My First Full Contact Fight (Lei Tai) On July 28th, 2019, I fought my very first full contact fight. The video is posted below, which you can skip to by clicking here; however, I do recommend you read through the entire post to get the full context. The United States Kuo Shu Federation (USKSF) hosts a tournament the last weekend of July every year. This tournament consists of many different events, including the demonstration of forms, point sparring, empty hand sets, light contact sparring, and full contact fighting called Lei Tai. I had already been training at Grant's Kung Fu Academy for a number of years, so I decided fighting Lei Tai would be the way to go for me. The Lei Tai is a platform raised approximately three feet off the ground. That's a pretty significant drop, especially if you're thrown off the platform. Luckily, the border was matted. To fight Lei Tai, you had to get a blood test, a physical, and you had to choose which of the following weight classes you wished to fight in: Light: under 132.3 lbs Middle C: 132.4lbs to 143.3lbs Middle B: 143.5lbs to 154.3lbs Middle A: 154.54lbs to 165.3lbs Heavy C: 165.56 to 176.3lbs Heavy B: 176.59lbs to 189.6lbs Heavy A: 189.8lbs to 202.8lbs Super Heavy: 203.04lbs to 216lbs Infinite: over 216lbs In 2017, I weighed 223.9lbs at my highest. Had I still weighed that amount, I would have had to have fought in the infinite division. That would have been disastrous, to say the least. This fight wasn't what initially motivated me to lose weight- 2 years ago, I had no idea that I would be fighting full contact in the future; regardless, with hard work, I managed to drop down to 161lbs the day of the fight, putting me into Middle A. I'll talk about my journey to weight loss in another post. Since this was a tournament, I had no idea who I would be fighting. I just knew I had to train hard. The diet leading up to the fight was very strict, going to the point where two days before weighing in (Friday, July 26th), I greatly reduced water and food intake. I must have had only two cups of water during those 48 hours, I still ran, I went to the gym, I went to my Kung Fu classes, and I only had a few hundred calories during both days. This was tough, incredibly tough. The months leading up to the fight, I even made it so that I would fast 18-20 hours a day and eat only during a four hour window. This habit has stuck with me, as it makes me more efficient. After I made weight (161lbs) on Friday, I broke my fast with a big helping of [...]