Workout Recap - Week of May 5, 2024
I might finally be getting on top of things well enough in my personal life to return to sparring soon. It didn't happen this week, but I am hopeful that it will happen soon.
Monday
Muay Thai class
This was an atypical class. We started out doing mass round kicks with a partner holding a kick shield, switching after sets of fifty-five. After that, though, we went into head-to-head drills to work on round kick and front kick defenses. Most of it was fairly basic parrying and countering, which I feel alright executing when I'm working with a partner who'll try a remotely-decent kick on their turn to attack (unfortunately, it seemed like my partners were mostly half-assing some limp noodle flicks that felt like a travesty to even acknowledge, so I only really got two rounds that felt good). On the plus side, the last of those rounds was with a competitive fighter where we needed to react to whichever leg the other attacked with and then got to freestyle our counters, and both of us put in good effort for that. They even complimented me afterwards on not biting clearly on any of the fakes they sprinkled in. At the time, I joked that that was a benefit of having slow reflexes, but it did honestly feel good to have someone notice that I put effort into having thoughtful defense.
Tuesday
Muay Thai class
This was a padwork class on defense and countering, though it was a little different from usual in that the focus was on countering with kicks rather than on defending/countering a specific family of incoming strikes. I was a little wobbly with my balance a handful of times, in part because my partner was holding the pads for head kicks whereas I'm more practiced with either low kicks or body kicks for countering, but I still held up well enough to feel fine about my performance overall. For a bit of flair, we finished up with a round of practicing spinning backfists, which was a fun change-of-pace, since it feels like it's been a number of months since we did that last. In spite of that layoff, I mostly felt good about maintaining the spacing to land properly and keeping down my dizziness. Fun class.
Wednesday
Muay Thai class
This was a boxing day. It felt like my lead hook was off, but my straight punches and rear hook felt good, so it was two steps forward in my development for one step back. I worked in a trio including a competitive fighter coming back from a hand injury, which is a situation I've been in before often (particularly in the early months of my training here), but they decided it was too painful for them to hold pads after my first rear hook, so the third person and I handled all of the holding after that. This incident doesn't necessarily prove anything by itself, but it was at least a hint of evidence that I can hurt someone, which is nice.
Thursday
Muay Thai class
This was a head-to-head day, starting off with some light sparring; a welcome event after I had been concerned about not getting any sparring this week. I honestly forgot whatever goals I might have set for myself before the class, so I kept it simple on the spot and just set a goal to land a lead uppercut each round (which I think I accomplished). We then moved into defense drills to work on blocking punches because the kru said we were all sucking at that, followed by finishing up with a couple more light sparring rounds. I was honestly pretty checked out mentally this day, so nothing about my performance stands out in particular, but one of the competitive fighters (who I've done more forceful sparring with in the past) warned a sparring partner of mine to be on their game because I'd pick them apart otherwise, and another felt compelled to compliment me on how I did during a drill with them above and beyond the usual sort of "good work" taps that we always give each other. Again, neither of those prove anything in a vacuum, but on review, it's been interesting to get so much praise this week despite how I'm still pretty clearly an outsider in the gym.
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