Workout Recap - Week of November 5, 2023
At this point, I should probably only consider it notable when I actually make it to sparring, at least until that becomes the norm again. Anyway, I seemed to get a couple of minor nagging dings during this week, but they've recovered well enough over the weekend that I don't expect them to be a problem going forward.
Monday
Muay Thai class
This was a head-to-head drill day, focusing on kick defense, with a mix of checks and catches. I was picked to help demonstrate the drills with one of the competitive fighters, though I'm not how much of that was a vote of confidence from the kru in understanding what she would want me to do versus making the newer people feel less bad about sucking because I remain terrible at sweeping after catching a round kick. Honestly, either way, that's still a skill that I don't really care about being bad at, so I was fine with using those drills as an excuse to practice hitting the ground and getting right back up.
Tuesday
Muay Thai class
We drilled on basics in padwork this day. My lead leg round kicks were a little awkward to start out, for some reason, but I got into the flow of them after a while, so I'm chalking it up to a minor glitch in my brain. On a better note, I was feeling particularly spicy with my rear straight punches. In a rare event, we finished up with footwork drills. I don't think I had done any of them before at this gym (I did do some of them a few times at the other gym), but despite my usual clumsiness, I actually felt quite comfortable with them. Curious.
Wednesday
Muay Thai class
This was a stamina-burner class of sequences involving multiple kicks. I feel like I lasted through the individual rounds pretty well, though I was running out of steam overall towards the end when we were just banging out low kicks. That said, I did seem to get something of a second wind right at the end when we did front kick to low kick transitions, so maybe it was more of a psychological block than a physical one.
Thursday
Muay Thai class
We focused on knee strikes for this class, with a little elbow worked mixed in, so I was bound to have a good time with it. It remains impressive to me how much impact those strikes can all have, even with just my small body powering them. Conversely, it's also impressive to me how much poor technique can waste the advantages expected from a larger body. That's all a fancy way of saying that I was working with someone larger (as usual), but I was knocking them back regularly when they were holding the pads while tending to stand my ground without much trouble when I was holding. Since I'm likely to miss a few more sparring classes due to some personal matters, classes like these are a good reminder that I can still improve by focusing on honing my technique, even if it'll be a little time before I get to test it in a live environment.
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