Catherine Costigan is a mixed martial arts cage fighter from Limerick. She runs Pankration Kickboxing Academy with husband Dermot McGrath and she is currently training for a major MMA event in Dublin on Saturday March 1. This is the first in a series of training diaries from Catherine in preparation for her upcoming fight.
February 1. I have a full month of hard, intense training ahead to get me ready for my fight on Cage Warriors 65 at The Helix. I know my opponent but can’t say yet until all contracts are signed. I’ll tell you all next week. Anyway, no matter who I face, I feel I must give the greatest performance.
In the next few weeks I’ll do what is asked of me in my gym by my head coach Dermot Mc Grath. I dream of the perfect fight and I push myself tilll I reach it.
What is my week like? Usually on a Monday I watch technical footage. I cover strategy and game plan detailing with Dermot. He will show me certain fights and moves that he would like me to use on that evening in sparring. I feel he is giving me a little challenge, saying if I make them work in the cage tonight, then I’m another step closer to finding the keys that will defeat my opponent.
A cage fighter needs challenges, needs to work things out for themselves. Nothing is given easy and that develops our talent further. I know when I’m in the cage tonight doing wall work, moments when I’m pressed with a situation and maybe feel tired, that I must work out the answer. Dermot will give suggestions which will be good choices but it’s me who must decide the timing and the delivery of those techniques. That’s the hard bit, and listening to a man as well!
Tomorrow I’ll be back in gym nice and early to do strength training. This is a big key to my victory and I love lifting heavy stuff and slamming things. Just check out my last fight to see what I slammed! Then I race home get my food in and sort the house, because I’m a clean freak and proud of it. My mum raised me well. I’ll then have a quick nap, get back to the gym and teach my classes in the evening. I teach kids from four years and up and I must be at my highest level of motivation when I teach. They look up to me and I need to show them how to achieve their potential.
Do I get tired ? Hell yeah, but again I’m doing it long enough now to know what it takes to reach the highs. I also have a perfect diet that I’ll talk about more in the next few updates. It’s what keeps me in superhero mode everyday. Ladies reading this, I know you want to know how to cut a kilo in two days safely. I’m the queen of cutting from 53 kgs to 48 kgs which I’ll be on February 28 with the guidance from my nutritionist Mike Leng.
I could stay here for ages writing a detailed day-by-day but you’d get bored. Instead I think every week I’ll take a interesting moment in my fight week, it may have been a breaking point, a high, or just damn funny. People tell me I’m funny, they say that’s why they enjoy learning from me. People think when looking at me as the fighter that I’m a robot, superhuman, made of steel. I am very like each of you reading this, the difference sometimes maybe is I only see what I can become. I do cry and break sometimes and it’s needed but I always drive forward towards my passion of being Cage Warriors world champion.
My advice to you all stand out from the run of the mill, I always did. Find your love in life and build it strong.
Follow Catherine’s fitness tips on facebook at Catherine Costigan Alpha Female Fitness and Twitter @alphafemalewar.
