Well, I went back for my first MMA classes today. Due to an injury, I haven't worked out properly in months, so an hour of kickboxing nearly killed me. I was ready to cry five minutes into the warmup. Seriously. But there's no denying that it was the single best workout I've ever had. A few more classes like that and I'll drop the 20 lbs in no time. It was extremely intense but damn effective. Yanitza, the one other girl in the kickboxing class, was kind enough to partner with me and patiently helped me through my flailing and hyperventilating, which was a great thing to have as a first-timer. Then, in spite of initial apprehension, I did an hour of BJJ. I'd never really gotten the hype but it looked fun tumbling around so I figured I'd give it a try. Wasn't expecting much.Bottom line, kickboxing is a great workout but for sheer personal enjoyment, BJJ has definitely won me over. Apparently, rolling around in ridiculous positions with a bunch of big sweaty people is so much more fun than it looks (or sounds, for that matter). By the time the class was over, I was all like...MOAR!! I signed up right afterwards (my hand was shaking so much from the workout that I could barely sign the form...yeah, I'm that out of shape) and am going to start from next week with the fundamentals class for a month or so, 3 times a week. Once I've got more experience, I can come to the other classes as often as I want, both gi and no-gi. I'm thinking I'll try to do kickboxing once a week (build up to 2 times...maybe...it's a really brutal class, all these muscles I didn't even know existed are on fire) and try to do grappling 4-5 times a week.
Side note: Browsing the old interwebs, I'd seen so many discussions making a huge deal about guys and girls training together, and I don't get the drama. I had no problems with WTF is she doing here? looks or people acting like I was made of glass. The guy I was paired up with wasn't holding back on me the way I thought he might, or worrying about girl parts and cooties and whatnot. We were both there to learn and were focused on that. It was great. I think the moment I decided I was totally in was when the instructor working with me went off on a tangent to teach me a move that he seemed to think I was half-doing by accident. In truth, I was just bracing an arm against my partner's shoulder to lessen the weight on the neck. He's got a strong hold and while it wasn't tap-inducing, I did feel the need to try and lighten the pressure a bit at times.
Anyway, the instructor thought I was trying to do something far more thought out and decided to teach me the proper way to do it. I couldn't quite understand what he wanted me to do to finish the move, and then the other instructor came over to see what we were doing and was like "you wanna do this, and like this, YES! YES!! GOOD JOB!" and I just felt that enthusiasm and really got into it. Plus I don't know who I'll end up with next class (I'm sure most people don't want the newbie...I know I probably wouldn't as a fellow beginner) but the guy that got stuck with me was very cool about it. I thought he might find it frustrating or too easy getting partnered with someone smaller and totally lost, but he didn't act put out when I forgot to do something, just reminded me real quick and we kept going, and was very encouraging when I got stuff right, especially since he was learning too. So that sort of attitude from the boys (and girl) there definitely made a HUGE difference to me. Good experience. Good people. Next week can't come fast enough!
