Waiting for the soreness
For the first half of the month, when I was either away or broke or whathaveyou, I didn’t set foot in the gym. It got to the point at the end of my stay in Brooklyn where people from my MMA class were texting and calling me every other day asking me what the hell was going on.
A week ago today I returned to class and it was great to be back. This past Saturday we actually started combining striking and grappling while wearing these:
It was a whole different ballgame and my favorite thing we’ve done in the class thusfar. I went two three-minute rounds with Raymond, a guy I’m pretty evenly matched with. To look at him you’d think he outweighs me by about 10-15 pounds, but we both hover around 170. I got him in a guillotine choke that ended up breaking two of his molars. I felt terrible. He even had a mouthpiece in. Turns out it’s not really my brute strength that did it though; he’s broken a molar eating a Taco Bell taco before. Probably had a ball bearing or a bone shard hidden in the meat or something.
Yesterday on my day off from class I decided to work on the strength even more.
My workout for the day went like this:
100 snatches with a 54 pound kettlebell.
3×10 reps of kettlebell thrusters with a 36 pounder in each hand
2×10 reps of overhead presses with the 36’s
3.5 mile run in 32 minutes
(Cobra, get some kettlebells. People will notice within a week or two of you training.)
Check out this guy who I plan on meeting this summer at some point. He’s a freak of nature when it comes to strength.
Other than training the day was spent working on the Ali vs. Liston painting. Here’s the progress. Only thing I’m still not getting to click is Ali’s face. I think this is going to have to be one of those occasions where I have to start again from scratch with a section of a piece. He just doesn’t have that sneer yet. “GET UP!”
