Workout Recap - Week of October 1, 2023
Fate conspires again, as my plans to return to sparring this week were dashed by an unwelcome surprise on Thursday night. Nothing too serious, but the annoyance is mounting.
Monday
Muay Thai class
This was a simple class, especially so since we were focusing on front kicks, which I'd say are the simplest leg technique after a basic knee strike. That said, something I've had issues with in the past is inconsistency about getting my hips involved on my lead leg front kicks, and I did feel like I was doing better with that on this day. All the kicking took its tool, as I could see my legs shaking during the last thirty seconds or so of the three-minute wall squat we did to finish things off, so while I did manage to hold on through it, there's something I can work on improving for the future.
Tuesday
Muay Thai class
We did head-to-head defense drills this day, focusing primarily on boxing defense but with the occasional kick mixed in. As usual, I was pushing the pace even while working with the competitive fighters. Something new to my perception this time is that I seemed to be consistently knocking some of the larger people backward when they blocked my strikes, though it's hard for me to judge how much of that is real and how much is them just playing along. Nevertheless, it was a good and fun class overall.
Wednesday
Muay Thai class
This class focused on round kick endurance, doing either a few punches into kicks or simply repeated kicks. It felt like I had very good snap on my form to start out, though I did notice that wear down as I got fatigued over the course of the class. In an unusual move, we finished up with a couple rounds of partnered work on the heavy bags. I felt down on myself after the first of those, but after changing positions for the second, I perked up since it seemed like the issues I'd felt were mostly from the awkwardness of needing to leave space for the person working on the next bag over.
Thursday
Muay Thai class
This was a body shot day, working on front kicks, round kicks, and body hooks from both sides. Shifting my partner around with my punches through their belly pad seemed to back up my experience from Tuesday, which was reassuring. There was one round where we were drilling rear round kick > lead round kick where I had some awkwardness, but not in the usual way; I was fine when I was deciding whether to switch step or step out between the kicks on intuition, but when I'd purposefully try doing the other after feeling like I was in a rut of just doing one, it took me one or two repetitions to get comfortable again. I think that's a good problem to have, but I do still want to get to the point when I can do either transition smoothly at any time. In any case, at the class's end, my partner complimented me on making everything look easy, which I took as a sign that my general coordination has been getting better. Satisfying to hear, as someone who's often a clumsy fool.
