Workout Recap - Week of October 6, 2024
Another week of incremental improvements. Lately, I've been conscious of tensing and relaxing my hands while punching. It's something that I had some sense for already, after training for a bit over two years now, but I want to focus on getting it to be more automatic.
Monday
Muay Thai class
This was primarily a boxing-focused class, with a bit of kicking on about half of the drills, possibly because there was a long-time boxer who was doing Muay Thai for the first time this day. I had sparred with them in the past (though I don't think they recognized me), so I expected the skill disparity between their punches and kicks when I partnered up with them. They had some concerns about training without shoes for the first time, and of course their kicking form was not good, but general comfort with things like footwork and adjusting spacing seemed to serve them well, so I hope they'll stick with it.
Tuesday
Muay Thai class
The kru was seemingly distracted with life events this day, so we had a competitive fighter take over as guest coach for the class. As usually happens when that's the case, we did some stuff that was different from typical. This time, that meant doing lots of long sequences, but each of them were sensible and intuitive even if the flows weren't what I was used to. It ended up being a fun stamina test, and while I was admittedly running on fumes by the end, it still sounded like I cracked in the last hard kick of the class, so I think that reflects well on my development.
Wednesday
Muay Thai class
There was unusually high attendance for this class, so the kru decided to mix things up by having us do a big drill station gauntlet rotation. I usually like going all-out at each station for those to make myself push through fatigue, but I had to hold back some power on a couple of the early spots this time because my front kicks and knee strikes were knocking my partners back too much. I still managed to exhaust myself by the last couple, though I seemed to still be getting enough impact from efficient body mechanics to get a reaction from the padholders, so I'll take that as a win. Besides, the little break between doing that and capping things off with a bunch of repeated round kicks was enough for me to recharge and rip into them, which I'm taking as a good sign for my recovery ability.
Thursday
Muay Thai class
This was a good stamina-grinder class. We opened up working on doubled round kicks from each side, and then went into a handful of punch sequences finishing with a kick. It was fundamental stuff, but as ever, I like that. As a bit of a personal highlight, during the calisthenic finisher, the kru tried to shame one of the competitive fighters for slacking while I was apparently pumping out reps as if I was in a P90X commercial, and as silly as it may sound, that actually felt like a really cool compliment (admittedly, it might've helped when another fighter chimed in afterwards that I was secretly an absolute terror despite not competing because I seemed to be constantly training and ready to rock with anybody).
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