Carly discovered kickboxing

It was years before Carly built up the courage to “try again” at a local kickboxing class, and when it happened, it was almost an accident.

The class in question was attended entirely by middle-aged women looking to stay in shape. A man came in to run the class every Sunday, at the gym Carly was a member of. She had mostly been using the membership for basic cardio on their machines, always trying to do battle with that natural flab she was so ashamed of. And she saw them. A group of older women, throwing punches and kicks into pads, or lightly touch-sparring each other, smiling and laughing.

At the time, Carly hadn’t done any hard workouts or sports in years. She had pretty much given up on the idea, in fact. But eventually, seeing the class training together every Sunday, just past a glass wall within eyeline of the exercise bikes and treadmills, her curiosity grew. And after much work hyping herself up, Carly marched into the gym one Sunday and went straight up to the kickboxing class.

She was a paying member of the gym, entitled to all of the various classes run by various trainers that the gym paid to show up on specific days. She was well within her rights to join the class any time she wanted. That didn’t make it any less scary for her.

The first time she went, about eighteen months ago, she was sure it would just be for one lesson. Just to try it out, just once. She arrived nervous and anxious and lacking her former fire. Honestly, she half expected to be laughed away. “You’re no kickboxer.”

The coach was welcoming and nice, though, glad to see a new face, and so Carly had ended up returning the next week. And the week after that. And gradually, it became a part of her routine.

It was a very safe, encouraging, supportive environment. It seemed like everybody was having fun, and nobody was taking it too seriously. The older women were friendly, and loved telling young Carly about all their latest gossip, between their pitter-pattering of weak strikes against pads and their frequent breaks. Once, Carly heard someone at the gym ironically refer to the group as the “killer milf squad”, which had outraged her all week. That was, until Sunday, when she was told by the women that they had chosen the name themselves, amidst an array of giggles.

Each Sunday before their kickboxing class, the “killer milf squad” did half an hour of yoga together. It was something they always chirped about and cheerfully insisted Carly come to, and eventually, it had become part of her routine as well. Even to this day, when she was much more built than she had been when she first joined, Carly still did yoga with that group every Sunday. Stretching out the dense muscles in her thick tree trunk legs and power-packed glutes, amidst a group of enthusiastic but largely unfit older women. A friend group of middle-aged women, who had welcomed Carly into their Sunday hangouts with open arms, excited to have a younger woman amongst them. All of them excited to have a new face outside their usual friend group, to fuss over and share all of their fun gossip with.

Carly liked these women. She thought they were sweet, and rebelling against the norms in their own mild way. Actually, she was embarrassed to say that she actually found their go-lucky happiness and casual confidence COOL. They didn’t care if anyone judged them. They didn’t care that their bodies weren’t perfect, or if some of them had a bit of flab. They were having fun hanging out with their girls, and nobody was going to stop them.

But Carly didn’t take the same carefree approach to the classes that they all seemed to. From the very first lesson, she always approached kickboxing as a genuine, meaningful pursuit. One that her emotions and potential happiness were both perhaps too tied up in.

It was at this class that Carly’s passion and drive to prove herself had slowly been stoked anew, building up more and more, as she remembered how much she liked this. How much it meant to her, once. How much she wanted to beat one of the boys at their own game.

Her coach, Luke, had taken her seriously from the start, and quickly began coaching her differently than the rest of the class. Not just to stay fit, but to actually be a fighter.

He kept things light and fun for the milfs, as that’s what they needed, but Carly needed more intensity. And so he gave it to her. Taking Carly through some heavy pad work. Giving her more advice and guidance over the fine details and micro-mistakes, in places where he might have just told one of the older women “good job!” and given them a hi-five.

That was an excellent kick, Carly, but you dropped your hands a little too low. Let’s try it again but see if you can keep your guard up.

Your punches would have more power on them if you twisted your hips a bit more. Let me show you what I mean, watch the way I move.

That’s good stuff, Carly, but let’s see if you can chain them all together a bit faster. Try to think of the combination as one fluid motion, not a collection of individual pieces, and let’s go again.

Carly absorbed the guidance much better than she had as a young girl. She had matured quite a lot. The many years that had passed since the boxing club, and going through a college education, had each taught her how the difference between assistance and mockery. She was humbler than before, and that made her a good listener. The raging, passionate feminist was still in there, very much so, and she still let her out when necessary - but Carly had learned that not every critique was an attack, and it made her a better student.

Some men deserved to get an earful from Carly at her proudest, and her loudest. But Luke wasn’t like that. He was helpful through and through. And his coaching really worked. Carly truly noticed the difference after she adjusted her techniques to fit his guidance.

Rising to match her energy, Luke was teaching Carly enough to set her up for a mild, low-level professional career down the line, if she wanted it. She would never crack the very top of the female kickboxing circuit, but she could definitely make a bit of money, win a couple fights, if she just stuck to training.

Carly had no talent, but she was dedicated, and that was enough for Luke. And her dedication was infectious, especially after Luke had spent so long coaching a fun class of laid-back older women. He loved those women, but it was nice to have a student take all of it so much more seriously. Listen to him so dutifully. Take home the training “homework” he gave her, and come back having completed the exercises. Luke even started running an additional class at the gym on Wednesdays, just for Carly, when he decided that she needed more than just the Sunday lessons that the ladies showed up for. The gym was only paying him to run the class on Sunday, but he knew that the one-on-one time was a big help for Carly, so he came in on his own time to help the young woman hone her skills even more.

On Wednesdays, Carly got a full two hours of practice in. Hard pad work, touch sparring, the works. And on Sundays, “Carly and the killer milf squad” (as the group had renamed itself) all shared Luke’s attention together. Carly still got some solo-attention those days, but mostly she was hitting the bags, or giving one of the other women some guidance, if Luke was busy helping someone else and one of the ladies had chosen to approach her. She had to take care of her killer milf squad, after all. And she had learned enough that she could help the older women with their forms, at least to the level where they weren’t falling over, which was just as high a level as they needed to go.

The women had grown to love Carly. Each of them treated her like a beloved daughter, and Carly couldn’t help but blush and preen under their attention. A few of them jokingly referred to her as “commander” and saluted her with wide smiles, which always made Carly roll her eyes and hide a smile of her own. “Carly and the killer milf squad” was a name she always groaned at and pretended to hate, but secretly loved. And she loved those giggly, carefree older women. They were ditzy, but they were fun.

Luke was a really good guy. He’d made something truly good for all of these ladies. Giving them all just what they needed. Carly included.

Luke was big, strong. He wasn’t any kind of prodigy, but he had been a half-decent pro kickboxer before he retired. Only 3-1 on the record books, but all against decent competition, and with a 19-2 amateur record before that. And now he got paid to run kickboxing lessons in this gym every Sunday, for a group of giggly 40-year-old women, and a very serious 24-year-old Carly.

On weekdays, Luke worked paving driveways for wealthy people. It was a living. He was thinking about going all in on personal trainer work, though. He already had a couple of clients he got some extra cash from, and he was good at the job. The man could make a good workout schedule, tailored perfectly to one’s needs.

Carly was committed to Luke’s lessons, and to the exercises he assigned her to perform at home. Squats were especially important for kickboxing, he had told her very early on. The power of the legs and glutes can be shifted up into every punch, every kick. They were the most important weapons a fighter could have, he said. And so Carly did squats. A LOT of fucking squats. Until her legs were thick, meaty, pillars of power. Until her ass was densely packed with muscle. Until her most important weapons were fucking deadly.

Carly liked her new look. She admired herself in the mirror, feeling more confidence in her body than she had in a long time. She ran a hand over the round curve of her rump, filled out and packed with so much dense muscle. Feeling its firm weight, imagining the power it would be able to generate. She had so much fucking ass now. Enough to knock the head off a-

“I GOT your ass!”

Carly winced, and her confidence faltered. Her fingers tightened against the curve of her ass, and she let it go, exhaling a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding in. She sheepishly bent down and pulled her jeans back up, covering her bottom half once again, and turned away from the mirror. The image of her body lying on the mats, at the feet of a rookie, burned through her mind. The imagine of her snoring like a stupid bimbo, slowly grinding her hips, thrusting her pussy up towards him with her bent legs spread wide open.

Six seconds. Six fucking seconds.

I got your ass.

Maybe it would take a bit more time before she was ready to appreciate her new, thicker glutes after all. And it did. But eventually, she got there. Nowadays, she loved her thick legs, and she LOVED her powerful ass.

The shameful memory of defeat still appeared and made her mood sag from time to time. The way her amateur boxing career had been ended with a record of 0-8, and with her stupidly thrusting her pussy up at a rookie. But after some time, her body itself didn’t bring her shame anymore. In fact, it filled her with pride. She felt POWERFUL. She felt like she could-

“I GOT your ass!”

A wince. Images of mindless, repetitive hip bucking. A drooling moron. Carly shook her head. THIS, she thought, slapping a hand to the firm slab of booty she was packing, is a COMPLETELY different ass.

The thought didn’t soothe her as much as she hoped it would. Unfortunately, the increasing power of her body and her growing self-worth never seemed to decrease the power of that awful memory. Part of her still felt like a stupid fucking cow, pretending to be a fighter. She hoped to be free of that, one day. It was part of what drove her to train kickboxing with so much dedication.

But who knows what it would take to override that awful memory?

Over the year and a half Carly had been training under Luke, her kickboxing skills had gradually grown. Very very slowly, but growing nonetheless. A new kick might take her six months of dedicated practice to finally get right consistently, when it would only take most people three months, and some very special people could get it in less than twenty days. But the thing about Carly was that she would happily do those six months of dedicated practice, without complaint or days off. That was her weapon.

Eventually she had built up a small, basic arsenal of tools. A couple basic punches and mediocre combinations, a decent defense, maybe four solid kicks, snappy and powerful. She wasn’t anything special - she would NEVER be anything special - but she was good enough to face other mid-level amateurs in a match, and was at a point where she probably couldn’t grow any more without those matches.

“Practical application is everything,” Luke would say. “You have to make it REAL.”

Unfortunately, the others in her class weren’t exactly competition. And Luke didn’t allow any official record-tracked fighting, OR hard sparring, in the gym. It would only scare off his group of mother hens, that all enjoyed coming here so much for a light Sunday workout.

The “killer milf squad” only did playful, soft sparring that Luke knew wasn’t of much use to Carly anymore. Throwing slow-motion high kicks at each other’s heads, and giggling as they nearly fell over. Making sound effects with their mouths as they slowly punched the air near each other’s torsos, missing on purpose because it wasn’t fun to hurt your friends. That wasn’t what Carly needed.

She had to make it real.

Carly had tried hard sparring with Luke a couple times, but he was just too good for her, and it only made her frustrated to see him holding back so much. She still couldn’t beat a man.

That is, she couldn’t beat a man if you don’t include the play-fights that Carly had started having with Matthew, in private. Those days when they wrestled, and she put her new thick thighs to good use, and Matthew was only putting on a show of fighting back, not using his full strength. Those days when Carly got to live out her fantasy of beating a man, and Matt got to live out his fantasy of losing to a woman.

Yes, Carly won a lot of THOSE fights. But they weren’t striking, and they weren’t… They weren’t real. Those were shows. Games. The domination, it was all… Gah, Carly hated to think of them as “fake”. But they weren’t REAL. And every time she acknowledged that, she felt tears prick up in the corners of her eyes.

She needed something real. She… She just NEEDED it. It had to be real. She had to make it real.

Carly couldn’t even use the shed her parents had so kindly converted for her for any proper kickboxing training. Not really. She used the weights and the treadmill in there, and she did a lot of deep power-squats with the barbell, but any time she threw punches or kicks at the heavy bag or training dummy her parents had bought for her… It felt fake. All the time spent play-wrestling with Matt in there had been fun and rewarding, but it had spoiled her from seeing it as a real combat zone. And she wanted her kickboxing to be REAL combat. So she trained at the gym, Wednesdays and Sundays, and just worked those glutes the other days. The shed was for exercise and play. The gym was for real combat.

“HYAH!!” Carly yelled, slamming a hard kick up into the pad Luke was holding up high for her, then following it up with a decent enough jab into the other one.

Most of her training time was spent hitting pads with Luke, or kicking the gym’s heavy bag, which felt a lot realer than the bag in her shed. Maybe it was the coach standing by her side watching her work. Maybe it was just that she hadn’t cum in this gym the way she had done in the shed so many times with Matthew.

But none of it was fighting. And Luke was right - Carly needed fighting. She needed to make it real.

So eventually, Luke suggested she start looking for fights elsewhere, at other combat gyms, with more serious students. He even recommended the boxing gym of the college she attended, specifically. He didn’t know Carly’s history there, but he had heard it had already produced some incredibly promising talents. And she was familiar with the grounds from her studies. There might even be a few familiar faces from class!

Carly was very hesitant at the idea of having another amateur match, on the record books for all to see, but Luke encouraged her. “Trust me, any girl you come across is in for a difficult fight if they go against you,” he said.

Yeah. Maybe. Maybe if she fought a girl, who was an amateur too, she would do alright.

Carly still wasn’t sure. Luke understood, but he also knew what Carly needed.

She could keep on training with him, Luke said, but she should get some practice against other people who weren’t 40-year-old women who are only here to move around a bit. Maybe a couple of amateur girls would be interested in putting a fight together with the new-and-improved Carly. And hell, you could always start off just finding someone on your level you can spar with, official fights aside!

Carly told him she would think about it.