Training for a Hypothetical Muay Thai

When the Personal Project started, I had a hard time choosing what I wanted to do. Knowing that whatever I chose to do, I had to do it for the next 3-4 months, personally it wasn’t easy for me. To prevent any inconvenience like losing motivation to do the Personal Project, the decision that I have to choose has to be something that I can enjoy and have fun with. There are plenty of hobbies that I can choose from but what piqued my interest was to do Muay Thai mainly because I have familiarized myself with Muay Thai since grade 7. I know all about the basics and techniques that had to be carried out in order to do Muay Thai. After identifying what my Personal Project should revolve around, it was time to decide the learning goal. Ever since doing Muay Thai in grade 7, I never considered training like a professional fighter for this. Following the fact that it has been a year since I took some time off of Muay Thai due to the pandemic. I thought, what better time to come back at it by training like a professional. What does a professional fighter train for? They train to fight other people thus being that my learning goal for my Personal Project is to train for a hypothetical fight by doing Muay Thai, carrying out a diet, and consistent workouts. Since I have familiarized myself with Muay Thai, I know what I will undergo later on. But I should also consider this learning goal challenging because in order to do what professional fighters do, the exercise loads that I was familiar with will be doubled and include more variations. Firstly in regards to my Muay Thai skills, I will have to learn more new techniques and skills in order to improve myself and be ready for this hypothetical fight. My learning goal also states that I will undergo consistent workout, these workouts will be seen through the sessions. Adding the professional fighter factor this will cause an addition of cardio exercise like running 1 kilometer in under 7 minutes and lifting weights and exercising the upper and lower body to a level where I am not familiar with because of how intense it will be. Lastly, my learning goal states that I will also carry out a diet. This diet will aim to increase my body weight because I am very skinny. I will mainly consume protein shakes because it can easily increase my body weight and food that also aims to increase my body weight.

Product Goal

Since my learning goal focuses on my progression of training for a hypothetical fight, I will make my product as a documentary. My first and only idea for a product was to do a documentary because it was the best way to show and explain what happened during my training sessions. I took reference from previous Personal Project products that were created by previous batches that focus on health and sport and most are in the form of documentaries. And on the plus side this documentary can also lead to a motivational video for people who would see it that way.

Reflection

My Personal Project has had a massive impact in my life. Before I started working on this project, I was in my worst state ever. In terms of what this project is all about which is health, fitness, and muay thai. My health was in its worst state because there has been barely any activity since the start of the pandemic which started in the second half of the school year during grade 8. During that time until grade 9 of course I had some attempts to keep my body at a good condition, so I worked out sometimes during the day but it didn't last long. There were little to no activities that can help my health and fitness until my grade 10 year. I haven’t been in my peak condition since grade 8. I was very glad that when I worked on this project I was able to work it out and get back at it. My health was doing better. My fitness was at its peak. My return in muay thai was great as I was better than I ever was. Started out at grade 7, I have never been this good. My form and skill has greatly improved. I was able to learn more things that I ever did before considering that now I am more able to grasp these skills that are taught. By doing this project I was able to balance my daily life a bit better. Rather than only having study, eat, game, and sleep in my schedule. I can now add working out. With this I was able to relearn things that I have forgotten about. Motivation is something that I lost since the start of the pandemic. I have gotten lazier each day. Ever since the start of this project I have gotten it back from every session. There was no day, no session in which I lost my motivation for this to work. I put everything I got in each session because I regained this motivation to make this work out and to finish my project as well as having my health and fitness to get better than ever. As an IB learner student, I have noticed that during my time of working on my Personal Project it has heavily impacted and strengthened my IB learner profile. One IB learner that has been strengthened in the duration of the project is Reflective. The IB learner profile, Reflective, is all about understanding one's strengths and weaknesses. As I said before, I have undoubtedly understood my strengths and weaknesses in order to finish my project. By understanding this, I took the initiative to capitalize on my strengths and improve my weaknesses in order to support my learning and development throughout the project. Another IB learner profile I would say that has been an impact to me throughout the project would be Risk-Taker. Even though my learning goal meant that everything that I have experienced physically would be doubled, I was resilient in the face of that challenge. I took all of it on because I knew that I would get better and that the double loaded exercise wouldn’t feel like a thing. I was right about that. Few sessions later, the pain was very bearable and I took less breaks than the breaks that I took in the first 4 sessions. Overall I have achieved my learning goal and I am proud of what came out of my hard work that resulted to my product for my Personal Project.

Product Evaluation

So for success criteria regarding my product, it was based on three criterias. First success criteria was the form, it states that the product should look like a video documentary hence the usage of camera to record the sessions and editing app to edit the footage. I have done all of this by first using my own personal camera that I set up to record good quality footage for each session and I used Imovie to edit all of my footage to create my video blog. I would like to say that after converting the recordings from the camera to the laptop then to the editing software I would see that the quality was reduced a bit so I would like to improve on that. The reduction of the quality of the video, I would assume was either caused by the editing software itself or that my laptop was already too old to handle that kind of quality recordings. Either way to improve on this it would be either getting a better laptop or paying for a top editing software. The second success criteria is purpose/function, which focuses on showing my progress into the training I put for this hypothetical fight. My product clearly shows this because in the product video I have included all sessions from session 1 to 20. It showed everything I have gone through. I would say that everything worked out and there was no need for an improvement in regards to the purpose and function of this product because it was able to show that I achieved what my learning goals are and it showed my progress of obtaining it. The third success criteria is user/audience, this focuses on how in my product it should target people who are interested in my journey and it also should be family friendly. From my product, I believe that people might actually be interested in what I did for my project which is good because it can act as a motivational video and I believe that I also have kept my product to be family friendly. An improvement I would like to do is to attract more people to my product. The only way to attract more people to my product was if they knew me or they shared a common interest in what my product is all about. Now in my survey that was made, it asked seven questions. The first question (image on the very top) was aimed at my success criteria of purpose/function. The survey for question 1 showed that most people think that I was able to show my progress into the training through this documentary. Question two and three (second top and third top images) was focusing on the success criteria of forms. From the seven responses that I got, for my video quality, people think it's in the middle of good level and great level. For the third question on the quality of my editing it was in the level of good. The fourth question is about if I was able to achieve my learning goal and that focuses on the success criteria of purpose/function, the survey said that the people who answered it think that I have achieved it greatly. The fifth, sixth, and seventh question all focuses on the user/audience success criteria. Majority found the documentary motivational. Everyone that answered the form says that the documentary was family friendly. Majority found the documentary enjoyable.