Now into Week 4 of the challenge and just coming off another Saturday morning session with my one-on-one trainer Dave Trotter. With the echo of what head trainer Paul Fyfield said to us in our post 90 minute thrashing session he gave us the Saturday before, there's no doubt that he's ramping it up now and he want's to see results. It's clear with Paul that he doesn't want to see failure and his post session pep talk leaves us all under no illusions about what he wants to see at the next session this coming Saturday. Nervous? A lot! Maybe just a little. So from this week, my training sessions are now going up a notch and I'll be having 4 sessions a week. It's clear that it's the only way to build up the conditioning to pass Fight Fit Training Camp.

This biggest challenge this week has been managing the injuries. The shoulders, both of them now, tend to play up every few sessions and I put it down to too much enthusiasm and not enough technique. I'm slowly starting to get that in check now and hope that at some point soon they'll both meet in a marriage made in heaven (or at least somewhere where it's nice and sunny and the people are friendly!). The hands are taking a beating though, aching thumb joints, skin off the thumbs and a case of boxers knuckle on my right hand are making training complicated and frustrating. For now, trainer Dave and I are just trying to manage it with some extra foam in the hand wraps and trying to ensure I strike flush with the bags, especially the heavier bags.

I don't mean to sound like I'm moaning, but I am. I honestly thought this boxing biz would be easier than what it is. But it's not. The technique and mental aspect is so critical that you really can't get anywhere with this sport unless you're switched on, it's just that mentally taxing. The physical punishment comes with it and is part and parcel. But lately I have been getting frustrated not so much with struggling with the burn from the training, which there is plenty of, but screwing up my punch, block, duck and weave combinations.

Yep, the perfectionist inside me is kicking my ass right now. But to play my own devils advocate, this is only Week 4 of picking up a new sport, maybe I should cut myself some slack?

In other news, and this is a pretty substantial announcement, this challenge will be extended to 12 weeks. There's a couple of reasons for this:

1. Before I started, I didn't truly appreciate the subtleties of picking up the art of Boxing. This is taking extra time. If this challenge was purely banging out PT sessions, it would be a different story.
2. In hindsight, it's become pretty obvious that you can make fantastic inroads in just 4-8 weeks. But I feel that I would be doing myself an injustice by measuring on just an 8 week program. In reality I believe a 12 week program will communicate the story better and will get me to my goal that I have set in my mind.

In addition, even though this journey will now be for the 12 weeks, I'm confident that I will be of such sound mind and body, that I'll likely carry on my own personal journey long after this blog stops.

Coming up in future posts, we have some more training video on the way and hopefully you'll be able to see a reasonable difference when comparing with my first training video. I'll also have a bit of light Q&A with the guy who's trying to keep my body from falling apart on a weekly basis, Physiotherapist Rob Brandham (he enjoys poking people with needles) and a summary on my 3rd Fight Fit Training Camp for this coming Saturday (29/08).

Till next time, Box on!

The last 3 or 4 days have been stressful and painful and I seemingly only have myself to blame. During my last one-on-one session with Trainer Dave, I was starting to open up a bit more and become a bit more fluid with my technique that is being drilled in to me (and I have no doubt it's for good reason).

Wild enthusiasm eventually makes you come off second best however and this session was no exception as a sharp pain kicked me in my right shoulder after one of the many marriages between glove and boxing bag for the day. I did my best to try and ignore it and battled on through the pain. So for the next few days and with good support from one of the best Physio's in the business, Rob Brandham (St Kilda Rd Sports & Physiotherapy), we put a strategy in place to ensure no further damage is done, along with a course of anti-inflammatory pills.

It all seemed to do the trick it seems, roll on my Thursday one-one one session and things were looking good. I was still fatiguing pretty badly though in the shoulders from the workout, which during this session was working in weaves with punch combinations.

I'm not sure if it's just me, but I think what I find the most frustrating is the mental fatigue, which makes you end up doing simple punch combinations ass-backwards. It's probably my number one pet hate and has been with me since the start. Effectively with the physical fatigue hitting hard late in my sessions, my concentration is all out of whack and I basically lose the plot and forget what I'm meant to be doing and in what order. Who said this wasn't a mentally challenging sport? I can tell you one thing is for sure, if it's not at least 90% mental fitness that get's you through a hard session, or even a sparring session or a fight, then I would be highly surprised. It's a drain on the brain, no two ways about it.

So now we arrive at Day 15, this marks the start of Week 3 and is met abruptly by another physically and mentally shattering Fight Fit Training Camp session with Paul Fyfield. My first session just over a fortnight ago was a definite wake up call. Out of my depth in so many areas and I was hoping that this time I was going in with some kind of form and the right mental state.

I'm happy to say that I was way more prepared than the first session. For instance, now, I can actually use a skipping rope without blowing out a calf or two. I can string a combo of punches together with a duck and weave. But this session really had a focus on bag work and we worked in groups of 2 and then 3. I happened to be partnered up with a great pair of Rob and Charlene. Very nice people, certainly less awkward than my pairing the first week and the sessions were generally made up of interval bag work. 20 seconds as hard and as fast as you can on the bag, followed by 40 seconds off, repeating that 6 times. And then there was trying to out punch your partner on the other side of the bag for a full minute, multiplied by 3 rounds. Rob hits like the proverbial mule, he made me have my work cut out for me.

Trainer Paul walks past the bag at the end of the first session of "Out punch your partner", "Did you win Brandon?", to which I replied cheekily, "Of course I did". I began to follow that up with a retraction and in the vein of good sportsmanship was going to offer that it was a draw. Paul cut me off and didn't want to hear that, "That's good mate, you won that round, now do it again! I don't want to hear you say your partner won.". And so off Rob and I went again for another 2 rounds and we well and truly spent all our tickets by the end.

Next we moved on to a new group of 3 for some focus pad work. At this stage though, after coming off some pretty heavy group bag work, my left shoulder started to play up (yep, another overzealous hook did the trick...again) and I was paired with a couple of relatively experienced guys in Paul and Evis. My striking was fine, my pad holding was another matter. Both men punched with ferocity and my dicky left shoulder gave way trying to catch their shots. Bugger. I have been doing a fair bit of pad work in my one-on-one sessions and was hoping to captalise on the inroaads I've made here and go all "Beast Mode". Sadly it was not to be and after this pad work session, we rolled into the core exersises we need to get through to pass this course.

Cycle crunches, alternating situps on an already fatigued body was taking it's toll. I was spotted by the trainer being down the back of the gym and before I knew it I was shamed into moving to front and centre. Oh the pain. I could barely get through the pushups, burpees and commandos with the shoulder but tried to make a valiant effort without my body going one way and my shoulder the other. Whilst holding the always "fun" prone hold at the end of the session, I'd noticed that we'd been working the bags and the pads so much this session, the skin was coming off my knuckles. Yep, that's dedication for you!

The session ended with Paul highlighting that if what we're doing doesn't seem achievable, it can be done. Personally, I'll have to start racking up some frequent flier points with Trainer Dave and up the number of sessions I'm doing so that I am on track fitness and technique wise as it will be way too hard to play catchup if I slip now.

Until next time, Box on!

So I'm just going to outline the last two one-on-one training session's I've had since the Day 1 Training Camp grind. After my first session I felt horribly exposed, I guess for good reason, but I've pretty much been a perfectionist at everything, so the fact that I am coming unstuck so quickly is frustrating. I need to keep reminding myself it's only just been 1 week out of 8.

Straights, hooks, jabs, uppercuts, crosses, ducks, slips & weaves. This is where I'm completely out of my comfort zone and it's so far showed. For my 1-on-1 sessions with Dave, I may as well have brought two left shoes with me, because that's how I felt I was moving. And hey, who would have thought that skipping was so hard? I mean, despite the fact I've probably not done it since high school, and even then it had an element of "girliness" that precluded me from doing it too much: this was hard.

I quickly found with the skipping, that my weight and lack of conditioning, my calves aren't going to last more than it takes to cook a soft boiled egg, such is the soft boiled nature of my calves. I watched others in my last session from the weekend, as people seemed to effortlessly bound from side to side, alternating the leg they push off on. Clearly that was my ticket to marathon solo skipping sessions, but the rope may as well have been glued to my shoes. I was going nowhere fast.

Step in trainer Dave. He breaks down the movements and it makes me think about just that, the movements and not so much about getting the rope through. By my second session, it's already improved considerably. I'm even going to the lengths of practicing at home so as to not embarrass myself in front of Dave with my feeble foot placement and lack of co-ordination. So on the skipping side of things, we're on our way. I'll be doing "cross overs" and "double unders" before you know it.

Our sessions start with the skipping and then move into fast and furious core work. Cycle crunches and Alternating situps are a struggle as the as my small oak-barrel (smaller than a full keg) of a stomach get's in the way and resistance is almost futile. But I crank out the sets anyway, again, feeling as uncoordinated as someone....extremely uncoordinated. Other core exercises are made up with Commando's and Push ups, followed by full Squats and a set of burpees. These were all done in an ascending set of reps.

This ascending set of repetitions is known as "Progressive Resistance Exercise" and it's punishing (created by an Army doctor named Dr. Thomas L. DeLorme in the 2nd World War) . If you're spent at the start or midway, you're going to be fighting a very real physical and mental challenge to get through the rest. At the end of a couple of set's of reps, I've then be asked to focus on a series of punches to my trainers focus pads. Remembering the combinations of punches, with ducks thrown in was one thing. Doing it with the right body positioning and technique was another. I was being corrected time and time again, I still need to remind myself this is early days still and the form and technique will come. Or so Trainer Dave assures me.

The middle part of the session is focused purely on boxing technique and combinations with ducking thrown in it for good measure. Till today, ducking was ducking. In boxing, ducking is ensuring you are doing it away from the leading hand coming at you, getting your body weight and positioning right and using the momentum of ducking from one side to the other to your advantage when you come up to strike on your opposite side. No, this aint easy either.

Left jab, right straight, duck, left hook, right straight, left hook, duck... 15 minutes of this and I was spent. What's that you say? Only half way through the session? Oh crap!

We then moved back on to some more progressive resistance exercises and this one was a killer. 20 uppercuts, 2 pushups, 40 uppercust, 4 pushups, 60 uppercuts, 6 pushups.... just about thrown in the towel at this point... 80 uppercuts, 8 pushups, 100 uppercuts and rounding it out with 10 pushups. I've done similar to this where you work your way down the count, but working your way is absolutely devastating.

I didn't say as much to the trainer, but right there I wanted to give up, but there was 5 minutes left, so why quit now? The last 5 was spent doing bag intervals. Basically you punch the suitcases out of a punching bag for 20 seconds and then 20 seconds rest. Do that 5 times. But it needs to be done with the best form that you can muster. This is where boxing is so mentally challenging. When you are absolutely spent and your pushing your body and you still need to ensure you keep your hands up in a guard. Roll your arms over with straight punches. Keep your hook hand flat or open, but not in between. Keeping it together mentally is so, so hard!

In any case, what I did find from this session is that there is promise with my skipping and boxing technique in general. I'm clearly seeing more challenges ahead of me than I first thought. And as I type this, I can tell you that I have been very well reacquainted with my transverse abdominis muscles.

Rest now until Tuesday, for session 3 where I'm sure Dave has more darts of pain in his blow pipe of torture.