Today’s boxing class had a couple of exciting firsts. We got to attempt to kick the swinging bag, which is significantly harder than it sounds. I’ve got a lot of force in my legs, and I really had to try to control the strength of my kicks to avoid having the bag slam into the electronics tower or the mirror. While I do really enjoy kicking as hard as I can, it really cool for me to have to reign that in a bit. Kicking hard has become second nature for me at this point, and while it’s fun it’s not particularly challenging.

The same thing goes for medicine ball slams. I’ve done so many of them over time that they’re not a major challenge anymore, although they are a great way to boost your heart rate. Today was the first time, we had to do ball slams while wearing boxing gloves ( and with a 20# dead ball no less). It was really hard to get the hang of picking it up after each slam as boxing gloves weren’t designed to give you a good grip. Although it seemed like this would be impossible to actually do, it was actually a super fun challenge.