Getting ready to fight

  I have a fight on a club show this coming Saturday, a tune-up bout before Ontario Open Championships two weeks later. After taking a winter break, I threw myself back into full training to get back into fighting shape in time for this fight. A full training camp for me involves:

-Running 4 times a week, including sprints and stairs
-Boxing 6 times a week, pads and heavy bag work each day
-Sparring 2-3 sessions a week, building intensity towards fight-pace
-Hot yoga 2-3 times a week for sweating out acid build-up in muscles and stretching those tight muscles

  But as I get closer to the fight, training changes up a bit. The idea of a training camp is to peak, be at your strongest and quickest around a week before the fight and use those last few days simply to stay sharp and recharge to be at full energy for the actual fight. This schedule has taken a while to figure out, but between my coach knowing the general structure of training camps and me listening to my body and adjusting things to fit my own needs and past performances, we've gotten a really good system figured out. It still gets adjusted for each fight, depending on my health, schedule, weight, etc. This week's training has looked more like this:

-Running 3 times a week, nothing past Wednesday. No stairs, sprints kept to very beginning of week.
-Boxing 4 days, to finish on Thursday. Session are kept shorter, focus on sweating, not hitting hard.
-Sparring 1 session, kept close to the beginning of the week.
-Hot yoga 2-3 times still, last class on Thursday. This keeps my weight down and my body limber.

  All weights are taken out of training the last week. The focus is to keep the muscles fast rather than strong. The weeks in the training camp are for building the muscles, making them as strong as possible, the last few days are simply to keep reminding the muscle what it's meant to do, muscle-memory at it's finest.

  The last two days are spent doing the training that some fighters have the hardest time with - rest, rest, and more rest. For the last several weeks you've been working as hard as you can almost every day and now suddenly you stop. For myself, this doesn't just mean not going to the gym, but actively working on rest - putting aside the desire to run all errands that could be run with sudden "free time" I don't normally have, to cook up a few meals for myself and my boyfriend, to visits friends, but that defeats the purpose. Rest means sleeping as much as possible to re-charge the body, and if sleep isn't possible, laying down and reading or watching a movie. Anything to keep the body still and, if you're like me, to keep your mind off all the food and liquids I can't have until after weigh-ins! I personally avoid thinking about the actual fight too much, or if I do it's more about what I know, at what I'm good at, at what my body is ready to perform. I don't think about my opponent, because that's just a bunch of "what-ifs", anything can happen in ring, and it's up to me to adapt and adjust. That can be the difference between the win and the loss - how quickly one fighter can adjust. And that's a lot easier to do when you are rested and sharp.