Workout Recap - Week of June 18, 2023
This was a good week. I got back to sparring, which was nice, though there's a caveat on that, but ultimately, I'm feeling like some things are starting to click into place again and aligning for future development. Can't fairly ask for much more than that.
Monday
Muay Thai class
We worked on doing long sequences in this class, in particular stringing together punches with multiple leg attacks. It was a stamina-drainer, but in a good way, and I felt like I held up better than usual. Interestingly enough, the drill that I found the easiest was simply doing four consecutive round kicks (varying the heights/sides), which seems odd since drilling on sequences ending in doubled kicks is normally exhausting, but aside from stumbling once or twice to keep my balance while recovering from a lead leg kick, I seemed to be flowing and vibing with it. I'll have to keep that in mind to reexamine in the future.
Tuesday
Muay Thai class
Due to the number of new people who joined the gym recently, the kru decided to use this class to work on holding pads, so the drills were mostly just doing the same strike with each side without much extra complication. I was working with one of the competitive fighters, though, and they wanted to spice it up some more, so we mixed in some reaction training by adding randomness in which side we'd hold for. They also helped me refine my form on a couple of techniques by making me get more hip involvement, and I happened to return the favor by pointing out when they were being sloppy about returning to their guard after punching, so it felt like a very productive class despite the simplicity of the drills.
Wednesday
Muay Thai class
Well, I hadn't planned on it, but I did a double-length class on accident because we were just working on boxing stuff and the kru decided not to take the usual break for some calisthenics at the end of the Muay Thai class (presumably since there was only one person who had reserved for the boxing class). Despite the unexpected workload, though, I held up well and was still hitting with nice impact (by my standards) in the final drills. Unfortunately, I got clipped on my left pinky finger at one point when my partner missed the target mitt, but while it's a bit sore and swollen, I don't think it's significant enough to hold me back from continuing my training as usual.
Thursday
Muay Thai class
The order of the day was head-to-head defense drills, and I was quite happy with that since it felt like it'd been a while since I've been in one of those classes. We mostly did impact conditioning for the legs and body, which is a fancy way of saying take we practiced getting beat on, but I'm fine with that; that's an important thing to do, and being somewhat hyposensitive makes it relatively easy for me to endure. I got an unusual number of compliments, too, which seemed odd since I didn't feel like I was doing anything special, but I guess my partners weren't used to a smaller person who'd take their punishment without complaint and push the pace in returning fire.
Friday
Muay Thai sparring
I'd wanted to improve on how I did in my previous sparring, so my goals this time were to land at least four clean low kicks per kickboxing round and to do at least one countershot per round to interrupt my partner's offense. The first was easy enough; I was keyed in on throwing out kicks after every two or three punches, and I'd keep repeating them if my partner was just taking them without blocking or returning anything, so I wouldn't be surprised if I'd more than doubled that target number. The second also went well to start, but it hit a snag when the kru got so upset with what some people were doing that she had everyone tone it down to just combo-for-combo exchanges instead of full sparring (I think I'm safe from the criticism about that, since the only time she called me out was to praise me for keeping the offense on someone who'd shelled up, though it's unclear to me how much was for doing that and how much was just for not being afraid to engage with a much better and larger partner who usually productively bullies me). Still, I did achieve it for the time that I could, and I wasn't one of the multiple people who left with a bloodied nose, so all in all, it was an encouraging session for me.
