PREPARATION’S been really good. We had a week’s training camp in Germany with countries like Germany, Brazil, Spain, France. There were a few countries there, seven or eight so that was really good prep.
We’re maybe training a bit harder than we did for the Europeans but it’s the same training camp, going through the same things, again more than ready to go to these Worlds.
In Germany it was the same as in the gym in Sheffield. Running in the morning, strength and conditioning in the afternoon, then sparring with other countries. We had it harder than the others. While we were running and doing weights, they were saving themselves for the sparring… I asked the coaches why, and they said that’s why we win more medals than them.
For the runs, we had sprints, we had steadies, long distance runs, it was all mixed. The strength and conditioning coach came out with us. When you see that we have a big team with us, wherever we go, we’ve usually got a few more people, more support staff than other countries, I think it shows when it comes down to fighting. We’re in the best condition that we can be, we’re the fittest, strongest and it shows in the medal tally at the end of the tournament.
Now I’ve got the European silver medal, they’re going to be a lot more aware of what I can do. There’s a bit more pressure.
Everyone’s flying. Because I’m the lightest I was always first up for the spars and I could watch the other spars. It was hard to see any of the boys drop a round. Everyone’s looking in form, no injuries in the camp, which is quite rare.
I was watching Joe Cordina spar a top Brazilian [Robson Conceicao], who’d won the Pan American Games and Joe just handled him.
