I GET TO BEAT PEOPLE!

WOOT! YES!

Okay, it's not ideal.

There's a local gym here that trains MMA guys. They had kickboxing for a real long time, but something happened and I guess they don't have it anymore. I offered to train Muay Thai there, but no one is really interested. They have real good Jiu Jitsu though, and their MMA guys say, "We already train low-kicks, we don't need anything," but the guy that owns the place is real nice. He told me I can teach a 45-60 minute class every monday in exchange for a free membership. My first class is tomorrow.

Now, my gloves (4 oz. ass-kickers) are at home right now, so I have to borrow theirs. If I had them too, I'd be cranking Irish rock music and asking the biggest guys in my Residence Hall to thrown down with me in the lounge. But I don't, so I have to restrain myself and wait to throw down with their boys tomorrow at the gym.

Pft, think they can't learn anything from me. Not til I start beating their asses on the stand-up. Granted, they might be able to beat me on the ground, but they ain't takin' me down without a fight, and I'm pretty damn versed on the ground. I'm not quite a blue belt, but I know what the fuck I'm doin.

Anyway, I'm thrilled also because I will be training some of these guys in my Monday class. They have PROFESSIONAL FIGHTERS here. Mike Van Arsdale fought Randy Couture (Former LHW Champion of the UFC for like, years) a few weeks back in August. He lost in the third round, but he was training at this gym like a few weeks before he went. Travis Fulton, the guy with the most fights on Sherdog.com's fight finder, lives in Cedar Falls and trains in this gym. We've had some of Miletich's guys come up and train here too. And I get to train there.

After I beat these guys' asses standing, maybe then they'll want some more classes in Muay Thai. I don't think they quiet realize the clinch-training and conditioning that comes with Muay Thai. They've always only had international rules kickboxing, which is basically kickboxing with low kicks, no knees, no grabbing legs, no throws, no elbows. I think I'll show 'em something they aren't used to.

Got I'm so freakin' PSYCHED! I wanna beat people.

Lucky.

I've been talking to the guy who owns a local BJJ gym (its very small, I've been living here 5 years and just found it a few blocks away), and once school and job are over, I'll start training there, but other than that, I've only done Tae Kwon Do as a kid. I've also been to Round Rock's kickboxing gym for a free orientation (not too much fun), and the MMA gym in Georgetown (a lot of fun there, but 45-minute drive on I-35 = yuck).

Tell us how it goes.


Oh, and while we're at it, what are your measurements? Waist, bicep, max. bench, max. squat, etc.?


EDIT: ALSO... are you taking any supplements? And what's your workout like besides martial arts training?

Measurements: you're lucky i have these, I wouldn't, but I've got a wedding in a few months, so I had to get measured for a dress shirt and I got all these.

Well fuck, it's at my girlfriend's place. I'll give you the exact measurements after i get over there and check 'em out. As of right now-

Chest = 28" (I have no pecs)
Waist = 28" (pretty much even all the way down)
Hips = 32"
Bicep = 9"
Neck = 15"
Shoulders = 24"

My weight wavers between 160 and 165

My BMI right now is around 10%, the highest it's ever been.

My max Bench is about 220 or so? something around there. I haven't maxed out lifting in a while to see, I'm working more muscular endurance than strength since I want to fight at 160. What I'll probably end up doing is beefing up to about 170 or so and then maybe cutting down to 160 to fight, I know it's not good for me, but I'm tired of fighting guys that walk-in outweighing me by ten pounds, much less walk around out-weighing me by about 20. You know the only time I really fought in my weight class was my first fight? Now that kid's fighting at like, 185. He's damn good too. Kyle Weickhardt. Wants to go pro in K-1, he was trained by Duke Roufus out of Milwaukee; amazing bunch of fighters up there.

Oh, sorry, Max Squat: I have NO idea. I haven't squatted in like... a long time. Like I said, I mostly work endurance now.

As for supplements, never taken any. When I get serious about competing, I'll probably start working out about two times a day, four or five days a week, taking supplements and lifting weights, all the things I'm not doing right now.

Right now, away from my home gym and before i get into this one, I'm working out in the gym about three days a week. I run 1 1/4 miles and shadow box for about five minutes with weighted gloves on (24 oz.), then I start working my muscles. I do about seventy push-ups (tested sixty-three in one minute ), 150 empty squats, 150 various sit-ups (fifty twisting, fifty MMA (Frank Shamrock has a workout video with them, you basically sit-up with an imaginary opponent in your guard, real weird, but good), and fifty straight crunches), twenty one-handed push-ups (ten on each hand), thirty tricep push-ups, thirty leg-lifts (straight out and straight up lying on my back to work my lower abs).

Then, when my muscles feel like rubber, I work on the hanging bag they have. It's surprising, because I'm going to a community college now (cuz the tuition is cheaper) but staying at the big university i went to last year, and the bigger university has nothing for punching bags. Anyway, I work several drills on the bags. My first is a series of jabs with the 24 oz gloves on. I pound out ten jabs on each hand, then twenty, then thirty, all the way up to fifty, and then back down again to ten. (By the way, these aren't big poofy gloves, they're basically nylon... things strapped to the back of my hand and looped through my fingers with a sand-weight on the back of my hand. They look like MMA gloves, but they're not. They're actually really not stitched very well.)

After the jab exercise I work three-minute drills. I start out in a traditional stance and throw a jab-cross-hook-cross, bob-and-weave, hook-cross-hook, bob-and-weave, cross-hook-cross set. Then I switch stances and do the same thing south-paw. Then I start working the kicks in, a drill we used to call a four-count right-to-left, left-to-right, throwing a right round, left hook, right cross, left round combination, and then going backwards and do that back-and-forth for about three minutes. I switch it up sometimes depending on my mood, throwing a kick and a knee or two kicks, something like that. To top it off I do one three-minute drill throw rising, snap, and down elbows, changing stances each time, just so I don't lose those. I don't compete with them, but they're useful.

Then finally after everything and I'm tired as shit and I've soaked my shirt, I go two three-minute rounds just beating the shit out of the bag as best I can. Knees, kicks, punches, elbows, everything for three minutes straight, as hard as I can go.

I cool down with a set of what we called "Body Builders" which practices a sprawl, then turns into a push-up, and we pop back up. I do about ten of those, then at the end I turn the push-up into ten push-ups, followed by a final push-up where I just hold myself up with my nose touching the ground for as long as I can. I shoot for thirty seconds and try to see how long I can stay that way (my best if fifty). Finally I work a bit of shadow boxing and walk about a half-mile before hitting the showers.

That's right, now you too can work out like Andy.

That's pretty damned serious. I'm more into lifting and building right now, doing lots of sprint training for lacrosse season (off-season started just last week), and a half-assed amount of endurance (I run the 5k track we have in the community about twice a week, usually less >_>).

The bag work sounds impressive. I broke my personnal bag over the summer (hangs in garage), and haven't replaced it yet, but after that, I'm thinking about it. : D

Ah, I figured I'd let you all know how the session went. I went to a class they had titled "Kickboxing" however, what I saw vaguely resembled kickboxing less than it looked like flailing arms and legs.

Now... the guy that owns the gym, Russ O'Connell, was teaching the class. To his credit, I know he's not a kickboxing instructor, or I assume he's not, he's an athletic/personal trainer. And granted, his serious fighters were not part of this class. They work together in non-listed "Team" training sessions which I assume are much more grueling and better regulated.

But this was a ridiculous mix of kicking and punching that just didn't make sense to me. These guys... It was bad.

Now, we started with two two-minute rounds of jumping rope, this made sense to me, that was fine. Then we did some quick warm-ups running up and down the mat, that was fine too. Then we paired off into groups and grabbed some pads.

This is where things started to go wrong. The guy I paired with was one of his better students in this class, not the best, but a lot better than most. The first thing he grabbed was a pair of Century arm... mitt... things. He was to hold these like you would hand-mitts for me to punch them. They were extremely flimsy and instead of being supported by his hand, they were supported by his arm, which resulted in his arm taking some severe bruising. If these had been Thai pads, or something similar, that wouldn't have happened. Or if they had been hand mitts, this wouldn't have happened. But they were a flimsy mix of in-between and it didn't work. We did Jab-Cross-Hook drills for about a minute, which was fine, though a little short, and then changed pads. After taking a few punches to the arm, I said "Fuck this," and grabbed a pair of real mitts.

They're style of hitting mitts is unorthodox, or at least not a style I was used to, but I suppose it works. A lot of people hold pads differently, so I just went with it.

Then we switched to a new drill, this time with Thai pads. I thought, "Oh boy, we finally get to kick." Now, this class was rather large, so pads were something difficult to come by. We broke into groups of threes, me and my partner, Nigel, from Bosnia, and some other guy that joined us. When we realized the pads had all been taken, I was looking for alternatives. Nigel, being so experienced, suggested we use the mitts again. For round kicks. This, would've been disastrous. He then suggested we use the large, though flimsier pads that we had started with. For round kicks. Someone's arm would've been broken. Finally we rotated things enough to find out that there were, indeed, enough pads for each group.

One man stood in the center and held them with another man on either side of him. These two would take turns throwing round kicks into the pad back and forth. I was familiar with this drill, but at home we did it for at least three minutes, or until we'd thrown one hundred kicks each. This went on for a single minute, and then we switched holders and sides. After each person had gotten to kick with each leg (three one-minute rounds in other words) we paired back into groups and worked drills some more.

This is where it got really ridiculous. This guy I was paired with was proud to tell me he'd hurt his TOES kicking earlier. Apparently he was also very proud that he aimed with his instep instead of his shin. -_- Furthermore, we started working clinch-work, trying to get the inside position on the clinch and then pull back and down into a knee to the face.

I don't know if this guy didn't understand English very well, being from Bosnia, or if he just didn't hear the instructor. He spoke English well enough, so I didn't figure that was the problem. He then told me he was experienced in this because he knew Hapkido. I stifled a smile and tried to hold back the information that I'd been trained in Muay Thai for over two years now.

It was PATHETIC. His clinch was wide open. I don't think he understood that we were supposed to work for inside position, because quite often he would try to throw a knee and I would off-balance him while his elbows were out and my arms were inside with a tight grip on his neck. I didn't throw hard, but he ate knee after knee after knee and whenever he was supposed to work on the inside, I LET him get there because it was just too easy to keep him out.

And then we worked on jab exercises. Basically one of us held open an open hand for our partner to jab at, but we would try to move the hand out of the way before the jab hit.

I missed his hand twice out of a two-minute round.

He hit my hand twice out of a two-minute round.

I wasn't impressed.

Furthermore! This guy's stance actually had his lead hand resting down by his thigh! I pointed it out to him and said he should put it by his face and he responded, "This is how I fight," like I was the uneducated one and he was teaching me something. Meanwhile, with that hand down I could've rocked him like a Mac truck mowing over a Geo Metro. And when he punched, he never brought a hand back to protect his face, they were always held real low by his body. And he was proud of that too! Like that was proper form or technique!

Oh my god, it was horrible. I could've KO'ed every person in that room before the first round was over. I start teaching Monday. If they come to class expecting that, they're in for a rude awakening.

Good for you, Andy, kick some ass.

Ah, from one teacher to another, Andy, (I teach music, myself) you have to realize that people are going to come in with "tainted slates" that you'll have to clear off before you make any headwind.

Just keep a cool head and only kick them after their third failure to abide by what you say.

lol, I feel bad, now that I know what our teachers went through when we were in school!

Andy you piss me the fuck off.

Drive down to Jersey and gimme some free fucking lessons or I'll fucking hunt you down.
Foo'.

But Andy... Rock on... \m/

Yes, Andy. Drive down to the whitebread suburbs of "I'm gunna fuck you up 'cuz I listen to 50 cent!" Jersey, and give him a free 'lesson.'

Please?

Zhelir Darkfall wrote:Yes, Andy. Drive down to the whitebread suburbs of "I'm gunna fuck you up 'cuz I listen to 50 cent!" Jersey, and give him a free 'lesson.'

Please?

"I plead the fiz-ifth!"

Dont hurt any of em... TOO badly Andy, you scare em all away and you can't teach anymore.