Krav Maga 72: shoulder tag, focus mitts, elbows, knees

TJ’s Saturday morning class, and it was a big one. 12 people on the mat, including some noobs. I came in still nervous about my sore oblique.

We started with some jogging around, shadow boxing, shoulder tag, and stretching. During shoulder tag, Ray hit me up to partner with him. I also got to play tag with Ronnie, Mike, and Nicole.

After that we got our MMA gloves on, grabbed a partner and some focus mitts, and started with a recognition/strike drill. Both Jeff and Mike asked to partner up with me, but I had to decline because Ray had already grabbed me. I felt like the popular girl before prom. It was odd.

Elbows into focus mitts were tricky. Also, Ray is a lefty so I got a little bit of practice holding for southpaw. But I’m getting ahead of myself. We did a second round on the mitts with elbow strikes, and then a third round of punch+elbow combos. Different.

We did knees with the kick shields, and I did a Thai clinch for the first time ever. Ray showed me the fundamentals. It felt less comfortable than the normal standing side control of Krav Maga, and offered a different kind of control.

After that, we teamed up into groups of 3 for a final drill – focus mitts punctuated by kick shield opponents bumping and drawing strikes and knees. Somehow we’d lost 2 students, or maybe gained one? Anyway, I was an extra so TJ paired me with the “heavy hitters” – Alex, Andrew, and Ronnie. Alex started, and he was throwing hard shit at the kick shields. Multi-spinning-kick combos and the like. I always jammed him with the pad so he wouldn’t kick me. Andrew didn’t take time to put his gloves on, and he hurt his thumb a few times on the mitts. Ronnie worked hard and you could tell it was all he could manage just to finish the time. I was the extra, and TJ knew it, so he made all the other groups pick someone to go twice so I could get my turn. Thanks, TJ. My turn was alright, but I did land a wild left side kick on Ronnie’s pad that slid up and touched his neck. He threw his head back and staggered when my foot got up there, and it looked to everybody that I’d sent him flying (not really – it was a weak and sloppy kick that slipped up a sweat-soaked kick shield, and I pulled it rather than following through with it). That ended the class.

So I felt popular at the beginning and respected at the end. Someday soon I’ll look back on this class and think I was the butt of a joke, but for now it’s very edifying.

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