Workout Recap - Week of August 14, 2022
The morale high continues, as I managed to go in Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday and felt good enough to have gone again if it hadn't been for other circumstances. Honestly, this Thursday was probably the first day since I started training that I didn't feel like I had even a slight limp. Now, granted, it helps that I've been monitoring my power (particularly on kicks) to limit how much I'm damaging myself, but I'm feeling very good about how my body's adapting after about a month of training, especially given that I'm one of the older students.
In any event, three classes per week feels like an easy baseline to maintain, so next up is aiming for four, and also talking with the kru about what I should do to work towards being ready for sparring.
Monday
Muay Thai class
This was yet another fun class, as we got to work in a good bit of pulling and pushing while doing knee strikes. Sure, it started out a bit rough because someone stank up the gym with their odious equipment, but once the placed aired out a bit (and the others I was working with found an area that didn't seem quite so exposed to the smell), it was easy to get beyond that. The kru also said that I didn't stink, which I suppose was nice, though I would've preferred to hear that about my technique rather than literal odor (of course, realistically, my technique does stink, but there's no simple solution in a can to fix that).
Tuesday
Muay Thai class
More knees and elbows today, so of course I had a good time with that. I happened to watch a handful of technical videos from some former/current professional fighters (namely Joe Valtellini, Gabriel Varga, and Shane Fazen) to brush up on good body mechanics for knee strikes during the day because of the previous class, so this was a good opportunity to put them into practice, and I would say that I did so adequately for my experience/skill level. I was pumping my same-side arm down more than probably should while doing a cross-face elbow guard, but all in all, it's probably still better than my lead leg round kicks (I've always struggled with being consistent about turning over my hips on those, which probably made my lead leg low kicks to finish the class rather pathetic, but of course one of the classic issues with being a new student in a martial arts class is you're always going to have an experience disadvantage until someone else joins, so it's hard to feel how much you're improving).
Wednesday
Muay Thai class
There weren't many students today, so we did some more bag work and mass partner rotation drills than typical. We also did a lot of teeps, which was great for me personally because that's something I can do with a lot of power thanks to all of my pistol squats and bridges (plus not needing to protect my insteps from impact meant I was comfortable putting some leg strength into those, too), so I was sending the heavy bag swinging into the wall for most of the interval where we were just doing alternating teeps. Now, sure, my partner didn't appreciate that I aimed for the lower of the stacked Thai pads on my first go against a person (in my defense, I was thinking of it as targeting the bladder like Buakaw did to pretty much dominate Nicky Holzken with a single technique in their K-1 match), but I apologized and aimed for the upper pad after that, and I won't deny that it felt good to consistently send my pad holder reeling a couple steps after each kick. Finishing the class by adding a Superman punch after the rear teep was less interesting to me, but it's good to have some understanding of the technique to help protect myself in case someone tries to use it on me.
Saturday
Type: Pass/Fail
Uneven Pull Ups - 1 set of 9, each side (pass)
Stand-to-stand Bridges, one wall touch on the way up - 1 set of 8 (pass)
Pistol Squats - 1 set of 8, each side (pass)
Hanging V-raises - 1 set of 10 (pass)
Bonus: 10 breath isometric archer flex hangs
Only one set for time constraint reasons, but it felt good. Well, with a caveat that my left shoulder is still not entirely comfortable at times (such as during the flex hang bonus, in today's case), but it has been gradually improving ever since it became noticeably sticky in July, so I'm still feeling alright about working through it.
