I have been training for this amateur fight since May. I thought I was going to be fighting in June but that was cancelled. So I have been maintaining a weight lower than I am used to(usually clocking in around 160 if I am not paying attention to my weight, right now I am 145). I amfighting in a 135-142 division at an IKF fight next weekend at the Sheraton. The great thing is the fight is 20 minutes from 4S Ranch, so I do not have to travel far.
That being said, there are so many factors that complicate training for something so serious. Here are some things that contribute to overtraining, or to a lesser extent overreaching.
Enough Calories
I have a really hard time eating when I am trying to stay light. My family lives right next to Camino del Norte in Rancho Bernardo. It is so easy to hit a restaurant north or south. My wife and I eat out a lot on the weekends, so I am constantly undercutting calories during the week(not a good idea). My lack of self-control makes resisting sweets and foods I like pretty much impossible, so I am not feeding my brain with the food I need to recover the best I can.
Sleep
We have a one year old that has become a crib escape artist. We finally got a net that goes over her crib, and she hates it. Rather than feeling safe and secure, she acts like we have locked her away in a Nazi concentration camp. Waking up in the middle of the night makes her scream for 10-15 minutes, and that disrupts my sleep. Plus my wife recently fell off a horse and is having a hard time moving around, and her sleeping positions are kind of like how you would find a drunk toddler. I miss you sleep.
Recovery Time
Since I am trying to boost my endurance as much as possible, I have been training like a mad man. I still don’t feel prepared, but I definitely feel more tired. I am hoping that last week before the fight I will just maintain. But right now I am so focused on doing as much as possible it is hard to not push myself. I can’t imagine anything worse than the last round and being out of gas with someone pounding my face.
Psychological Stress
My dog of 10 years is dying, we have been taking care of him pretty intensely for the past two weeks. Add to that I have never done an amateur fight before and it causes some psychological stress. I feel a combination of dread and worry a great deal of the time, I really don’t know if it’s the dog, the fight, or a combination of both.
So what do you do? I have been taking walks at Webb park, I take some really good vitamins, try to close my eyes when I get a chance, and I decided for the next week and a half I will not worry about any work or business problems. I shouldn’t anyway, but I am sticking a timeline on it. For the next 10 days I don’t have to worry about it, after that I will worry as much as I want. But for right now I am going to focus on relaxing. Most of the things above by them self are not a problem, it is when you stick them all together. We will see what happens, I mean are you ever really 100% ready for something like this anyway? I can’t expect to be at 100%.