Three more days until the WKF Austrian Open in Steinbrunn. I’m fighting a hard battle against my weight – for the first time since 2004, I’ve decided to fight in the -71kg division. Weigh-In is friday from 4pm to 8pm. I’m drinking quite a lot, more than 7 liters a day. Thursday, I’ll cut to 3,5 liters. Beginning thursday at 6pm, I’ll stop any water or food intake until the weigh in. Really curious as to how much weight I’ll be able to drop.
Anyhow, when it comes to training, we’re not doing a lot anymore. No hard training whatsoever. You see, recovery is becoming an issue when food intake is limited. Probably the single most limiting factor is the absence carbs. This might be less of an issue with traditional diets where you’re eating 5 to 6 times a day – with the warrior diet, however, this definately makes a difference. Coming back to the topic at hand – training -, I did 15 2-minute rounds of shadow sparring today. I really come to like this stuff better by the day. Not only is it a great way to sharpen technique and get a feeling for new maneuvers and tactics, it’s also absolutely scalable in terms of intensity. For example, today I deliberately chose to go super-slow. As always, I set technique-goals for each round:
- Movement/stepping only
- Jabs only
- Straight punches (jab/cross)
- Lead hand, all strikes
- Boxing, freestyle
- Lead hand, all strikes, lead foot, all kicks
- Boxing, freestyle, lead foot, all kicks
- Combinations: punch->kick->punch
- Combinations: kick->punch->kick
- Kicking a boxer (i.e. have that lead foot constantly work and attack)
- Indirect counters
- Direct counters
- Shadow sparring, freestyle
- Shadow sparring, freestyle
- Shadow sparring, freestyle
Since the weather improved a bit after days of rain and even snow, I took my session to the courtyard. This time I even managed to hit the ‚record‘ button, so there’s video footage. Feel free to take a look and post your opinion to the comments section below.
So long,
take care
The Performance Engineer 