Today's Workout: 1 hour of contact kickboxing at the Krav Maga Fitness Center in Milwaukie

[Guest guest]

Wow, this was the best GX class I had taken in ages! My friend who I do the stairs with at work told me about a free first time kickboxing class at the Krav Maga Center in Milwaukie.  I had a BLAST!!

The instructor, Mark Blake, was kind, calm, unassuming and powerful.  I finally learned how to properly wrap my hands.  For the first part of class you just use the wraps, and you warm up by running around the room.  Of course I loved that part, it felt GREAT to run again and I can't wait til this knee is fully healed so I can do my 5K Jingle Bell Run and 8K Shamrock Run in March!

After that you do Tae-Bo type warmup exercises, neck rolls, arm circles, runners' lunges, etc.  The bulk of the workout was pretty much like the Danny Sullivan workouts.  Mark would call out a combo for the bag, like, " right jab, left cross, hook right, left, right, front kick, hammer punch (I think that's the name for it, a cool Krav Maga punch, loved it!!!) I'd say we did that for a good 40 minutes. 

The last drill was fun, freestyle.  You all line up and did 3 punches or kicks, whatever you wanted, to each bag in the room (around 12 of them).  This is where I did some back kicks, uppercuts, and hammer punches since we did fewer of those in class.  Lastly we did some really fun drills, mostly ab work.  Here's what I remember:

5 punches on the bag, drop and do 5 pushups on your knuckles (not used to doing them with gloves on and on my knuckles)squat, then front kicklay supine with bag in between your legs, crunch up, jab cross!  FUN FUN FUN!!!

boat pose (v sit)leg circleleg raisesleg pushesrolling like a ballthen some stretches, wide leg stretch, then to each side head to knee,  legs back together head to knee pose, there was a pigeon pose somewhere in there too.

I was drenched in sweat when it was over, had the big dark " U " going on my shirt, and I was also a little sad it was over.  I was spent and couldn't have done much more, but kickboxing makes me feel so ALIVE! 

Hope everyone enjoys a great weekend in fitness!Namaste,