Workout Recap - Week of April 21, 2024
I've had Things Happening lately, so this training has been a welcome reprieve from that chaos.
Monday
Muay Thai class
This was a stamina-testing padwork burnout class, featuring several long sequences with repeated same-side strikes just to be extra spicy. I was making a point of keeping my abs flexed hard while striking to help ingrain that habit, which probably made me a little slower going between hits, but my power on impact still felt good, so it should just be a matter of practicing keeping the tension there (and in the appropriate fist/foot/etc.) while keeping the rest of my body relaxed and whippy. I also almost stepped on a human baby, but fortunately, years of living with cats gave me the reflexes to feel something underfoot and shift my weight away immediately, so no harm done.
Tuesday
Muay Thai class
This class was a return to fundamental offense practice. I felt a bit more comfortable with maintaining my abdominal tightness this time, though it might've helped that I was dialing back my power on about half of my rounds since one of my padwork partners was a child (one who's been training longer than I have and who has competed, so I didn't go as light as I would with newbies, but I still held back some, especially on my front kicks). Unfortunately, the child and our mutual third partner wasted a lot of time screwing around, so that was annoying, but I did what I could with the time I had. I also dropped myself by losing my balance on a lead leg round kick to head-level, but I'm taking it as a win that that happened only once, since I feel like I'm terrible at keeping my footing with those in padwork (for some reason, it's less of a problem when I'm kicking an actual person).
Wednesday
Muay Thai class
This was a head-to-head day. We started out with some light sparring, for which I met my goals in the first few rounds; doing a mid-offense feint and then punishing my partner's reaction at least once per round, and doing an immediate counter lead hook after blocking a hook on my rear side at least twice per round; and then decided on a whim to try fighting with a rangy keep-away, harass-and-counter style similar to Johnathan Haggerty. That was out of my comfort zone, even without copying his constant bouncing and stance-switching, but the point of sparring is to experiment and learn, plus I was pleased with myself at one point for stance-switching and then landing an immediate front kick with my now-rear leg to my partner's liver when they tried to rush in. We did some defense drills after that, followed my another couple rounds of light sparring, where I kept up trying to fight like Haggerty. Finally, for a change of pace, with finished with a couple rounds of taking turns using a partner's body as weight resistance, which kind of sucked for me because (a) I'm small, (b) my partner probably outweighed me by at least 20%, and (c) I smacked my head into a metal post doing some push ups in the first round, but I still managed to carry them and do two sets of ten partial squats with them on my back, so that was still something.
Thursday
Muay Thai class
This was a day for extended offense in padwork. It was a good challenge to maintain balance, control, and intensity as the class went on, though there was nothing particularly special about this class otherwise. That said, it was perhaps notable for being the first class I can recall where someone hurt themselves from kicking an elbow that wasn't mine. Is this a meaningless detail? Yes, but considering I have had partners hurt themselves by doing that with me twice before, it was nice to break the streak.
