Intensive Training: Kia & Tina

(Sorry bout the delay)

Kia wondered where Tina was running off to when she saw her leave the ring. Kia was sightly releived when she saw Tina come running back, but now full of pads. When Tina raised a pad at roughly chest height for her, Kia took a step forward, trying to maintain her stance.

She bought her left arm back and threw it forward to hit the pad. The punch was about of average strength but it had managed to hit the dead centre of the pad. "yha!"

"Okay not bad..." Tina said, trying to encourage Kia on "Try anything else, you want to get me to drop the pads here, any strike you can think of."

Kia was stumped for a moment. She couldn't think of anything she could use. She had a thought and decided to try and use a uppercut on the pad to try and get it off Tina

Tina watched as Kia seemed to struggle with what to do. Knocking the pad out of someone's hands was easier said than done, especially against someone with as much experience as Miss Armstrong had. You needed to A) have enough power to really blast the pad away, and B) find the right place and angle to maximize the effect of the strike. Trying for an uppercut was a good idea, the awkward angle made it difficult to just use a straight pad to block it, just getting the pad into position would put her of balance and easier to swipe the foam training equipment loose, if she hadn't just side stepped the attack. "Making it interesting, it's too simple if I just let you hit this out of my hands, let's see you try and earn it." She challenged, bouncing up and down on her feet.

Kia was shocked when Tina sidesteppped and made the uppercut miss. Her eyes widened and she quickly recovered. However Kia did not want to give Tina any time to react. So she quickly span round and threw her leg out to try and spin kick the back of one of the pads.

"Ummmph!" Tina let out as Kia quickly lashed out a kick, the heel of the rookie's foot catching the side of the pad. Enough to jerk her to one side but not enough to get it free "Keep it up!" the superstar challenged, forcing the pad back towards her trainee: denying her the space she'd need to hit another kick like that.

Kia was saddened that the kick had not been enough. Tina had quickly denied Kia another chance of getting a kick in. So instead Kia used the momentum fromher kick to spin back round and throw a frontal punch at the pad hoping to over power Tinas arm single handly.

"Hmmph!" Tina grunted as she took the punch straight on, "Come on, that's what these things are designed for." She said, backing away forcing Kia to take a run up if she wanted the pad.

The whole point of this little runaround was to get Kia to think of strikes differently, a variety of moves for different situations. What works at what range, and how much power could you get. Closing the distance to stop the kicks might have been a bit hard to deal with but she had always left her options. Instead of going straight through the pad she could have gone down, swiping it with an overhand shot or bionic elbow, or gone up with a quick knee instead. Power behind those strikes could be worked on later, this was pure striking technique.

Kia had to admit she was pretty annoyed that she could not use her pure power to take Tina on that way. The fact she gave Kia some distance did not help either. It only served to confuse the female slightly. After a minute of close thinking Kia finally came up with a plan. Kia ran towards the Tina and once she was close enough she would raise her leg up into the air, way above the pad and bring it down with an axe kick to the pad, hoping to hit it from the top and cause it to fling out of Tina's hand

"Are you sure you don't want to wrestle properly after we have finished training Miss Armstrong? I am sure we could come up with an interesting match up of some king or another"

Tina didn't flinch away from the initial raise, but if Kia's idea was to just boot the pad from her hands, she shot way to high. However it seems her trainee was starting to get to grips with things, bringing her heel down on the top of the pad, letting it slip through the Superstar's grip and slam on the floor. "Well done!" She said, smile on her face. "See, striking isn't as simple as you think. You've got a lot of moves and not all of them will work in every scene, so you have to use your striking ability wisely and pick your spots, there's more to it than rushing in to punch someone's face in."

Kia's next question put Tina a bit off balance, it seems she was determined to fight her: politely, she wasn't trying to antagonize her sensei but still. "We've got a lot still to do before we get to that and you need other matches. See how far you're growing as a fighter. Softballs first, no point to jumping in the deep end."