Workout Recap - Week of June 2, 2024
I had some extra time off this week compared to usual, so I went in for an extra session on Monday. It felt like my body held up well enough to doing five sessions for the week, so whenever I do eventually return to Friday evening sparring, I don't expect it to be too taxing on my stamina conditioning.
Monday
Muay Thai self-class
There was a planned class for midday Monday, but I was the only person who showed up for it, so the kru opted to just let me do a solo bagwork session instead of the usual class flow. Fortunately, I had guessed something like that might be the case, so I went in with a plan beforehand. I tried to focus on precise targeting (ideally hitting the same part of the same letter of the bag's logo each time I repeated a strike) and staying well-balanced, which together with my apparently-fairly-efficient form seemed sufficient to bring a lot of impact without trying to go full power. I ended up doing nine intense rounds before wrapping up with some handstand push ups, bridges, and finally some neck strengthening. It was a tiring workout, but I felt better afterwards.
Monday
Muay Thai class
This class focused on brief bursts of power offense. I had felt a little fatigue from my morning session prior to warming up, but once I got into actually doing stuff, that faded away. My partner was giving up a lot of ground while holding for my knee strikes and overhand punches, which might have been just playing along since I am considerably smaller than them, but maybe I'm underestimating myself. Even though I was trying to emphasize speed over raw strength, moving faster does add power at impact, after all.
Tuesday
Muay Thai class
This was another class of basic offense, and my brain just wasn't being fully engaged this day. My front kicks were inconsistent and generally bad, and I just struggled to get into any sort of comfortable flow for the whole class. I'm not entirely sure what went wrong, and partners were still saying I was hitting hard (though I'm pretty sure they were just doing that to encourage me), but I'm willing to more or less write this off as a one-off bad day and move on without dwelling on it as long as it doesn't repeat soon.
Wednesday
Muay Thai class
This was a pure boxing day. I felt a little slower than I'd like, but I seemed to still be getting good impact without committing as much weight (and consequent body rotation) into each punch as I typically do, so I'm still taking it as a little progress towards my general goal of learning to hit hard and fast without going overboard in case of a miss. I also continued experimenting with slight variations on my hooks and uppercuts, in terms of altering hand position for different ranges, and the results of that were largely acceptable. My core was gassed out by the time we got to wrapping up with some calisthenics, so I'm taking that as a sign that I was still getting full body engagement and explosive rotation, too. A good class overall.
Thursday
Muay Thai class
I had been hoping this would be a day for some head-to-head work since there had not been any of that earlier this week, but sadly, such was not the case; it was probably an unfortunate coincidence that a few newer people showed up for the same class and the kru likely didn't want to risk them doing head-to-head drills underprepared. Anyway, I still had a decent time of things in padwork, though there was nothing particularly remarkable about it. This was a class.
