I started this post with the intention of saying what I was going to do this week. Partly to set goals and partly to convince or motivate myself to do it. But realistically I won’t do much. This lead me to thinking, what should a person focus on in the holidays?
Here are some thoughts for my training this week:
Jump rope, maybe set a goal to do a few rounds. You can do it anywhere, indoors or out and it’s not as rough as roadwork, sprints or hills.
If I do that I’ll be ready for a more serious week of training the following week. If I do a little more the week of New Year’s, I’ll be ready to train all out starting the first week of 2010.
I hate buying boxing shoes! In 8 years of boxing training I’ve only had one good pair of boxing shoes (a particular model of Asics). Those Asics were my last pair, and I was so happy to have them I wore them into the ground. I literally had toes sticking out! But I continued to wear them until I was afraid I’d twist an ankle because the treads were so worn.
Most boxing shoes have flimsy ankle support, or are too wide or narrow. The new pair purchased 2 weeks ago have soles which are too narrow, so my foot causes the side of the shoe to spill out over the sole onto the ground. I wonder how long until I wear a hole into the side?
This new pair pissed me off because I visited two stores and spent $70. After rejecting the one pair in stock at the local Big 5 Sporting goods store, I tried this pair at a local boxing specialty store. These Everlast brand shoes were the only pair they carried and they seemed ok when I tried them on. In retrospect I should have moved around a bit to better evaluate them… If/when I ever get a good pair I’ll let you guys know the make and model.
Outside of telling a fighter what punches they can throw, you don’t see too many quality instructionals on intermediate or advanced inside fighting. Here’s a decent video of a guy working the inside with his trainer:
He’s doing a lot of shifting, switching leads, using his elbows and shoulder to create space and showing a pretty tight inside guard. Some good stuff there.
So I got the flu right after my last post, then the holidays hit and my blog got messed up. The next week I’m ready to go back to the gym but I get TMJ.
Temporomandibular Joint Disorder (TMJ) sucks, I wake up one morning and my jaw is hurting. No getting punched beforehand, no falling out of bed, just a freak occurrence. It makes cracking noises when move it, eating is painful that whole day, etc. Fast forward that night and I start wiggling it and hear a loud crack! Suddenly it feels better, a little internet search indicates it was dislocated. Gotta love self treatment on the internet!
Next day it’s still sore, tender to eat, but better. Each day better until I try out some shadow boxing with a mouthpiece, apparently too soon because I regress a bit. Few days later it feels better but I go to dentist appointment, now it’s jacked again. To make a long story short, a week goes by and it feels mostly healed. I’m going to try and go for physical therapy to ensure it stays healed.
So no sparring since my last post and very little gym time. The week before and the week of Thanksgiving I gained a combine 5 lbs. But last week I lost 6.2 lbs! How did I do it? My new intensity training routine, I’ll post it later.
Now the plan is to rest the jaw and be back training and sparring Monday.
