I have always loved sparring and liked to do it as much as possible. I go to boxing on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday and have always loved sparring all three nights. I also like to spar as close to a fight as possible as I felt like the more I spar the better I did in it and the more confident I was. But I doing 5 rounds on Wednesday night with someone from a different club in preperation for a big tournamnet that both of us will be in next weekend. I flt great in the sparring but the next night I sparred again and I was at my worst. I could feel it was from teh night before. The joints in the middle of both of my arms were very sore and stiff and I just didn't really wanna be there and I felt very stiff and sliggish. Thankfully now I have a much needed break until next Monday before sparring again and I don't have my fight until next weekend because I still feel stiff and sore and need a break from teh sparring. I think it may have a lot to do with the fact that I have a bad cough and cold right now but it affected me a lot more last night than it did on Wednesday.
It's not a bad idea to rest after a night of 5 rounds, especially if you had been sick recently. I never felt the effects to sparring too much beyond the feelings of a normal boxing workout, but 5 rounds is a decent amount (possibly even more so depending on what you did that day). Work it in your schedule so you can take a day off after sparring when you go certain days of the week.
Take it day by day to be honest I would think it's probably more the fact you've had a bad cold recently which will put your recovery time down a bit. It could just be a one off for you though there's been times when i've done 10+ rounds of sparring took a bit of a beating and felt good the next day whereas other times i've done 3-4 rounds and felt like crap the next day.
You can be destroyed if you have a stupid, brave trainer who allows you to spar when you're hopelessly overmatched against an amateur or a pro who only goes to war, 'n doesn't use sparring as a learning experience. Most important lesson is: Ya gotta have a trainer who's looking after your welfare, makin' sure ya develop, and not sparring monsters, soya get hurt 'n discouraged.
Or a trainer who puts you in with a amateur who has gone to quater finals in World Championships to get his confidence up, I put on a defencive masterclass (more like McCloskey vs Khan) but still. Take a day or 2 off, if You are being overmatched in sparring fight like a '*****', that's what I do and most do it aswell they just won't admit it, fight defencive and if you can manage to counter the other guy few times with clean punches - after the sparring you can say you dominated based on clean punches. Ice is always good, you can get some ointments aswell fore sore muscles and joints
Thanks for the replies. Yea, I'm thinking now that it is mainly due to my cold. Its affected my training at home as well because normally I do threadmill every day but I haven't done any this week. I just need to let this cold pass before I can get back to my best in training.
I was sparring at my gym and the trainer prefers shark tank type training. 3 minutes of sparring, one minute rest and then jump straight into someone else. It's irritating when people don't wear the right gloves and think its a real fight trying to kill you. That's even more annoying.
I do find it annoying sparring someone of my experience level who has smaller gloves on. More for speed reasons than for not wanting to get hit with small gloves. There is a big difference in speed between having those big heavy 18 ounce gloves on and the smaller ones.
Don't ya hate a loose-fitting head guard that swivels, obscuring your vision every time you're even jabbed, BK?