PKA Kickboxing Nationals 2013 – Five Days Out

For those that follow me on social networking site Twitter and Instagram would know that I have been continuously training over the last three weeks for my clubs Kick-boxing Nationals held in Brum this Saturday.

Whilst my team members and kick-boxing colleagues tried to convince me to enter as a light continuous fighter, I felt I wasn’t ready for that challenge at the time so decided to enter the Pad-work Routine Competition instead.

Up until last week, my BB ladies Jo and Denese and I have been training as a trio, perfecting our pad routine Sensei Sam had kindly created for us.

We knew that only two of us would get to perform the routine on the day but saw it best to train as a trio should the unforeseen occur.

That unforeseen circumstance happened last Tuesday when Dee’s back completely gave way towards the end of a training session. It was that bad that it took two physiotherapists to put Dee’s back back into place *she twisted 5 no vertebrae* We didn’t even get to draw names out of the hat as planned on Saturday just gone to fairly decide who will do the routine as this devastating blow decided our fate for us. Myself and Jo will perform the pad work routine this coming Saturday *no pressure*

Saddened by what had happened to our friend and team member, we drew a positive from the negative situation and completely threw ourself into the task in hand, upping the ante spending up to three hours  every other day tightening up our routine whilst Dee took on the role of the coach, keenly watching every move thrown and critiquing our technique when something didn’t look / flow right.

Sensei Marvin was on hand to give us extremely useful tips to ensure our kicks, especially the spinning hook kick and rear jumping push kicks were on point *Thank you Marv*

Throughout these last three weeks we went from not knowing the routine at all, getting confused as we attempted to talk ourselves through the unknown sequence to getting the routine down to almost perfection. I say almost as our GUARD needs to be up at every position, even when the attacker goes into a rear leg round-house kick into a spinning hook kick x2 *yes it’s hard to keep the glove to your face when using the momentum to spin 360*

As Saturday beckons we are more focused than ever…. we want a team victory, not just for our London club and Sensei Sam that we are going there to represent, but for our injured soldier, team-mate and friend Denese!

There is no ‘I’ in team, as the late great Henry Ford famously said “Coming together is the beginning; keeping together is progress and working together is success”.

Photograph by Colvin Hazzard.