Workout Recap - Week of October 29, 2023
This post is delayed due to an atypically busy weekend, including another Friday surprise that kept me out of sparring. I'm annoyed at that, but on the plus side, the competitive fighter who had partnered with me all the way back in my first class at the gym returned this week after a long break, and they're someone who's right around my size, so that's been good inspiration of what my potential might be as I keep improving.
Monday
Muay Thai class
Today's class focused on padwork with some defense and countering. It felt like I was constantly on the verge of being tired, but my stamina kept holding out well enough to last until the round's end, so I'm taking that as a good sign that I'm further developing my skill at being a relentless pitbull. Working with someone who was up for peppering in some extra defense checks between drill reps is something I always enjoy, and I even got a compliment from the kru at one point for my distance management while doing rear straight punch>lead hook the body>rear round kick to the body. I felt good about how I did overall, all things considered.
Tuesday
Muay Thai class
This was another padwork class, though it focused on just basic offensive sequences. Perhaps it was the low ambient noise level due to the low attendance on this day, but I seemed to be cracking into the pads somewhat better than usual, particularly on my head-level round kicks with either leg. Other than that, it felt like an unremarkable but good class.
Wednesday
Muay Thai class
In a break from the recent trend, this was the third day in a row of just padwork this week, though in this case it made sense since there was a new student in the class. The competitive fighter who I'd partnered with when I first started here returned this day and worked in a trio with me and another (newer) person. It was good to have someone relatively high-level to work with again for a whole class, since we usually rotate partners during head-to-head drills and I happen to have not partnered with one of the better competitive fighters for a padwork class in a while. We finished up with cranking out repeated low kicks, which has become a fun burn-out for me ever since I've started getting consistent at getting a satisfying boom from hitting the kick shield.
Thursday
Muay Thai class
This class ended up being an extra-long one for me since I didn't realize that the kru extended it into the typical boxing class timeslot due to nobody showing up for that. We did padwork for the regular Muay Thai class's time and then went into head-to-head drills for the extension. My padwork partner said that I was tending to come in wide on my hook punches, and I felt the difference as soon as I started being mindful about that, so that's something I'll need to work on building up to become automatic. Interestingly, during the head-to-head drills, two different competitive fighters each apologized for going too hard at one point (which I honestly didn't feel the difference), the latter of whom then joked that they knew an uptick in intensity was coming in my return (which I honestly didn't try to do). I suppose the lesson I can take away from that is my punch defense frames tend to be well-aligned enough that I still feel entirely comfortable even when it outwardly seems like I'm being hit hard? Really, it's all probably more a symptom of hyposensitivity than anything about my skill level.
