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Fight Prep, T– 4 days

Come Sunday, I’ll fight in the [XX Open Polish Taekwon-Do Championships] in Czestochowa, Poland. Didn’t post a lot in terms of fight preparation this time, although I did line out what our [S&C sessions] and [T&T sessions] look like at the moment. I really just didn’t feel like thinking too much about things. Im trying to get to a point, where, to put it into [Martin Rooney’s words], a fight is “just another day at the office”.

Anyhow, today I did my last session before the fights. Up from now, it’ll all boil down to the [Warrior Warmup Routine], some light stretching and easy shadow sparring. No point in burning out just right before the real thing.

Speaking of fatigue, today was hard. Although we cut round times to 90 seconds to keep things fresh, I really had trouble going through all the exercises. Must be the carb deprivation kicking in – I haven’t eaten carbs in what feels like an eternity (but in reality is more like 3 weeks or so). Explosiveness and [the Atkins diet] just don’t work together, period. I felt that fact particularly strong when doing power cleans – after the first out of three working sets, I had to call it a day. Only just on Monday, I tossed the very same weights almost effortlessly onto my shoulders. Doesn’t matter, really – I’ll weigh in Friday night and fight Sunday, so I have more than 60 hours to re-hydrate and load up on carbs.

As for a game-plan, I don’t have a general one set up this time. Especially in Poland, at Open tournaments, it’s hard to conjure up an end-all-be-all strategy. You see, in a kickboxing match, I know there’ll be lots of push-kicks involved, heavy boxing and clinching at close quarters, some roundhouse kicks, probably the Thai version, maybe even a spinning back kick. On the other hand, in a pure TKD setting (I’m talking [ITF TKD] here, as opposed to the [Olympic WTF]), when I face someone from, say, the [TAGB], I know he’ll aggressively work that lead leg pumping sidekick. Fine. This time, however, there’ll be guys from [TKD], [TSD], [Karate], [Kickboxing], maybe some [Muay Thai] guys… each of them is going to call for an individual strategy, I guess.

Of course, I’ll compete on my strengths, which I suspect to be the following:
  1. I’m fairly sure to be amongst the strongest fighters in the –72kg division, physically
  2. also, overall, I’m sure I can challenge even the fastest of the lot when it comes to speed. There might be a faster boxer, a faster kicker and a speedy Gonzales when it comes to footwork – but after averaging those three areas out, I guess I’m pretty much on top
  3. Talking of being on top, I guess there’s only a few that can compete with me when it comes to technical skill. I’ve been working on a couple of things lately that I’ll give a try when the situation allows it.
Having said all that, fights aren’t won on paper, so I won’t make any wild assumptions here or indulge in trash talk. At the [BSPA] instructor course they taught us that “performance can be planned – success can not”.
In any case, I’m looking forward to competing again and will certainly give everything I’ve got. Videos are due to follow after the event.
So long,

take care

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