This week's classes

Monday

Frankly, Monday night's krav maga class was a bit of washout. No fault on the part of the instructor or of the other students - totally my own issues.

I've been under a lot of stress recently, and stress for me nearly always goes for my stomach with sort of irritable bowel-like symptoms. I had a run in with my mother's council landlords just before I left for class that really frustrated me and then impacted on training.

I was pretty gutted (pun not entirely intended there, but I'll go with it) cos it was a nice evening and Lee took us outside for a run round the main rugby pitch. I did manage a wee smile to myself as I toddled around, remembering the times I've stood opposite the main stand to watch games. Right enough, Boroughmuir RFC have totally revamped the ground since I was last here but the pitch hasn't really changed.

Anyway, I was dead slow and stop at running, even more so than usual. Then we were asked to do some 'bounding' type exercises but after the first set or so it was obvious that my 'gastric distress' wasn't about to let me do much more. So I did what I could.

Then we moved onto class 'proper', working releases from wrist grabs. We started off outside but after a wee bit too much attention from kids we went back inside. It was ok when they were sitting on the wall watching but it wasn't ideal when they started coming right up to us.

From the wrist grabs we then added some hammer strikes then developed into defending against two attackers. My head was mince most of the way through so not one of my more stellar performances :(


Tuesday

Spin class at work today. It was a good workout, and I didn't feel like upchucking during the sprints. After the disaster that was the previous night's krav class, I wasn't sure how my insides would hold up, but it was fine.


Wednesday

I had the day off yesterday to go over to the hospital, so missed out on spin class. I decided instead to go along to the kickboxing class at the Combat Ready gym. Again I wasn't sure quite how things would hold up, but it was fine.

We warmed up with some skipping then moved onto the warmup proper. We did sets of:

20 kettlebell swings
20 pushups on the kettlebell
20 squats with the kettlebell

and as a special treat on the last set:

20 crunches / sit ups with the kettlebell

Sets were interspersed with lots of lovely star jumps.

Onto the class proper and we worked a jab-cross combo on the pads for timed two 2 minute rounds. Each person did 3 rounds with a 15 second break in between the rounds. After the 3 rounds, we swapped pad holders. I was initially working with two other girls, but after the first few rounds Bear tapped me on the shoulder, announced that he had "broken his partner" and would now train with me lol.

After about nine rounds of the jab cross, we ramped things up a bit with a front kick-jab-cross-hook-cross-turning kick combo. Three rounds of that each and finally we were into a cooldown which consisted of working covers against outside attacks and parries against straight attacks from our knees. After 1 round each we then moved into a sort of 'free fighting' drill but again from our knees.

A bit of stretching and then we were done.

Really intense class - I was so sweaty when I got home I was straight into the shower!