33 days to go until “The Beginning”.
It’s St Patrick’s Day at the Clinic and as if we needed reminding, Amit the least looking Irish man you could find, arrives in his St Patrick’s t-shirt with ‘I heart Guinness’ on the front…I was disappointed the walls hadn’t been painted green for the night too.
And so to business. Training business. This is a real team. Another fantastic turn out when I’m sure this was a night when many of the guys would have preferred the pub. But the April 18th fighters must show up and the rest are here to help their mates prepare. Regardless, it’s 100% effort from everyone locked in the cage! Once again it was hard to tell where the warm-up ended and where the hard work began…I can no longer tell the difference.
The feisty fireman Ben Vickers took the warm-up. And as if to prove the point that in an MMA bout your brain needs to be as alert as your body at all times, this was needed with the warm-up. Once again tough stuff, rocky hops, sprawls to knees, burpees with a press up and straight up to the knees and so on – my fingers hurt ju
st typing it!
20 mins in and it’s a stack of broken men before me. Anyone reading the forum in the last couple of days will have read that Taherul wanted to continue the warm-up with the pros and semi pros (they get an extra few minutes’ beasting). When the amateurs were kicked out of the cage for a few minutes he kept to his word and stayed in for the extra work. He kept up and although he told me he was broken at the end – he looked anything but. Well done Taherul.
Michael Russell led the session. I’ve never seen Michael in action but his reputation precedes him so I was looking forward to seeing the session unfold. The first 5 minutes after the warm-up proved carnage. 7.30 we had a freezer full of ice by 8.00 it was empty and nursing elbows, knees, noses… Our boys struggled with the change in tempo from a busting your gut warm-up to rolling and going through some ground moves.
Michael and Paul had planned a very methodical, rhythmic session. Getting the guys to roll, grapple and generally go through the motions in 3-minute rounds while they looked on. They were looking at their ground game – getting the guys to spar – working out their weaknesses and then correcting them.
After the first few rounds Michael aptly pointed out, “you’re all making common mistakes – little mistakes but big details that if corrected will make a difference”. And it was the finer details they spent the evening working on. The guys were advised to tuck an elbow in here for greater protection…. place your head there for greater stability…rest your hips here for greater control of your opponent. To see this in action made perfect sense…. even to me. I was intrigued that Dean (our resident cabbie and I’m sure he won’t mind me saying our lankiest fighter) could curl up so tightly around his opponent using his arms, legs and head tucked tightly into the nook of his partner’s neck and resting it on the mat to literally pin his partner to the mat. Michael made it all sound so logical; Dean made it look so simple. The final part of the night was working on head lock escapes and submissions. As Paul instructed, “No gloves – let’s just roll.” And roll they did.
17.03.10
By Sue Finnegan
