Saturday 2/25/2012
As usual on Saturdays, after it was over, I'm glad I went today.

Coach was there, the personal life drama that's plagued him the last decade is going to come to a head on Monday. There was some really good news this past week and he's feeling positive that Monday's going to go his way.

Also, my old workout partner was there - one of my all time favorite guys to work with. Funny that my 2 favorite workout partners are also the 2 guys who have broken my ribs, but those 3 incidents don't mean much against a long history of great workouts.

We did freestyle pad work - lots of back and forth, with offense and defense.
It kinda ends up like sparring, but the one hitting can go harder without either partner worrying too much about getting hurt. In other words, it's probably my favorite thing to do. I burnt him after 3 rounds. I went 6 with no rest round between the last 2. I guess he was taking it easy on me, some of it was hard. It's weird, when I have to worry about getting hit, I don't get as tired - it's interesting, so my brain stays engaged & time just flies by.

Finished up with a good 5 rounds on the heavybag.

Afterwards, we had a nice long round table on sparring - me, my partner, and the noob who had the incident last week. The topic of the incident last week came up and I expressed some concerns about the other guy involved that my workout partner kind of confirmed. Overall, we agreed on 3 points:
1. Sparring needs to be constructive - there needs to be a progression, you don't just throw people to the wolves, and you don't spar to brawl. You do it to reinforce the application of your technique.
2. You can't learn to fight with techniques without hard sparring - you can learn technique & train on bags all day, but in the end, in order to learn fighting you have to do it (as safely as possible).
3. There's no place for ego or bad blood in the gym. You save that stuff for people outside your gym. You shouldn't lose your temper while you fight, but you really shouldn't abuse your teammates. You both need to be working towards the common goal of making both partners better.

Was the talk revolutionary? No, not really. But I can look at each team mate on an individual basis. If there's nobody good for me to work with, then I'll have to accept that. There are a few people that could be good to work with, but I'll have to either build up a better partner relationship with them or build up their skills first.

I hate having anxiety on Saturday mornings before going to work out. I want it to be fun. I'm trying to make it fun. It's a lot of fun when I've got people I enjoy working with. When I don't think any of my preferred partners are going to be there, it's a bit like going to the dentist. I'm trying to change that.