Hey there, let me introduce myself, i’m a fighter newbie, actually a contact sport newbie full stop, i’ve never been hit (Thank god for good schooling) I have never thrown a punch or ever really wanted too (except that one time in the que at Disney land, ironically in the que for ‘it’s a small world’ which for anyone who doesn’t know is the happiest ride in the park, it has singing dolls! Anyway another blog for another day!)

Back to business, a few weeks ago, in a moment of sheer madness I signed up for the Blood Fitness White Collar Event which will be held on June 17th 2017 and being a bit of a part-time blogger (and still in that crazy, mad phase) I offered to chronical my journey, with 100% honesty, so to save myself from any further embarrasement for now you can just call me Muay Thai Girl.

White collar is an idea that some crazy person somewhere in the world came up with that consists of untrained and clearly unbalanced people training for a fight in just 10-12 weeks, we then all step into the ring and bash it out, normally in aid of charity which I am hoping will make taking punches a bit easier – after all it’s all for a good cause!

Myself and my group of white collarins are on a ten-week schedule, training a minimum of 5 times a week training consisting of a mix between 1-1 sessions, sparring, running and strength and conditioning. Outside of this we are free to train more if we want to. Each fighter picks a PT to train with and once a week all us white collars come together to ‘spar’ which I think is code for ‘let’s all punch and kick each other randomly and hope that somewhere in there we remember some of our training!

On Saturday 8th April six of us pitched up at Fort Regent, the home of Blood Fitness, expectant faces, excited, unscathed and ready to kill it in our first conditioning session.

I won’t bore you with the details of the session save to say that it was so gut wrenching one guy had to stop before he painted the canvas with breakfast and the rest of us struggled with basic walking following the 30-minute stint – no second thoughts here though. I headed off achy but still smiling.

Sundays are run days, in Thailand Muay Thai fighters run every day before and after training, not short run’s either a good 10k in the AM and 6/7K in the evening. There is an immense amount of research and science behind this and how it impacts endurance. For anyone interested I’ll post a link below.

I think we have it easy with a short run, every Sunday morning. I am no stranger to running and although a little out of shape now I have done a fair amount of running in the past and can hash out 5k easy, so I figure I’ll be ok.

Michael, owner of Blood Fitness meets us for the run and we set off, 20 minutes, multiple hills and several stairs later and I am ruing whatever it was that convinced me to depart from my warm bed that morning. Clearly more work is needed on the running I think to myself as I guzzle down water and air not sure which one my body needs more! You’re not as fit as you think you are my body screams at me!

Feeling a little embarrassed at my lack of running ability I vow there and then to run every morning until I can keep up on the hills and so my white collar journey has started.