Workout Recap - Week of April 9, 2023
This was not a great week for me, for personal reasons. I still felt like I made progress, but most of it passed in a haze, in all honesty.
Monday
BJJ class
The coach asked if there was anything either I or the other two trainees wanted to work on at the start, and remembering what happened in my sparring the previous Monday, I asked to do mount escapes. I got to partner with the coach for this class, which was useful for getting tips about some finer points that I would've likely missed out on otherwise (like the ideal positioning for my forearm frames). Getting to be his demonstration dummy between drills also helped to make up for needing to take some breaks during the drills themselves for him to supervise the other pair. We did some round robin positional wrestling finish, which had an awkward moment when one of them seemingly got triggered while I was on top and asked to stop, but ultimately, I believe everyone is free to train or not with whoever they want without needing to explain why, so I obliged without question.
Tuesday
Muay Thai class
The weather was unseasonably hot for this time of year, so the gym was a hot box even with the back doors open, and that seemed to sap my stamina greatly. We were doing pretty simple drills, but I still had to take a few breaks in the later rounds to catch my breath. Frankly, I don't think it was just the weather, though (my grappling classes don't feel as taxing overall as my Muay Thai classes do), so building up my stamina again will be another benefit once I resume focusing on Muay Thai in about a month. In any case, at least I was able to finish strong on doing pyramid leg kicks (10 on one leg, 10 on the other, 9 on the first leg, 9 on the other, 8 on the first leg, etc.), so while my total stamina may be down a bit, my recovery seems to remain solid.
Wednesday
BJJ class
This class continued worked on positional control and flow, starting with takedowns into side control and then defenses and counters from there. At the end, I got to do a sparring round with a BJJ blue belt and another with the coach, which I took as a good opportunity to measure my progress through the eight or so weeks I've been training here. There were a couple of takedown attempts where I was sloppy about not getting low/deep enough and was threatened with guillotine chokes, but I got my posture up quickly enough to defend both comfortably. Granted that the coach was obviously taking things easy to keep it fun/competitive (and I wouldn't be surprised if the other person was as well), and I spent most of both rounds in worse position, but I scrapped well enough to avoid getting threatened with any other submissions and did my best to make them work to improve their position, which is probably the best that I could realistically expect at my current experience level. The blue belt even complimented afterwards on doing well at pinning them and maintaining side control when I got to that position, so even though I wasn't able to finish the arm triangle that I was fishing for there, I was cool with my performance overall.
Thursday
Muay Thai class
This was a similar class overall to Tuesday, including a repeat of the heat and finishing strong with pyramid leg kicks. There was a lead teep>rear knee sequence that took me a while to get comfortable with, in part since the footwork had to be modified based on how much space was opened up by the teep, but I think I started getting the hang of it eventually. Unremarkable in the main, but this is the sort of class that I need to grind through to get fine details cleaned up and locked in.
Friday
MMA class
Interesting class today, working on driving an opponent back to the wall and either taking them down or defending takedown attempts from there. I was partnered up with the skilled wrestler that I've mentioned a few times before, and I feel like I was able to have a little more success when we turned up to full resistance; I was still getting taken down more often than not, admittedly, but it was taking a little longer, and there were some times when I was able to reverse positions enough to go on the offensive myself. I also almost punched the coach in the face during a demonstration; he told me to throw a jab at him, and while I had meant to be a little lazy with it, my muscle memory didn't adjust for not wearing 16-ounce gloves and whipped it out faster than intended, but fortunately, my brain caught up in time to over-rotate my torso and drive it wide.
