2013

The year 2013 is about to end and with that the first four months of my journey passed already. It really didn´t feel like four months, the time passed by so fast. That means it´s time to look back and assess this journey so far – did everything work out as I planned it? Were my expectations fulfilled?

If you are already following my blog for a while you may already know the answers that come with these questions, but I also want to come to a conclusion so far and furthermore I want to look ahead. Since I arrived everything worked out perfectly, from travelling to Chiang Mai, to finding a flat and to getting the training started.

As far as I can judge my own performance, I think I evolved in several parts of my game, I did in Muay Thai as in MMA and grappling as well. It is amazing how fast you make progress when you train so much. It is way easier to concentrate on a specific technique or weakness because there are no long timeframes between the classes. After practicing one and the same movement for one hour, you realize at the end of the morning session, that if you change this little, tiny thing it may be the key to making the movement way more effective. There is no time to forget something either. A few hours later you will step on the mat again and simply continue where you had stopped before.

I had only two pure boxing classes per week in Germany because all the grappling, wrestling and Muay Thai classes had to fit into my training schedule as well. Now, while I was injured, I had 22 classes in two weeks. Even if I wanted to train so much (boxing), I neither had the time nor the possibilities to do so in Germany.

For example: On Monday, one of the coaches tells me to do this and that while sparring and try a new way of movement or so. By Friday I had improved visibly. Goals are reached way faster and it feels like training on a magic drug. It is not like I didn´t train much before since I trained six times a week for the last three years; but this double up of the classes leads to a whole new pace of effective learning.

But there were also disappointments. The worst thing that bugged me, or still bugs me, is the knee injury I suffered during a sparring session. I have no idea what really happened because it began to hurt the next morning. The pain is still there. Even if I don´t think anything got badly injured, this injury has affected my schedule even after two months. There is absolutely no problem during training, and even competing, Muay Thai. However, I barely did any grappling in the last weeks – bending the knee and sitting on my lower legs, as you do in all the top positions in grappling, causes pain after a few minutes.

I have this fantastic opportunity to live my dream, but the time for that is limited and I don´t want to waste my valuable time with resting and recovering from an injury. What I want is to use this time for the sport, to get as good as possible in this year and learn a thousand other things.

On the other hand, I guess, this is part of the everyday life of all the professional fighters: Dealing with injuries and adjusting your schedule around these.

So if being hurt will be usual (even more usual than it already was in the past few years) I should view it in a positive light: The injury made me concentrate on my boxing and on the Muay Thai. This has given me the opportunity to compete a lot in the pass weeks.

Well... that doesn´t hide the fact, that I missed dozens of grappling classes and, with that, opportunities to make my ground game stronger. But at least there is something positive about the situation.

I keep telling myself that thinking positive helps with everything. I am not sure yet if this is true; but until now, it worked.

Tomorrow, I will continue my review - I´m not finished with you yet, 2013!