Kickboxing tonight. I was late because I had to give my daughter a ride--she couldn't walk past the high school on Halloween, too eggy--but didn't get into trouble.
In drills, we worked on slipping and immediately weaving to the other side of the opponent. Hard to do in drills, harder in sparring.
I'm only doing light boxing during sparring--no kicking or being kicked, so my ACL can continue to recover. Afterwards, I told my new sensei--who's the Muay Thai champion pictured above--that sometimes when I was slipping, expecting a jab, the opponent threw a cross instead--leaving me on his inside instead of his outside. Sensei said not to worry about it, just weave and get back outside.
Then he gave me some tips. From watching me, he said that I have a good jab and I keep my distance well--which was good given how long I've been out of action. But what he noticed is that I drop my arm after throwing the jab--what he would do fighting me would be to sweep down my low left hand with his left and clobber me with his right cross. I said I had been working very hard in shadow boxing to keep my hand up when I jab; he said yeah, but when someone starts throwing punches back at you, your body mechanics get all screwed up.
How cool is that, to have a true champion giving you tips based on what he sees you doing!
The other thing I re-learned was also to keep my right hand up by my head. I gave Gumba Frank a stiff punch in the face (we are wearing headgear) and he walloped me in return with a hook, his favorite punch. And my hand was down. A good reminder!
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