Well that SUCKED

Today was Day 1 of Fight Camp.  I will be competing at the 13th Annual WKA North American Championships amateur kickboxing tournament on March 9th.  I am currently a soft something-over 210 (my guess is 215, but I don't have a reliable scale at home), and I am shooting for the 187-198lbs weight class.  Why have I set myself the task of dropping roughly 20lbs in 6 weeks?  Because the weightclass above this is simply 198-infinity lbs.  I'd rather not be faced with Butterbean in my debut match.

So what was it that sucked so much?  Fight Camp.  Fight Camp sucked so much.  Turns out Jon & Jarrett are kinda taking this thing seriously & aren't planning on letting us get worked over in there.  For that reason, they decided it's best to kill us all now & save our opponents the trouble.  Here's what they put us through tonight:

• 3 rounds of jump roping
• 3 rounds of shadow boxing
• 4 rounds of cut kicks on the Thai shields (2 for you, 2 for your partner)
• 4 rounds of combos on the Thai pads (2 for you, 2 for your partner)
• 5 rounds of sparring

All rounds were 2min on, 1min "off".  During your "off" time, you had to do 15 burpees & could then rest for whatever time was left.  As for the sparring, Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays are to be light days, whereas Tuesdays & Thursdays will be KO time.

By the second round of shadow boxing, I was just focusing on keeping my hands up & not being flat footed.  In the third round, I was trying to remember to keep my trap shut & breathe through my nose.  After the first round of cut kicks, I was too busy convincing myself I wasn't going to puke to do the burpees.  Thankfully, after the second round of cut kicks, Marvin got in my ear & talked my indeed doing a measly 3 ugly, ratty burpee wanna-bes.  After two rounds of holding the Thai shield for Gene's cut kicks, my leg was killing me.  During the combo rounds, I could barely think clearly enough to come up a combo to throw.  Like the considerate jerk he is, Gene bum rushed me after every single combo to make me keep my hands up & work on circling away.  In between every round, Gene stood right by me, talking me through those burpees, matching me pace-for-pace, pushing me when I'd slack & hyping me when I was moving.  When I finally made it to sparring, I was struggling.  Fortunately it was a light day, but I swear, I think I could have thrown everything I had into my punches & even Bob Sapp wouldn't have gone down.  Then Jarrett reveals a wonderful surprise: non-fighters no longer have to do burpees between rounds!  Bully for them, now they've got extra energy to murder me while I slow to a pace glaciers would scoff at.

But I did it.  I pushed through.  I hung in there.  And I will be back in there to go through it all again tomorrow.  I have committed myself to the camp and, Lord willing, I will persevere to the end & represent myself, my teammates & my gym well come March 10th.