Last night was the first time I’ve ever taken two Krav classes in one night.

I took W for the first class. He’s well-known for being intense and this class was no exception. It was non-stop action. One strike after another. We did advancing front kicks, roundhouse kicks, knees, palm-heel strikes… and that wasn’t even the defense!

I teamed up with a guy two inches shorter than me, but all muscle. I think he may have been reluctant to partner with me at first, but I proved myself by the end. He seemed shocked by a lot of my kicks, but still gave a lot of positive, constructive feedback about my technique.

The only issue came when we started doing knees. He would knee me so hard the wind was knocked from me. Then my stomach started hurting. It hurt so bad I had to ask an instructor to hold the bag for him. THAT’S how hard he kicked. You know me. I don’t just give up. I’m always all in. But he kneed me so hard, I’m 100% positive if I didn’t have a pad, I’d have broken ribs today. Moral of that story is if you throw knees correctly, you will deal a lot of damage.

I decided to wait it out and see if I’d be okay to go to the next Krav class. After I had a chance to cool down, drink some water, and stop shaking, I felt alright.

In MT’s class, I teamed up with V. She was worn out from Crossfit right before, so we were both exhausted and weaker than usual.

We learned how to defend ourselves if we were on our back with a heel kick and then how to get up from the ground. I felt like I was doing okay, but then my stomach started hurting again. I wanted to stay in class and practice getting up (it’s the first official class I’ve had where we’ve worked on this), so I tried to take it easy and focus on my technique rather than power or speed.

Although I had a 45 minute wait between the two classes, all I can say is Oh. My. God. I really just can’t imagine eight hours of that for testing. My brain was goo. My hands were shaky. And my stomach hurt for most of the night. For the future, I definitely need to pace myself.

Even today, my arms feel weak, my stomach has felt off, and I’ve just been really low energy. Sort of what it feels like when you get sick, but without the sick. I’m just going to continue to take it easy today and hope I feel better tomorrow.