[Liu Jin]

Today was the first day I actually felt like an ATHLETE in the gym. An all-around good day. We always begin the same way:

6:30am - 4 mile run.

This number varies, sometimes 3.5, sometimes 5. Depends on the heat as we dress like the pictures above. Heavy despite the heat of the desert.

10:30am - Gym time.

Richie showed up late as he does sometimes. So today we stretched, got warmed up with 3 Rounds of Shadowboxing each (I do this in full dress because I need to cut some more weight, I'm about 160 even right now and want to get down to 154, which I can do), then it was onto sparring. We do round-robin type sparring between the 3 of us. Richie who is normally full of negativity was a totally different trainer today. After our talk, he's now Coaching more. Offering advice, and giving praise when we do things right. I think Diego causes him emotional strife though. lol Diego's young enough to learn, and physically strong, plus Mexican so fighting is in his DNA, but he's not polished and I think that irks Richie. He told Diego recently that he could be a National Champ, a week before he was a punching bag.

Myself, I've graduated from Punching bag to Club Fighter.

Today I didn't just fight. I boxed more, Richie said it was like Night and Day, and gave a lot of compliments. His only complaint was that I needed to punch from my shoulders more, and move my feet more. One of my liabilities is that I tend to brawl, when I get hit I see red, and HAVE to hit back. So I can be lulled into standing in front and slugging it out. Bad habit when I usually have height and range on people in my weight class (I'm shooting for Welterweight ultimately, 147, POSSIBLY 140 if I can do it without dying). The first time I sparred Edgar (shorter guy who can get low, hits hard, is a cardio machine, but gives me 10lbs advantage), he hit me with a bazillion bodyshots because I was standing tall and my guard was wide. Hey Brandon, remember that? You called it, I was wide-open for the straight-right to the body.

So, I tightened my guard, got low myself, and started blocking the bejezus out of his bodyshots. He caught me with a good left-hook though once he saw I was hip to the straight-right to the body. Also today (unlike last time) I got to use my Shell defense, and when I did he couldn't land squat aside from that left-hook, so I gotta do something about that for next time. I'm thinking I'm gonna step into it and short right-hook him, or upper-cut. I think I can knock him down, because I notice he's off-balance when he feints.

Richie likes that I pick up on what I'm doing wrong before he has to tell me. And I think he realized today that I'm not a scrub, I can scrap, and even Box a bit. He said "You guys are coming along good, it's a process." We're learning the hard way though, just getting in there with guys who have the background and experience.

After sparring we had to go to work.

PM workout:

After work we do conditioning. Diego was sick Monday and Tuesday with a stomach bug so he didn't do tonight's conditing. I flew solo with:

2 rounds skipping rope.
100 push-ups, 50 with the bars horizontal, 50 with them vertical.
20 pull-ups.
30 dips.
30 T-ups.
30 power-overs.
4 rounds double-end bag (our heavybag is dead, we broke it)
2 rounds Shadowboxing to cool down.