Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Training Journal

I've decided to keep a public training journal, not because I'm not writing about my training in my personal journal (I am) but as another writing exercise. This blog is mainly about me engaging in different writing exercises, sometimes I get feedback, most of the time I don't.

My fight against John Kusaba will be on October 10th in Santa Clara. I've actually trained to fight against him before earlier in the year. Unfortunately I had a sparring accident that split open my nose thus disabling me from the fight. I did, however, get to see Kusaba recently fight against Team USA's Kevin Arcero at the Fight Night at the Fox. Arcero with his diversity of weapons beat out the aggressive Kusaba.

So one of the changes I've been starting to make is in my diet. Mike, my head trainer, wants me to become stronger thus more protein in my diet. In addition he wants me to cut out white bread, white rice, and to eat 6 small meals a day. Eating smaller amounts boosts your metabolism. I'm on my third day of the new diet and I'm always, always hungry.

Along with the diet I'm going to start to do some weight training. On Thursday morning I did a strength and conditioning class. We warmed up then did fifteen dumb bell snatches (I used 30 lbs) with both arms then ran a quarter of a mile. We did five sets. I then did the boxing class.

Every day I'm doing pull ups to increase my upper body strength and additional push ups. In Thailand I don't think I did one pull up, nor that many push ups. I loathe pull ups and push ups but if you want to win you've gotta do the shit you hate.

Today my training consisted of fifteen minutes of jump rope. One of the side benefits of working on my boxing has been improved skipping skills which breaks up the monotony of jumping rope. I can now cross the rope, double under, and do a variety of footwork drills. I then shadow boxed. After shadow boxing I did some light padless sparring with Andrew. Padless sparring is good for timing and placement although one has to be careful not to bang up one's shins and or arms.

Coke held pads for me for 4 rounds. He told me to take my time within the clinch and to be more relaxed with my kicks. He got especially pissed at me when I accidentally kneed him in the balls. "Matt! I tell you to take your time," he screamed at me his voice high and cracking.

After the padwork I did five rounds on the bag and then kneed the bag. I finished with calisthenics.

1 comment:

dawnfurious said...

not that i am a fighter, and it's been almost a decade since i competed in any kind of competitive sport,but when i did, push-ups and pull-ups were impossible for me and my zero upper body strength, it's all in the legs,right?