Death in June

Its been cold out here the last few days and my head is beginning to feel it. My nose its stuffed like a thanksgiving turkey, my nose when taken outside of my semi-warm abode becomes a like the underpants of a two year old who has drinken too much coca cola, wet and drippy. Nevertheless my bicycle brought me down to Pacific Ring.

Mike told me I should probably take it easy, he's been out with a fever for a few days. Shadowboxing in the cold gym for a half an hour before the muay thai class started seemed like a good way to take it easy rather than to start doing bag drills, or squats like the day before. One round was spent entirely on footwork both my regular stance and southpaw. Moving forward, backward, sliding side to side to slowly acheive the grace of a dance, a completely instinctual series of movements. The second round was spent shadowboxing purely defensive moves. Leg checking, leaning backwards, and skirting kicks. A final round was spent practicing knees. After three rounds of skipping rope, I led the class in calenthestic stretching, nothing out of the ordinary. Neck, shoulder, and hip rotations followed by some simple leg stretches. It being a large class Mike had us pair up (per usual Carl and I trained together), half of the class did pad work while the other half did bag work. The initial drill was; jab, cross, left hook, right leg kick, right body kick, right body kick, left tep. After a round of that the drill was switched to: jab, left inside thigh kick, left body kick, left body kick, right tep. Carl and I moved around the ring practicing the drill and mixing things up a bit. I've read a few muay thai books now, which for the most part are a reiteration of things I've already learned but sometimes they provide some interesting tidbits that I hadn't thought of. For example blocking a tep kick to the body with a cross knee, which I read about in the poorly named Muay Thai: Unleashed.
After two rounds of pad work each we moved onto bag work. The first drill was: cross, left hook, cross two left kicks, the second round drill was; left hook, cross, left hook, two right kicks. Often when attacking the fighter will mix things up, high/low, left/right, so often after a right cross a fighter will follow up with a left kick. Most drills follow a logic of alternating the right and the left. The third round consisted of ten right kicks, ten left kicks, twenty skip knees, until the end of the round. The final round consisted of ten front tep push kicks, ten rear tep kicks. We all joined together for some conditioning.
Fifty leg checks with each leg, then twenty squat-push kicks. Carl and I did 100 sit ups each, and three sets of 25 push ups intersperesed with 25 burpees. We are training to fight in febuary, at a place in Antioch. This fight I may make a weekly training schedule and try to adhere to it, not because my training isn't rigorous now, but as an experiment.