Grueling workouts

So what kind of class did Justin get for his anniversary celebration day?

He--and all of us--got a killer workout.

We began with lots of serious stretching.

I've grumbled before on this blog about the tendency of TKD classes to START with stretching, serious stretching, before we're warmed up. I won't gripe again about how one needs to have broken a sweat before serious stretching. . . . especially those of us over 30.

The good things were: it was fairly warm in the dojang. Also, I paired up with Stacey, which was nice. She's a quiet, gentle person, but a serious martial artist, too. She's small-boned like I am and used to dance. I liked working with her. It made me think once again that an all-women class would be fun sometime.

We did all sorts of stretches to improve our splits. They did work--I got a good stretch. Master Hughes supervised it all and wandered around the dojang helping students and giving others a hard time . . . I got both! He seemed happy to be back to teaching.

After stretching, we did the old "everyone line up on this side" business: hopping, kicking, side-kicking from one end of the dojang to the other. "Keep moving, keep jogging."

I wasn't sore the next day, surprisingly. But ballet class finished me off! Tuesday class is always more of a workout than Thursday. Suki had lots of good barre exercises, including an adagio completely on releve (on our toes) which made us tired, and a petite allegro that we worked on for quite a while. "It's from my advanced class," Suki explained, which made us proud, depite the exhaustion in our legs.

Today, I'm stiff in my calves, but happy. Long Thanksgiving break coming up, so it's good to have some serious workouts beforehand!