Building up your emporium

Every single morning we all make one, very important decision. 

We decide for ourselves how the rest of our day is going to look like.
Not only by taking certain actions; exercising, meditating, eating well, etc...
But mainly by our attitude towards possible forthcoming challenges.

By choosing the way we feel about ourselves and difficulties that comes our way.
As most adult people understand, life is full of them and the way we deal with those obstacles is going to define how our life is going to look like.

If you are a bit of modern action man/woman, set to progress and having ambitious goals.
Very rarely you will wake up felling totally fresh, without any fatigue.
Especially when you exercise extensively and still carry on with full time work and other human being related activities.
You most likely wake up with sore muscles, maybe with some injuries.
You most likely lacking on recovery sleep and other comforts that could bring you "short term happiness".
You most likely wake up with long list of the tasks that you want to achieve during this day.

Do you? !

You are not the only one!
We all get that felling.

I do believe that to build up great, powerful and stable emporium,takes a long time and it is full of ups and downs journey.

There is going to be many obstacles and difficulties like the weather conditions, natural disasters, wars, epidemics, political or family related problems and other catastrophes...
If you want to achieve your greatness you need to learn on your mistakes and embrace the failure. Believe in yourself and command community of your emporium wisely.
To be great commander you need to be flexible and learn how to adjust to constantly changing situations, while listening to the needs of your people. You need to show great respect, love and patience to your soldiers and ally.
And what is very important,  you need to make sure that they morals and motivation doesn't go down when the hard times comes.

Great commander,  great leader is also a great motivational speaker.
But if there is any doubt or insecurity in commanders voice people will feel it and they will just follow the orders without spark in their actions.
That's why it is essential for the commander to have a great vision, pure intentions, believe and knowledge of how he or she runs the emporium.

Keeping your body fit and strong is just like looking after your army and arsenal.

Having good, healthy diet. Plenty of sleep, rest and hydration. I would compare to looking after your ally, which you want to make sure are always on your side and never turn their back on you, especially when you are ready to fight.

To inspire others and make them believe in themselves and our vision. We first of all have to believe ourselves and lead them by example. 

When we feel tired, broken  and demotivated is worth to make few steps back and look at the motives that have brought us to this point and made us choose the way we are at first place.

Then we could consider some changes or adjustments in our strategy to prevent future burn out of our army and ally.

We have to trust ourselves as well as the mother nature. We are all born to achieve the greatness.

Is only us who can decide how our life is going to look like. By making those everyday choices of how we feel about our lives. 

Stay strong, stay focused, stay driven.

www.GMMA.co.uk

Krystian Ozog Fighter/Instructor, GMMA Academy 07928093841 | KrystianGuruMuayThai@gmail.com | http://www.gmma.co.uk/ | London/Great Britain

What we can see is just a top of an iceberg

Being an athlete / fighter and coach is an amazing journey.
I can't imagine better way of learning about human  psychology and abilities of myself and others.

Learning and developing physical skills is an essential part of the improvement for an athlete.
But what I have learnt from my own experience is that what we can see is just a top of an iceberg.
It is obviously unnecessary to have certain skills and abilities to compete amongst other professionals.
But the factors that going to make you float steadily on the huge territory of the ocean are hidden deep under the water.

Factors like persistence, physical and mental stamina, will power and never give up attitude/attitude of a warrior.
These are what you learn along the skills when pushing yourself to the next level in any sports. These are the values that can help you stay alive when the storm or heat hits you. These are the real reason why I have decided to dedicate my life to fighting sports.

It is important to have a vision of where you wanna get to and remember how far you have  already gone.
As sometimes it is only you who know how much you are going through and how many obstacles from the bottom of the ocean you have avoided.
Even when you get caught by some rock sticking out which is going to stop you for a while.
Current of your desire and wind of your faith is going to pull you out and help you to get back on the right track.

Obviously I do understand that if the top of the iceberg is not very attractive, if it hasn't got enough space to rest on for others. No seagull or penguin will find it useful and doesn't matter how much it has hidden underneath, it will not have value to the society.

This is exactly how I see my career as well as most of the professional athletes.
My fight record and titles are only my CV.
I value the most all the experience and what I have been learning along.

Of course I wish to have only defeats on my records. And it would be great if they all have been achieved before the time again the top fighters.
But the truth is that; when crashing with other huge icebergs in the middle of the ocean very few of them will crack after one single hit.
They all have they own story and hidden depth.
As long as I am going right direction with right harmony and respect to others who are floating around they own way. I know that I will get stronger, wiser and bigger.
What is going to create more space to the society to rest on and help them with theirs existence.

www.GMMA.co.uk

Krystian Ozog Fighter/Instructor, GMMA Academy 07928093841 | KrystianGuruMuayThai@gmail.com | http://www.gmma.co.uk/ | London/Great Britain

Dealing with negative thoughts

Have I done enough work?
Was I working on right aspects and strategies for this particular event?
What if after all this work and sacrifices I will make some silly mistake which will make me loose?
What is my opponent capable of ? What does he know ? Was he working harder than me?

Have I had enough rest? What if I am a bit rusty as I haven't fought for a while?
What if I haven't had enough recovery time since my last bout?
What if my Injury will get worst during the fight and I will loose or match will have to be stopped?

These and so much more crosses my mind before the fights.

Questions, doubts and self talks are inseparable part of our existence which intensity grows up along with the importance of happening that we are overcoming.
I don't think that it matters how old you are or how much experience you've got we are always going have this kind of thoughts in our heads. I think that it is in our nature.
To stop this kind of thoughts we would have to stop our brains which one very wise men Sadhguru has said cannot be done as long as we are alive. He said that our brains cannot stop working just like our hearts cannot stop biting and our livers cannot stop functioning.

The only matter we have some impact on is; the way we deal with overcoming obstacles.
The way we see ourselves in particular situation and what benefits we or others going to get out of it.

I have seen recently some bits of TV reality show "Special Forces - Ultimate Hell Week" and full episode of "Discovery secret of human brain" ( you can watch it on You Tube ), where both resources where showing what makes human being stronger, faster, more responsive and adaptive to a world under pressure.
In both episodes they were showing some extreme training of special forces aspirants which have been trained and examined under extremely difficult and stressful for human beings circumstances.

After all, most of those aspirants ( especially those who succeed ) realise that they are capable of doing things that they would never think of. They realise that all the worries were created in their heads and the only way to fight it back is to conquer their own negative minds.

Watching and hearing  this kind of stories makes me think that what this people find in their extraordinary training, many of us find in every days life, battling with some difficult life situations.
Makes me think that my way of training my brain and getting through the life has always been sport challenges and for a long time it has been my Martial arts and fighting experience.

It doesn't really matter how strong your body is. If your brain gives up you cannot do nothing.

 www.GMMA.co.uk

Krystian Ozog Fighter/Instructor, GMMA Academy 07928093841 | KrystianGuruMuayThai@gmail.com | http://www.gmma.co.uk/ | London/Great Britain

Confidence and humbleness

I will never forget when in 2002 back in Wroclaw/Poland, I have attended, as a viewer my very first kickboxing show. It has brought a great impact to my life, especially two MuayThai fight fights presented on the day. Both of those bouts were involving young( teenagers ) fighters from outside the country. Experience of those Thaiboxing fights was quite different from all other matches on that show. I found it more interesting, deeper in meaning and more artistic than the other, even the main event fights.
Boys walking in to the ring fully focused and without any spectacular body motions.
Traditional outfit, Wai Kru dance accompanied by traditional MuayThai music. Both boys looking down while meeting in the middle of the ring and hogging each other before the fight starts.
The moment when fight begins you can hear from the distance, powerful kicks and punches slamming on their bodies. Amazing techniques, looking for openings in every possible situation and trying to score from every possible angle. Amazing will power of both young fighters and great respect given to each other before as well as at the end of the fight made all experience very attractive and impressive to me.

Right from very first of Thaiboxing class I have took at GuruMuayThai, I wanted to grow and learn exactly this same way as boys which i have seen on the show.
I wanted to learn the skills and absorb everything that fighting and martial arts practise brings along.
I wanted to build up my confidence but stay humbled and respectful at this same time.
I wanted to become I can possibly be...

Stepping up the level, becoming full time fighter and instructor has made me put my improvement on hold few times. Thinking of where I should be and where I currently am, forgetting about the journey I went through and setting up very high expectations to myself. Watching some of the greatest fighters and criticising my own performance in comparison with theirs.Working out to reduce the weight more than to improve my skills. Being overconfident with some aspects of my abilities.
All this and I suppose few more things has been my setbacks at some point of my experience.

But coming back to my vision right from the beginning of my journey always brings me back on track.
Believing in yourself and fact that you can achieve whatever you choose as long as you stay focused, humble and take every possible step towards your goal.
That is the best you can do for yourself.
Stay passionate, stay focused.
Stay confident, stay humble. 

www.GMMA.co.uk

Krystian Ozog Fighter/Instructor, GMMA Academy 07928093841 | KrystianGuruMuayThai@gmail.com | http://www.gmma.co.uk/ | London/Great Britain

Feel good about yourself, you are still under construction

Whatever we do in our lives, the way we feel about it is the main factor which is going to decide what outcome has that experience going to have on us.
Is it going to be positive or negative outcome ?!
Is it going to be our step up, step down or just another act of killing the time ?!
It is us who decides how much we are going to learn and benefit out of it.

We all have our own story and our own way of living. We are all having our own, individual approach to everything we do.

As a GMMA Academy fighter and martial arts instructor, guy who spends most of his day in the gym. I do look at training as a way of development of my life.
I do look deep inside of my own performance and performance of others. When I look at it I do see much more than just physical abilities.
I see it as a great example of human psychology tool.

Training with and around others everyday gives me great opportunity of meeting countless individuals with so many different approaches and attitudes towards their training and development.

I meet people who are coming to the gym only when they manage to get a bit of time off  from other duties,  once or twice a week. Most of those people  understands that it isn't going to be easy but still decide to do it as they believe in advantages of their training. Even though they are having hard time they are still happy and proud of their achievements.

I also meet people who train regular, at the competing level and they are being quite hard on themselves. When the struggle comes, pain kicks in and body slows down, they become to feel bad about their performance and excitement drops down.

There are people who come to the gym once in a while, with great enthusiasm which fades away as intensity of workout increases.

There are individuals who practise on general bases and understand that when struggle begins is when training really starts.

I have been wearing all of those pairs of shoes. I have trained less and felt positive about my progress, what was giving me that extra boost to train more and harder.
I have been training a lot and very hard then I have reached to a point when not only my body was fatigued but also my brain was telling me that I am useless and I should stick to do my work and train for pleasure only.

I am still learning and developing myself as a fighter/student/Instructor. I do really believe that I have got an amazing opportunity of doing something I always loved to do and improve my private life and my other passions at this same time.

Seeing it this way gives me that push to get out of the bed and hit the road for morning run, even thought I have slept very little and my body still hurts from last night's training.
It has been my own choice and it is the only way forward to achieve my goals.
Seeing it this way gives me a lot of positive energy and power to keep going even when my performance doesn't satisfy my ego.

I give myself credit, understanding that fighting and coaching is something that you never stop to learn. Believing in myself and the fact that I am on the right track.

It makes me feel good about myself.

GMMA Academy "Sporting, Inspiring, Greatness". 

www.GMMA.co.uk

  

Krystian Ozog Fighter/Instructor, GMMA Academy 07928093841 | KrystianGuruMuayThai@gmail.com | http://www.gmma.co.uk/ | London/Great Britain

Running on the treadmill

In general I am a great fan of outdoor running.
I do practise running everyday, sometimes twice a day.
Depends on the stage of preparation for upcoming fights I will vary the distance, intensity and techniques of my runs.
It could be long jog, medium or short distance fast run, twist of jog and sprints on the road, long sprints on the running track, hill or stairs runs.
All those options work well for me, I do love to push myself and shock my body with unexpected hit effect burst. Especially during my morning routine when my brain is still half a sleep and I am moving on the auto pilot.

There is nothing better than early morning run around the local parks with bit of shadowboxing and stretching surrounded by the nature. What makes it even more enjoyable is having a great company, partner and pacemaker, it could be human. My Running Buddy is my lovely dog "Rumba".

However, as I do practise my bag work, strength and conditioning and sparring in the gym daily.
I have been some of the equipment from the gym floor too. Every now and then I do pick some weights or pull myself up on the bar. For a while I have been also creating new challenges on the treadmill.

I was never big enthusiast of that great machine as I believed that it is much more beneficial to run outdoors. And I have always thought that it is a bit of paradox when people drive their cars to the gym to run on the treadmill.
My opinion hasn't really changed, I still prefer and continue my morning run around my area.
But at this same time I found Treadmill quite challenging and demanding tool for the second or third part of my daily routine.

Running on the treadmill you can't really cheat ( I haven't learnt yet :-) .
When you set up the work out, fix the pace, time and distance. Even if your brain and body is asking you to stop, unless you press the red button or you get off the running belt and step on the side rails, you've got to keep up.

This modern/advanced treadmills can be really fun and involving, as long as we use our creativity and allow ourselves for bit of hard time we can really make a use of this great invention.

My basic and favourite warm up of the evening session would be 20 minutes run with 1 km/h speed increase every 2 minutes, starting from 10 km/h. Last 4 minutes of the workout: 18 and 19 km/h is quite good pace to finish of the pyramid and move on to the rest of the training.

www.GMMA.co.uk

  

Krystian Ozog Fighter/Instructor, GMMA Academy 07928093841 | KrystianGuruMuayThai@gmail.com | http://www.gmma.co.uk/ | London/Great Britain