It feels a little weird to not have the day counter from the 9 week challenge here. It gave me something to count towards. I guess it works the same as goal-setting almost. I’m working on my plan for what I want to work towards next, so I’ll have new goals up soon.

Today’s workout was destined to be tough - I went to a concert last night and didn’t get home until late. So I didn’t get much sleep and I was also sore as well. On top of that, I didn’t eat as much as I should have during the day, so by the time class came around, I was running pretty low on energy. I need to sleep and eat well consistently.

Today’s class was focused a lot on defending against attacks. We started off by lining up against the wall with a partner. One partner would then jab and move backwards and the other other would block/dodge/counter the jab. We did that a couple of times then moved on to jab/cross combos. Once that was done we did more drills that were more freestyle, with one that was particularly hard.

For this one, we started off with partners again - one would lean over and hang their arms down and get spun around 10 times. They would then stand up and defend against incoming attacks. This one was tough - for the first 10-15 seconds I got tagged a lot and would lose focus. When I was able to focus / watch my opponent I did pretty good with blocking. I definitely lose my composure very quickly after being hit. I also have trouble watching for visual cues to the next attack. I know that both of these will only improve through time, so I’m going to get to as many sparring classes as possible to work on them.

Unfortunately, it’s going to be at least a couple of weeks before I can really get started with sparring. I won’t be around on Wednesday and then on Saturday I’m getting some tattoo work - so I’ll be taking it easy for a couple of weeks while it heals. I’ll go crazy if I don’t get some exercise in during that time though, so I’ll have to think of something.