Solid workout today. On monday evenings, the senior instructor (Tara) leads her advanced class. She’s studying at another school in town right now, and brings back some neat material. Tonight, she brought back pain … but it was a good pain.
We started off with a ladder. In this case that worked out to sets of [N jumping jacks, N push-ups, N sit-ups], with N decreasing by some K after each set. We did 25 of each, and decreased by 5’s. It hurt. Pride kept me going. As we were going through, Tara kept up a banter about how at her other school, they did a drill of 150 front punches, while holding bricks.
Then the competition started. There were four of us in the class. Two teenagers (maybe 16 and 18), me, and John, who’s maybe 10 years older than me. We counted how many kicks we could land on a heavy bag in a minute, with the loser having to do push-ups. I won my round, and John won his. After that, we did some grappling, with the goal being to knock your opponents over. John and I (by virtue both of mass and guile) kept knocking the kids on their butts. As it became obvious what was going on, the mockery got more and more extreme. Class concluded with a 3 on 2 soccer game. John and I vs. the two kids plus Tara. We beat them 1 to 0.
Both John and I managed to get back to the locker room before collapsing, gasping for breath. We agreed that we had signed up for serious pain tomorrow, but that it had been totally worth it.
A little competition is good for the soul.
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