The number of the Beast apparently denoted extra pain for my left tendon today, as it got a bit of a battering from all the combinations we did today. Class started as normal, with Ste running round the room and counting out numbers to drop and do 10 press-ups, 10 sit-ups etc (with me still doing sit-up insteads of press-ups and squat thrusts). I made a throwaway suggestion of replacing the squat thrusts with sprawls, as Ste said he didn’t like the former exercise, but it wasn’t the best idea as I couldn’t actually demonstrate, so had to try and explain it. Maybe next time; I’ll have to email him a video or something (although I think there is one of our other instructor, Glen Cudjoe, doing in sprawl in one of his san shou fights).
Rod came in as usual during stretching, and once we were feeling limber, we did a quick blast of Lo Han Chow (the first form in ZSK), but thankfully only went through it once. The rest of the session was almost entirely linework, and this is where my tendon got to suffer.
First off, we started with low kicks. That was built up to low kick, back kick, then low kick, back kick, back kick. Punches is where the strain came in, as I had to keep pulling my left punches, hooks and uppercuts, as well as elbows and taking care on the spinning techniques. Co-ordination was occasionally a challenge too, with combinations like jab, cross, hook, uppercut, front kick, knee, or jab, cross, hook, low kick, mid-section kick and head kick. On top of those, Rod also threw in his trademark acrobatic moves, like turning kick, tornado kick, tornado kick, or even more taxing, jab, punch, jumping knee, jumping back kick.
I can blame my injury for lacklustre punching, but I’ve got no excuse for the sloppy kicks. I was failing to follow through properly on the back kicks, particularly when they were doubled up, I didn’t fully bring the left spinning hook through, and my high kicks had terrible foot position and lacked power. Plenty of work to do to even reach my earlier standard, as my right spinning hook, normally one of my better kicks (in terms of flashiness at least – I wouldn’t throw any of these kicks in sparring, except maybe a back kick if there was an obvious opening), is looking poor.
Nevertheless, it proved to be a good work-out, but I’m sure my left shoulder area around the tendon will tell me exactly what it thinks of being thrown around tomorrow – I’ve been put off the Warwick physio by timings and cost, so I’ll have to force myself to go to the doctor if I’ve got any chance of getting in some BJJ this holiday.
Finally, there was a brief bit of two man work at the end. First drill was low kick your partner’s front leg, who would draw the leg across the body, then fire a short side kick into your mid-section, switching legs after a set of five. This was followed by punching your partner, who would block on the inside of the forearm, then low kick which they would counter with a shin block. That was a little problematic for me, as instead I have to double jab, and block with the same arm. This mainly served to confuse my partner even further, though I suppose its good to mix things up occasionally. However, would much rather being doing something sensible, like padwork with a bit of aliveness, so we’ll see if the session switches back to that next week.
Not many sessions left this term, so I may have to make up random crap over the three month holiday, unless my injury clears up. That’s a highly unlikely outcome, unfortunately, but I can always hope.
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