Workout Recap - Week of August 27, 2023
My right ankle was still a bit sore from last week, but it feels better each day, plus this week would be my last opportunity to do sparring until the back half of September, so I still pushed myself to train every day. The next two weeks should be a good chance to focus on polishing my form for more efficient body mechanics when I return to sparring.
Monday
Muay Thai class
Head-to-head defense drills were the order of the day again, working primarily on parrying and countering. At one point, the kru paused to admonish everyone for being too fancy and unrealistic with their counters, which I don't think really applied to me because I was just doing one or two basic techniques for mine, but it's typical for her to be harsh on the fighters in the lead-up to an event. In any case, I tend to enjoy these drills as a chance to fairly safely go harder than I tend to do in sparring, and when I happen to do rounds with the competitive fighters, they seem to appreciate that I also test their stamina with how rapid and relentless I tend to be, so it was a fun class.
Tuesday
Muay Thai class
This day focused on Dutch-style fighting, doing long punch sequences with a kick or two mixed in. That said, we did start out with a little flair by doing spinning backfists, and since I was working in a trio, alternating who was hitting the pads gave me enough of a break between reps to not get too dizzy. After that, the main drills were tiring, but I felt like I had a solid and consistent performance, even when doing stuff following a lead round kick (which I've had issues getting back into a good stance after executing in the past). Granted, it was a little frustrating that one of the people I worked with kept forgetting the sequences when it was their turn to hold the pads, but if nothing else, that made for some useful impromptu reaction training.
Wednesday
Muay Thai class
This class focused on endurance while doing kicks and knee strikes. Once again, I felt like I did well to keep up my power and stamina throughout the class. It wasn't just my own self-evaluation, either, since my partner said at one point that they were feeling pressure to keep up holding the pads with the pace I was striking at, which was a nice complaint to elicit. Overall, it's nice to have some signs that my skill level is rising gradually.
Thursday
Muay Thai class
It was back to head-to-head drills today, working exclusively on boxing this time. I had lots of good prolonged exchanges with multiple competitive fighters, and a couple of the more experienced ones gave me some tips to help better simulate the drill's flow as a real fight, which is always appreciated. I came out with a forehead full of irritation from bracing against it but no real damage, which is more than I can say for a couple of the people I partnered up with; one of them hurt their neck somehow while punching me and sat out the rest of the class, and another almost ate a near-full-power overhand because they forgot what the drill was and froze up (fortunately, I noticed the odd response during the previous punch, so I was taking the overhand off course already and smacked their forearm with it instead of their jaw).
Friday
Muay Thai sparring
My goals for this sparring day were to do at least three combos with different starters per round and to have at least one instance per round where I landed a hit and then got out without being countered, both of which I achieved. I also got compliments from two of the experienced competitive fighters for instances against each of them where I slipped a punch preemptively and countered; I tend to favor a high guard and footwork over lots of head movement, so they were both surprised when they missed without having their usual extra space to recover and block my return. I finished up with a round against our gym's best boxer; I got handled, obviously, and they also took some breaks to let me get more offense in than I should've, but I still met my goals and otherwise survived without any real damage, so I'm taking that as a personal win. I had stepped out to put my shoes on when the kru called for a group photo to wrap up, and while I was initially going to just sneak out since I don't think I really belong in such a thing, she saw me and called me out to join in by name, so I played along.
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