Friday Kicking — First week complete!
I did a shadowboxing (well, shadowkickboxing or shadowfighting since it included elbows and kicks) workout this morning. I warmed up with some usual stretches, then some bodyweight lifts — ten pushups, ten squats, ten pike pushups, and also some crunches; this was only for warming up, so I didn’t go for higher reps. Then I followed with some shadowboxing, 10 reps of jabs , straights, hooks, uppercuts, and elbows in combo, starting with a right stance, then followed by another whole set of tens with a southpaw stance. After that I did ten reps of thai kicks, ten reps of body-level roundhouse kicks, and ten reps of high roundhouse kicks, starting each set of kicks on a right-handed stance, followed by another set of ten on a left-handed stance.
And that was all just the warm-up!
After I’d done with those sets of kicks, I strapped on five pound weights on each ankle, five on the left and five on the right. Then I repeated the sets of kicks again — low, mid, high, ten reps each and alternating between ten reps of right and southpaw stances each.
To cool down, I finished off with same kicks, minus the ankle weights, but only for five reps each, followed by the same stretches I did for warm-ups.
All in all, it took me thirty minutes. Not bad for a morning’s workout.
I think I’ll need to cut down on the warm-up kicks, maybe go for only five reps instead of ten, then maybe add spinning back and spinning heel kicks with ankle weights. I’m also thinking of punching with the five-pound weights strapped to my wrists, and see how that goes.
Strapping on weights to your kicks or punches is a controversial issue in some circles, but for me, the added weights unlock some of the neural inhibitions of my muscles when doing a move. Its similar to wave-loading, where lifting a very heavy weight first tells your nervous system and muscles that its okay to lift a slightly lighter weight. So when I punch or kick without weights, my nervous sytem and muscles will have no more inhibitions punching and kicking, resulting in stronger strikes in general.
Well, that’s the theory anyway. For me, at least, it works, as the difference was noticeable to my instructor when I first tried it. Mind you, I hadn’t told him I was trying on weight straps at home, so he wasn’t biased during that practice session the next day. So yeah, for me it works.
And that’s it for this week. I finally finished four days of weekday morning workouts, just in time for my two weekly Muay Thai sessions this Saturday and Sunday. At least now I know its feasible to ‘keep the motor running’ the whole week, so to speak, with these short but intense workouts, even if I have to go to my day job everyday. Hopefully all this will amount to better Muay Thai performance every weekend!
