Training makes champions: Yoka D.

It's been a long couple of months but it was all worth it. I've been fully immersed in training my two fighters for their first fights and at the same time preparing for my own competition but more on that later. On October 13th, my fighter Yoka D. put all her hard work and dedication to the test and fought in the IKF PKB kickboxing tournament and won. Two fights and six rounds later she not only won the championship in her division but also fighter of the night. It was an amazing moment but it was even more gratifying because of how hard she worked. A Belgian import, Yoka has embraced Muay thai as a way of life and put in an enormous amount of time working on her skill set.

Throughout training there are always obstacles in the way as well as clashes between coach and fighter. We also endured some clashes and bumps along the way. The good thing about Yoka is that she is her own worst critic, so most of the time we bumped heads about how much she was training or how good she was doing. Even on her best day she would give the impression it was her worst. As far as her bad days went, well I wouldn't say it was a good time to be around. I pushed her to her limits in training and challenged her to be better every time. I yelled and she pushed at her and at times she let me know what she thought about it. She complained and I let her know what I thought about that.

Through all of that we kept our eyes on the prize. We met every week and we trained consistently. We worked hard on conditioning, technique, philosophy, and belief in what we were doing.

At the end of it all it was belief that carried her to the victory and the "fighter of the night" accolade. Belief in her coach, belief in the technique, belief in the hard work, but most importantly it was belief in herself. She deserved the championship, not because I say so, but because she genuinely earned it and it was an honor to watch it happen up close.