Brian

Sir,

I'm sorry for not empathizing earlier. I've been wanting to reply to this thread for a long time. I've just been getting crushed by a number of obligations. Work has been a beast lately, we've been working hard to change our business practices at our gym, Ajarn Chai came through town and we've got a couple fighters getting ready for fights in October.

But anyway. Believe me, I know how you feel/felt. There was a good year and a half, two year stretch were I couldn't go more than two months without somehting catastrophic happening... Broken Knee then Dislocated Shoulder then Broken Ankle, Then Broken Nose, Then Broken Eye Socket and all the subsequent surgeries and recovery times. Man it sucked. It was a lesson in discipline and it begged me the question... How bad do you want this active and agressive lifestyle?

The answer everytime was, bad enought to get back in there and risk it all again.

I hope you're feeling good now and that you are healing up stronger than you were before.

And while I'm at it may I ask you a question Khru Popejoy and any of you other fight trainers out there. Tonight we brought some friends in from a sister school not too far away to work out and spar with three of our fighters. Two of our guys did exceptionally well. But one guy got a full on beat down handed to him. He was giving me and the other fight trainer a really hard time last week and the week before when we sparred him but when he stepped in there with a guy he was unfamiliar with, a guy with skill and a stiffling reach advantage, he looked like he was moving in slow motion... He had fear written all over his face and he ate enough punches to make him want to skip his next two meals. Oh, and on top of it all, he took a head kick that raised a nice pearl sized blood blister in the outside corner of his eye.

My question is this. How do you talk to your fighter after this? Do you tell him to hang it up and walk away from the fight game... that he hasn't been pushing himself/herself hard enough in their runs, on the pads etc? Do you put them back in the ring the very next day?

The kid has skill plus he's a lefty but he hasn't built the ability to walk into the ring and say I am the king... give me Lance Armstrong on his bicycle, I'll race him too... then I'll punk him in the face, run up into the stands and punk his momma.

How would you deal with a situation like this? Khru Nino, if you're out there I'd love to hear your take.

Anyway, sorry for the tangent. Hope you're feeling better...

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Sincerely,

Brian