Training and Recovery
I just turned thirty yesterday and not only is a birthday a good reason to take it easy for the weekend, but in the beginning weeks of training I need to make sure my body recovers before I start the next week, because each week is going to get harder and more intense. The body doesn’t get stronger via exercise. It gets stronger during recovery from exercise. Recovery is a part of training. This doesn’t, however, serve as some sort of rationalization for being lazy. If you’re waking up fresh every morning you’re probably not working out at an intensity where planning a recovery periods is important. However, if you’re constantly sore, generally exhausted and getting more unmotivated and emotionally fatigued as the week goes on, (as what can be expected for a professional fighter or someone training in Thailand), then planning recovery is very important.
I am glad it was my birthday though because based on how I feel today, I think one day of recovery could have been enough and I could have trained today. That being said, I don’t know if the one extra day of training could have made for an inadequate recovery over the weekend and then a terrible upcoming week of training. What’s done is done and I should enjoy this weekend and the crap I am going to eat because I made a pledge that after my 30th birthday, I would eat sweets only once a week –FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE. I am sure it wont be like that to the T, but bottom line is that it’s time to be even more careful about my diet than I already am, because what you do in your early 30’s will decide whether or not you will be competing after age 35.
Back to the point, which was about training and recovery. I have two days of recovery this week so I am going to push a little bit harder next week. This is how I’m planning my upcoming week here at Team Quest Thailand:
Monday –
0900 – Core and balance training (More about this class in a bit)
0945 – Cardio-respiratory training for MMA (aka fight conditioning)
1300 – MMA Fight Team Training
1430 – Grappling
1600 – Boxing for MMA padwork/Sparring
1800 – Rest
Tuesday –
0730 – Muay Thai Training
0900 – Flexibility Training
1430 – Grappling
1600 – Muay Thai Clinch for MMA
Wednesday –
0730 – Kickboxing (K-1 style padwork)
0900 – Core/Agility/Balance training
0945 – Cardio-respiratory training for MMA (aka fight conditioning)
1300 – MMA Fight Team Training
1430 – Grappling
1600 – Boxing with takedowns padwork/Sparring
Thursday –
0945 – Conditioning for MMA
1430 – Grappling
1600 – Muay Thai Clinch
Friday –
0730 – Muay Thai and Boxing padwork
0900 – Core/Agility/Balance training
1300 – MMA Fight Team
1430 – Grappling
1600 – Kickboxing with takedown padwork/Sparring
Saturday –
0730 – Muay Thai
0900 – Flexibility training
1430 – Grappling
So this is my schedule for this coming week. I will be planning out my schedule week by week depending upon how I feel the week before and where I think I need more work or what I see working for me and what doesn’t. This schedule is also going to help me remain disciplined as I have now publicly posted it and will be upheld to it!
The 0900 class that is based around core/agility/balance is a class that in fact I will be running as a trial class. It’s all going to be based around things I am learning in my master’s degree in exercise science. Will be posting videos about the class and the concepts we’ll be covering week by week.
Finally, this is sort of a trial to see how I can tweak my training to best prepare me for MMA. One of the issues I have had in the past is that trainers often times don’t want to try anything new and refuse to go out of the Muay Thai box. Obviously, if I am to excel in MMA I cannot simply train for Muay Thai just as someone who is learning boxing for MMA cannot take takedowns and leg kicks out of the equation. So we’ll see how successful how this trial is.