Nerdcore Boxing

A Death March, as in a soldier traveling a long distance in harsh conditions without the proper rest or supplies, entering battle already exhausted and beat down. Napoleon sent his men on a death march into the Russian Winter and sealed his (and their) fate before the fight even started. I’m starting to think I’m on a conditioning death march.

In order to discuss my trainers difference in philosophy more clearly, I will name them Old School and Mexican Style respectively.

I’m into shorter intensity training, I know most amateur boxers run only a couple miles/day with sprints, because boxing is a sprint not a marathon. But at the same time I want to stick with my trainer Old School, even though he’s going crazy on the conditioning.

This week in response to my trainer I cut calories, I’m pushing my runs, I’m doing uber-intense bag work to push punch output way up. I feel the weight come off, but I’m feeling bad.

I’m exhausted, my knuckles and foot are sore. Worse yet I’m getting the chills in the afternoon. I bundle up but I can’t get warm (it’s like 70 degrees in LA). According to a google search a temperature drop in the following day of exercise is from overtraining. But I ignore this, because I want to stick with the program, overtraining the body is training the mind I tell myself.

After my trainer dressed me down a bit Friday night, he says he wants me to go running with him and an Olympic sprinter in-training the following morning at 8:30 AM.

I left the conversation a little put off and decided to have my last undisciplined night for the next 6 weeks of “camp.” My wife & son are out of town so I went to a little sushi place a short walk from home. Had some spicy tuna rolls and more importantly, 2 pints of beer. On the walk home I’m thirsty as hell, so pick up a 2 liter bottle of Diet Coke and down the whole caffiene infused bottle.

That night it rains hard all night. I know this sounds sounds lame, especially since I’m an ex-East Coaster, but I’m not used to the noise of it raining really hard at night so I can’t sleep. Oddly enough all my running partners had the exact same issue. I admit it, Southern California makes you soft. Anyway combine the rain with the alcohol and Diet Coke and I only put in 2-3 hours of sleep before the run.

The trainer that organizes runs is old school, he worships boxers that used to run 14 miles/day and box 20 rounds or whatever the hell they did, so I knew he’d abuse us. The original plan was jogging a warm up mile, 2 miles of light-then-medium jogging intervals, then 30 all out sprint job intervals. They sprint the straight aways of a quarter mile track and jog the turns, which means 15 laps, or 3.75 miles of sprints completed after another 3 miles of jogging. 6.75 miles, come on!!!

So we do the warm-up mile and light-then-medium jog intervals completing the first 3 miles. It’s not as bad as I thought, we stopped to stretch between the warm-up mile and the other 2 and I usually run my 3 miles faster, so I’m feeling fine. But then again here comes the sprints.

Then it starts hammering down rain. I swear I wasn’t the person complaining, but one of the non-boxing sprinters is worried about getting sick. So we go into a nearby parking garage and do as best we can our sprint work. Garage starts to fill and we cut it short after a mile by our count. Not as bad as planned, but still 4 miles total.

I’m stepping it up, so I take a nap, then go to the gym for some bag work. Next morning (Sunday) I do a 3 mile run on my own and later in the day do some more bag work. With my bag work I’m focusing on upping my punch output. I either shoot for 3 fast 300 punch rounds, or do 3 rounds of 30 second power punch intervals.

I got off the plane at 6PM Saturday night and went right to the track to run 2 miles of sprints. Sunday morning I jogged 3 miles, did 3 rounds of jump rope push up intervals (3 min rounds with push ups on breaks),and 7 rounds of bag work.

This week I need to run every morning. My trainer wants me to run an 8 minute mile then finish with 2 miles of alternating jogging/sprints. I’m not up to sprints and a 3 mile run at the same time yet, but it would be awesome if I got there this week.

I’ll do 2 hr sessions with my trainer Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I’m going to be traveling for sparring on Tuesday and/or Thursday. This will be a long week especially with taking off training last week.

I just got back from a week long trip to Kansas City Saturday night.

This trip to KC to visit my in-laws was set in stone for many months. My trainer wasn’t too worried about it, but I feared the weight gain and drop in performance from missing a week of training. I hoped to do some running, jump rope or shadow boxing, but I did nothing. I was surrounded by good cooks, BBQ and peach cobbler, so my diet was terrible. I’m only consoled by the fact that a man can only gain so many pounds in one week of bad eating.

I have 8 more weeks to fit in a fight or so before my 35th birthday. It should be plenty of time especially since before leaving I was only 9-10 lbs off my targeted weight. I’m not even going to bother weighing in until next weekend. Hopefully with another week of hard work I’ll be back where I was before I left, 184 lbs.

“He Was a Poet, A Scholar and a Mighty Warrior” is a quote said at the funeral scene in the classic movie Lawrence of Arabia. If you’re not familiar with the movie or the life of T.E. Lawrence, he was a Brit that single handedly lead an extremely successful Arab rebellion against the Germans in World War II.

I always wanted somebody to say that about me, but I’ve never written a poem. I had a case of the nerves while driving to a foreign gym last week, so to keep my mind limber I composed the first poem of my life:

Please Cure My Disease

Fear is my affliction

I’m going for the cure

The infirmary is no use

My hospital is the ring

No shots in the arm

I take them in the face

Side effects are cosmetic and dementia

I don’t want to go

Without a cure disease lives on

Take my medicine and fear turns

Turns to accomplishment and pride

I could run away and ignore it

The thought is tempting, peaceful

If I don’t treat it, it will haunt me forever

I’ve now entered the intensive training period to get in shape for my fight, a real sanctioned amateur fight in the next month or so. Unlike my work the last year I’m not looking to tweak anything major except what comes up in sparring. My trainer is looking to give me 50 rounds of sparring before the fight. I’m mainly looking to get in fight shape and remove the ring rust.

Beginning of camp inventory check:

• I’m at 187 lbs, I need to drop to at least 175.
• I’m running 2 miles on a hilly trail 3 times/week, I need to add back in the sprints. Since my coach sometimes makes me do 3 miles on organized runs I might as well work up to it on my own.
• My left rotator cuff hurts as always, but I’m doing my physical therapy exercises and range of motion work to mitigate it. By keeping my elbows tucked in I’ve been doing pain free pushups for the first time in years, which is a major victory for me. I’m confident the shoulder will hold up ok for the fight.
• Recently my knuckles have been hurting, this is a new disconcerting injury,  but it mainly occurs on hard heavybag work, which I can easily limit.
• Overall moral is high and I’m feeling optimistic.

I was derailed in my attempt at switching gyms. I called up my leading prospect and in the process of talking to the trainer I found out their guys only compete a few time each year. My current club has guys fighting every few weeks, often every weekend. I guess this is not surprising since theirs is an MMA gym and they’re dividing their resources scheduling fights in several sports. Still I will consider them in the future when I migrate back to MMA, but not right now.

I turn 35 in April, which means I’d have to compete in the Masters division if I don’t fight by then. So this is my last chance to compete in the main pool of amateur boxers. Lining up fights can actually be tough and disappointing if your opponent drops out, so to ensure I can fight by April I need a gym plugged into the local boxing community.

I’m coming to the conclusion that changing gyms is not a good idea right now. I think I need to have “one for the road,” a fight with my current club and then move on. This means I’m going to have to do the travel for sparring thing, and go with my trainer to other gyms for sparring partners. I’m not a big fan of this, because on foreign soil where other guy is not on your “team” it’s sometimes not sparring but an actual fight. Most guys are cool but sometimes your opponent is looking to practice KO’ing strangers with his big right hand.

My trainer is spinning the situation saying the road warrior route helps him train better boxers. He said it toughens us up and shows us lots of styles of opponents. I’m not sure if he believe it, but it’s a good bit of rah rah propaganda nevertheless.

This new gym I found has much nicer facilities than my current local, I could actually do all my strength and conditioning there too. Plus it’s an MMA gym.

In theory I’ve wanted to get back into MMA, but MMA gyms usually offer limited boxing programs and are super expensive. The problem with them is that they need to offer MMA, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) and Muay Thai classes in addition to Boxing and Wrestling. This means that they employ 4X the number of trainers, and their boxing classes are usually 1 hr slots 2-3 times/week. This is not enough training time for me.

I hope I don’t piss off the Muay Thai and BJJ advocates with what I’m about to say, and I preface my comments by saying that I’ve been out of the MMA game recently so my perspective may be ignorant. But it seems to me that MMA gyms focus too much on BJJ and Muay Thai classes when in their MMA training they’re most likely to be boxing and wrestling along with MMA specific skills. Yeah there’s kicking, kneeing and submissions in MMA, but those things are far less common than the other components. So why not focus more on Boxing, Wrestling and integrated MMA classes, and make BJJ and Muay Thai secondary?

Well this new gym I’m thinking about takes this Boxing/Wrestling/MMA approach. This is great for me because there’s lots of Boxing classes and people competing in pro/am Boxing to spar with. And there is the additional advantage that when I go back to MMA I already wanted to focus on developing Wrestling skill so I can impose my Boxing. Wrestling, while it doesn’t include submissions, teaches one to control the transition between striking and grappling. Basically if you have superior Wrestling you get to decide if it’s a grappling or striking match.

Apparently I’m not the only guy who likes this approach because 3 former UFC and two current WEC fighters train at this gym. In a week or two I’m going to visit this gym, then if I like it decide when/how to break it off with my trainer.

Some of the boxing bloggers on the net (like Lawyer Boxer and Earning a Nickname) are more open about posting the name of their gyms or sparring partners. Personally I don’t do this because my anonymity makes me feel more comfortable discuss my trainers and sparring partners without it affecting our relationships.

My long time readers know that I never come on here and bash people I train with, so I don’t worry about hurting people’s feelings. All the same it would be awkward if one of my sparring partners subscribed to this blog and showed up to the gym saying, “so you thought you owned me with your jab in the first round last night…”

I made this anonymity decision 3 years ago and I’m convinced it’s the right decision. If I do go forward with switching gyms I’ll continue to post details, but I’m going to withhold the gym name.

I lost 6+ lbs last week. I’m not sure if this is due to being sick, or the fact that it included 3-4 lbs of weight I held for only about 2 weeks. In any case I’ll take it.

This week I’m planning on running, doing 3 sessions with my boxing trainer plus a little work on the side. My goal is to lose another 2 lbs and weigh in at 185lbs.