A Jiu-jitsu Log Filled With Shenanigans

Yesterday was my first day as a substitute, well a substitute teacher’s aide.  I chose to be an aide to kind of ease me into the whole process.  I worked at the Youth Opportunity Center with children who have behavior problems and mild learning disabilities.  I actually had some fun working there.  The kids were really easy to get along with and help out.  I spent most the time helping them read or work out math problems.  I even got to play some kickball… which I totally dominated. lol

I went to the gym last night to get in my first training session in about 5 months.  I was looking forward to it, so I was quite disappointed when I got there and realized I missed it.  But I made sure to get in there today and showed up nice and early.  It was a striking class today, and to say it was fun or easy would be an understatement.

Pretty much, I warmed up with 2 rounds of jump rope then I was tossed into the bear pit.  I got into the cage with a guy who was bigger than me, and we went for 1 five minute round.  I thought we’d take it easy but there was none of that.  He hit me with more than a few punches that caused me to see stars.  When he would start to overwhelm me on the fence he wouldn’t let up.  I’m pretty sure he started to even throw harder.

I took a lot of shots from over hands and hooks.  I mean, I had my hands up and chin tucked so mostly my face came out intact.  But even though I was using semi decent boxing and protecting my head with my hands I was still eating a lot of shots and seeing a lot of stars.  My cardio also kind of sucked.  My arms felt better than I thought they would but it was still not impressive.

After 2 rounds with that guy, and a third much slower and technique focused round we got out the mits and worked technique.  That’s were I pretty much where I gassed.  I held the mits for another guy who was tired like me, so I don’t feel terrible about it.  Afterall, I’m just an amatuer striker whose been out of the gym for 5 months. 

After getting beat on for the first half of class the boxing coach wanted to work with me.  He put on the body shield and used his boxing gloves as mits (That way he could still blast me).  We did 4 five minute rounds of me throwing the majority of strikes.  He would counter occasionally but mostly it was just me getting my heart rate up.  The final two rounds I was tired and he turned it up a notch.  He started to come back at me a lot and was captalizing on my bad habit of covering up rather than ducking under or slipping a punch.

I got in there and like to think I showed some promise.  I keep my hands up pretty well and can throw decent punches, when I’m not dead tired.  I have a problem covering up instead of ducking and slipping, so I have to work on that.  But being the first time in a gym in so long, it was expected that I would get my ass handed to me.  And I’m terribly disappointed in Alex.

He said he was going to go.  Then he started making excuses about having too much homework.  Then, as I leaving to go work out, he was playing Madden and about to go over to his girlfriend’s.  But, I can understand how life and all that gets in the way of training.  I know what it’s like to rather spend time with your girlfriend or let schoolwork pile up.  So I’m not hating, but it’s just unfortunate for him.  I guess I’m fairly lucky to be single and out of school… when it comes to training anyway.

Here’s how the entire work out went tonight.

Warm-Up:

• 2 five minute rounds of jump rope

Sparring / Technique:

• 2 five minute rounds of full go boxing
• 1 five minute round more focused on boxing technique
• 1 two minute round of mitt work
• Lazy bag work to stay warm
• 4 five minute rounds working on my boxing with Coach wearing body shield

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 at 5:08 pm and is filed under TRAINING LOG. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.