Mixed martial arts - it's good for ya!

Tonight, finally, after being in the Atlanta metro region for about 5 weeks, I was able to get myself out to a local dojo to take part in a mixed martial arts class. Actually it was a Muay Thai (Thai Kickboxing) class. I had taken about 4 Muay Thai classes when I lived in England and while the workout and techniques virtually killed me, the benefits to my fitness were profound. I noticed when I was did these couple of sessions prior to my Las Vegas wedding that I was tight! I lost about 8-10 lbs of body fat (was hanging around 12% body fat, which for me is outstanding!).  Then I moved back and I stopped. I still train very very hard and work hard on functional muscle strength and circuits. Tonight reawakened me to the benefits associated with martial arts training. Let me explain:

To start we warmed up. This consisted of 3 sets of 5 exercises, each performed for 1 complete minute and moving to the next exercise without rest. After completion of each of the 5 exercises then you got 1 minute rest. So this is what constituted the 1st 18 minutes of the session.

Set 1 (each exercise performed continuously for 1 minute): Pushups - Squats - Burpies - Frog Leaps - Side twist pushups

1 minute rest

Set 2: pushups (either clap pushups, or a variant where you lift your entire body, legs and feet too, off the ground - toe grab squats - leg lifts - frog puhups - hindu pushups

1 minute rest

Set 3: kick with right leg out straight to hand - repeat with left leg - right kick to side with hip twist to hand - repeat with left leg - alternating knees to elbows

Die. No, seriously, stretch.

After this "warm up" we did some drills. We started with alternating 1 minute continuous Thai kicks to pads. Then we did push, or jab kicks to the pads.

OK that took about 25-35 minutes.

Now we did the "cool down" which consisted of 100 Thai push-ups, which entails doing a push up and then clap your partners hand at the top of the movement. We followed this with 100 Thai situps. Here your partner sits on your quadriceps, when you are in the down position of the sit-up a third person smacks your belly with a kick pad. Ugh!!!!

Absolutely grueling, but worth it.