Blog 9 08 Mar 2010 5:19PM Tough 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.