Workout Recap - Week of September 24, 2023

Does anyone even read these? I don't know, and frankly, it doesn't matter, since I do them for myself first and foremost.

Anyway, no sparring again for me this week, because my brain wasn't in the right space on Friday for me to feel like I could do it safely and productively. Alas, but all I can really do is hope for things to work out better this week.

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Monday

Muay Thai class

This was a pretty basic class, with a slight emphasis on kick endurance, if I had to call out a focus. I got to partner with one of the competitive fighters who I hadn't worked with much before outside of some head-to-head drills, and they complimented me on my padholding. I'm not sure if they really meant it (they talked a lot), but taken at face value, it was nice to hear since I have actually put a lot of effort into learning how to do that. I'm aware that I'm one of the smallest participants in the adult classes, so I had researched a fair bit on how to hold for larger people without them needing to hold back on their power, and then I backed that up with over a year of practical experience doing so at this point. It's a point of accomplishment for me to not ask the heavyweights I sometimes partner up with to go easy.

Tuesday

Muay Thai class

This class was a grind, with lots of punches and lots of kicks. It was also the first class in quite some time where we did the drill station rotation gauntlet, and I'll admit that I was disappointed with myself for being exhausted by the time I got to the last station. That said, I did recover well enough to hold up through two straight subsequent rounds of punches and sprawls; it was during continuous repeated round kicks after that when I finally ran out of steam, and all in all, that felt like an acceptable performance in total. Plus I seemed to keep things going better than either of the competitive fighters that I was next to for the calisthenics to finish off the class, so that's a partial win of its own, too.

Wednesday

Muay Thai class

It seems like this was a week for some throwbacks, because this was the first purely boxing class that I've had in a while. Funnily enough, that was something I'd been hoping wouldn't be the case during the day because I'd had some soreness in my left shoulder in the morning, but I got through it fine and felt good afterward. Admittedly, it felt like my uppercuts were a bit weak in flow when we were stringing a few of them together, but my straight and hook punches were doing well. I even toned down the power on my hooks at one point because they were turning my padholder's whole torso on contact when I was going hard, so I think it's reasonable to say that I was getting good impact with them.

Thursday

Muay Thai class

It was another boxing class today, albeit with some elbow strikes mixed in as well. There were a lot of newbies, so we kept things fairly basic, even having a couple rounds that were just working on one technique. Despite being partnered with someone who wasn't a good padholder yet (they tended to be very stationary and limp), I was getting some satisfying cracks on all on my strikes, which gave me a little confidence boost; in particular, the meaty hits I was getting during our final drill of lead hook>rear straight>lead hook despite the fatigue from the rest of the class made me feel like my form had to be getting better. I took it all as a good set of signs for how much I've improved.