Ataraxia Day 2: Giving Kickboxing a Fresh Chance

If it weren’t for my husband physically putting his foot on my right butt cheek and pushing me out of bed this morning, I would’ve hit snooze big time.

I went to bed at 9:45 las night because I told myself I was going to wake up early and work out. I ended up being up and down a lot last night so when the alarm finally went off, I was anything but ready. But I got up, got dressed, albeit dragged my ass through doing so, and I made it outside for a repeat of Ataraxia Day 2.

I know I did this one already, but I didn’t feel great about it. I love boxing drills, so they usually put me in a great mood- another reason I wanted to do this again on a Monday when I really didn’t want to get up and workout. Ataraxia Day 2 is kickboxing, so we’ve got some combos to learn, and I was really clumsy the first time I tried.

It was cool out when I stepped onto the porch, but I warmed up quickly once I pressed play.

The boxing combinations were a breeze and instantly made me feel powerful and in control. I even threw an elbow without cuffing myself in the side of my head!

But those kicks. Adding those kicks threw me all off.

I noticed during my workout that my problem is in my posture. When I lift my hands to guard my face, I round my shoulders up and in, sealing the block- but when doing so, I also drop my core and my hips get right back into their anterior tilt position. This throws off my balance big time and then my kicks are more like desperate flails of my legs at my imaginary opponent.

Once we got through all our drills and I laughed my way through my kicks because I just couldn’t smooth them out on the first run. At the end of the video, Sam told us to go back and repeat it so we could try the drills again a second time. I didn’t have the time to do this right away, because I had to go inside and send my husband off to work and eat some breakfast. I took too long getting up and getting dressed to eat before my workout this morning.

Once he left and I had eaten some food and drank some water, I went outside to run the drills again, this time focusing on engaging my core properly first and holding my hips in a neutral position during the combinations. I won’t lie to you and tell you it was great, but it was less of a flail and resembled more of an intentional kick on the second round. I still wasn’t really pleased with it, but I felt less like a clumsy oaf moving through the combinations. So at least there’s that.

I took the kids for a walk once they had all gotten up and dressed and eaten breakfast. We did our Fall Observations, and talked about the changes they can notice now, what the animals are doing, the trees and local plants. What humans do for Fall and some of the flowers that pop up this time of year.

Hopefully I can keep up with my plan to wake up super early in the morning. I’m running PE for the kids these days too, so it’s often a lot of running around for me later in the morning or early afternoon with them. I need to be up early to get my workout done, and have time after I send my husband to work to do website work before the kids get up and it’s time to homeschool them and have our normal day. It does kind of put an end to the late night movies with my husband, but I think we need a real date night soon anyway, so maybe we should focus on planning some of those soon while I rise and grind and stay on top of everything.

Anyway I’m off to drink my weight in water and make lunch for these feral creatures I’m raising.