It´s good for you

It is a beautiful Friday morning, absolutely no clouds on the sky and the temperature is plesant (maybe a bit less than 20 degrees). Two weeks ago it was really cold at night and in the early morning. It was colder than it usually is in the Thai winter, often only 10 degrees. The Team Quest site was often covered in thick fog. Fortunately it has been warming up during the last days.

"Your last training before the fight on sunday!" Ni welcomes me with a cup of hot coffee in his hands. When Dylan spots my girlfriend who arrived just the day before in Thailand and is going to watch the session, he adds, directed at the coffee sipping Muay Thai trainer: "Oh! And I heard him saying that he wants a really hard workout today." Sometimes, I seriously hate trainers. Dylan grins at me.

We are just three students this morning: A beginner, a new sponsored professional fighter, Ali, and me. After the usual warm-up of having a short run, skipping, stretching and shadow boxing, we start doing bagwork. Or at least that's what I do while the other do their pad rounds. As always when I am working on the bags, I start slowly, reminding my bones, muscles, tendons and ligaments how to absorb the power when a punch or kick hits something hard. And as always I get the comment from someone to hit the bag harder. However, even if I am warmed up already, I think, give me at least one round to get used to my training partner made of leather and rags.

Jab, cross, right kick – cross, jab, left kick – teep, teep (the Thai word for frontkick) and slowly, my body awakes. The punches become harder, the footwork faster and the combinations more fluent. Two jabs, hit the bag lightly and my cross smacks into it with all the power I have. As I dot that, I take a long step forward. A long bleep sound calls for the break and then following bag work. Wow! These three rounds passed by fast!

I climb into the ring and touch gloves with Dae, who is a new trainer, and prepare myself for the coming three rounds of padwork. "Okay! Fifteeeeeen push-ups!" Ni shouts. "Same procedure as every day" I think as I do what he asked for. Then Dae holds the pads to his side "10 times!". 10 kicks with the left leg and then 10 kicks with the right one. I am expecting to go on with punches now but Dae has different plans for me. Again, he holds the pads to his left side "Nine!". Again, I switch my stance and make my shinbone smack into the pads as fast as possible, trying to keep the breaks as short as possible. He will count down since there is no time limit. The round is over after completing 10-9-8...-2-1 kicks on both sides.

I am taking a deep breath in the corner. Since I have managed to do two rounds, the last one won't be a problem. Instead I should give even more than before.
The sweat is dripping from my rashguard and shorts, the shinbones and the top of my feet got a slight red color and my breathing is fast. "Seven! Harder! Harder!" Dae shouts at em. I give my best "More hip! More hip!" - "Ozz! Ozz!" I breath out fast, with every kick – "Two! Come on! Hard!" - "Ay! Ay!" - "One!" - I move my hip in more than before, create more power and then the pad work is over.

"One more round!" Dae informs me.

"Damn it! Ok, what ever the coach says" I think silently. "At least, I am able to do this now, a few months ago I would have died already."
The next round is as hard as the one before. And it was not the last one. Again, I have to do another one. During the break that follows, I put my arms on the ropes and try to take deeper breathes in order for me to recover faster, but it does not work that well. I feel slightly dizzy but nothing bad.
"Come on!" Dae calls me over – the more tired you are, as shorter breaks seem to be.

But I do the fifth round as well. I perform well and climb exhausted out of the ring. I count the kicks: 550 kicks in five rounds with breaks, less than a minute in between. Not bad. It wasn't fun but not bad.

When I check the time I am a bit worried: We have nearly an hour left? Holy... "Clinchsparring!" Ni commands, and Ali and me climb back into the ring, kneeing each other in the stomach and throwing each other around. After ten minutes, Dae stops us "Ok! Get your shoes!". Running. Probably sprints.

With forty-five minutes left on the clock, we are getting on the track: Jogging with bringing your knees up high to the wall, jogging to the mid of the track, sprinting from there to the other side and jogging back again, to continue. Dae does not tell us how often we have to do this. Us two fighters sprint next to each other, competing, and thus, guaranteeing that neither of us will give up or run slower than he possibly can. After eight rounds my legs hurt even when jogging back to the start point and Dae motivates us by telling us, at last, we are just facing two more rounds.

We shout on the last meters of sprinting, pushing harder, trying not to lose the race, but Ali is faster than I. Nonetheless, I try to keep up with him. 10^th round -- finished – time to relax.

"No!" Dae says with a slight grin on his face. "Side-steps to this line, touch the ground, back to the start, side-steps to the second one over there, then sprinting again!". Five more sprints. I have the sentences from a famous motivation video in my ear when doing one sprint after the other: "You CAN push a little harder, and you CAN run a little faster!". It motivates me to go on – to continue to run.

The second last sprint. My legs hurt and even if I try, I cannot run as fast as before. Another one of the sentences from the video pops up into my head "And the loss of physics is merely a suggestion!".

Done. I am done. Really. This was definitely the hardest coditioning workout I have ever done. Finishing it with push ups and sit ups seems relaxing compared to the running before. The problem with conditioning is, that it does not get easier as better you become; instead, the grind is simply longer then.

But I have progressed. I am in great shape. I could not have done that a few months ago.

I am well prepared for the first fight of 2014.