Chapter 45: Fundamentals
Kaden turned his head to meet a muscular man with short brown hair. The hair was cut in a military style or otherwise known as a buzz cut. The mans muscles were also very apparent through his sleeveless shirt and there was sweat on his forehead showing he had just been working out like the others in the building.
"Yeah I'm new, I saw the ad online and wanted to come to check it out for myself and start the free trial." Kaden said to the man in front of him.
This made the man break into a smile, "Well that's fantastic! We love showing how great our gym can be and are always excited to meet a new face. In fact, I am one of the current managers of the gym. I'm Jim nice to meet you." Jim said sticking his hand out for a handshake.
Kaden had no issue with this and stuck his our as well and shook hands with Jim. Kaden could tell by the feeling of the man's hands that he had spent many months and years training and doing hard work because of the many calluses and scars he could feel on Jim's rough hands.
"I'm Kaden it's nice to meet you." Kaden said while shaking hands.
"Nice to meet you as well. Since it seems you're here to start your free trial let me take you over here to fill a few pieces of paper and then we can get started on your first lesson! You actually got quite lucky because today is a newbie-only class in one of our arenas so I will be putting you over there for today." Jim said as he led Kaden to a desk in the corner of the building and then handed him a few pieces of paper to sign and fill out to confirm his attendance and admittance into the gym.
After reading through all of the papers and looking into the fine print Kaden found nothing out of the ordinary so he signed up for the membership and was assigned to the class Jim talked about before. The class was located in the boxing arena inside the gym. It was located on the right side of the gym and there were many people just like him trying to get started and after counting it seemed there were 10 others besides himself.
The teacher today was even Jim. It turns out he ran into Kaden as he was on his way to the class that he was teaching, "Hello everyone, and welcome to the first day of your one-week trial in our gym. During these next 7 days, we will ask that you show up every day at this time and allow a few hours each day to fully get your training in so that you may maximize your experience here. Today we will be going over one of our beginner forms of martial arts before leading into a workout session." Jim said as he strutted along the sides of the boxing ring in front of the group of people like a drill sergeant.
Most people had tense expressions as they watched the way he walked and talked. It seemed like he was preparing his soldiers for battle and it was both pumping up and scaring some of the people around Kaden while he was just staring at Jim plainly waiting for him to explain more.
"Now to begin we will start off with a jab. This is one of the simplest and basic moves of this fighting style and I will show you how to use it. Now watch me closely." Jim said making everyone begin crowding around him in expectation.
Jim then got into his stance with his left foot forward and his right foot behind him, "Keep your chin tucked in behind your shoulder and keep it low so you have more protection around your jaw and head area. The next thing you want to make sure of is if you look at my feet, my left foot is in front of me and my right is behind me. After we get farther into the lessons this may change for some of you depending on your comfort. The next thing you want to do is initiate your jab like so." Jim then paused and sent a jab that left a shockwave so strong that it carried over into the judo arena and shook the entire floor making it crack partially in some places.
"Wowwww!" Everyone in the crowd said in surprise by the sheer power that the punch produced. This also proved that Jim was indeed an ability user because no regular human can have that kind of punching power.
"Quit breaking the arenas every time you want to show off to your new students!" Some guy shouted before walking over to the cracks and somehow started repairing them.
Jim scratched his head in embarrassment, "My bad Lane! I just wanted to show the new guys something that they can strive for." He said chuckling to himself.
"Show off!" Lane shouted as he finished fixing the cracks and then walked back towards the office area and disappeared from view.
Jim ignored that comment and went back to explaining the jab to the new students, "Now the way that you do the jab is quite simple in theory but it takes a lot of effort and practice to perfect such a move but that's not why we're here. We are here to show you how to begin. Now I want all of you to get in the same stance I had just a moment ago. Make sure to spread out so you don't accidentally hit another one of your fellow students." Jim said with enthusiasm.
People then began spreading out all over the mat and making sure that they had enough room like Jim said. Kaden chose to be in the back of the ring so he could see Jim more clearly and also scout the other people in his class. He wanted to scout them to see if he could find anyone with some sort of potential to join his army but he also wanted to scout them so he could copy them easier if he failed miserably at the jab.
"Let's begin!" Jim said happily.
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