Schedule: Week of Behind Closed Doors 12

SCHEDULE: WEEK OF BEHIND CLOSED DOORS 12 Filed by Sera Voss For Personal Records and the Federation Site Last Updated: Sunday Evening, Pre-Week ———————————————— NOTE ON FILING This is the first schedule I have filed as the holder of a championship, and it is the first one in three filings that is not organised around a match I am competing in. I want to address that at the top, because it is the largest structural change to this document since I began producing it and I would rather explain it than let a reader assume the omission is modesty. I am not booked at Behind Closed Doors 12. I will be in the building. My presence there is a scheduled item and appears below in its correct slot, and I am recording the reason honestly: Bríd Ó'Súilleabháin competes on that card, and she is the person who will challenge me for this championship, and I intend to watch her do it from the building rather than from a screen in Hamburg two days later. Three things have changed in the composition of the week. The medical block continues and has not concluded. The film block has changed subject. And a category has been added that has never appeared in one of these documents before, which I will identify when I reach it. The schedule is provided in twenty-four-hour time, Hamburg time zone. I travel Friday. — S. V. ———————————————— MONDAY 06:00 — Wake. 06:00–06:15 — Hydration, mobility sequence. Thoracic rotation reintroduced at approximately sixty per cent range. Weight check. 06:15–07:00 — Medical evaluation. Fortnight review, imaging repeated. Findings, recorded in full because I said at the time that I would: the bruising has resolved. The soft-tissue damage to the left flank has not. There is no fracture and there was never a fracture. There is a residual restriction on end-range rotation under load and a pain response to direct compression that has reduced but has not stopped. The physician's estimate for full resolution is a further four to six weeks. I have asked him twice whether that estimate assumes I am competing during it. It does not. I have not asked him for a revised estimate that does, because I would rather have the honest number than the applicable one. 07:00–07:30 — Breakfast. Two soft-boiled eggs, one slice rye bread, one apple, one black coffee. Unchanged. 07:30–09:00 — Film: Ó'Súilleabháin, Behind Closed Doors 11 (against Drummond, 17:44). First full viewing. No notes taken. First viewings are for watching. 09:00–09:30 — Walk. Five kilometres. No music. 09:30–11:00 — Gym session 1. Full lower-body block, unmodified. First unmodified strength session in five weeks. 11:00–11:30 — Cooldown. 11:30–12:00 — Lunch. Salmon, brown rice, steamed greens. 12:00–13:30 — Rest. No screens. Reading: text not related to combat sport. 13:30–15:00 — Gym session 2. Submission drill block. Partner: M. Body-lock pressure reinstated at partner's discretion, which I have instructed him to exercise without consulting me, because I will otherwise adjust for it and the adjustment is the thing I am trying to remove. 15:00–15:30 — Notes. 15:30–16:00 — Ice, left flank. Twenty minutes. Still scheduled. I had expected to have removed this block by now and I have not, and I am leaving it in the document at its full duration rather than shortening it to look further along than I am. 16:00–17:00 — Dinner. Chicken, sweet potato, mixed greens. Tea. 17:00–19:00 — Film: Ó'Súilleabháin, complete STRIFE record, catalogued by finish type. Four matches. Three finishes by Ceasefire, all three at centre of the cage, all three following an opponent's forward commitment. 19:00–20:00 — Free time. 21:30 — In bed. 22:00 — Sleep. ———————————————— TUESDAY 06:00 — Wake. 06:00–07:00 — Standard morning sequence. 07:00–09:15 — Gym session 1. Conditioning block. Hill repeats reinstated. 09:15–10:15 — Cooldown, ice, lunch. 10:15–11:45 — Rest. 11:45–14:15 — Gym session 2. Submission drill block, continued. Focus: entries against an opponent who does not retreat. This is a different problem from the one Ms. Drummond presented and I am not carrying preparation over. 14:15–14:45 — Notes. 14:45–15:15 — Ice. 15:15–16:15 — Dinner. 16:15–18:15 — Reading: Ó'Súilleabháin's filed material, complete. Four documents. Ninety minutes, which is longer than the reading requires, because I read the last one twice. 18:15–19:15 — Free time. 21:30 — In bed. 22:00 — Sleep. ———————————————— WEDNESDAY 06:00 — Wake. 06:00–07:00 — Standard morning sequence. 07:00–09:15 — Gym session 1. Strength maintenance, full body, torso included at full load. Completed without modification and without incident. Recorded because the previous three schedules recorded the opposite. 09:15–10:15 — Cooldown, ice, lunch. 10:15–11:45 — Rest. 11:45–14:15 — Sparring. Reinstated. This is the activity I removed from the No Escape schedule, and I said at the time that I was recording the omission rather than concealing it. I am now recording its return with the same intent. Partner instructed to work in a hardcore register — forward pressure, close range, willingness to absorb in order to arrive. He is not Ó'Súilleabháin. Nobody available to me is. The exercise is the closest approximation obtainable and I am noting the gap so that nobody, including me, mistakes it for sufficiency. 14:15–15:15 — Ice. 15:15–16:00 — Notes. 16:00–17:00 — Dinner. 17:00–19:00 — Film: my own No Escape match, self-review. Fourth viewing. I have identified nothing further since the second and I am recording the two additional viewings as unproductive rather than deleting them from the schedule. 19:00–20:00 — Free time. 21:30 — In bed. 22:00 — Sleep. ———————————————— THURSDAY 06:00 — Wake. 06:00–07:00 — Standard morning sequence. Medical check-in by phone. No change. 07:00–08:30 — Gym session. Mobility, scapular work, hip work, breath work under resistance. 08:30–10:30 — Administrative block. This is the new category. It contains: two federation media obligations, one photographic session, correspondence relating to the championship's physical custody and transport, and a request from the office that I confirm my availability for a date I have not been given the details of. None of it is difficult and all of it is unfamiliar. I am recording it as a block rather than distributing it through the week because it does not behave like training and I do not want it filed as though it does. 10:30–11:00 — Lunch. 11:00–12:30 — Rest. 12:30–14:00 — Film: Ó'Súilleabháin, BCD 11, second viewing. Notes this time. 14:00–15:30 — Walk. Eight kilometres. 15:30–16:30 — Ice. 16:30–17:30 — Dinner. Chicken, white rice, vegetables, tea. 17:30–19:30 — Reading. Not related to combat sport. 21:00 — In bed. 22:00 — Sleep. ———————————————— FRIDAY — TRAVEL DAY [Conforms to the standard travel-day structure filed previously. Medical check-in on arrival at The Foundry's contracted facility. Equipment travels with me despite the absence of a competitive obligation, which I am aware is unnecessary and have elected to do anyway.] ———————————————— SATURDAY — BEHIND CLOSED DOORS 12 No competitive obligation. I will be in the building from the opening of the card. I intend to watch Ó'Súilleabháin against Volkov live, from a position where I can see the cage floor rather than a camera's selection of it, and I intend to leave when the card ends. I am not going to characterise what I expect to do beyond that, because I do not know, and a schedule that predicts behaviour it cannot commit to is a worse document than one that leaves a line open. ———————————————— ADDITIONAL NOTES Two observations. Both structural. Neither is a complaint. The first is that I have never defended anything. I want to be precise about what I mean. I have won matches and I have won them consecutively and I am not describing a deficiency in results. I am describing a deficiency in category. My working method for eleven years has been: identify the match, arrive, compete, depart. The method has never once required me to remain. A championship requires me to remain — not physically, but in the sense that the thing is now in my possession between matches, and the interval is no longer empty. I have historically been very good at empty intervals. This one has an object in it. I do not yet know whether that is a problem. I am recording it early because if it becomes one I would rather the record show I identified it in the first fortnight than pretended afterward that I had. The second observation concerns the challenger, and I want to state it carefully because it will read as a criticism and it is not one. Bríd Ó'Súilleabháin filed a document before Behind Closed Doors 11 in which she wrote that she wants this championship. She wrote it plainly, at length, and by her own account for the first time in a fifteen-year career. Everybody in this federation has read it as a moment of courage, and I have no argument with that reading. It is probably correct. It is also information. A fighter who has just told the entire federation that she wants a thing has told me what she will do when the thing is close and what she will do when it is receding. That is not a small disclosure. Ms. Drummond had the same disclosure available to her at Behind Closed Doors 11 and did not use it, which I understand and would not have done. I will use it. I want that on the record now, before the match, in my own document, rather than having it inferred afterward from the result. She was honest in public at a cost to herself. The correct response to that is not to pretend I did not read it. The correct response is to tell her I did. I have watched her four matches and I have read her four documents. The championship match is two shows away. I expect the ribs to still be a fact on that night. The record will show I never pretended otherwise. — S. V.