Crazy Monkey Defense

Yesterday was a full lesson of sparring where we did mostly tennis match sparring though near the end of the class there was some light sparring.



While sparring with Riri and Basrull who were going harder on me and punching me with a bit more force, I started to feel more comfortable with the CM1 movement and the contact of their punches against my elbows felt pretty solid. I appreciated the increased resistance and was a good test of how well my CM1 was doing.

The CM1 movement and hunchback position is also starting to feel a lot more natural and I am starting to get used to the limited vision.

Several things that need working on:

1. Keep on forgetting to move hands constantly
2. Sometimes when doing CM1, my hands block past the centre line leaving the side of my head exposed.
3. While doing CM1, found it hard to maintain rim-shot range without backing off. Punches closer in that range still feel pretty heavy. Perhaps this is where CM2 comes in?
   
4. Footwork is improving but I found that when fatigued, it tended to go crappy. Back left calf hurts! :P
5. Still moving backwards but making a conscious effort to circle or sidestep now.
   
6. Sometimes during a strong punch towards my guard (especially when sparring with Riri), even if it was in the correct position, I found my guard being blown open for a short while. Do I need to bring it in tighter?
   

At one point when I was sparring with Albert after a round with Riri, I was literally out of breath and extremely exhausted and ended it prematurely. On retrospect I should have gone on to see how to operate in times of fatigue and it would lend valuable lessons in incorporating TES (tight economical structure) in my game.

I also found it difficult to mount an offense when Albert had his guard up. Only when he started punching me could I use my reach advantage to sneak some hits in. I don't quite get it as it seems so pointless to hit a good guard so how do you actually get past that? Something to think about as it seemed very energy inefficient unless you are confident you can overpower him.

Watching Riri and Basrull spar was very educational in picking up what was working and what wasn't. I showed Riri the video I took and he picked up things from his video that he didn't notice while sparring like how he turns his body too much when being attacked and his straight body posture. Next week, Riri is going to help video me while I spar so that should be pretty educational and I am looking forward to that.