Today I slept longer than I had planned to. Just didn’t hear the alarm. This shouldn’t happen again. Weigh-in is scheduled for 8 a.m., so I’ll have to stand up around 6 or so. Need to condition my body to power up early. Over those last couple of days, it’ll be bedtime around 10 p.m., I guess.
For my training session, I hit the Shinergy[zone] (our headquarters, check out the homepage here). The facility is top-notch in all regards, I doubt there is a more professional and up-to-date martial arts school in Vienna. I’m not going to advertise for them here, however, as this is not really necessary. Check out the page – better yet, if you live in the area, go check out the site – and form your own opinion.
Now the funny thing is, I didn’t really need any of the equipment there. I actually tend to practice what I preach, so I did what I’ve been propagating over the course of the last weeks and months: I shadow-sparred. After a spent some time going through my warmup-routine (which I believe is awesome, but I’ll come back to that later, after my fight), I just went through the motions. In the „traditional“ martial arts (check Wikipedia, most of them aren’t all that old and traditional at all), the kata/poomsae/tul or whatever you may wish to call it, is often actually considered a form of meditation. You go through a known ritual and focus on perfection. Now while I do appreciate having a couple of rituals to go through, I don’t believe the kata in the traditional sense (no pun intended) is of any use to a competitive kickboxer. So, instead of doing the same thing over and over again, I just went through my combinations, throwing them as they came to my mind. There was no timer, no specific tasks, nothing whatsoever. Just me, my technique and the moment.
Afterwards, I did some static stretches. Now of course I’m aware of the fact that static stretching after a technique session will take me nowhere in terms of agility or mobility and that it may actually be deterimental to regeneration. Still, it gives me a certain mental comfort. Mind over body, especially now.
I’ve uploaded a video of my session. Again, the quality is pretty bad, maybe even worse than yesterday, but it’ll give you an idea.
As mentioned, the static stretches could slow down regeneration a bit, but I think I have more than made up for that – to finish my session, I did what I came to the headquarters in the first place, I hit the sauna. Did two rounds of 20 minutes each (~15 minutes in dry heat, then pump up the humidity and sweat in the steaming heat for another ~5 minutes). Obviously, I won’t be posting any video clips of that.
Tomorrow, it’ll be a morning session with Chris. Of course, I’ll put it up here.
So long,
take care
The Performance Engineer 