It never seems to fail.  Whenever I work my legs really hard at the gym on a Monday, we have a very hard class on Tuesday.  Today was in the catagory of very hard.

We started out with a warm up from Sensei Plocharczyk.  The gym was on the cold side and he certainly gave us a good but hard warm up.  We started with a jog to each quarter line on the gym floor.  After that, we shuffled sideways across the gym and back and then again but in a horse stance.  Next we ran across the gym with our hands behind us, trying to kick our hands with our heels and then we came back with our hands in front, trying to hit them withour knees.  We also low walks both forward and backward across the gym.  Those were really hard since the leg presses that I did yesterday hit the same muscles.  Then came some stretching and about 20 pushups.

Sensei Noia had us start with some simple sparring drills.  We stood in front of our partner and each of us tried to slap each others leg.  The idea was to keep our head up and get in and out quickly.

Next,  we stood across from our partner and threw three attacks and then it was our partners turn.  We started with punches, both blocks and reverse punches.   After that, we did the same thing but moved into kicks.  My front snaps kicks felt okay but my roundhouse kicks felt really slow.  I mean really slow.

We finished up our sparring drills with some free sparring.  The free sparring felt pretty good but I need to work on retreating after my attacks.  I can get in and score but I don’t move out fast enough.

After that, Sensei Noia had us do low walks again.  I lost count of how many we did but if my legs had a mouth, they would be screaming.

It was a great class but very hard.

Sensei Noia had us spend almost the entire class working on sparring drills.

We partnered up and did shifting drills back and forth across the gym. After that, we worked on double shifts with attacks. We then did the same thing but were able to counter. These drills are really helping with my timing and distance.

After that, we did some angle drills. Our partner would stand in front of us, we would attack and then shift on an angle to the right. We did this in a movement like hands on a clock. I need more work on this drill. Moving in angles is hard for me at this time.

Next, we moved on to a drill where we slap our partners hand out of the way and attack to the outside. For example, I would slap my partners hand out of the way and hit them with a reverse punch to the back or open area near the ribs. We also did the same drill with kicks.

After that, we finished up with some self defense movements. We would do a knife hand block, knocking our partners hand out of the way, grabbing their arm with the other hand and then hitting them in the neck area with the edge of our hand. These drills require some pretty good coordination. We then worked on the same type of movement but added a knee strike after the knife hand to the neck.

I am finally starting to enjoy the sparring drills since we have been having classes like these.