Different aspects of fighting training

Everybody has its own reasons and own goals to achieve by training combat sports.
As long as your motives are clean and you stay within sports ship values.
As long as you doing it to help others rather than harm them. That's great.
Apart of your personal reasons why you choose fighting training there will be much more you gonna gain and earn in a process.
Everyday I learn more about it.
Even if I don't learn something new I do improve what I already know.
For example when I have first started I just wanted to learn a bit of self defence and improve my cardio.
Self confidence, speed, stamina, flexibility, reaction, self control and much more just came along in a package while I kept improving.
As a fighter, it is very important that even when you feel weaker and your energy level goes down,you still "dig it in".
You work till bell rings or referee stops you. You go beyond the average, beyond the tiredness, laziness and all weaknesses.
All that cannot be just said and done.
You got to learn that like "A,B,C", like foreign languages, like kicking and punching combos.
You got to drill it. You got to teach your brain to become your natural instinct.
At the moment of pressure is no time to motivate yourself.  You got to have it in you and fight to the end.
This kind of attitude will make your life easier and better not only as a sportsman.
Also as a professional in your everydays work, as a parent and simply human being.
At GMMA Academy we strongly believe that we do much more than just " kicking and punching ".
GMMA Academy "Sporting, Inspiring, Greatness ".
www.GMMA.co.uk

It is all in your head

A lot of sports and athletes having some time in a year called "off season".
Time to recover,time to rest.
So do boxers.
At the beginning of boxing season I could feel that I was well above the other boys who took time off.
It took them while to get back in shape.
As I was constantly training Thaiboxing, Taekwondo,running and conditioning.
I always believed that my passion and state of my mind is going to take me well above the tiredness and I will move forward with natural way of ups and downs.
Didn't really learn much from my past experience. For example,  when I have worked nights on the building sites  for almost three years and sacrificing sleep time to get some extra training.
It all developed my mental strength, on some point.
But my performance was going down.
My speed,stamina and drive to push harder would go low .
I begun to feel similar few weeks back.
First few weeks after training camp and fight in Thailand I have felt very energetic and motivated.
I have felt like I wanna fight everyone and everywhere.
I still feel like this but I can tell that my energy level is gone down.
My mind wanna push it to the next level but my body doesn't really follow.
I've been trying to get some extra sleep,change my diet a bit,change my training routine...
Nothing would work as it is not just fatigue from single training.
It is chain of things going on together for a bit longer time.
Tonight's session wasn't easy either.
I have started sharp and went through few rounds of good sparring.
But then again fatigue would catch up.
When we were finishing with some tough groundwork  ( series of bodyweight exercises ) I didn't really feel like I wanna to kill it.
I felt more like I just wanna get it done.
But then in the process my attitude has changed to what I have been always practicing,"never give up attitude ".
I have pushed it harder than I planned it at first.
Which made me feel better, made me feel happy and made me feel that I am moving forward and my time isn't waisted.
We all get tired, we all get down.
But training our mental strength and positive attitude as well as our body can keep us going and get closer to our goals.

Commitments

I was slightly heavier than usual at the beginning of this week.
Still having very busy schedule of work and training I have managed to make it for Fridays bout.
Dropped down even more than I supposed to.
I shouldn't leave it to the last minute,it might affect my performance and I suppose is not healthy too. I should have remain my weight around the boxing weight to get less stress for my body and mind.
This is something that I am still learning about and improving.

But one thing I know for sure is that if I have agreed to take a challenge, if  I have said I will.

I do really mean it.

With all the respect to myself,my hard work,my family and friends, my coaches (who share with me their knowledge,time and great heart) as well as to my opponents who put some effort in preparation for fight.

Seeing effort and hard work of my team Mates I can tell that we all have very similar  attitude when it comes to the training and fighting.

We are exchanging our experience, encouraging  and supporting each other at the hard times.

And what's very important we all understand our commitments as a fighters.

One of our boys caught some bad flu at the beginning of last week,one got some wrist injury.

The other boy just recovered from over trained shins problem...

Everyone has been leaving their lives and having some obstacles.

Very rarely everything works as we wish.

But we got to remember what we are doing it for and respect ourselves and others.

We can't just come up with excuses for our faults, it is not going to explain nothing and is not going help us in our lives.

As I have  said before, fighting is not only "kick and punch game",it is much more.

To be a good fighter you need to be a man of a word. To others as well as to your own self.

You need to understand your commitments and being able to sacrifice certain things to make it work.

I have trained to the last minute, and reduced food and liquid intake couple days before the fight,even thought that I was working long hours on top of that.

So I have made it. 

Am I special?!  

Not at all. Most of my team mates would do exactly this same.

Unfortunately my opponent and couple of other fighters from rivals camps wouldn't.

So few of our fights got cancelled.

Am I upset?

Surely I am not happy as I do wanna fight to improve and test myself. 

But there is plenty of other fights for me coming up.

And as long as I have done everything to make it,I do have peace of mind and can move on with preparation for next bout.

Which is in two weeks time.

	Krystian Ozog Instructor/Trainer/Fighter, GMMA Academy Mobile: 07928093841 Email: KrystianGuruMuayThai@gmail.com Website: www.GMMA.co.uk

Overweight

Two days to my boxing match, scale before the training shows almost 3kg overweight. Tonight's session was intense but much shorter and I haven't lost as much weight as I usually do over the class. After training my weight was still a bit over my boxing weight.
When usually I am dropping at least couple of kilos below.
I've been running,even on Sunday,my usual rest day. (I did 5k charity race)
I've been training as usual and eating pretty much clean too.
Can I drop it?
Of course I can. That's not a big deal I can easily drop 2 or 3 kg on the day.
I have done it before. However I don't think that this is healthy and right way of preparation for the fight.
Especially as my fighting weight has been around 75kg for a long time.
My plan after training camp in Thailand was to drop down to 72kg walking weight and remain it. So my fighting weight would be under 70.
And I am still working on it but it looks like I need a bit more time and possibly some professional help from nutritionist.
Why would my weight suddenly jump up?
I can only presume.
There might be many different  reasons like lacking of rest and sleep, over training, working long hours...
I am not really looking for a reason as I believe that what I am doing at my work and training is still not my maximum.
I am still looking for the way to do more and better.
I think my next step is going to be visit at some professional nutritionist cabinet.

Follow your dreams.

What is your dream?
What is your ambition?
How would you like to see yourself in few years time?
Those few questions keep on coming back to my head every now and then.
Answer isn't always this same,everything changes. I am changing, my family and my needs are changing.
My surroundings and abilities are changing.
And the most of all my hunger increases.
All my little achievements keep the fire burning inside me.
Keeps me inspired and believe that I am on the right path.
All my failures makes me understand how much work there is still in front of me.
Sharing my knowledge and experience by writing this blog and coaching others gives an additional value to my journey of becoming better.
Gives me hope that my way of improvement and what I have learnt can help others believe in their goals and save some time by not making this same mistakes.
Having weakness, fears or making mistakes is natural.
But don't let all these slow you down or stop you in achieving your goals.
Don't look for excuses.
Fallow people you believe are right and helping you to improve.
Follow your dreams!

I've missed my training!

It happens.
Busy life,busy city,busy roads.
Even though I've  carried with me all day long, my gym bag with equipment and food ready for the training and after.
I was mentally ready for it and would honestly do all my best to get to the gym on time. My coach has promised us some nice sparring session for tonight,one of the last one before next Friday show.
I was really looking forward to it.
On some point I have realised that there is no chance that I am going to make it on time. But  I  still haven't gave up, still tried to get to the gym even if I was going to be late. Nothing worked right.
I was still around half an hour away and training was already 40 minutes in a progress. I would have missed more than half of it. I have no time to waste especially week before the fight. So I have done some quick shopping and went straight home planning my own training while still driving.
What is it I need the most now and what have I been lacking of in my training recently?
I've decided that working on the speed will be what I need right now.
So I have planned some long sprints, skipping,  shadow boxing with dumbells and fast circuit workout.
I am pretty sure that apart of the sparring, boys have been doing very similar routine.
So ambitious plan was in place and I have made myself ready.
Then here we go; other priorities,cold outside,late evening, tiredness, laziness and many other symptoms of human nature, tries to take over initiative.
I've been in this kind of situation many times and I am pretty good at dealing with that.
But then again,doing it and doing it right are two different options which depends on your determination,will power and honesty to yourself.
It is easy to go light on yourself when no one is watching and pushing.
For some strange reason in my case I feel like this is when I really put some good work.
Over the years of training Martial arts, fighting craft but even doing the weights or running I have learnt one thing.
If you don't have enough discipline to train on your own, you are not going to get far.