Kickboxing & Jujutsu..

So yesterday, Jeremy and I finally attended our complimentary 2 week pass to martial arts training. My friend Chris is a member of Leading Edge Kickboxing, and he was the one who gave us the vouchers.

I knew Jeremy wanted to get back into martial arts and from what I heard, the kickboxing class gives pretty good cardio workouts, as well as it's fun. So we go.

First class was mainly for Jeremy, althogh I participated. It was Jujutsu. Pretty interesting. It was cool to just get into techniques of how to get out of certain positions and what not. One of the girls I paired up with, I honestly forget her name, I think it's Laura or Lisa, made me feel comfortable doing the manuevers with her. I was pretty damn nervous because I had no idea what I was doing and she was very positive explained things to me. It was kinda funny, cuz she was also doing the class with her boyfriend Chase, who ironically paired up with Jeremy. From what I saw Jeremy was having a good time.

The next class was Kickboxing. Man, that certainly kicked my butt. I didn't go full out hard, because I didn't want to hurt my body, I probably went at like 60-70%. We first started out with warm up execercises such as skipping rope, sit-ups, and push-ups. Then we paired off, I was with Laura again, and we put on gloves and blocking pads, and we just practiced 3 hit combos of cross and hook punches. I did pretty good at that. I didn't hit hard because Laura was recently recovering from shoulder surgery and didn't want to hurt her. But from what she said, I was good at doing cross punches because I was able to easily learn to rotate my hip throughout the punch. I guess I'm used to that because I was a thrower in Track & Field in high school and with throwing discus and shot put, the power comes from your legs and rotating your hips, so that was pretty cool.

We then proceded with doing kicks. Same thing for most part. Threw a cross then kicked. Yean, I'm not that flexible and I realized that with my first few kicks. For some odd reason, it seemed easier for me to kick with my left leg than my right. The rotation in my hips seemed easier at least. Then we continued with sparring with punches again. This time the defender threw a hit to either the head or torso, so we can learn to block. Then followed up with a 3 combo hit of crosses, hooks and uppercuts.

Then we finished off with like a minute of fast hard jabbing alternating our punches and also knee lifts. Man that was a workout. Felt good.

After the sparring, we did more cardio, by doing these squat type thingies, where you squat, have your hands touch the ground, push out your legs as if you were about to do push ups, then pull your legs back in and jump up. We did that for about a minute. OMG... yeah. Those are tough. And we finished up with doing pushups for a minute. I had to do the female position because I was pretty tired.

After the class, I felt really lightheaded as if I coudln't breathe, and not enough oxygen was getting to my brain. And another odd thing, my hearing was muffled, I dunno what happened, I guess I over exerted myself a bit on the squat thingies. I had to sit down for a few minutes to catch my breath, and I felt better and my hearing came back.

They still had another class, Jeet Kun Do, which looked pretty cool from what I saw, however I dunno if I can get into that.

Overall Jeremy and I had a good time. From what he told me, he'd rather do the Jujutsu because the Kickboxing class kicked his ass and he kinda hurt his shoulder from the punching. I rather do the Kickboxing, so we have another week or so of classes, we'll more than likely just attend the Wednesday & Saturday class, and then decide if we want to join.

I honestly don't know if I can afford this right now. It's like $75 a month, and I can afford it, just right now I need to finish paying off the repairs to my car, and I won't get finished till like May, possibly earlier, if I work OT or something. I'll have to consider my finances and see if I can do it. But another negative is that the class is in Renton, which is like a good 45-60 minute drive depending upon traffic, so that's a bit on gas. I am already spending enough on gas with commuting to see Jeremy already, but I did enjoy the class a lot and it was refreshing to be able to exercise and have fun at the same time, and learn some pretty cool stuff.

So something to defintely consider.

But yeah, my body is sore. Not too badly, mostly my calves, quads, and pecs from the push ups.

/needs bengay