Tuesday, October 19, 2004
***KwandoFlex***
Last night I took my first KwandoFlex class. I mistook one of the students as the instructor and kept wondering what the routine would be like. Then the true instructor arrived and I breathed of relief: I knew him by reputation and would get a good, if thorough, trashing.
I broke into a sweat during the warm up. I quickly saw there was no way I could match the instructor's speed or the pace of the more experienced (or regular) students. I slowed down, lowered the angle of my strikes and--sometimes--didn't even use my arms. I learned from years of taking step not to burn myself out too early. I applied the same principle in selecting the weights for the barbell and dumbell routines. While, 2 1/2 pounds per each weight for the barbell sounds ridiculous for a six-foot, two-hundred plus pound guy, I had no idea when we'd be using them or in what capacity. And I'm glad of my decision: we did lunges, squats (and how!), overhead press, lats, and others I can't remember at the moment. And all this weight-lifting was between the cardio routine: front, back, roundhouse kicks; fist and elbow strikes. Thankfully I still remembered most of my martial arts training from college though I found the fist/kick combos difficult to coordinate.
We won't discuss abs. Ugh.
Image found on the Internet and all rights belong to its owner.
Overall, I liked the class and am looking forward to the KwandoSpar class on Thursday.