“How do you eat an elephant?” “One bite at a time.” Friday was my last hard day of training for my CWFC 47 fight with Aisling Daly. It started out with my last strength and conditioning session down at S&P gym. Power endurance intervals, 35 seconds all-out work and 10 seconds of rest for ten sets. Twice.

I waited for Sean to tell me that he was joking, but as it turned out, he wasn’t. We’ve been building up to this for months now, starting from just 10 seconds of work and 50 seconds of rest back at the beginning of the fight camp. In theory, I should be able to nail this…

Ten seconds into the second set, and I’m certain there’s no way that I’m going to make it. It’s one of those moments when, if you allow yourself to think about how many more sets there are to go, or what you’ve got to do for the rest of the session, or the four rounds of hard sparring later that evening, it instantly becomes impossible. The temptation is to say to yourself, “if this is how bad it is now, how bad is it going to get?”

(As it turned out, the other eight sets felt pretty much like the second. The theory works.)

Some people are good at living in the moment. I’m not. It’s one of those hippy ideals that sounds great if you’re sat on a beach sipping a cold drink, but distinctly less so in the gym when your calves are shaking, your shoulders are cramping up and you’ve only just started. That’s what hard training forces you to do, though. The only way to get through it is by repeatedly putting one foot in front of the other. Thinking about what’s coming up next can drive you nuts.

So now, with the last sparring session out of the way, this last week is all about keeping things ticking over, cutting the last bit of weight and concentrating on getting a full recovery. One more blog to come before the fight!

Rosi Sexton faces Aisling Daly at Cage Warriors Fighting Championship 47 on June 2nd in Dublin, Ireland. She blogs regularly for MMARising.com leading up to the fight.