The fight continues to edge closer with only 19 days until the big night. Training has been particularly taxing over the past week as more focus has been spent on getting comfortable in the ring. It is pretty easy to learn in a sport like boxing, all it takes is a fist to the side of the head or the face to let you know that you are doing something wrong. As I become more familiar with boxing, I have come to realise that it is a combination of a lot of different aspects of other sports:

- Fencing (the agility and sharpness)

- Golf/Tennis (the technique and hand eye coordination required to throw a punch is similar to that of swinging a club or racquet)

- Rugby (the contact)

- Running (the cardio endurance and leg strength)

Inside the camp, speaking to my other training partners, it appears that as we lift the intensity of replicating ‘fight scenarios’ increasingly more of us are picking up niggling injuries such as elbow soreness (for one of the particular older lads), and sprained/dislocated fingers. Its all part of the game and speaking to a coach who is an ex professional boxer he was telling me that its very rare for anyone to step into the ring 100% fit especially if you have been training hard. Makes sense I guess….

Finally, it appears that this week we should find out who we will be facing in the ring come 4 September. So keep an eye out for the fight posters on the Vanda website.

Have a great week.

Yours in the Ring,
AW

P.S. Total word count: 267

Time has flown by as I realised today there is less than one month until the fight. You can feel the mood is a bit different around most of the guys at training, its as if you can almost feel the tension. At Monday night’s training we received a visit from Andy from Vanda Promotions who flew in from Singapore to give us a bit of a rundown of what to expect on the run into the fight on September 4^th.

A few weeks ago we had the photo and video shoots which were accompanied by interviews. I must admit it’s a pretty strange feeling having to stand in front of a few cameras and answer questions about something that you have not experienced before. I was glad to get it out of the way. It will be interesting to see how the videos turn out on the night, as some of us said to each other after the shoot, “I really hope I didn’t make a d#%k of myself!”

On a personal front, things are going well, a few minor niggles from the training and sparring but I will be good to go. At the moment I am trying to focus more on getting in quality ring time to get me comfortable with seeing fists flying at me and getting ‘fight fit’. I have successfully avoided any grog for the past 2 weeks and will carry this through until the fight.

One last thing, Go the Wallabies this Saturday night!

Yours in the ring,
AW

P.S. Total word count: 266

Rainy season in Hong Kong is always a fun time for those who are fortunate enough to be living in this hectic city. Starting with the rain warnings then moving onto the thunderstorm warnings and finishing with the much loved Typhoon 8s it makes for an interesting couple of months.

Tonight, I found myself negotiating the jungle of umbrellas along Queens Road, in Central to make it to the gym. As I am sure those of you who live in Hong Kong and are a bit taller than the average person on the street you at some stage have been poked in the eye by the stray umbrella spoke. After a while it does start to get on your nerves. Although tonight I realised it does serve a hidden purpose, by the time I arrived at the gym I was pretty agitated (not to mention soaked like a wet dog) and ready to unleash this pent up aggression on the bag and pads.

As the fight imminently draws closer and closer training is now more focussed on sparring which I personally find the most enjoyable. Matt our trainer likes to replicate a fight scenario by pushing us through rounds of 3 minutes followed by a 1 minute rest. Needless to say, time flies past and before I know its time to put the mouthguard away, unwrap the hands and get home for some much needed R&R.

Last entry I touched on the nutrition aspect of the fight preparation. This week I thought I would delve into a bit more detail. I find that with being so active that I am constantly hungry. And as a result, I eat 5 meals throughout the day. Most people think that this is a dream, but let me assure you, it isn’t as fun as it sounds! Here is a typical guide of what I eat on an average training day:

Meal 1:  Protein Shake, fruit (apples or blueberries), oatmeal

Meal 2: Handful of unsalted nuts and a can of tuna in mineral water

Meal 3: Salad with chicken breast and turkey or tuna and some whole-wheat bread

Meal 4: Can of Tuna and some fruit

Meal 5: Some protein either: Fish or Chicken, vegetables or salad

Basically I try not to eat anything which comes wrapped in plastic that has a used by date, thus avoiding as processed foods as much as possible. I have found that eating foods in its whole state is best as you avoid taking in anything that your body doesn’t really need and can’t process.

I find this amount of food keeps my body and mind fresh and ready to take on the training load of each day.

Yours in the ring,
AW

P.S. Total word count: 453

Attended my first proper White Collar sparring session last Saturday. Was caught in the flash floods along Bukit Timah road and only made it down to the Turf City gym half an hour late at 9am. Stepped into the gym and was promptly “ushered” into the ring to put on my headgear, mouth guard and gloves.  After a full month of 3 times a week cardio, bags and footwork training, I was when I woke up on Saturday morning, confident (very mistakenly I was soon to realize) that I had enough in me to truly enjoy a bout of sparring and throw some decent swings at my opponents!

Memories of my first sparring session involved multiple and rapid (or so they felt to me) blows to the body, blows to the head ( left, right and definitely center), rapid sounds of my own immensely hard breathing and the distant ringing voice of Alexis going “Jab! Punch! More Aggression! PUT THOSE HANDS UP!”. Rob and Latif who were my fellow amateur sparring partners that morning must surely still be feeling proud of themselves after their rounds with me! I must say that I did managed to get my decent swings in, but not too sure how many of them actually did find ANY target.

2 days down, and I was proudly nursing a slight little (fast disappearing) bruise on the left of my eye. Definitely going to be putting much more work into the skipping, the bag works and the footwork drills this coming week. Looking forward to the next session!

Dear Readers,

Foreword: (please read this if you are wondering why my actual blog is so rubbish)

When asked to write a blog, you are never really sure where to start. So as a result, I have been procrastinating and finding other things to keep myself occupied with. I guess this is not too hard when you have to work for a living. Being a blog virgin I decided to Google what a typical ‘good’ blog should consist of. It said I should:

1. Make your opinion known – I don’t think this will be a problem.

2. Link like crazy – honestly, wtf does this mean?

3. Write less – shouldn’t be a problem.

4. 250 Words is enough – Isn’t that similar to point 3 above? I just clicked word count, I am 97 currently.

5. Make Headlines Snappy – I will do my best

6. Write with passion – Sure, sounds easy enough.

7. Include Bullet point lists – what is this supposed to be? Minutes from a meeting?

8. Edit your post – I thought it was spell-check and grammar checks job to do this for me.

9. Be consistent with your style – Well I will be posting the blogs, so obviously it will always be my style.

10. Litter the post with key words – see if you as a reader can pick up some key words.

So basically, after reading this not so useful link, I realised that all a blog is my own thoughts and opinions. And I have decided to ignore most of the 10 bullet points listed above.

Blog:

I am currently sitting here in the office on Friday morning; the Typhoon 1 signal has been raised in Hong Kong. Although looking outside you wouldn’t think it given that it is blue skies and sunny and approximately 30 degrees outside. I am desperately hoping that the T8 will not be raised or else it means that the city basically shuts down as everyone gets to leave work. This would mean that tonight’s boxing training with Matt Corbett will probably be off. Not ideal given we are 7 weeks out from the big night.

I started preparing for the upcoming fight back in October 2009. Currently I train 6 days a week. A typical week comprises of: 5 boxing sessions, 3 weights sessions and 2 circuit conditioning sessions. Although this sounds a lot, it will be gradually reduced as we head closer to the fight as I focus more on the finer intricacies. To be honest, sometimes after a long day at work the last thing I want to do is get myself into the gym and push it to the limit. But I have realised that I just have to suck it up and recognise that I have made a commitment to myself to get into the best shape possible for 4^th September 2010.

Obviously with all this training, it is a hard task to keep the body fuelled and feeling fresh.  So I have asked some friends who are trainers to help me out with an eating plan. I have learnt that a solid diet is critical in order to get into great physical shape. Many people believe eating less is best when training for something such as boxing (as there is a certain pressure to cutting weight and getting the skin-folds down). However, I have learnt that this is totally the wrong way to approach it. Let me use an example that I saw in a magazine to give a better picture. Imagine your body is a racing car (you) and your goal is to make it go as fast as possible for race day (the boxing match). If you don’t keep filling up the tank how are you going to run it continually around the test track  (training) and tinker around with the car to get it into the peak setup if you don’t keep adding fuel  (diet) to the tank? Enough said.

That’s about all I have time for this time round. Next time round I will go into more detail of what I am doing at training and also give you insight into my current diet plan.

I hope you all have a great weekend.

Yours in the ring,
AW

P.S. Please comment or send me through any questions or topics that you want me to discuss in future blogs.

P.S.S. FYI – Total word count 736 (not including this line)