Workout Recap - Week of May 11, 2025

Nobody should be trusted to have your best interests in mind without having done something to demonstrate that's the case.

---

Monday

Muay Thai class (x2)

The guest kru from a couple of weeks ago took over teaching the first class this day. As before, he had a somewhat different approach from what we usually do, which was a good chance to learn from the benefit of a different perspective. He was also a lot more vocal about micromanaging stuff in a way that came across to me as imposing his approaches onto matters of personal preference, which I didn't enjoy. Hopefully the latter doesn't become a recurring issue if he continues to teach here, because it did really grate on me. In any case, the second class was back to the usual Monday stamina-building grind. I held up well enough in padwork to still be visibly rocking my partner back with my power strikes, though I was dead-ass exhausted by the end. That's the sort of work I enjoy.

Tuesday

Muay Thai class

This was a head-to-head defense day, keeping up the recent trend of doing that on Tuesdays. Amusingly, the kru started out by telling everyone to not mind the previous day's guest kru's nitpicking because she understands that having your own personal style that works well for you is more important than adhering to some mythical "ideal", as long as it's actually working. That aside, we did some practice on slipping and countering, followed by extending the counters. It wasn't anything fancy, but it was practice and effective stuff, so that's always a winning trade in my mind. Plus I didn't seem to hurt anyone accidentally this time, so that's a bonus.

Wednesday

Muay Thai class (x2)

The first class was run by the guest kru again this day. We did a lot of knees and elbows, which was about the only positive I had to say because he was once again up to nitpicking stuff for no apparent meaningful reason, including giving me contradictory advice this time. Well, whatever, some people need to show off that they have value and expose their actual truth in the process. At least the second class was more head-to-head drills. One of the gym's best competitive fighters gave me some praise after we did a round in which I seemed to wear them down, which I don't trust entirely since the person is a talker, but it is a fact that I was returning faster overall for that round than they were, so maybe there was some truth to it.

Thursday

Muay Thai class

This class focused on padwork for catching and countering round kicks. It was fun, especially since we did the drills without shin guards, so catching the kick brought an immediate point of negative feedback if the defender didn't take a step to reduce its power. I wasn't trying to put any power into my kicks, since that wasn't necessary for the drill to make sense (and I was partnered with a newer person who was doing the typical new person thing of trying to go too fast for their skill level instead of slowing things down to learn correctly), but they still ended up asking me to kick lighter since it allegedly felt like they were getting stabbed every time my shin tapped their ribs. I accommodated, of course, along with reminding them about taking the step and also suggesting to flex their lats to help take the impact on muscle instead of bone. Trying to teach all that was a good set of reminders for me to make sure I was doing it all, too.