tired and tested, I'll lose approx 1kg by fasting for 24hours, I'll lose
another 1kg by having a light exercise session (walk) and then what ever
is left by sitting in a salt bath for 20 minutes the night before the
weigh in and if need be again in the morning of the weigh in.
I used to
be on weight some times the night before a weigh in or hours before it, I
changed that after seeing an interview with Freddie Roach where he
talked about fighters cutting weight properly only being on weight
for the minutes it takes them to get on the scales which makes sense to
me. I don't mind the last day, I'm busy for most of it and I know the
hard part of the fight is almost over, I can go eat, relax and then
fight, whats better than that.
After making weight I'm careful to rehydrate and load everything my body
needs back in slowly, depending on the time between the weigh in and
fight I should get my weight back up to 80kg (truth 68-69 although I've
done 71kg once and I'm on pretty late at bushido challenge). Cutting
weight isn't complete just by making weight, managing to rehydrate,
refuel and then perform should also be considered part of the cut for
fighters as some guys make the weight then screw up after it.
Next blog I'll post up some of my training diary for this camp, I'm very
geeky and record almost everything training wise in some detail as I
find it helpful in planning camps, making changes for the future or
highlighting areas that might need attention, it also helps keep my
confidence high when I look back and see the work I've put in over 6
weeks.
Blog 1016 Mar 2010 12:03PMTraining has been much the same as last week, horrible. I hammered it Monday to Friday and decided to take the weekend off to rest up and keep my sanity. I'm all for keeping to a training programme and making sure you do the work that needs to be done but some times you really need to listen to your body and rest up to get the most from sessions.
In the past ive been bad for over training, mostly because of two reasons, 1. I love training there is practically nothing id rather do than train, 2. I'm a boring anti-social fucker, I don't drink or go out, I hate socialising with 'normal' people so I've really not got much else to do but train, which makes being a professional athlete (I use the term loosely) much easier.
Over training is really not understood by most fighters and coaches in my opinion, and in my experience, its a bad thing, I've seen great guys with fantastic work ethic burn themselves out and suffer when it matters most, I've been there myself so I understand what it could do to a fighter. It would be easy for me to over train for my next fight, its on a big show, its against a good European ranked fighter, its a good fight for me at this point in my career, I'm thinking about that fight 24/7 so taking the weekend off was more following my head and not my heart. But it will make me better on the night.
Outside of training I've been watching my opponents fights on youtube again, trying to see if I've missed something before, looking for gaps and stuff to exploit, the coaches I work with do this also and give me their views which helps. The video analysis thing is something I'm not too sure about, on one hand I can see it makes sense getting an idea what to expect from an opponent and where their strengths and weakness's but no two fights are really the same, and more than not the fighter your watching isnt like the one you will end up in a cage or ring with out side of one or two things they do. Another thing it can do is make you give people either too much or too little respect, both are bad. I'm pretty carefull with what stuff of me end up on youtube and such, most of the videos I'm involved in show me hitting pads or ending fights with strikes on the feet, anyone clever enough to research me for a fight is going to see I like to stand up and strike, obviously I'm from a striking back ground, what you dont see is the grappling competitions I've entered, the amout of time I train BJJ or anything suggesting I might actually be not to bad on the ground. Looking at my MMA record in 13 pro wins 6 has been due to submission, not to mention another 3 in semi pro fights. What im trying to spit out is, if your studying future opponents fights online, dont take it for granted thats what your going to get from him.
Now check this out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4S4uHMW3Zrc
Blog 908 Mar 2010 5:19PMTough week in the gym this week as expected.
I'm almost half way through the camp for Bushido Challenge and I'm
starting to feel stuff coming together. The intensity of my sessions
has picked up now to a point where I've been adding rounds on top of
what i done last week and il be doing the same next week. I've been
a lot sharper in training as well, submitting guys i normally wouldn't
and stuffing takedowns I was missing just a week back. Training must be
going right as I'm both sharper technically and fitter.
The biggest chance in training this week has been introducing some
opponent specific drills into my sessions these are mostly technical
sessions with different coaches. I've been working drills with a very
innovative coach from the griphouse Glasgow called Lin Mindin, he has a
great eye for analysing fighters and coming up with stuff to work on
while the same time playing to my strengths, I might video some of the
stuff we have been doing and post it up after the fight. I've also been
picking the brains of wrestling coach Kieran Malone and getting
help from BJJ coach Gary Christie who like Lin is an excellent analysis
of styles and coach. Although I'm taking Artemij's style into
consideration I'm not concentrating on stopping his game, I'm looking at
ways to impose my game on him.
Weight wise I'm still about 10kg over the weight which is ideal for me, I'm eating fairly clean just now but after this week I'll be dropping down
portion sizes on some meals to begin my cut, I'm looking to get a nice
balance between dieting and cutting water on the day before the weigh
in. This should allow me to put a decent bit of size back on between
the weigh in and the fight itself, something I'm getting better at. I've
not managed to put 10kg on between the scales and the fight but I
always manage to get back up to around the 70kg mark which is fairly
big for a bantamweight.
Outside of training I was at another fight show this weekend,
Sportfight Scotland was in Lanark with a good 10 fight card with a lot
of my team mates on it. All in all it was a decent show with some good
up and coming fighters on the semi pro under card, Darren Gray, Ryan
McFarlane, Gary Ward and Kieran Malone keeping there unbeaten records
intact and performing well. In pro fights on of my main training
partners Danny Gray beat a really good fighter in Johnny Martin, Danny
is like the Dinky Ninjas secret weapon, technically id rate him with
the best guys in our team, I know Paul McVeigh also thinks very highly
of him as well. Fight of the night was between Dan Hope (DNFT) and Joe
Nugent (Team Viper) both guys brought it, the fight was up and down,
back and forth an all out war with both guys hurting and cutting each
other before the Doc stopped it in favour of Dan. Both guys left
everything in the ring though it was cool to watch. In the main event
John Cullen stopped Irish fighter Kevin Cairney early with a choke.
Johns on a great run just now with a pro record of 12-4 built on mostly
international names. Look out for him on the under card of Bushido
Challenge when he takes on the excellent, unbeaten Dave Hill.
Blog 802 Mar 2010 3:01PMTrainings picked up level this week as its now under 5 weeks until Bushido Challenge.
5 weeks out to 2 weeks out is generally the time when I get the most amount of work done in the gym, this means I can start slowing down and working on more specific stuff for the last few weeks. The purpose of this is 2 fold, First by the time I get to 2 weeks out from a fight my diet is really strict so I'm not putting a lot of calories into my body, so sessions requiring high energy are generally dropped to every two days with more skill based sessions in-between. This also allows me to concentrate on getting sharp and getting my timing down with some conditioned sparring drills. Secondly this also ensures I don't get injured in the last two weeks.
The number of guys who get injured in the last two weeks or more commonly the week of the fight is frightening. I'm aware accidents will always happen but training at an intensity or training in a way which could result in injury as a fight gets near is very unprofessional in my opinion. In almost 13 years of competing in full contact martial arts I've never had to pull out of a fight. I've been on the other end of the coin a few times, having guys pull out the week before, the day before and even on the day and it sucks.
Training is now in full swing for me, 6 days a week with 2 sessions on 3 of the days and 3 sessions on the other 3. Structure is easy I train skill stuff separate from conditioning and concentrate on covering stand up, wrestling and bjj. A lot of emphasis is on sparring now for the next three weeks also I'll be sparring around 50 rounds a week (various ranges and full mma).
Conditioning wise I've finished with the strength programme I was on and I've switched on to a force development programme. Speed lifts combined with plyometrics mostly in the gym and some wrestling drills with pad work to keep everything sport specific. Out side of sparring training for force development is my favourite way to train.
I'm starting to look for a fight now for after Bushido Challenge, ideally in late April or May, just now nothing is certain but a bunch of promoters have been in touch, hopefully they can sort me out with something.
Blog 722 Feb 2010 6:53PMBusy week for me again this week, had Graham Turners (15-5-1 Total
Combat British LW champion) weight cut to keep an eye on, another 2 or
3 fighters coming into the final phase of there own fight camps and my
own training picking up as I'm now 6 weeks out from Bushido Challenge.
I've been using 6 week camps for fights for a few years now, settled on
this after trying everything from 4 weeks to 12 weeks, 6 weeks suits me
best. I've just completed a 6 week strength programme and increased my
general conditioning session to prepare for the 6 weeks of fight prep,
this allows me to train hard from week 1 to week 5 then have a tapering
off period of 1 week to allow me to 'peak' on the night of the fight.
First two weeks I'm working a lot of sport specific fitness as well as
fight specific techniques, I also start sparring more from week 1,
loading it up weekly for 4 weeks before going through a deloading
phase. Sparring is the main element of my fight prep, I use a bunch of
different of styles from full MMA sparring, to wrestling, rolling, thai
boxing. Always covering very range and working with people who are
going to push me.
I'm basically getting my arse kicked, boxing with better boxers, wrestling with better wrestlers and rolling with better jits players.
If there was a secret to getting good at MMA this would be it, if your
winning every round in every range in training/sparring your training
with the wrong people, and most probably not reaching any where near
your full potential. Obviously this doesn't mean if your getting a
kicking in training all the time your on the right road.
Got shows coming up the next three weeks in a row, some of my JR
fighters are in action on Sunday, the following weekend Sportfight
Scotland returns to Lanark auction market with a strong card featuring
a bunch of my team mates and fighters, I'm helping these guys finalise
there preparations in training just now, all are looking awesome. Main
event is Scotland's number 1 Featherweight John Cullen (11-4) taking on
Kevin Cairney, this fight should be a proper war, JC has one gear, 100
mph and hyper aggressive, Kevin I've seen a few times is tough as hell
and also aggressive both guys like to stand up and throw down, should
be exciting.
The week after that there is a big Thai show in Glasgow my better half
is fighting on, hopefully keeping her 14-0 winning streak running
against a south African girl whos name I cant pronounce, also on that
show is 2 of my students and one of my best pals Tommy Young defending
his Scottish thai boxing title. Should be an excellent event.
Yesterday I attended at SFC show in Stirling Scotland, as I mentioned
earlier Graham Turner was fighting in the main event a 4 man tournament
at 65.8kg. Graham went into it the favourite to win as he was the most experienced guy involved. Graham's first opponent was a tricky
Lithuanian guy who had some nice wrestling, but not a lot else. Graham
stopped him in the second round via TKO. In the final Graham faced
Swedish fighter Carlos Prada. I couldn't find much info on Carlos so the
first time I got to see him fight was his semi final match with Glasgow
based Polish fighter Majec Semibab. I know Majec as I've rolled with him
a few years back and had seen him box. I was really expecting Graham v Majec in the final but Carlos had other idea's and ran right over him,
excellent take down and nice GnP to set up submission early left me
both impressed and a bit worried as Graham had went 9 minutes putting
the Lithuanian guy away. The final was an excellent fight Carlos
dropped Graham early but didn't finish and other than a slick flying
armbar attempt and some takedowns wasn't doing much while Graham was
constantly working and hurt Carlos a few times. Judges gave it to
Graham, he went home with 15-5-1 pro record (dudes just turned 22) a
£1000 richer and with a ton of free supplement for winning fighter of
the night, I went home relieved and mega happy. I've coached Graham
since he was 14 years old, he is like my little brother in some ways.
SFC show was an excellent success for my team 5-0 in MMA (Tuner win
twice, Scotty Ward, Ally McRae and Ryan McFarlane also win) and 1-0 in
Thai (Micheal Wiseman) the show was excellent all round, very
professional and well run and a great addition to the Scottish MMA scene
Blog 616 Feb 2010 4:42PMI'm now 7 weeks out from my next fight (Bushido Challenge bantamweight
title fight) against Lithuanian submission fighter Artemi Sitenkov.This
is when stuff starts picking up for me. Ive got everything planned from
now right up until i jump on the scales and weigh in.Fail to prepare
prepare to fail and all that.
Ive just finished 4 weeks of conditioning training to prepare for the
actual fight prep itself, this sounds weird but this next fight is a 5
rounder as every pro mma title fight should be. In over 24 MMA fights I've only been past the first round three times, but ill never go into a
fight not in shape to go the distance, the biggest difference for me
with the 5 rounds compared to the normal 3 rounds is not the
conditioning, but keeping my concentration.
The level I'm fighting at now, and especially with some one as dangerous
as Artemi means if i make one mistake I'm done, in my last few fights the
guy's I've fought have made a mistake and I've made them pay for it, id
expect the same back. Artemi's last fight involved him taking a shoeing
off Steve Mccombe for a few rounds before catching him in an armbar.
To ensure i can keep my concentration and not make daft mistakes under
pressure ill be sparring with a group of pro fighters with different
skill sets, they will be fresh when I'm tired.Sparring is definitely
where fighters get better, if there doing it right.Fortunately I'm
surrounded by the best guys in Scotland for every session, whether its
MMA, BJJ,Wrestling, Boxing or Muay Thai.
Off topic slightly but a pet hate of mine is coaches letting people spar
before they have solid fundamentals, usually this ends up in brawls.
Ive taught seminars at gyms all over the place and seeing how other gyms
spar amazes me. Dont get me wrong there's a time and place for hard
sparring, usually not with in a year of training, definitely not in a
class environment and realistically with someone of similar stature and experience. Our gym has few guys who have left other teams due to wars
in sparring.
Next week ill post up my first week, fight prep.
Off to SFC this weekend to corner Graham Afterburner Turner in Scotland'S
first 4 man tourney, best of luck to Scott the body Ward and Ally McRae
from the ninjas also
Blog 508 Feb 2010 1:26PMSo what was expected to be a mad weekend of MMA actually turned out to
be super hectic. On Saturday we had a 330 mile round trip down to
Ulverston in Cumbria for Xtreme Kombat. First time we had been to this
show so i didn't know what to expect, the four fighters we took down
where all ready to fight after 6 weeks of well prepared and planned
training. Ended up being a good little show, nice set up, good crowd
and some good grass root level MMA fights.
We ended up going 3-1 at Xtreme Kombat, Rich Mclearty got caught early
in his pro debut, bit of a bummer as Rich is an animal in the gym and
has looked brilliant in his previous semi pro fights. Props to his
opponent on the night Daniel Park though. Our other guys on the card
included a first timer Martin Delaney who looked really good getting a
slick kimura win in the first round of his fight and two of the most
promising MMA fighters in Scotland Darren Gray and Kieran Malone. Both
guys are really young, have great attitudes and work ethic. Both got
submission wins in the first round.
Having shows to attend two days on the bounce is strenious enough,
whack a 3am UFC on ESPN and sleep goes out the window, after watching
Sonnen de-rail Nate the Great and Randy handle an ancient
looking Coleman i grabbed 3 hours sleep and then got ready for Cage
Kombat in Edinburgh today (sunday)
This was the first Cage Kombat i had been to in a while, its one
of Scotlands most established shows now and has featured some good
fighters in the past. The latest card had 6 pro fights on it which is
cool. Another super prospect Gary Ward was in action and following on
the trend of our guys at Xtreme Kombat Gary win by submission (armbar)
in the first round. Between guys like Gary, darren and Kieran as well
as a bunch of other young fighters at the gym our the talent coming
through is unbelievable.
Main event at cage kombat was a British welterweight title fight
between UKMMA legend and general nut job Paul Jenkins and Andy Snape.
Andy is another guy with insane potential and is under the radar of a
lot of people when he shouldn't be. Jenkins is the most experienced UK
fighter, has been fighting forever and has fought just about everyone.
Knowing both guys the fight was only ever going to end with somebody
getting knocked out. Andy brought his A game, stuffed Paul's early take
down attempts, stayed on top and landed some heavy shots, getting a TKO
in the first round. By far his best performance to date.
So we put out 6 fighters on 2 shows over 2 days. 5 wins all in the
first round and 1 loss. Over 500 miles of driving, 3 hours sleep,
countless crap jokes and lots of sugar free redbull. Brilliant.
Blog 401 Feb 2010 1:46PMNext weekend we have our first fighters if the year out on two
different shows. On Saturday we have four guys travelling down to
Cumbria for Extreme Combat and Sunday we will be at Cage Kombat in
Edinburgh. Ninjas main eventing on both shows.
Been a busy week at the gym, Paul's been away to Ireland for a rave,
i've been trying to make sure the guys fighting next weekend are
tapering there training down slowly and making sure everything has been
covered in training and there all going to be on weight. While ive been
doing this, i've got Graham Turner mid way through his fight prep for
Scotland's first ever 4 man tourney so he is at the most intense phase
of his training , I've got another group of fighters just starting
there 6 weeks prep for fights in March at Sportfight Scotland and a
Thai show at Oron Mor. It been pretty hectic to say the least.
I think one of the big differences between good fight teams and great
fight teams is the organisation. Back in the day we just turned up and
trained with out much structure or with out goal setting, now we have
training programmes, game plans for fights and goal sets for each
individual fighter, for each specific fight and for there own
development over the time. It does take a bit of effort but it means
our fighters know what there doing, when its to be done and more
importantly why there doing it, It also means all the fighters have to
do is train.
Training wise, I'm now 9 weeks out from Bushido Challenge when i fight,
last weeks training was mostly sparring and strength training. I also
spent 3 sessions working half guard for MMA. Next week sees me starting
hill sprints with Joanne (she fights south african thai boxer Ferial
Ameerodien in 6 weeks) and and some additional circuit training
sessions.
On friday i sparred with an 18 stone Heavyweight called Andy Hillhouse.
Andy is preparing for the Optimus fighting championship open weight
tournament in April. I'm about 72kg just now, i've trained in martial
arts for almost 23 years, its took me that long to realise that if a
big guy wants to batter a small guy the small guy is fucked. Thankfully
Andy wasn't hitting me hard and i'm still alive.
Also this week MMAunlimited released there first set of UK bantamweight
rankings. Couple things were pretty cool about that, 1. there is
finally enough bantamweights in the UK to have a top ten, and 2. i'm
ranked number 2, behind Paul Mcveigh. The rankings dont actually mean
too much to me if i'm honest, same as belts and titles, being talked
about in the same breath as fighters like Paul, Brad Pickett and Leigh
Remedious means a lot to me though.
Right i'm out of here, next week ill run over Xtreme Combat, best of
luck to Martin Delaney in his first fight, Keiran Malone and Darren
'Tito' Gray (look out for these young guys in next few years) and
Richie Rampage making his long awaited pro debut. Il also run over Cage
Kombat which has its best card to date, Andy the scorpion Snape
returns from Brazil to face UKMMA legend Paul Jenkins.
Awesome weekend of MMA for me.
Blog 324 Jan 2010 10:50PMIts now 10 weeks till Bushido Challenge when i fight. It really cant
come in quick enough. I started fighting/competing as a kid because i
grew up terrified of it. Now i'm comfortable with it, actually i really
enjoy it which is a bit worrying. People who have never been in a cage
or ring will understand that.
Just now i'm holding myself back as i'm dying to start fight training,
our gyms really busy with a bunch of fighters in action in the next few
weeks and i'm super jealous. However if i start now il be wrecked by
the time the fight comes. I've over trained before and it sucks,
performance was shit, i was super flat. Now i've got my routine down so
i peak on the night of the fight.
So just now i'm still working away with my focus on getting stronger
physically and developing my grappling with extra jiu-jitsu and
wrestling sessions. I'm really starting to notice a big difference in
certain positions wrestling which is mainly due to the increases in
strength from the programme i just completed. I'm looking forward to
seeing if it changes anything up when i fight next. Plan is just now
for another 2 weeks of strength training being priority before i start
looking at 2 weeks of general conditioning before i go into my 6 week
fight prep.
I've attended a few seminars with some top fighters/coaches from
individual martial arts and MMA over the years. One of the best coaches
i've had the privilege of picking stuff up from is SBG Ireland's John
Kavanagh. Something JK said during a seminar about 5 years ago has kind
of moulded my outlook to MMA, he said ''you split MMA up into 4 ranges
to train it, stand up, clinch/wrestling, ground and conditioning''. As
a fighter and coach i make sure each area is covered. It makes sense.
Its easy to spot guys who are only good in one area, even two areas,
most of these guys win one fight then lose one fight, who wants that,
its no coincidence that the guys on top of there game in the big show
and even down to just british level are well rounded, well conditioned
athletes. That's what i'm aiming for, for myself and for my fighters.
This week we had two pro mma fighters from Northern Irelands Chum Sut
gym over training with us, Peter Duncan and Ali Mclean, Peter is
fighting on the BAMMA show in a few weeks against Alexandre Izidro.
Peters one of the hardest working fighters in the sport, fit and tough
with a great engine it was cool having him and Ali over. They even
stuck around for team sparring on saturday before a marathon drive and
ferry back to belfast. You definately find some of the coolest people
in MMA.
Off to watch best of ufc 2009.
Blog 217 Jan 2010 10:38PMMy week started at the griphouse gym, team sparring with the Dinky
Ninja guys who are fighting soon. Busy Busy session with a whole lot of
talent under one roof, the combined record of the guys involved was
over 100 fights. I'm not going to go into specifics with how we team
spar as its secret ninja shit, all I'll say is it's similar to what a lot
of gyms call ''shark drills'' although we also include periodisation
for progression into the programme so its not just guys sparring for
the sake of sparring. All the fighters get feedback from the coaches
and go away with stuff to work on as well as a lot of positive
reinforcement.
The lanark MMA guys train a few hours after team sparring, this session
gives me a chance to go over stuff with each of the individual fighters
while stuff is still fresh and relevant. The team sparring contributed
to our success in competition last year for sure.
My focus in training for this week was getting the second phase of the
strength programme started, Basically it involved testing the
programme, getting the weight right for the reps and sets I prescribed.
The new programmes a bitch, I was walking about like I shat myself on Wednesday and Friday I had to spar a few hours after heavy squats. Not
great but the last programme definitely helped my wrestling, and jits.
I definitely got into lifting a bit late, for some one who has been
training full time for the best part of 13 years and has a degree in
sports and exercise science i should have known better and started ages
ago but hitting stuff is always been much more fun.
Anyway lesson learned I'm adapting well to strength training, getting
quick gains and as a coach I'm getting all my fighters on suitable
programmes as early as possible.
Its now 11 weeks till I fight at Bushido Challenge, training is still
not in full fight prep stages for me but with so many of our fighters
in action soon I'm clocking up 40-50 rounds of sparring a week just now
which is mental.
My aim for the next 5 weeks is to progress my jits game, so il be
spending time drilling, rolling and analysing positional stuff and
submissions 5 days a week. Out side of physical training I'll also read
more BJJ literature, and watch more BJJ instructional's of fighters in
action. You definitely cant substitute mat time for nothing else and
get good, but for me watching and studying BJJ increases my learning
curve and I feel a big difference when I'm rolling.
Before I go big props to the guys from the griphouse who took medals at the Scottish Open BJJ tourney this weekend.
Introduction11 Jan 2010 11:22AMQuick introduction, my name is James Doolan I'm a professional MMA fighter/coach from Lanark, I train with and represent Scotland's top fight team the Dinky Ninjas.
My next fight will take place at Bushido Challenge in Nottingham, April 3rd, I'll be fighting Lithuanian Artemij Sitenkov for the vacant Bushido Challenge Bantamweight title. The current European rankings have me at number 3 (behind WEC's Brad Pickett) and my team mate Paul 'the natural' McVeigh.
I'm looking forward to the fight, I'm on a good run of 4 wins just now and I've still got gears to go up, Artemij is a good fighter very slick grappler, 10-4 record, 10 submission wins and he seems to have a lot of ambition. I'm sure he will present me with some problems the fight should be a good test for me. Bushido Challenge is still in its infancy as a promotion but their first show had one of the best cards in Europe last year, their card for April is starting to come together and its looking awesome again, Allan Love the unbeaten Scottish Middleweight is on the card in what should be the start of a big year for him, I've fought on the same show as Lovey twice now and both of us have both performed well and got the W, he is like my big goofy lucky charm.
Just now I'm 12 weeks out, sitting a bit heavy at 72/73kg (committed carbocide over Christmas and New Year) I've been training 5 times a week just ticking over.
Training wise I'm just about to start a 6 weeks strength and conditioning programme, before I start my 6 weeks fight prep. I've pretty much got my fight training down now after a lot of trial and error in the past, I've tried everything from 12 week programmes to 5 weeks, 3 day splits, using no weight training, excessive amounts of cardio and other stuff. Last year with the help of my coaches/team mates Paul McVeigh, Gary Christie, Tommy Young and Lin Mindin I refined a 6 week programme that suits me to get ready to fight and the results I had last year show its working. (4 1st round wins against Ireland's top bantamweight Neil Seery, Steve McCombe ranked number 3 in Europe when we fought, and 2 unbeaten Fighters Jay McGuiness and Brazilian Hugo Leonardo)
Plan for the blog is to record some of my training, (I'll keep some of the secret ninja stuff to myself) along with updates on diet, weight issues and other stuff that a goes on in the run up to a fight on a weekly basis.
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