Edinburgh-based Euan Burton, 29, will be taking part in his first Olympic Games in August, in the 81kg class.

He has been writing regularly on 606 as he prepares for Beijing.

When Coldplay's Chris Martin sang “Nobody said it was easy/ No one ever said it would be this hard ” I’m pretty sure he wasn’t talking about a judo player’s preparation for an Olympic Games, but it certainly rings true in this phase of training.

I’m just coming off the back end of a month of intense conditioning camps with the Olympic team which have been split between Bisham Abbey near London and Edinburgh.

The camps are run by our strength and conditioning coach Stuart Yule, with the judo coaches there to support him in his torturing of the team.

We also have our nutritionist, physio, doctor, and psychologist and performance director at hand just in case any of us start to break down physically, mentally, emotionally or - heaven forbid - all three at once!

A typical day would see me up at 6.30am checking my heart rate, urine (sorry - not nice to talk about pee but it’s got to be done) and weight.

I also fill out a general wellbeing and recovery questionnaire so that the support staff and coaches can monitor our status throughout the camps.

It’s then into the gym at 7.15 for 40 minutes of cardiovascular work and some yoga or stretching before breakfast.

After that the team head back to the gym to be put through our paces in a heavy strength session.

There is a focus around upper-body pushing and pulling exercises, core strength and lower body power development.

It was encouraging for me that I managed to bench press 120kg and chin up with 45kg strapped to me - personal bests in both these exercises and proof that the strength gains are there.

The strength sessions invariably finish with a fore-arm and grip strength circuit which leaves me with forearms Popeye would be proud of and makes it almost impossible to lift my arms.

If you want to know what it feels like, grab a 20kg bar and some dumbbells and do 20 wrist curls, 20 bicep curls, 20 reverse curls, 20 hammer curls and then walk with the heavy dumbbells for 50 metres.

Repeat four times through and then try to wash your hair in the shower afterwards. It will be the toughest hair-wash you have ever had.

That pretty much takes us to lunch and just about gives me enough time to catch my breath and begin to get nervous about what delights might await in the afternoon.

Our last session of the day will always be something to push us to the edge of our physical capabilities and makes us dig down into the deepest reserves of strength, speed and power.

It more often than not ends up being about heart, guts and the will to continue when every sinew in your body is screaming for you to stop.

This is where the difference is made and trust me when I say it hurts. During these sessions I hate everyone! All I want to do is stop and make the pain go away.

But I know that there is something that hurts even more than the burning in my lungs and muscles - giving in, quitting, losing.

These things sting more than any session on the rowing machine, more than any circuit, more even than the infamous “steps” at Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh.

So I grit my teeth, push through and finish. Usually we have just about enough energy to eat our dinner and head off to bed.

The conversation over the evening meal isn’t exactly full of excited chit-chat. Mostly there are muted mumbles about what we guess tomorrow might bring. A good guess is more pain, more torture, more of the things that make champions and break anyone else.

The good news is this training phase is behind me now, a distant nightmare which I am trying to forget! This week the team got back on the judo mat, the place that we call home.

It will take a little while for the strength and conditioning gains to be transferred into our judo but when they do it should leave us better athletes than ever before.

The next step in our preparation will be taken in Japan and we will soon be off to Tokyo to fight at some of the country’s premier university dojos where the elite of Japanese judo ply their trade.

By the time we return our timing, feel and judo fitness should be firing again and we will hopefully have left behind the stiff, awkward, frankly awful performances that we were producing this week.

I knew that getting back on the mat after a month off wouldn’t be easy, but no-one ever said it would be this hard!

I’ll let you know how things go in Japan.

Until next time,
Euan