Chris and I partnered up together tonight. We generally don’t, because we can always practice together at home, but we thought we’d switch it up.

After the initial warm-ups, we began practicing palm heel strikes. Chris went first… and holy crap! He hits hard. The first left-right combination he threw, I was knocked back at least a foot or two. In fact, I was knocked back several times when he struck the pad. Note to self: don’t make Chris angry enough to hit me (or anyone)! Those broad shoulders of his must really help pack a punch. JEEZ.

I did notice my own palm heel strikes are getting better. It was helpful to have Chris there to encourage me through those final moments of drills. Sometimes I wonder if I can physically go any further and to have someone cheer me on was tremendously helpful. He also made me realize I wasn’t striking through the pad. You could immediately tell the difference in the strength of my strikes when I started rotating my hips and hitting the pad as if I wanted to make impact with his spine.

We moved on to knees to the groin. When I started kneeing Chris in the large kicking pad, we had some… uh… issues. I was kicking through the pad so hard, he was feeling the affects of my strikes on his… uh… man parts. I had to adjust my angle and knee more into his thigh than his groin, so I didn’t seriously hurt him. I’ve seen what even a light tap on a guy’s package can do (i.e., lay him out), let alone a full on knee to the groin… After class, I asked him if he had that problem when other people practiced kneeing him in the groin and he said “Nope! Just you!” Which makes me think I’m doing them correctly.

It also shows the difference in my strengths versus Chris’s strengths. My strengths are in my kicks and knees, his seem to be in his upper body strikes. I imagine this is the same for most men and women just getting into Krav.

And for the record, we’re getting Chris a cup… pronto.