Adventures of HG at NRTI

OK I'm going to write this in sections because my arms are still really sore from yesterday. Strike that-EVERYTHING is sore. I wish I had a computer that I could talk to and it would write everything for me. That would be cool.

So yesterday was our first full day of PT/DT. PT wasn't too bad. We did a half hour of moderate cardio and a half hour of light lifting. DT was a whole other story. We started off with about a two mile run. Honestly, everything between there and the rest of the day is all sort of a blur. We punched as hard and as fast as we could for a few hours. At one point the instructor came over to me and said I had the best punching he had seen in the class. Yay me! I switched off between 35 situps and 18 push ups before each break. We did relay 'games' that just made us dizzy and sweat a lot. We had takedown tactics and learned how to safely fall, including on our gun, which hurts by the way. I can't recall how many times I ate the mat, but it was a lot. We were taught at least four different take down techniques and did each one at least 10 times. We did the crab walk, bear crawl, tactical somersaults which I found out that I'm really bad at. We had another run after lunch. Oh and these aren't normal runs by the way, we had to run with our guns above our head for about four laps. I don't even know what else we did. There was just way too much to remember.

I do know that I went through several power bars, four large Gatorades and a bunch of Ibuprofen. When I got home I crashed for about half an hour, took a nice HOT shower and then headed out with the guys for dinner. I certainly didn't feel like cooking. We went to Applebee's . I had steak and veggies with onion rings as an appetizer. I was hungry. We went back to the guys' house after dinner and hung out for a while. I think about half of the class showed up. That was interesting.

These are a couple of moves we learned yesterday...

Straight Arm Bar Takedown

Gooseneck

Dying Cockroach

And yes, we actually performed these techniques on each other. They can be painful. Especially when you do them over and over and over again. I already had a bruised shoulder last night from being taken down on my left side repeatedly. The dying cockroach video-yes we do that too but without the squirt guns. You hold your head, feet and hands in the air as high as you can and wiggle your hands and feet saying "I'm a dying cockroach." Even my neck muscles hurt from holding my head up.

My muscles are so sore from repeated use that I can hold my hand in front of my face and watch my fingers shake uncontrollably. It even hurts to breath. My partner accidentally punched me a couple of times yesterday. He missed the bag and ended up punching me in the shoulder/chest. Nice. And of course my hands are swollen, cracked, etc. Thank God it's the weekend! Here's a few photos...


(In these photos I was trying to show what we wear for DT. We have a t-shirt, our tactical pants and our duty belt, including the fake gun, fake mace, handcuffs, etc.)




(Relaxing between PT/DT)


(Busted knuckle)