Yes I can 🙂

sorry about the cheesy  90s music reference, I just couldn’t resist it! For those of you that are not aware of the music to which I am referring it is “Can you kick it” by A Tribe Called Quest from 1991. Why did I make such a reference…well you might guess that today’s exercise has something to do with kicking :-p

Today* was an awesome personal training session 🙂 It started 10 mins late because of some other person demanding a gym induction and Matt the trainer being (unbeknownst to him) scheduled to do it. It didn’t matter, I warmed up on the AMT machine for 10 mins then the session got underway. It was generally a great session, we went outside! outside training is the way to go…it was not as hot as it had been but it was still warm and inside was extremely stuffy so outside felt fresher 🙂

We started off by jogging… then got into the Thai boxing, we did the normal practicing of combinations, punch, kick, knee, and defense…this whole thing seems to be getting faster every week I have to say…I suppose this is a good sign…but it is hard work! We were out on the sports field of the leisure centre and found a square of hard / springyish stuff… I realise that description makes very little sense but shhh…it is the same stuff they make athletic tracks from. It was a really good surface to train on.

Because we were outside and had a lot of space, we could add a lot more movement into this session. I have a general tendency to adopt an aggressive style of fighting (I know who’d have thought it…me aggressive :-p) by which I mean I have a strong tendency to come forward when I fight, causing the other person to move away. To try to introduce me to a new direction of movement we worked on sidestepping in between the combinations…there was a line drawn on the floor and I wasn’t allowed to step across it leaving me no opportunity to come forward.

After that we worked on kicks (hence the post title), we did the more flicky type of kick (known as a Fouette in Savate) where you pivot on the standing foot, bring your knee up and then extend from the knee…it is tricky and requires quite a lot of balance. We also did the Thai kick, which involves stepping with one foot then bringing the other leg around in an arc…it transpires that I am reasonable at that one, and have a relatively powerful kick. I just had to remember my Thai boxing training from (:-S) 13 years ago and remember to aim to kick completely through the opponent 🙂 We also did the switch kick where you perform the same kick with the other leg using the switch in stance to gain momentum 🙂

After all this aggression, we returned to the gym to work on strength training, we did some work with the long bar on chest presses and triceps and plyometric chest presses remember plyometric…hard work and odd, well…there was no more plyometric after the chest presses but there was a whole lot more odd…

the last set of exercises we did were designed to activate my glutes apparently…I am still not sure they were not just payback for kicking him so hard…We headed over to the rowing machine to do some intervals…then just as I was starting, Matt produced some extra strong elastic bands :-S

I had to (somehow) get them around my legs just above my knees… while sitting on a rowing machine :-S this whole maneuver was complicated enough, but then I had to row, concentrating on stopping the bands pulling my knees together and do sprint intervals! The elastic band craziness did not stop with that…I had to do squats with the trx with them on and the clam exercise lying on my side! It was hard and considerably more ungainly than it could have been! Matt seemed to think it was good for me…I am obliged to believe him and I did feel it… so maybe he was right…

Anyway, this whole crazy set of exertions lasted for about 1.25hrs 🙂 which is awesome in its self! and I can quite definitely say:

Day 46 complete 🙂

*Technically this was yesterday’s session as I am writing this a day late but it sounds better this way.