I'm absolutely stuffed!!!  I have not been this sore in such a long time.  My whole body is pain and it hurts to so much as roll over in bed! Possibly went a little bit too hard in my first week!

Wednesday night I did the stand up boxing and kick boxing double.  Haven't been feeling so hot since that point!

I am absolutely LOVING this stuff!!  I am hungry to learn more and to get better.  It has been ages since I've Youtubed like a crazy ass trying to learn more! 

Boxing was taken by a trainer called Bolash.  He has a very thick accent but I generally was able to work out what I needed to do.  There was a good mix of fitness and technical training.  We actually played shoulders and knees!  Actually, it was more like heads and ankles but it was something I was familiar with and could do quite well. Boxing the bag was alright. Shadow boxing was alright. Sparring was NOT alright. Myself and the other new guy were only allowed to do jabs and I felt like a white belt ALL over again.  I mean fully retarded!!!  I couldn't see anything coming and whenever I did stick my fist out, it was at a completely inappropriate time and I walked into quite a few punches. Every time I went to punch my other hand would try and return to my ribs and end up dropping down into some random useless position.  Oh well, practise and I'll get better I suppose!

The fitness side was pretty hard core with lots of burpees. The rest of the group were soooo fast!!  I thought groups of 10 burpees was enough... until we did bag work and each set was broken up by 50 push ups and 50 sit ups.  I looked around and not a single person batted an eyelid... and again just ripped through it.  Then of course there were the burpees from hell which involved jumping up, grabbing the edge of the supporting roof struts and doing a chin up in between.  This was challenging for two reasons.  I had to get over my fear of missing the ledge for a start... the other part being unable to do a chin up which means I hung for a second, strained a bit before plopping back down into a burpee. My fingers are actually bruised from that!

There were two other girls in the class who had clearly been doing it for a while. One had me totally impressed, not only could she bash things really well, she could do proper push ups and chin ups!  I gotta get like her!!!!

The hour class seemed long and I felt I had worked hard.

The next session was kickboxing with a smaller guy called Adam.  There were quite a few people who I could see were less experienced.  I didn't make a point of saying I was new.  We started with skipping and shadow boxing.  Even though I felt awkward as anything, I kept telling myself "fake it until you make it" and did my best to adapt karate to boxing with my technique.  Must have done alright cause when he gathered us newer folks around he pointed to me and said "so you've done some kickboxing before"... cue feeling internally chuffed!  The more experienced people were in the ring sparring.  The rest of us were learning how to catch kicks, destroy the opponent and then escape from a caught kick.  That was more painful because of repetition.  We finished off the session with bag work.

I really feel my weakness in terms of footwork and combination creativity are marked doing this stuff but I do hope to improve in time.  I also struggled a bit with breaking out of non-contact punch pulling mode. I am there with Bolash and he's like "try and hit me!!!". Part of it was a respect thing... coming from a culture where you don't hit the sensei. Part of it was because I didn't really know how to try to actually sock a person unless in competition or very angry! It is funny though, in boxing the shoulders get raised when punching as a protective mechanism and that just is so natural to me.  Perhaps I will find my forte in kick boxing!

Yesterday morning PT turned sore upper body into equally sore lower body and then got flogged in boot camp (which was indoors) this morning.  I am so incredibly sore but I feel awesome!!!  It has been ages since I have felt this good.  Last night I declined take away and had pasta as a side serving to vegetables.  WHAT?!?  Pasta as a SIDE SERVING!? Since when do I do that!?? I am feeling so inspired to eat well.  I want to get lean and I want to get stronger.  I want to be good at this!  Can't wait to sort out my new training schedule!  I know I have gone nuts because I just want to do something everyday!  I know now I have to rest.  I can barely do push ups on my knees due to fatigue so really gotta rest but it is calling me!!

Tomorrow I am going to tackle Mt Beerburrum with K.  Cannot wait! I haven't been up since NYE with B.  Mt. Beerburrum is paved track.  In the beginning I thought it was soft but it suddenly gets very steep and just having a simple backpack with water on made the going sooo tough.  There was a lot of wheezing and soreness!  That was before sunrise even.  Tomorrow we are heading out in the morning but will probably be setting off at about 10am.  Hopefully, the cooler weather will serve us well!  Should be great!!!

So I am on the count down back to work.  I can't say I am really looking forward to it.  December seems like a long time away for more holidays and universe will have changed in that time! lol!  I have that horrible itch yet again to do something different.  I wouldn't mind being a civilian with normal hours of work.  I'd miss all the holidays and days off but something different would just be divine!  Problem is that I am not really qualified to do a whole lot other than ambulance work and I only have management experience as opposed to qualifications.  But who knows... might start doing some digging!