Programmes:
Back and Core Day 29
Vitality Day 24
Challenge:
Daily Kicks Day 18
Workout:
Tempered Steel I'm having fun doing these upperbody workouts, avoiding all those with push-ups.
Tricep kick-backs 3 x 10
Taekwondo training. Shortly after I began, my calf started to feel a bit funny again and I was Not Happy. So I skipped much of the warm-ups as they generally involved jumping. Some I adapted on the spot (standing out so I wasn't with my group), so pre-squats became just squats, and skater hops were slower and without the hopping. Others I couldn't do at all, so just walked on the spot. Fortunately all that didn't take long today. Into joint warm-up and stretching. Then the coach decided to have us practice our kicks on the floor. I've practiced side kicks on the floor before in Poomsae, but never the others so this was something new. We sat on the floor, one leg across in a kind of half-butterfly, the other pulled up the the chest. Then we straightened that leg fully into a kick, trying to keep the thigh in the same position all the time. For that, I had little difficulty in keeping the thigh pretty close to my chest. Then we did turning kick, lying on a hip. That wasn't particularly exciting. On to side kick. I'd done this many times before, and lots of reps and sets, so when all we had to do was 10 on each side, once, it seemed to me a bit of an anticlimax. Of course, the rest of the class, not having suffered such torments before, were complaining about their poor hips.
We moved on to some drills. We started with ball kick up the line. Then we did side kick as high as we could go, not worrying about technique, just aiming for the head. Then we put them together in a funky way. After we'd done a couple of laps of that, she changed it again, and I'll explain it here so I can remember and drill this because it was fun:
L leg back, L ball kick, land forward. Rotate 180°. Back side kick with R (front leg), land back. Ball kick with R, land forward. Rotate, repeat but now R is back.
I was reciting "ball kick, turn, back kick, turn, ball kick, turn, ball kick, turn...." Once we had got it, we were supposed to do it as fast as we could. I was just focussing on getting it! After that, we partnered up for alternating turning kick to paddles, the mid-section turning kick which I found Hard but that's a sparring thing. Cut kick through two paddles. After that, as a finisher, the coach had us do single leg kick-outs, then diver push-ups. No idea how many - at least 10. I was pleased that my elbow didn't complain at all about these, possibly because of the release at the bottom. I find these ones much easier than regular push-ups.
I'd had to go out unexpectedly this morning which screwed up my other training. What I did do was getting closer to my Taekwondo training than I liked so I didn't do as much as I had intended. Ah well, these things happen.