Workout Recap - Week of October 2, 2022
On the plus side, the plans that I'd had for Wednesday got deferred, so I was able to go to class every weekday. This also meant that I was (finally) able to go to an open sparring class, which was a wonderful experience. I intend to keep doing that regularly going forward, though not this week since I'll be out for medical reasons on Thursday and Friday, and with Monday being a statutory holiday as well, it's going to be a bit of a mess. I'll find a way to get through it, though, and this should be the last Thursday where this issue comes up (since I'll be switching to different treatments after this week), so I just have to look at it as one step back to take two steps forward in the future.
Monday
Muay Thai class
It's a testament to the general quality of the students at my gym that this was the first class where it felt like I had a bad partner, as in someone who was dangerous to train with because they were inconsistent about remembering the drills and lacked control. As a result, I ended up taking a kick on my mandible joint (when I'd been holding the pads for a kick to the ribs). Fortunately, there was no real harm done, and at least I took it on the side of my head instead of on the front. Frankly, I was just glad to get through the class without an injury.
Tuesday
Muay Thai class
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; I was able to work with my favorite pad-holder again, but we were also in a triad with the bad partner from yesterday. At least there were no notable accidents this time around, which was an improvement, but it was an effort not to react too much to the person's wild swings when we were supposed to be practicing rear overhand punches. After the kru stepped in to correct them once, I felt empowered to remind them about points of form when they reverted back to looking like they were pitching a baseball, which seemed to help some. The person seems to have some background in other martial arts, since they do enough sensible things to not seem like they're just inexperienced (which I say from being on the other side of that scenario, like needing the kru to remind me to pivot more on my round kicks despite that having been something I was specifically focusing on in my solo sessions last week), but I'm not sure if that makes things better or worse.
Wednesday
Muay Thai class
I was dealing with a weakened grasp on reality this day, which showed in my training performance, since I kept messing up basic things that I should know like using hip thrust to power a teep or needing to rechamber quickly after a round kick. I was glad that my pad-holder for the class wasn't letting me get away with them, though, and that I mostly kept things together (aside from a frustrated "I'm trying" after getting reminded about the same point two or three times during a single round). If I ever need to use the skills I'm developing for real, the person trying to kill me isn't going to reschedule because I'm having an off day, so I need to get good enough to still be effective when I'm like that.
Thursday
Muay Thai class
It was pure legs today (we didn't need our gloves at all), which was an interesting change of pace. My partner complimented my consistent energy output after a couple rounds of drills, and while I brushed it off initially as being a consistent potato, I revised that immediately to thank them for the compliment and say that I know I need to keep working on improving the actual effectiveness of my techniques. That said, I was getting much better hip pop on my teeps and knees this time around than in any previous class, which felt like a big improvement.
Friday
Muay Thai sparring
All in all, this was a successful session. I achieved all of my personal goals (establish sequence patterns in the first part of each round that I could change up to manipulate my partner's natural pattern recognition later on, block at least one punch with an elbow each round, and be active whenever I happened to get into a clinch), and while I'm certainly aware that the more experienced people (i.e. basically everyone else) would've been capable of shutting me down if they weren't being good training partners, I can also take a little extra win in landing a couple of good shots each round (with control to not hurt them, of course) despite their defenses being much better than my offense in general. I even got complimented by the kru in front of everyone for keeping both my effort and my hands up when there were people sitting out random rounds or messing around with no-guard fanciness; it wasn't necessary, since obviously her general statements won't apply to literally everyone, but with how hard I am on myself, it was nice to hear that I was doing something well. That said, there's a lot that I can improve on, so my goals for my next sparring session will be to keep offensive pressure on after a kick or knee (since I was tending to just disengage and hand over any momentum) and to focus on breathing while on defense (since there were some times where I'd hold my breath under pressure and then end up winded).
