Nerdcore Boxing

I’m still getting over a cold. So tonight I’m just going to stretch, do my rehab exercises, drink water and take vitamin C. I haven’t vegged out on a weeknight in a long time, might be fun.

After a weekend of dedicated icing and my first two days of doing the rotator cuff exercises, my shoulders feel real good. It’s hard to test them out until I get back to training, but I’m very optimistic.

I’ve been working on getting approval from my health insurance to see a physical therapist for shoulder pain and instability. Hopefully the final approval comes in this week and I can make an appointment.

If I want to fight in the next 2 months I’m kind of concerned that I won’t get to begin working with the P.T. in time to see any results. So instead of waiting I’m doing some exercises I found on the internet. I’m also going to take it easy on the push ups until I strengthen the stabilizing muscles (push ups are a painful activity for me).

Sorry, I missed some postings. My father in-law has been in town so I’ve just had enough time to squeeze in a little training between spending time with family.

I was very unhappy with how I performed last week. I felt clueless during sparring and have now practically gone back to the drawing board to re-work some punches. By week end my rotator cuffs (small stabalizing shoulder muscles) were killing me again and to top things off I had a sore throat.

So I’m strategically resting up so I don’t get sick and so my shoulders heal. I’m going to ease into training this week. I’ll work out tomorrow night on my own so I can finish resting my shoulders and I’ll get back to my daily cardio. Tuesday I’ll be back to training hard and I hope to have a strong week.

…when sparring. I just caught a hook with my mouth open and my jaw still isn’t happy about it.

At this point I’ve sparred 15 rounds against real boxers. Real good sparring, all with either very experienced amateurs or professional fighters. My trainer seems to put me in with a particular guy and as soon as I get somewhat comfortable, he puts me in with someone different and I’m back to square one.

Before I started training seriously I never appreciated how difficult it is to hit a really good boxer. Against a newbie I can pretty much land all my punches and dance around real pretty (well, kind of pretty). But when I first start with these new guys I am often unable to land a single solid punch. Nothing worse than feeling like your coming along as a boxer and then being complete and utterly outclassed.

Got in 30 mins of cardio then went to boxing class today.

I have to say great sparring partners are a true gift. I find you learn the most if you’re sparring partner is better than you are. As of lately I’ve been mostly sparring with a standout amateur boxer who’s had 6 fights or so. He’s 15 or so lbs lighter than me, but very hard to hit. If I can land a particular punch on him, I know my mechanics are solid for that punch.

Tonight I started sparring with my trainer, who’s about 10 lbs heavier than me and has 3-4″ in height on me. He also has the fastest hands of any of my sparring partners. Add in the fact that my recent sparring has been left handed only and tonight’s 3 rounds of sparring ended up being very frustrating. It was hard to land anything, whenever I attacked I was countered. When he attacked I found I was overwhelmed with speed, power and effective combinations. I covered and even (dare I say) closed my eyes a few times. Even though he took it easy on me I definitely felt the difference in weight when it came to his power.

I’m currently licking the wounds to me ego and will need to work on a few things before Wednesday. He sort of paws me with his jab to setup his right, I need to effectively counter this. I also need to get used to right hands, how to defend and counter. And I need to keep covered better with my right hand when I throw the left.

I’m a big Cro Cop fan (throwing the kick above). He’s a very interesting guy: an amateur boxer with 40+ fights, elite kickboxer in K-1 and former Pride MMA champion. He is/was also a member of the Croatian special forces and a member of parliament. Apparently a scholar and a mighty warrior.

Last night Cro Cop got shocked in his UFC fight. His fight with Gonzolas was supposed to be a sure thing before getting a shot at the UFC heavyweight champ Randy Couture. Instead Gonzalos, who isn’t noted for his kicking skills, landing a high kick knocking Cro Cop out cold.

This isn’t the first time Cro Cop got KO’ed by a inferior striker. Wrestler and 2nd tier MMA fighter Randleman shocked the world scoring an early 1st round KO via punch. It just goes to show you how slim a margin of error there is in a sport like MMA, where the fighters are so well rounded and there are so many ways to win.

Weighing in is a Saturday morning ritual for me. Because of the weight classes, competitive boxing heavily involves weight management, diet, etc. At this point I probably fret over my weight and diet more than most women.

Everybody has an ideal weight class, where they are at their fastest, have their best strength-to-weight ratio and can take the punches. In the past when I’ve trained rigorously, I’ve been able to get down to 178 lbs, which for me was about 10% body fat and gave me a 4 pack (damn those persistent love handles!).

Yesterday I weighed in at 182.4 lbs. Last week I weighed 183.8 and 186.4 the week before!  Four lbs lost in 2 weeks and I’m almost in the 170’s!!!

As of about Thursday night I was in serious despair. My calf was not healed and I was starting to fear that this would be one of those long term nagging injuries. But Friday was better and Saturday I was able to go through most of my boxing workout. I haven’t jumped rope for over a week, but I anticipate this next week to be a full week of hard boxing.

Even though I took a bunch of days off, I chose some specific things to work on that wouldn’t affect my calf. I worked on ways to shrug off punches without blocking or slipping: shoulder rolls and rocking back on my rear leg. I also worked on getting some more range and mobility in my right shoulder when doing straight rights and hooks. And finally I continued to work on my pivots and fwd/back/lateral movement during v-slips.

Thought my calf strain was healed and I did a little workout. I shadowboxed a bit, working on my long left hook, pivots and v-slips. On the bright side I’m actually pleased with the improvements in balance and speed in my v-slips and pivots. Can’t wait to break these out in sparring.

But then I tried jumping some rope… Cramp attack at the end of the first round. I take a rest and go for 30 minutes of cardio on the elliptical walker, only to get the cramps at the 20 minute mark. Ok, very very discouraging, especially since my trainer will be having me jumping 4 rounds tomorrow.

Must think positive… I’m not old, just over trained. The rest of the evening I’ll be taking potassium, calcium and magnesium supplements and doing hot and ice baths tonight. Hopefully I can hold up tomorrow. I will not miss another class this week.

I somehow strained my calf last week. I expected to be sore over the weekend but I didn’t expect to be limping and cramped. The bizarre thing is that last week’s workout wasn’t that much more than usual, I can only come up with one reason my right calf was so taxed after last week: I changed the angle of my of my foot in my stance.

I believe trainer’s call it “standing in the bucket,” or when you’re rear foot is generally perpendicular to where you’re facing (pointed towards the side). This reduces the range of motion of your ankle and thus the potential explosion forward. I fell into the habit of standing in the bucket and my trainer corrected me on this point last week.

With my foot pointed in the right direction my calf has to work harder, hence additional stress and subsequent strain in my right calf. When combined with my sore rotator cuff I decided to skip class tonight. Instead I did 30 mins of cardio and 3 sets of 30 lunges and hot/ice baths. I’ll be back to training tomorrow.