Workout Recap - Week of January 15, 2023

Double-weekly-recap posting again today. No explanations for why this time; I just didn't do this one last weekend.

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Monday

Muay Thai class

This class had a lot of extended sequence work (the kru called it out specifically as a Dutch-style class). For the most part, I felt fine with long strings of punches, and finishing with single or doubled kicks was mostly alright as well except in the case of finishing with kicks using alternating legs. For whatever reason, that kept throwing me off. My best guess is that I was overcompensating when rechambering the first kick and getting into an unbalanced stance, so that's something I'll need to focus on correcting in the future.

Tuesday

Muay Thai class

It was all head-to-head boxing drills in this class, which was an interesting change from the usual head-to-head drill days. I made a concerted effort to push the pace to test my stamina, and as usual, I seemed to generally hold up better than even the competitive fighters on that front, which is always encouraging. There were a number of drills including hooks to the body, so I also made it a mental point of emphasis to think of dropping my head/shoulders instead just thinking of dropping my elbows to guard against those, which seemed to help with keeping both my head and body protected (we did a couple of freestyle back-and-forth rounds to finish, and I feel like I did a good job on defense for those, though it's likely my partners were slowing down some to help me out).

Wednesday

Muay Thai class

It had been a while since we did a fancier class for some variety, so this one was a selection of things like pushing mid-offense, question mark kicks, and spinning back fists. It felt like it'd been more than a month since I've done any work on any spinning attacks, so my footwork was rough to start out on those, though I did start getting into some flow with it after a few minutes. At least the others were things that I do in sparring (I'm a fan of dirty boxing/clinch stuff in general, and I do mix in the occasional question mark or reverse question mark kick if my partner is over-committing early to defend my kicks).

Thursday

Muay Thai class

This class was another extended sequence day, this time tending to focus on punches>kicks>punches. I felt pretty well-balanced overall (at least by my standards), and I did fine about maintaining body control to keep attacking after round kicks, but I was awkward after front kicks. I suppose that's better than the reverse, though, since landing a front kick should generally provide enough separation to reset safely in the worst case, and otherwise, this was good preparation for my sparring goal.

Friday

Muay Thai sparring

For my final sparring class on my current gym membership, I'm pleased with how this went. We had a few guests visiting from another gym, so I got to do a round with one of them, and even aside from that, I got to do a lot of rounds with both regular sparring partners and newer people. I feel like I achieved my goal of not doing any single or double attacks and like I did a good all-around job of defensively, including getting in a number of counters to interrupt my partners' offense without eating something else at the same time. Overall, I'm satisfied that I have improved dramatically from where I started, though of course there's still much further that I have to go to be a good fighter.