Workout Recap - Week of April 14, 2024
This week was kind of a blur. There was once again a low amount of head-to-head work, so I'm unfortunately thinking we're back to doing that just once a week on average again. Too bad, since I do really like those classes, but alas.
Monday
Muay Thai class
This was a fundamentals day, which would've been fine in a vacuum, except that my brain was also being uncooperative with reality. As a result, my balance just wasn't quite there, so my kicks were all feeling kind of awkward. On the plus side, my punches felt solid and satisfying, though, so that's a confidence booster that I can still potentially be a danger even when I'm not at my sharpest.
Tuesday
Muay Thai class
This class was a mix of boxing and knee strikes, so I was in my general element. As usual, I got some excessive pleasure from knocking my slightly-larger-than-me partner backward with my knees, though I was trying to go a little lighter on them than usual since attendance was atypically high this day and thus the gym's space was more congested than usual. On the flip side, my partner kept knocking against my shin when kneeing from the same side as my lead leg because they were letting their lower leg just dangle instead of tucking it back. I tried to advise them about it, but they didn't seem interested in correcting their technical error, and while I'm sure that's not the only reason why their knees sucked, it didn't do them any favors. In any case, I felt nice about how I did overall.
Wednesday
Muay Thai class
This class was focused mostly on kick defense and countering. I was a little off to start the first round where we had to react to which side the kick was coming from, which earned a laugh from the kru when I tanked one, but I got into the flow of it quickly enough to get on point before the round ended. Aside from that, this was kind of just another training session, though I did manage to wear out yet another partner into quitting partway through a padwork round. I don't really understand what I'm doing that seems to push people particularly hard, but given that it's happened more than half a dozen times by now (though without any vomit this time), and most of those being with people who're experienced if sometimes coming back from a training break, I think it's a sign of people overvaluing cardio over fight-applicable stamina.
Thursday
Muay Thai class
This was a head-to-head day. We started out working on round kick defense, building on the previous day's practice of needing to read which side and what level the kick was coming at, which I felt sharp with from the outset this time; granted that I made some mistakes about the levels, but I was good with reading which side and blocked everything coming at my head, so that's pretty reasonable overall. Then we moved into several rounds of light freestyle back-and-forth. I couldn't recall what sparring goals I had set last time, so I tried to just focus on reading my partner's defensive approach and exploiting the openings. I also did a couple of rounds with competitive fighters for which we just straight-up did light sparring; I think these were somehow my first sparring rounds with either of those two, and both of them complimented me on my skill level afterwards, though I'm sure part of that was just being nice.
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