Sunday - Did some FMA learnin' . Practiced doublestick with gunting, and different types of return strikes. I now have an aluminum training knife, so we practices some drills with stick and knife. Got wacked on one of my knuckles pretty hard though, still hurts a bit. Overall, it was great stuff. I did a quick go through of some Kung Fu forms later in the day as well. Monday - MT class. Pad drills and conditioning. Fun class - but my legs were really sore today from some of the conditioning we did. Focused on spinning backfists a lot, which we haven't really worked there a lot before. Tuesday (today) - Went to KF school and did the basic kickboxing class - concentrated on shovel hooks, Overhand - they call it a kup, but in this class it is very boxing like - not a CMA swing punch. Also various variations on uppercut and hook combos. Then practiced sidesteping and side kicking and sidestepping and round kicking. Then I did the more advanced kickboxing class. Slipping drills, concentration on blocking close up punches, etc. Did some sparring. Some good, some bad. One time was paired up with a guy about 6" taller than me (I'm 5'8") and felt pretty overmatched. I felt like I threw some decent kicks - but my hands were crap tonight. A lot of the time sparring at this school can be very hand oriented, a lot of guys don't kick much at all. I really like to kick - and will try it every chance - even if it is just a kick to a leg. I think I'd probably do much better if I just kept hitting people in the face and not so much setting up kicks - but honestly the kicking is a big part of what makes this fun.
Friday did MT and was a great class. Came out of it feeling really good. Jammed my left thumb pretty bad though (doing warmup stretching of all things). Today (Sat), woke up with many pains. My lower back hurts, my left shoulder hurts where I fell badly from a throw years ago, my feet hurt, one of my knees, my left hand hurts from jammed thumb for yest, and a couple places from FMA last week. My right wrist hurts from a cyst (don't think this is MA- related). Went to MT and didn't do so great. Was crappy at pad holding even. Felt sorry for my training partner having to put up with me, and I apologized - he was ultra nice about it. I got better as class went on, but overall I still feel pretty sore all over.
Its just as I said to my boys yesterday when they were telling me how sore they were: "If you aren't aching from training from time to time, you're not being trained to the level you're capable of" Their response: "But da, you always hobble around like an old man who'se just be flattened by a lorry!" "I'm being sufficiently challenged"
On Sunday had some FMA instruction. Great practice. Did some knife stuff. Some hubud. With some variations my instructor added there is a ton of things to work on. Gave me some new insight in new ways to drill moves, adding different returns to moves, adding different prefixes to them. On vacation the rest of the week, so no training. But did add quite a bit to my geek cred as I visited the Arecibo space telescope!
Ok, back from vacation - and did MT class on Monday. Was pretty happy in that I wasn't as crappy as last time I went. Lots of pad work and conditioning. Tuesday did kickboxing at the Kung Fu school. Was pretty amazed by an assistant instructor I normally see only doing forms and stuff. He was doing some shadow boxing and was crazy fast. Did lots of pad work, and worked on doing a side kick from close range. I feel like I am getting tired this week (so far) very easily. I guess it is from taking a week off with very little exercise and lots of eating Mfongo.
I have been a slacker for updating this - I have been training, but nothing super interesting and out of the ordinary. This week I did doublestick, stick and dagger, and some JKD combo drills on Sunday. Tuesday I did kickboxing at Kung Fu school, focusing on foot work more than anything else. Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday did Muay Thai class. Did lots of stuff, focusing on combos starting with a cover, lots of conditioning, etc. lost track of everything really, there was a lot. Saturday I plan to take off (will be working, likely), but who knows? Got some new Fairtex gloves (18 Oz) so plan to put them to work next week.
So once again I don't log stuff for a while...I have been training pretty often though. Right now what I want to do is sort of plan out what I want to do in the future that is maybe a bit different than what I am doing right now. any feedback is appreciated. Right now : Muay Thai 3-4 hrs a week, Kickboxing at Kung fu school 1-2 hr a week, Kali/JKD/other stuff 1 hr a week with personal trainer Future plans: The Muay Thai class has everything the kickboxing has and more. The Muay Thai class meets several times a day 6 days a week. So I really don't need the kickboxing. But...I still have 6 months on a contract at the Kung Fu school for the kickboxing, so I can't just quit. Also, I really like a lot of people there, and the school is super cool (it is also very affordable, which helps too). The kickboxing is a small part of what they do there, Kung Fu is their main focus. So what I am thinking is switching from kickboxing there to Kung Fu (which meets many times a day, 6 days a week) and would involve a small extra charge. Or I could do Tai Chi only (no change in cost), which meets a couple hours a week. The Kung Fu is probably about 70% as physically demanding as the Muay Thai is (for me anyways), so I could probably keep the same amount of Muay Thai as now, and do 2-3 hrs of Kung Fu. Or I could do Tai Chi classes there, which is a lot less physically demanding. I could replace the kickboxing with more Muay Thai, and add the Tai Chi on as a "bonus". I'm trying to figure it out. I know this sounds a bit like a math problem, but I have found I have a limit to how much I can train with out being really worn out, and getting injured. I actually took yesterday off, because I felt a little banged up and drained, even though I still wanted to go. I'd like to do 2 hrs of Muay Thai every day, but at this point I know there is no way I can do that. The Kung Fu school is pretty accommodating, and has let me add things, switch around what I am taking there, etc. So I could try a month of this and see how it goes. I could drop in to the kickboxing class and spar some folks there every now and then too. I also want to add some weight training as well. I did a small amount of it last week, and my plan is to maybe do 2 X a week for 30 min or so. I don't plan to change the Kali/JKD personal training - but keep it as is. It may be that this turns into a small class with some other people training at the same time (which would be a lot cheaper). I don't really have a question here, just sort of thinking out loud to figure out my options.
If you keep the MT and add the taiji you'll be doing 'thai chi ' ! . (do yo know what style they teach ? It might fit well.)
They teach the Yang 24 and 48 (Bejing) forms, a sword form ( I guess this is also a Bejing/Yang form as well, but not sure), and a fan form as well. I have learned the 24, but none of the others. I have always thought it would be fun to confuse people by telling them I study Muay Thai, Tai Chi, and Tae Kwon Do all at once. Maybe one day I can do it, and will use it to create the hybrid art of Thai Tai Tae.
Ok, so I am going to try logging again to motivate myself. Since last I logged, I have stopped doing FMA lessions, and am not doing anything at the Kung Fu school. However, I have kept up doing Muay Thai pretty consistently, and have done a few BJJ sessions lately. Today did one Muay Thai class. This was a conditioning one more than a sparring one. Warm up -Jogging, high knee, kick backs and what I think are commonly called "fire hydrant circles", and burpees. Then we partnered up and focused on palms out, high type guard. Worked on controlling partners hand - pushing it down to do an elbow strike. Horizontal elbows, upward elbows - pad holders choice. Pushing both down to do clinch and knee strikes. Drilled doing clinch, 4 knees, and round kick. Did a drill where we did 50 knees in a row from clinch into pads. Did all the above for approx 20 min then switched holding pads with partner. Interesting as not a punch thrown whole session. Did 8 sets of 20 seconds of situps with 10 seconds rest in between. Stretching. Wasn't especially taxing, but happy to be done as weather is icy and bad.
So a week full of ice, snow, etc. that caused my Martial Arts school to be closed messed with my training a few days. I was a slacker for various reasons other days, however. Today I was driving to get my wife tea before going to class, and my car said "need air now, urgent, please do the needful!" or something like that. So I hooked up to handy gas station air pump, and of course my valvestem breaks off and my tire goes instantly flat. Luckily gas station can get get the valvestem delivered and fix. So I leave my car, walk home (luckily not far!) and take my wife's car and still make it to class today. So today, similar to last class I went to. Jogging, high knee, kick back, etc. and shadow boxing for warm up. Teamed up with partner, and alternated squats and push ups, doing 21, 15, 9 of each. With partner and pads- lots of focus on palms out, high type guard. Worked on controlling partners hands to move into elbow strikes, clinch, knee strikes, etc. Drilled teeps round kicks in the above mix as well. Did 3 rounds of sit ups, burpees, and pull ups - with a minute on each - total of 9 minutes .
Since my last log I was only able to make it to class once due to family illness, work, school, and honestly one day me just being lazy. On the one day I was able to make it: Did jogging and various minor warm ups, then partnered up for pad work. Practiced elbow strikes from the palms out, high type guard. Also going in to knee strikes, by pushing a partner hand down and putting an arm behind their back - what my instructors called "snake arm". Then focused on punching combinations, warm up with jab, cross, hook, hook, uppercut, uppercut for a few minutes then into pad holder picking any punching combinations. Then did 100 punches in a row. Back to doing pad holder choice of strikes, this time - punches, knees, elbows, kicks. 100 more punches in a row, 40 kicks - and switch pad holders. Pad holding only notable due to a miscommunication about which combo I called out resulted in me not being ready for a punch, and my forearm bouncing back into my glasses, which smooshed the lens on my eye. I've been whacked by pads and my forearms when holding a few times in the past (usually by really strong round kicks) and it has been no big deal, but this really hurt. It's a good lesson, and teaches me to always be aware of what is happening. Then we did a few sets of different types of situps, and some stretching. All things going well, I hope to get to a lot more classes next week.
Since today I was stuck doing troubleshooting on a con call for work during martial arts class time I decided to try some solo training when I had time off from work. I'm not good at solo training, it is hard for me to motivate myself. I did 20 min of dog walking as a pre-warmup. Then I did some stretching and went through some kali double stick stuff as an additional warmup. I have a wavemaster in my garage so I practiced Muay Thai combinations on in until I had worked up a pretty good sweat. Practiced some side kicks for a while, cause I never practice these in Muay Thai class. Then I ran through the 3 Kung Fu forms I mostly remember. I did a few pushups, situps and squats too but not really anything of note. Better than nothing I guess.
On Monday I did Muay Thai Class: 2 minutes jogging, 1 minute bear crawls, 1 minute high knee runs, 1 minute "side to side" run (imagine moving sideways in a wrestling stance). then 21 pushups, 21 situps, then 15 each, then 9 Concentrated on the high palm out type guard (the school I go to picks a certain thing to concentrate on each month, and this month this is it). We did pad holders choice of knee strikes, elbows, punches, round kicks, knees from this guard. Every so often the instructor would have us do something like 10 elbows in a row each arm, 10 knees, 20 round kicks, etc. We also did a couple breaks where we did 100 straight punches. By the end of doing this, and holding pads for my partner I could barely hold up my arms. The we did one minute of pushups, one minute situps, one minute pullups. On Wednesday I did Muay Thai class: We practiced 3 move combos on wavemasters for a few minutes as a warmup. Then did various drills where we fight for clinch, then did it with resistance. Practiced slapping knees from clinch for a while as well. Then drilled various spinning elbow strikes. then I did a BJJ class: I am a BJJ newb so bear with me if my terminology is off. Spent some time stretching out necks, bridging, etc. We practiced braking out of a half guard and getting to side control while being on top. Then we practiced a sweep from half guard from the bottom. Some variations on these 2 things involving different ways to do things that I didn't write down so can't explain. Practiced with different partners rotated around. Then we rolled a while switching partners every 3 minutes. I don't really know BJJ yet, so I'm mostly useless at it. I wrestled in high school, but that was almost 30 years ago so I don't have hardly anything from that either. I can't do a submission on anyone, but I am getting better on wiggling out of submissions (or people are taking it easier on me). One guy there got a triangle choke on me a few weeks back - and afterwards I read up on them and watched a few videos, and so when he tried it again in this class I knew enough to screw it up so he couldn't get it.
So today I did some Muay Thai: started with trading off 4 knees from clinch with partner. Then did some jumping knee strikes - traded off doing 2 or 3 each with partner doing straight up knee strikes - then doing jumping side knee strikes. Then we got in groups of 3, and traded off 3 then 5 strike combos with partner while the other partner drilled on a wavemaster alternating who was on the wavemaster every couple of minutes. Then we did 2 punch, 1 kick, 2 punch , 1 kick combos while 3 partner did pushups. Also did trade offs of combos with knee and elbow strikes as well.
So last week I forgot to log. Did Muay Thai a couple of days. One of those days had a warm up that involved box jumps onto a 26" box as part of it. We also did superman style elbow strikes and jumping knee strikes. My legs were sore for days after that (mainly from box jumps). This week: Tuesday - Muay Thai - I was a little late so missed part of the warmup. What I did get in on involved pushups, holding plank position, and burpees. We practiced 4 short combos over and over. 1 was jab, lead leg round kick (or switch and rear leg if we wanted). 2 was jab cross, rear leg round kick, 3 was jab cross hook, lead leg round kick, and 4 was jab, cross, hook, cross, rear leg roundkick. The idea being to work the round kick on the same side as the last hand technique. Usually I find myself throwing a kick from the opposite side of my last hand technique - and I guess that is common, so this was a way to work around that habit to mix it up a bit I think. We went through a set of that, then a set of teeps (front push kick), then a set of double round kicks, a set of covering from attacks from our pad holder, then a long set of boxing combos mentioned above and all the previous sets combined. Then switched pad holders. My legs were so sore on Wednesday that I skipped that day despite planning to go. My shins are nowhere near conditioned enough. I wear shin guards in class, but somehow one slid to the side and had some fierce shin to elbow contact at some point. But mainly leg pain was from just doing lots of kicking and jumping I think. Thursday Muay Thai - Did a warmup that involved 200 straight punches, 100 knee strikes, 100 round kicks into a wavemaster. These were split up by running through a mini obstacle course which involved the dreaded box jump - this time with 2 26" boxes stacked up - hard for me to jump onto that even using my hands. We practiced switching positions from clinch, and doing slap knee strikes from clinch. Did a brief segment where we parried punches down, and used same hand to do side elbow strike. Then we practiced elbow strikes with a partner, doing some combinations of elbow strikes - forward elbow, then rear. Also forward straight elbow and then side elbow from rear, and vice versa. We then worked on various clinch escapes. One with a arm across the face, then a pivot, one where you do a movement very similar to an uppercut (with pivoting, etc.) and use your shoulder to push the nearest arm off, and one where you make an X with your hands in their face and push. For most of these you have to be postured up, and they are really difficult when your partner has you all hunched over - so if your partner wants to make this hard, they can. Then we practiced boxing combos that begin with a cover - partner throws a lead hook, and you do a set combo, they throw a rear hook, etc.
So my Muay Thai class closed for spring break this week. Friday was the last day they were open, and I went but forgot to log it here. But anyways I went to a Isshinryu Karate Club class tonight. This was my first time going. I've wanted to take Karate for a while, but believe it or not Karate is not that common where I live - and this is the first Karate class I have found that is a reasonable distance. We did jogging, pushups, situps, mountain climbers, jumping jacks and a few other things as a warm up. then we did some stretching. We did a stance called Seisan, and reverse punches for maybe 30-40 minutes. Then we practiced low front kicks for 30 minutes or so. Lastly we practiced an X block into a standing arm bar. The Karate class is interesting. It is very different from Muay Thai. There are things that are similar to other martial arts I have done, but different enough that I am confused a bit. I plan to go back next week, but I am going to keep up the Muay Thai too of course.
