FYI...

...if you ever finish your seventh class of the week (a 45m kickboxing class) and slowly realize that the only people around for your next class are your head instructor and one of the assistant FIGHT instructors...run. No matter how tired you are after kickboxing, sprint to your car and don't look back.

Only mostly kidding. For comparison, a normal FIGHT class (Mr. R teaches on Tuesdays and Sir teaches on Thursdays) usually works something like this: run for a couple minutes, finish warming up and stretching out, engagement drill with a partner (round kick, punch, eye gouge, head butt, elbow to the neck, center clench, triple knees, takedown), review of the defenses for the week, boxing drills, and random PT drills. We might do a knife defense on Tuesday, but weapons are really reserved for Thursdays, when Sir is there. That's a typical class, anyway, with usually 8-12 people who usually are at least familiar with the class but are generally at very different levels of physical fitness and skill. Tonight, it was me, Morgan, and Sir. Which was cool, because Sir had us do things that we don't usually get a chance to do in regular classes, like go out to Morgan's truck (which was conveniently right next to the door) and work on car-jacking/gun defense scenarios out in the parking lot. Tonight was all about the weapons. We didn't do a warm-up at all (I didn't really need one, having just done kickboxing, and Morgan's definitely in good shape) - we just got handed knives and "Knife sparring, go!" at the start. We did a long round of knife sparring, then a knife defense, then another round of sparring, then another knife defense, then another round of sparring, then a gun defense, then went out to the parking lot/Morgan's truck and did THOSE gun defenses (I'm glad our training gun is bright yellow, because there were a lot of people giving us some really funny looks - I'm a little surprised we didn't have the cops called on us), came back in, Morgan and I messed around with "Bob" (our human-shaped punching dummy) while Sir handled a walkup who had questions about the school, then did two boxing drills, a balance drill, a clench drill, and a leapfrog drill (one partner squats sideways and you leapfrog jump over him, then he stands up and you crawl between his legs, stand, and become the squatting partner, etc.) before Sir finally decided he'd had enough of us for the night. I'm not sure if it was physically any harder than any other night (we did get to sit in the truck sometimes, after all, and none of the PT drills were new or unusual), but it definitely felt more intense, like it was stepped up a notch. Maybe it was just me, though. At any rate, I definitely learned a LOT of new defenses (of course, if someone points a gun at me, I'm still gonna do whatever they want - my wallet or keys or phone aren't worth the risk of getting shot!), and it's always cool to have more one-on-one time with instructors. I feel like I can ask more questions and get more answers, so actually it was a pretty cool, if exhausting, class.

Oh! And, my new dobok came in today! Yay! It's plain white, but SOOO much more comfortable than my old one! Like, a human being can actually move in it, comfortable. Mrs. S had me try on the jacket to make sure it fit, and then she took it back so they could "make it pretty" (get the logo on the back), but I will get to break in my new pants on Monday! Yay! (Can you tell I'm excited? I'm just really so broken-hearted about not having to wear my old uniform anymore. Really.)

Now I'm just trying to decide if the almost-broken finger (I can bend it without pain, but moving it side to side hurts) and the huge bruises I'm going to have from class tonight (I love knife-sparring Morgan - he's fast but still pretty controlled and we might actually be close to even in that aspect. He does still hit hard, though, and I actually have a KNOT on my forearm from blocking him - although yes, I do realize that if we were using real blades, it'd be a nasty cut. It'd still be on my arm, though, and not my chest or throat!) are going to have to be covered up when I go for my job interview tomorrow. I'm thinking employers generally don't want to see a lot of bruised employees....