For the last 6 years I have trained my body far too hard at times with little rest.

After pulling out on very late notice of MMA Attack 2, which would have been a highlight in my MMA career, I’ve taken a few weeks out of training and spent time looking at how I can change my training schedule and routines in order to keep in the best condition possible whilst remaining relatively injury free.

I have been training so hard without a break for a long time, very rarely taking a day off and always training pretty hard. Competing at a high level of MMA you need to train so many different disciplines as well as different aspects of conditioning it is hard not to overtrain. (more…)

We all know the jist, and it’s no secret. To 99.9% of promoters running a show is about selling tickets and getting people through the gates. That’s not saying anything negative about them, it’s just the truth. If people want shows to fight on and if professionals want to get paid, the events must at least make enough money to be sustainable and cover the costs otherwise they won’t be around for very long (or people won’t get what they’re owed).

From the best, all-professional fight cards right down to amateur events, you’ve got to make it worthwhile and not put yourself in a hole that financially you can’t get out of. Some people promote for the love of the sport, but unless their pockets are ridiculously deep and their heads are pretty thick, they won’t continue to do so at a major loss, no matter how passionate they are.

This brings up the question of ‘who is the market?’ (more…)

(Let me preface this by saying I won’t be making any reference to bad rappers. Apart from Richard Blackwood. What was all that about?!)

It’s not often I’m a sentimental old fool, but there’s a time and place for everything – well, almost everything – and this is one of them. As anyone reading this will (or should) know, we’ve just released our first print edition of Your MMA Magazine. If you didn’t know, then where the hell have you been? And why aren’t you clicking this link immediately to go buy it?
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Let’s get straight to the point. Padding records is not an MMA phenomenon (it’s exponentially worse in boxing), nor is it a UK phenomenon, but it is an issue that has been raising its head, even moreso over the past couple of years.

This food for thought for this blog was actually a tweet by Cage Warriors matchmaker Ian Dean, who said:

“Gonzaga defeats the 13-0-1 Edinaldo Oliveira. UK fighters take note, protected records don’t help you in the big show.”
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There’s really not that much interesting to say about the journey from Manchester to Recife, apart from the laughable thought of a 6’10″ Dave being able to squeeze into a regular seat.
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Picture the almost bemused look on my face as I stood with the phone to my ear, on the blower to Dave Keeley as he casually poses the question to me in his lovely Rotherham tones.

“Hey up Jay, do you fancy a fight in Brazil?”
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This time yesterday I was sat at my desk, mentally gearing up to shift the last few of pounds to get down to weight. Surprisingly, I was feeling quite energetic (it’s all relative of course) and looking forward to just getting it shifted in order to commence the fun part of this whole ordeal; rehydrating, replenishing, and then having a tear up with some spritely young fellow in the cage.

It’s hard to describe the mindset you have when you’re in a dehydrated and depeleted state and you just want it to end, but at that point I guess the motivation is that relief is only a couple of hours (and pounds) away. I donned the sweatsuit once again, layered up and jacked up the volume on the I-Pod; with a selection of tunes from Slick Rick all the way through to No Warning keeping me pounding the treadmill. Again, I got a sweat on with a light jog and then maintained it with some lower intensity stuff to keep it going. My thought process is that I don’t want to be taxing my body any more than I need to, so it was a case of slowly, slowly catchy monkey. And I could catch a monkey. I did about 35 minutes on the treadmill, bike and skipping combined, and I got that sloshing feeling in my sweatsuit somewhere around my elbows that lets me know I’ve expired a decent amount of liquid from my body.

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We’re edging ever closer to the pay off and, whilst my body and mind feels more depleted as the hours pass, it also takes us closer to the goal; being a skinny runt for about five minutes to step on the scales, only to put most of the weight back on again. That sounds pretty backwards to me right now, and whilst I was boiling myself in a hot bath last night, nothing could have seemed more trivial than my current pursuit. However, it’s got to be done no matter how stupid I think it is. Again, I’m not going to bang on about the ethics and morality behind weight cutting, just reporting the facts on how I do it.

(A selection of cutting utensils)

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I left you following a scintillating egg white and black coffee breakfast yesterday morning and, I’ll be honest, things haven’t exactly got much cheerier around these parts.

The saving grace amongst toiling through the slow hours is that for every moment that goes by, you’re a moment closer to weigh-in time. Clock watching never helps though, like you want it to feel like any more of a drag.

There isn’t a great deal of note to say about the day time whilst I was in the office. Stuff got written, stuff got sorted, people unwittingly came dangerously close to getting their eyes gouged out and I went about my merry weight cutting ways. I was on a reduced water intake of around 5 litres of the low sodium stuff, and I ate meagre amounts to keep me going whilst looking forward to not a lot.

As you can tell, enthusiasm isn’t at an all time high at this point. Oddly, the day before the weigh-ins when I start the 24-hour fast, I actually feel better knowing it’s slightly more imminent. Two days before kinda sucks though, because there’s no real sense of achievement in there.

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We finished off yesterday after taking a look at a little bit of background information and how I’d go my weight to where it is now. Sullenly I admitted to waking up at 72.0kg on Monday morning, but that looks a little brighter today as I was down at 70.4kg after a monumental urine deposit upon waking akin to some sort of African waterfall. In a couple of days time I’ll be happy with a mere trickle of the stuff, but for now there’s just no stopping the flow. I’d apologise for going into the gritty intricacies of my toilet practices this early on, but this is the real life of cutting weight and you’ll be paying a lot of attention to it if you do it yourself.

(A typical weight cut shop)

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