August Update

Hey guys,

It's been a while since I gave a true update here at Fights Gone By, rest assured that this is simply due to my being busy and not my abandonment of my blog. To update you on what I've been up to, as always it's been writing and training for much of the last few weeks. I did, however, get the chance to travel into London to see three events at the 2012 Olympics; boxing, greco-roman wrestling, and weightlifting. I must say that despite having never been someone with a great sense of patriotism, I was truly proud of how well Britain pulled the Olympics off, Beijing was certainly a tough show to follow and we managed not to embarrass ourselves at all (minus the flag incident)!

As someone who has only recently started weight training seriously (embarrassingly late for someone so passionate about combat sports) I found myself getting more excited about the Olympic weightlifting than I ever could have imagined. Having won my seats in a competition (very good seats, six rows in front of Amir Khan!) I had low expectations for what turned out to be one of the most dramatic live events I've ever been to. I had no idea that so much strategy was involved. The boxing was also excellent, I got to see some cracking young talents from the Dominican Republic, Thailand, Kazhakstan, Mongolia and even the tiny Seychelle Islands.

My training schedule has remained much the same, training every day except for Sunday and then pacing around all day on Sunday complaining that I've got too much energy and that I'm bored. My Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is finally feeling a little sharper after training twice a week for the last couple of months. I am no longer feeling so fatigued by rolling and I am hoping to step it up to three or four sessions a week in the coming months, eventually hoping to immerse myself in rolling every day, but that's a little way off yet. I did injure myself this week, crunching my ankle and knee under my weight and the weight of a training partner, but I managed to ice it pretty quickly and take good care of it and have been able to train and teach for the last couple of days. Hopefully I will be back to rolling on Wednesday but it's certainly given me time to catch up with blogging and writing Elementary Striking!

Today I have been running through the photo list for Elementary Striking, looking for ways to keep the book short but somehow comprehensive - it's a tough ask. I have also been uploading three pieces a week to Bloody Elbow and have finally got into a sort of pattern. My first piece of the week is normally a "Finish of the Week" from kickboxing, boxing or MMA. The other two pieces a week are pre and post fight analysis. I'll wrap this update up here because my keyboard has just broken and is only allowing me to type lower case letters if I turn the caps lock on and hold shift! I will keep you all updated but Elementary Striking should be out by the end of September.

Cheers,
Jack