I had my 4th Muay Thai fight last night. 5x3 minute rounds and it went the distance and I won by uni dc. I noticed during the second round I began to feel tired. Though I wasn't out of breath at all, my muscles just felt very heavy and though I was rattling my opponent with shots I couldnt put together combonations that were long enough to put him away even though I knew I could, I couldnt due to my muscles feeling so tired. In the lead up to the fight I did 2 HIIT sessions a week on a spinner (15 seconds slow, 30 seconds fast), 2 Barbell complexes a week and 2 30 minute sessions on a cross trainer a week. Then trained every day too. So my question is is, Was it a problem with my conditioning in this fight or was this just my bodu dealing with the adrenaline dump badly. I never felt out of breath in the fight it's just my muscles. I was nervous about going into the fight as I was coming off my first loss. So what do those of you who fight or are fitness buffs think?
Every day? If that's literally true, I'll guess that you need to throw in some rest days. Admittedly Kuma said this in respect of strength training, but if you're going all out daily in any kind of training or conditioning, you're going to wear yourself out.
Well I'm in Thailand right now so I train about 4 hours a day 2 hours in the morning then 2 hours late afternoon. I do my conditioning on top of this so maybe 5 hours a day. Sundays are rest days. I also take a morning off every now and again when I feel tired and overtrained. I fought on the Friday and took Thursday and the day of the fight off.
5 months now, so I think I'm fairly adjusted to the training routine. It felt like a lactic acid build up in my muscles, it's judt odd that I've never felt it as bad before in my fights. Anyone know good exercises to improve my tolersance for lactic acid? I quite often get the shakes a bit after I fight too and I noticed after my last fight my hearing was really muffled which was a first. Anyone know what that means? Edit: Oh and when I spar boxing I can do 3 x 5 minute rounds at a pretty intense pace before I even feel I have to slow down. So it's odd that I felt heavy after only 6 minutes of fighting.
If your performance starts to drop without reason (injury etc), that's a sign of overtraining. You recover from overtraining with several days of rest (best case), not a morning off. Muffled hearing sometimes just happens when you are exerting yourself, I don't think it's anything to worried about...if I'm wrong, I need to know too.
I think it's you're still buzzing/crapping yourself about being in the ring, made tenfold due to the fact you're fighting in Thailand. I think a few days off won't do you any harm but I'd want you on a fight card pretty quick when you get back. I think you'll then be calm as.....a calm person?
Try switching to light workouts only for the week leading up to the fight. I really think you need more than two days rest before a fight. Some fighters start to bring the intensity down two weeks before fight day.
I see two things here. 1 - Too much high intensity stuff in the leadup to the fight. It doesn't matter how conditioned your body is if all the muscles are tired and still in the process of getting repaired. 2 - What are you eating in the leadup? You didn't mention this. It doesn't matter how conditioned your body is if there's no energy for it to do stuff.
I have to admit my diet was not as good in the lead up to the fight as normal. I ate about 6 hours before I fought. I ate some rice with chicken and potato curry. During the day I ate very little, a bit of bread, some chocolate and some diet sodas. Now I think about it, this could be a big part of why I felt like I had no energy.
I think Snoop hit the nail on the head. You could have used a bit more rest before your fight. Granted some of those crazy Thais fight all the time, but that's because they need the money. That's why a lot of them retire when they're just in their 20's. You're probably right about the diet as well. You can't race a sports car if it's got no gas in the tank.
