A Busy Day!
Having not done much training for the last 10 days, I absolutely had to go to the gym today. Unfortunately, it was also boxing-day (as in the sport, not the crap version of Christmas). Not wanting to give up either, I decided to do both. It hurt… (The person in the picture is not me – it’s purely for boxing-illustration purposes!)
After a lovely final day of holiday, I headed to the gym for 1.5 hours of strength development, but without putting too much stress on my elbow:
Bench press at 80kg, following warm-up.
Incline dumbbell presses at 2 x 30kg
Incline dumbbell flyes at 2 x 20kg
I attempted to include some back-work as well but, after my first few sets of chin-ups, I realised I didn’t have enough juice left.
I then headed back into Wycombe to go boxing. This week, we did some new technique-work, based around footwork and counter-punching. Without doubt, this has been one of the most useful sessions so far, as it involved a lot of technical sparring (like normal sparring, but without hitting each other very hard). Although it was primarily shoulder-boxing (hitting the other guy on the shoulder) and body-counters, I still managed to take a fair few punches to the face, which was actually more fun than it sounds.
I can already tell I’m going to have a problem with boxing. Not only am I too concerned with hurting other people to really commit to my punches and step forwards enough to deliver impact, I’m also too ‘nice’ about being hit. Basically, years of pro-wrestling taught me to keep my guard DOWN, to make every punch look as good as possible. This is so engrained into my psyche that, when I see somebody’s hand coming towards my face, I practically offer it to them! I turn to one side, close one eye and get ready to take the punch! I literally HELP OTHER PEOPLE TO HIT ME IN THE FACE.
As I said, I’m going to have a problem with boxing…