Mizblog

This is the first time I’ve been able to do a class just 2 days after another class. I was nervous going in, because I had some mystery foot pain earlier, but the foot was fine.

The class was very cardio-heavy. Warmup was shadow boxing, jumping jacks, squats, push ups, jogging, side jogging, mat smacking with jogging reverse, then shoulder tag. The mat smacking part had me a bit panicked, but I was able to slack during shoulder tag and still do okay. I have long arms and I’m not bad with feints and blocking.

Anyway, then we went on to focus mitt work. We did combos and bob/weave. I’m bad at bob. Then we reversed stance and tried to do the combinations with our off hands. I was fairly awful.

Choke against the wall, we did against heavy bag stacks. My partner was Tig. I need to squeeze tight to the wall and shoulder to my head. I did alright, especially the strikes and control afterward.

The stress drill was choke against the wall, then a knife defense (my underhand knife defense sucks – my wrap was reversed every time) and then heavy strikes on a tombstone pad before going back for another choke. It was exhausting. We followed it up with practicing the knife block and simultaneous strike, but actually striking a tombstone pad. I kept hitting too close but I don’t know how I could do an effective block from an effective punching distance.

Anyway, then we put in our mouth guards. Tig and I took turns punching each other lightly. Then it was sparring time. For 15 minutes. I sparred with Tig, Loraine, some other guy, John, and finally Larry. Tig did some good leg kicks. Loraine hit me lightly in the body a few times but I went pretty easy on her. The other guy had some heavy leg kicks but I landed some good body shots on him. John I hit on the head with an overhand right (actually hit him with my thumb and bruised it) then he followed up by knocking my mouthpiece out. Finally it was Larry. He’s tall and I was exhausted. I think I hit him once and he hit me dozens of times, easing out of the way of all my lobbed attempts. It was really almost all I could do to keep my hands up and stand there.