krav for girls

Last night was the first time I've been at the women's Thursday class for a good long while.

We started off with a circuit style warmup:

Inverted kettlebell rows
Double / single arm kettlebell swings
Kettlebell squats
Pressups
Single kettlebell lunges
Jab-cross on the heavy bag
Star jumps
Ab roller
Single kettlebell press

All for a minute each

Then we moved onto the 'meat' of the class. We started off with some double stick drills:
high one cut, low two cut - right and left, just to get the feel of the movement before moving onto a Heaven 6 count.

I learned the Heaven / Heaven & Earth 6 count drill a few years ago, although I haven't practiced it for a while now. It took me a long time to learn! It was obviously new to a few people last night. Most people were fine with the right hand side but not so good returning with the left. It just takes time to learn though.

UTP caught me an excellent crack on the knuckles at one point - it wouldn't be stick work without at least one good knuckle rap lol.

There was a point to the stick work though. It was about learning the body movement for our next combative drill. Basically we were defending a static knife threat to the chest / throat. The attacker had the knife in their right hand and we used our left to drive the knife across our body and thus offline. By locking out the elbow and stepping forward onto the left, we were taking the attacker off balance and preventing them returning the knife. Obviously we followed up with a strike or several to the face!

We took turns drilling this and then finished up for the evening.

I had a very good night's sleep last night!!

Fried!

This has been my first week of 'proper' training in a good while, so I'm pretty well fried today!

Went to spin class on Wednesday which was ok, legs weren't too bad at all. Thought about hitting the kettlebells again at night, but after Tuesda's session decided to lay off lol. Did spin again yesterday morning (Thursday) and it was quite a toughie - it pretty much flattened me for the rest of the day.

Finished off with krav class at night which luckily wasn't quite as tough as it might have been!

Kung fu update

We're all back on with the kung fu.

Although my instructor has decided not to teach any more, he arranged for me to transfer to the senior instructor's class. Of course it's on a different night, so I'm having to juggle my week around a bit, but that's ok.

I went along for the first time a couple of weeks back and it was great! I'd been training one-on-one with sifu for so long that I'd forgotten how much fun it is to train with other students. The material was different for both chi kung and kung fu - more advanced, I think - but a new and good challenge. Also training with more senior and experienced students is always an advantage.

The senior sifu offers more classes so I will get to train more frequently as well. Classes are not running this week, as sifu is away on holiday. However he has invited me a day long seminar this Saturday which should cover all the basics that I need. I'm really looking forward to this!

So, whilst I'm sorry not to be training with my original instructor any more, things might just have worked out ok.

And we're back!

I decided to take a break from blogging for a couple of weeks since I was on holiday. Also, there wasn't much to write about really, as I haven't been training that much recently. Am back in harness this week though!

Things I have done this week

Sunday - Sunday Service in the Meadows. Sunday Service is a bit of fun - a bunch of us turn up at a pre-arranged time and generally run around playing with kettlebells, ropes, tyres etc. Great fun and a brilliant workout. It's also free!

Monday - toddled off to krav maga class. You can tell it's holiday time - a grand total of 3 students turned up .... Not that I can say anything really, as I haven't been to krav in quite a few weeks now. I was definitely out of sorts stamina-wise, esp when it came to running. Need to up my game in that respect. Otherwise we worked on defending against multiple attackers, which was fun.

Tuesday - first spin class in about 4-6 weeks. Again you could tell it was holiday time - a grand total of 2 of us for this class! Went better than I thought it might - my legs didn't protest quite as much as I thought they might (they're also not bad at all this morning!) When I got home, I chose to totally *fry* myself with some kettlebell stuff. Previously I've tended to train kettlebells for reps; this time I trained for time. And it was hard!

Swings
8kg for 3 mins
12kg for 2 mins
16kg for 1 min
20kg for 30 secs

Snatches
8kg for 3 mins
12kg for 2 mins
16kg for 1 min

I added in some barbell chest presses and bicep curls just for fun, although my forearms weren't really laughing by this point.

Then I finished off with 100+ reps bodyweight stuff:

50 x squats
50 x crunches
25 x star jumps
25 x pressups

Then I went and lay in a corner for a while!!

Today - spin class at lunchtime and prob some more kettlebells tonight.

Normal service ....

.... will be resumed shortly.

I have been on a much-needed holiday.

DOMS, DOMS, DOMS ....

Well the legs are much better, but my upper back has clearly just remembered all that kettlebell stuff I did last night. Am slightly surprised - thought it would have been my shoulders / upper arms that would have been protesting today!

Kung fu no more!

I got an email from Sifu last night telling me that he is stepping down as an instructor with immediate effect, as he would like to pursue his own learning and development for now. I am actually quite gutted about this, as he is an excellent teacher. I totally understand where he is coming from though. I have already emailed the other Sifu about joining one of his classes.

I shall miss my Thursday chi kung and kung fu :=(

On the positive side, I can at least return to Thursday krav maga now.