Sarah Liegmann – From the ring corner: Christmas recovery

Before I get started, I’m really glad you’re here to read my column. It’s going to be chaotic, funny, but mainly 100 percent real. I’ll be sharing lots of anecdotes and experiences from the world of boxing, but also giving you some exciting insights into my everyday madness. And now it’s time to clear the ring!

Happy New Year to all our readers! We can now put a tick behind Christmas and New Year’s Eve and take twelve months to prepare for the next phase of “Last Christmas and Feliz Navidad”. Personally, I’m a total Christmas fan and always look forward to ending the year on a contemplative note with my family and lots of food. For competitive athletes and especially for us boxers, it is important to have and make use of such regeneration phases. By that I don’t just mean a rest day and a cheat meal, but several days, maybe even weeks, where you take boxing out of your everyday life and don’t define the day after training, but the other way around.

For me personally, the Christmas season is therefore very sacred. To be honest, I couldn’t imagine anything worse than being in preparation during these days. Christmas also stands for coziness. I used to assume that “more is more” and always lost sight of regeneration in the off-season. Yet it is so important to allow your body to regenerate, especially in the phases when you can take time out. Regeneration doesn’t just mean lying around lazily, but also swapping boxing training for yoga and mobility training, for example, and turning intensive 10-kilometer runs into easy 5-kilometer runs.

Important regeneration

If we try to stay at the same level of fitness all the time, sooner or later fatigue injuries will occur. We must not forget that boxing is a hard contact sport in which minor carelessness during training can lead to major injuries. To make a long story short: It’s also not a bad thing to give our brains a break from the punches, because we should all know that brain cells die every time we spar or compete. This doesn’t directly make us dumber or put our lives in danger every time, but of course it’s not beneficial in the long run either.

Regeneration naturally refers not only to physical aspects, but also to mental aspects. Competitive athletes are under enormous pressure. Most of the time, we put ourselves under pressure because we are the ones who sacrifice ourselves. And as it is with everything, we expect our output to be equal to the input we put in. Our input may vary from person to person, but I can speak for us boxers that most, driven by their will to win, will do everything in their power to win. You often have to put family and friends on the back burner. That is also exhausting. Christmas should be different. Christmas is a time for interpersonal relationships and an extra three kilograms on the scales.