I pushed myself past my limit – and then I did it again.
After losing my quarterfinal fight in Porto back in April, I took a break but I didn’t want to stop completely. I cut club sessions to once a week and trained solo twice to sharpen the basics — footwork, stance, and rhythm. I followed the phrase slow is smooth, smooth is fast. The goal was to slow down now for cleaner movement later.
Blog prep began in June. I spent 5 hours a week building a timeline – every journal entry, training and visualisation log, and weight and mood record. The volume was immense, but I wanted a brief overview before diving into drafting.
With the club on a 6-week break, I wanted to be ready when it returned. I trained 6 sessions a week at a lower intensity, split between boxing, running, and gym work. By mid-July, tibia pain forced me to reduce impact work. I swapped in the assault bike for two weeks, then reintroduced running gradually with walk-run intervals until I was back at full load. Strength work improved steadily; I felt stronger and more mobile.
I decided to release the blog in early August. That meant doubling my hours from five to ten a week. Upon releasing my first post, I learned the real work happened during editing. My 7000-word brain dumps had to become 1000-word blog posts. Each week I stripped the story to its essentials. I fused the objective events and my subjective experience into one coherent narrative.
Club sessions resumed at the end of August. The work paid off. My footwork felt sharp, my rhythm smooth. Sparring fitness lagged, but that would come with time.
Publishing weekly built trust in myself to deliver, but at a cost. I was waking early to write before work and staying up after training, often past midnight, pushing 20 hours a week. Saturday to Monday became editing marathons. By midweek, the crash hit.
In September, those dips grew consistent. Training felt heavy, and my throat flared up. I realised I’d replaced a physical training camp with a creative one – different form, same result: exhaustion.
Resting brought guilt like I should just get on with it. But I began to see recovery as something to practise too. Now I’m rebuilding again, trying not to repeat the same mistake of doing too much too soon.
Through this, one lesson stands out: the balance between discipline and pacing. Discipline is showing up regardless of how I feel; pacing means pushing my limits by working within them. The aim is to stretch, not snap.
Writing this blog over 175 hours taught me that lesson as much as training did.
That’s where my Road To Porto ends and the next one begins.