Workout Recap - Week of September 25, 2022
'Twas a bit of a cursed month. When I started training, I'd had it as a soft goal to get into open sparring before the end of September, and I was looking forward to meeting that target this month, but then there was the Carnage seminar, and then my monthly medical skip, and then last week's depression, and fortunately the kru got sick and had to cancel that this week, so it didn't happen. Disappointing, but I can take some solace in knowing that I would've gone, had it been on, and I'll just have to make up for it at the next opportunity that I get.
Aside from that, though, I felt like I made some nice, foundational improvements this week. I'll be skipping Wednesday's class this coming week, but for now, I can enjoy what I've accomplished.
Monday
Muay Thai solo practice
Classes were cancelled due to the kru being sick, so I went in to beat up the heavy bag by myself. In experimenting with some technical details, I discovered at least part of why my left round kicks feel inconsistent is that I'm not good at getting some initial pivot with my right foot in order to facilitate turning my hips into the kick, so that'll be a point of emphasis in my mind until it becomes more automatic. I also took the time to do more gloveless and also bare-knuckle punching on the bag than usual (and with more force than usual) to check my knuckle and wrist alignment. It felt good on my straight punches, but I could clean it up on my hooks (ended up scraping a second knuckle due to poor initial contact). Another detail to focus on cleaning up.
Tuesday
Muay Thai class
There was plenty of work with kicks and knees today, with some emphasis on stringing together multiple leg-based strikes. That gave me a good opportunity to focus on improving my plant leg placement for my left round kicks, and it seemed to pay off with some solid cracks on the pads, plus I just generally felt better about having good shin alignment at the moment of impact. It's not nearly where I want it to be yet, but all progress is welcome. Unfortunately, I also managed to jam a toe while packing up my stuff at the end of class from stumbling over a loose spot in the floor mats, which seemed to give me a minor sprain, but I don't think it's bad enough to be a problem going forward.
Wednesday
Muay Thai class
My toe felt bad enough that I kept it taped to its neighbor for most of the day and did any plank-position exercises with a duck-footed stance, but I took the tape off before class and got through everything without any notable pain, so I'm feeling good about it just being a matter of discomfort tolerance. We did a lot of practice with shin checking and countering, and my control on my simulated round kicks was good enough to swing out with reasonable speed but pull short of contact, which was great to see (since I have had one or two instances of clashing shins accidentally in the past on similar drills). I think it's important to keep aware of those improvements, not only to help with keeping motivated to train more but also to cross-pollinate gains into other techniques (e.g. I should be able to do better fake round kicks now, too).
Thursday
Muay Thai class
More leg defense and countering drills together, though focusing on evasion rather than checking. I dare say that, despite my complaints about my left round kicks in general, I have been developing a nice counter kick after drop-stepping away from a leg kick (regular readers, if they exist, might recall that I had mentioned doing this successfully in a light sparring session a couple of week ago, so it's a tactic I was fond of already), especially in terms of whipping it out quickly; I was having to slow down for my padholder's safety and still kept firing back noticeably faster than either of my partners. Admittedly, it's not the most powerful kick, but I'd say it still gets around 80-90% of the impact that my regular switch kick does, so that should still be good enough to be respected, especially if I'm mostly using that to crack someone from behind.
Friday
Muay Thai solo practice
Classes were cancelled again today so that the kru could focus more on her recovery, so it was back to the heavy bag for me. I really wanted to focus on working my legs, so I warmed up with a few weighted pistol squats (using a 20-pound medicine ball, so that it'd present some challenge without being at my limits) and then got to cracking away. I put on shin guards after about 10 minutes so that I could ignore the soreness while juggling the bag with round kicks, but then I took them off after about another 10 minutes to juggle the bag with knee strikes, and that proved to be time enough for my brain to reset the baseline for its pain receptors, because I kept kicking hard for about another 20 minutes after that without the shin guards. I was bruised up pretty noticeably by the end of it all, but I was also feeling good that I had taken some strides forward compared to Monday, so any little pain is just weakness leaving my body.
