Today was the first session of the new academic year, after plastering notice boards with posters on the Sunday and babbling at lots and lots of freshers for four hours at the Sports Fair earlier. Rod was not there, so Paddy took the class, which fortunately was small and mostly people from last year. At Sports Fair, we had been pushing the Sunday session as the one to try out, as that is when the main instructor, Glen Cudjoe comes up. It was enjoyable to get back into the old spiel of how our club was the only one on campus that worked up to full contact, had an instructor who had been teaching at the uni since 1985, had various experience as a kickboxing and judo champion, door work and a brief bit of cagefighting, along with our other ex-army instructor who was therefore top class on the fitness side of things.
There were a few new people, so Paddy ran through the usual warm-up, starting with static stretches, especially for the legs, then into press-ups, sit-ups and leg-raisers, before moving into some basic techniques.
Paddy started off with a jab from basic fighting stance, then the jab-cross combination, briefly went over the rising block (not too practical, but I guess it does come up in the formal grading stuff, so I can see why he threw it in) moving on to our typical exercises of low kicks to the thigh in two-person pairs, alternating strikes and sliding out of the way. The second classic ZSK loosening up exercise was crescent kicking in the same two-person pairs, with one ducking back then moving in with a crescent, swapping over each time.
Padwork filled up the latter half of our time, again with jab-cross combos and low kicks, after which we finished up with a quick warm-down. The main fresher onslaught should be the Sunday, which I probably will not be able to make as I am normally just there for Tuesdays. Might be nice to pop along, as my shoulder does feel a lot better – I got through the press-ups no problem for the first time in a long time, although I’m still not too confident on holding pads with the dodgy left tendon.
I have been considering taking up fencing, and it would fit on the Tuesday as its late, but I think I’d finish up too late for my gf, who I am hoping to tempt back to ZSK. I am also really keen to get the social side of ZSK vibrant again, as it has been fairly quite since my Masters ended back in 2003. BJJ is still something I’m planning to go along, so absolutely have to get off my arse and go along next week. I was chatting to one of the eskrima instructors at the Sports Fair (purely because he was wearing an Erik Paulson shirt, which caught my interest) who trains there, which is cool as its always good to be able to recognise a few faces at a new place.
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