Latest / Between The Rounds Official / Inside Camp | When You Belong, You Perform at a Higher Level
Transcript
- Sarah: So here's the thing about walking into a new squad. You can tell yourself you've it. You know you've earned it. But there's still this invisible weight when you step into a room full of people who've been here longer, fought more, medaled more. You're scanning the room, you're reading the temperature, and somewhere in the back of your mind, you're asking yourself, do I belong here? That question takes up more energy than people realise. It sits underneath everything. Your punches, your footwork, your willingness to take risks in sparring. When you're not sure you belong, you hold back. Even if you don't mean to. I was really grateful for this when people helped answer that question for me before I even had to. One of the coaches handed me a bag of official boxing Ireland gear on one of my first days. No big moment, no ceremony, just here, this is yours. And something shifted when I put on that kit. I was wearing my home colors representing my home country. and after a hard first week, I sent text to the head coach thanking him before I left. He responded to say, I've slotted into the squad and by no means do I look out of place. I don't think he knows how much that landed. That wasn't just encouragement. That was permission to stop second guessing and start working. And it wasn't just the coaches. the whole squad went out of their way to get to know me, asking questions, including me, and by no means in a forced way, in a way that said, you're one of us now, so let's get on with it. And that mattered more than any technical session, because once you stop wondering if you're supposed to be in a room, you can actually train and focus. The reality of week one for me... ⁓ wasn't about fitness, it was rhythm. So when you train on your own schedule like I had in New York, you control the pace. You decide when to push, when to pull back, but in a squad environment, the pace is set for you. You show up and you match it. There's no easing in. Monday hit different. I was back to double sessions, technique in the morning, conditioning in the afternoon. By Wednesday, My had changed, appetite had changed. Recovery went from something I should do to something I absolutely have to do. Nobody tells you this about high performance camps. It's not one brutal session that breaks you. It's an accumulation. It's Thursday's session landing on legs still paying for Tuesday. Now, technically I'm being challenged in ways I knew I would be. The detail here is different. It's not about throwing more punches. It's about where your feet are when you throw them, half inch adjustments, The thinking about the placement of shots, the preparation stages before you execute, stuff that elite level pick up on and changes everything in the ring. Now I caught myself defaulting to old habits on things I've done for years and they creep in when I feel pressure. and defaulting to those things at this level matter. I'll be honest, there were moments this week where I felt every year of my late start. Moments where the gap between knowing something and executing it under fatigue felt enormous. But here's what I've learned about those moments. They're not the problem. They're the point. That's where the work actually lives. Not in the rounds where everything clicks. In the ones where it doesn't and you stay in it anyway. Week two starts on Monday. My body will be adjusted more. The rhythm will feel less foreign. The work gets more specific from here, be yet, but I'm exactly where I need to be. And that's the difference. I'm Sarah Cunningham. This is Inside Camp for Between the Rounds