Thursday Night

Its always fun to have Detention. As a teacher, I mean. I call him that because he's so hyper & naughty that if I'd had him as a student in my middle school class, I'd have given him detention every damn day. But as a teacher, he's a blast! He let me lead the warmup & I had them run relays across the room - you should have heard the groans when I said it was bear crawl time - hee hee! He always starts class with straight punches, which I find interesting & effective. Its a great way to focus your head on what you're about to do & an important skill to continuously practice. I also taught palm heel strikes, a technique I love. Interesting wrinkle - when we were doing side hammerfist a big muscle-y guy I've never seen before was just nailing his partner so hard he was hurting her. I stopped them and asked him, "Can you see this person is half your size?" and told him to lighten up on smaller partners. I didn't get a chance to see if he corrected it, as Detention had everyone switch padholders right then, but I did realize I'm going to have to watch my tone with people. Every emotion I feel is plastered on my face & I was very annoyed with this person, so I'd better control my tone of voice under those circumstances.

One fun thing that happened was when I was demonstrating the absorption drill - where the padholder with the focus mitts is smacking you all over your body with hard smacks & then claps the mitts together as a signal for you to strike - I saw an opening when Detention was smacking me & instinctively started to punch, even though it wasn't time. I pulled it back though and started grinning like a monkey, absorbing my hits - I'm taking it as a good sign that my instincts are going from being a defender to being an attacker.

Next hour was MMA, taught by Mudslide. I was lucky to get the Professor as my partner for an hour, I always learn a ton from him, and we were doing confusing techniques. I'm perplexed by my mediocre power on the ground. I'm pretty strong for my size, I think (?), but explosive moves on the ground continue to elude me. I'll get it, though, it'll just take a while. I'm okay with that now. I continue to seek out partners who are better than me, the Professor, the Gentleman, and Spike... working with more skilled people raises the bar and pushes me faster.