Quote Originally Posted by sourpuss View Post
Erg! Fight in one week and no chance of any other sparring. Boooo I watched my last match against this girl as a refresher for what I need to be working on and I realized that I've stopped doing all the things that worked against her. The girl that I mostly spar with in the gym is a bleeder and has a sensitive nose so I stopped throwing uppercuts all together. This is really frustrating, every time there is a newbie, I get stuck with them for 3 months and then I have to spend the next three months getting back to where I was when they started. No wonder I'm not getting any better. This is really frustrating.

I'm going to focus mostly on conditioning early this week and just hope for the best. I can't change a whole lot at this point. I feel like last spring (the last time I fought this gal) I was much better than I am now. I can't un-do all the bad habits I've formed trying to help this new girl out in just 5 days either. So I think if I just focus on conditioning and the basics it's better than nothing.
That is frustrating!

I've read papers where they compared groups of athletes practicing something (wish i could remember what) physically to those just visualizing it. In reality there was not a huge difference in retention of what they visualized compared to what they actually practiced.

I guess the good thing is you don't need to learn anything new against this girl - you have done it before - you're just rusty. Perhaps if you spend some time visualizing what you're going to have to do in shadow sparring and say for 10 minutes before bed every night you'll still pull it out when you need it.

I think you need a good night's sleep to retain information at your best also so don't sleep deprive yourself - except for those days where you just learn nothing you want to keep!

I think from memory it's only the last few hours of a restful nights sleep which has you consolidating your memory or something - can't remember the specifics but under sleep and your visualization practice won't be as effective.

Good luck!