Well this week has involved plentiful training and encouragingly I think I am really starting to improve my fitness and stamina. It is now rapidly approaching notch one out of ten! Not far to go...

Training was, as per usual on the Tuesday and Thursday at the Bulldog but with the addition of going along on the Friday for sparring and for this week's torturous bit of conditioning on the Wednesday my friend who is a personal trainer decided we would run up some flights of stairs in his block of flats. Oh, the delights he comes up with.

So Tuesdays and Thursdays training sessions were the standard fare, so nothing out of the ordinary there. Wednesday mornings stair sprints were a little different though. My friend and I sprinted from the ground floor up six flights of stairs as quickly as possible taking the steps two at a time. The first sprint was deceptively easy actually and I got to the 6th floor in relative comfort, not out of breath and without struggling. Unexpected and pleasant! We then got the lift back down and repeated this another two times in total. The second rep was harder and the third was definitely a struggle. At this point I was sure the lift was returning us to our start point quicker and quicker. After the first set we had two minutes off and did another three reps of the stairs. On the last couple of flights each time it was agony and the sprinting had slowed right down. Achieving two steps at a time meant we kept up the pace and it never deteoriated into a walk. It was seriously hard work and two sets was more than enough. Next week we are giving it a twist though and doing four reps in the first set, three in the second, two in the third and one in the fourth. I will let you know how it goes....

Amusingly I think we alarmed some of the other residents though when we got in the lift barely capable of talking whilst hyperventilating! Just to confuse them we would be in the lift going down as opposed to going up and returning to our flat. We got our share of puzzled looks that morning unsurprisingly ...

On the Friday was sparring. There was a really light warm up, mine possibly lighter than others as I was keen to retain all possible energy for when I would need it! The sparring was very light with the emphasis on practicing your technique and not trying to knock out your opponent. So all about movement and trying to improve your defence. In my case this wouldn't be hard as my defence is fairly non existent. However on the bright side my chin seems to be excellent at getting hit. My new tactics may well revolve around my opponent hurting his hands by hitting me too often and too hard. It might work, you never know! In total we did around 9 rounds of sparring. I wasn't quite as tired as I expected to be so I think my fitness is improving. Now its just my skills I need to work on, so still a long way to go.....

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