« Newer Entries  
  Older Entries »

Winner on Nitro 5

By DirtyWhiteGi, on March 25th, 2012

Integrated MMA team, in numbers, just after Igor's win. Damien up next.

Won my fight last night on Nitro 5, by RNC in the 2nd round, and I’m very glad I did. I knew my opponent, Craig Lankester, had heavy hands and comes out hard at the start of fights. In training I didn’t really know where I’d want to take the fight but the plan was to keep the hands up high and use straight punches. This evolved into closing in and working for the takedowns, which thankfully worked in the fight itself.

I was feeling a bit nervous in the lead up to this fight, because all it takes is one punch to change the fight and looking at the size of Craig in the pictures you could tell he had it. Another reason was this is a bigger show in front of a bigger audience and I got a lot of support from friends and family, so felt a bit of pressure there to perform. I didn’t want to watch any of the videos up on Youtube because I didn’t want to over think or over analyse it, plus Steve Compton from EOS Academy gave me some good advice which basically goes like: if I’m watching videos on him and changing the way I fight to suit that he’s probably watching videos on me and doing the same so we’re both going to be fighting completely different to the normal way we would so why bother?

The seated crowd. Also a big crowd standing and seated at tables around the ring.

Anyways here’s the video of the fight taken by my mate “G6″ on his iPhone. He was right ringside and I remember seeing him holding up his phone to record the fight when I was going for a takedown and thinking, “Cool at least I know someone’s getting video so I can watch later (I better win).” It also shows a great angle of the finish of the fight.

Integrated MMA VS …

Out of the 6 fighters from Integrated MMA, 4 of us won our fights, which isn’t too bad an effort at all. Unfortunately there were a couple of losses but such is the fight game. I sincerely hope that my team mates that lost on the night come back stronger because I’d love to see them win and know they got the goods to do it.

Of the winners, I was impressed and proud of all them. Damien won by guillotine in the first round. Chris “Igor” got another TKO finish and Tyler by RNC after some tough exchanges.

Cage side

Nitro 5

Best MMA show I’ve seen or been a part of yet. I’m not just saying it out of bias having been part of the card. But the whole show was sold out, the production was well run and organised and the show flowed well without many major delays. Only 1 fight went to the decision, on a fight card of 10 fights, and that was the final fight for the Middleweight title which was an awesome fight full of exchanges and some good reversals on the ground.

You can get the full results for the show from Fight News Australia HERE.

If that wasn’t enough to convince you that this was a good show, then maybe some eye candy will.

Nitro ring girls

My fav Nitro ring girl

Nitro dancer

 Overall it was a great night and made me proud to be a part of team Integrated MMA. A big thanks to our sponsors Tapout, Fairtex, ASN Brisbane, MMA Sports Magazine and All Type Cabinets. Also a huge thanks to my trainers and team mates and to all my friends and family that supported me in person and/or in spirit.

Leave a comment   Fight Shows & Events, Integrated MMA, MMA Brisbane   ,  

The hard part is over

By DirtyWhiteGi, on March 19th, 2012

And man… was last week hard for me! Conditioning circuits after a session of hard rolling or MMA sparring or Muay Thai. Wasn’t easy getting beat up and thrown down, but I got through it… and I always came back the next day for more. I’ve trained hard, had my body and mind pushed to the limits and made it through it all. And now it’s now Fight Week.

I’m feeling confident and ready. I feel fit and my weight is good, got to be 62kgs so it should be an easy weight cut as long as I don’t go pig out much this week. I’m looking forward to taking it a bit easier this week and finally letting my body recover a little.

Today’s session was a kind of grappling open mat. We did a couple techniques then just rolled the rest of the session. I used the time to revise some techniques and situational sparring positions and really just flow roll lightly. This kind of training with drills and situational sparring helps me kind of focus my game and identify the areas I’m strong at and those that I need to sharpen up.

The rest of this week will be much the same, just light work outs concentrating on techniques and things. I’ll post some progress reports later in the week. Hope everyone else is going well in their training ventures.

Peace~

 

Leave a comment   Everything else

Last week of hard training

By DirtyWhiteGi, on March 12th, 2012

For the 5 guys fighting on Nitro 5, including myself, this will be our last week of hard training before we taper off next week in preparation for our fights on Saturday March 24th.

It feels like the past week I’ve learned a whole lot things. Not big things just minor details with techniques and the philosophy behind positions. Even though it feels like I’ve been learning a lot, when I think of it all the things I’ve learned make perfect common sense and I should of realised them sooner. I guess it’s not so much learning something new, but rather just refining it.

I’ll be glad when this week is over and all the hard conditioning is out the way. It’s funny when you get near the end of a training camp and mentally you almost feel like just getting it over and done with. But sometimes we have to remember that it’s not always about the destination, but the journey.

Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it.

- Greg Anderson

 

Hahaha. Yes all that pain and suffering through sparring and our strength and conditioning circuits is quite joyful. Well when you finish them it is anyways :)

An example of a typical circuit (like the one tonight) might be:

2 x 5min Strength Rounds – 50secs each station, 10secs change over & 1min rest in between rounds
Box Jumps
Tornado (twists and shoulder press)
Rope (making waves with the rope: single, double etc)
Squat jumps
Round the worlds with 10kg plate

1 x 5min Cardio Rounds – 50secs each station, 10secs change over & 1min rest in between rounds
Airdyne cycle
Ground n Pound dummy with hips on a swiss ball
Striking on a floor to ceiling bag
Knees, elbows & push kicks on a teardrop bag
Ground n Pound on a grappling dummy

Sometimes we’ll do 3 rounds, sometimes 5 rounds of circuits. It depends. And if it was only 3 rounds like tonight we just might be lucky enough to finish with a few sets of sits ups or any abs and variations of push ups.

6 x 50 Sit ups/Ab work
6 x 20 Push up variations

Now it’s time to recover. Then do it all again tomorrow, and the day after for the rest of this week. Yup definitely looking forward to getting the job done next weekend. Train hard and train safe. Peace out homies.

 

My poster for the Nitro 5 show... must. not. smile. lols

Leave a comment   Integrated MMA, MMA Brisbane

Jose Aldo Highlight by [Hello Japan]

By DirtyWhiteGi, on March 7th, 2012

Another freakin’ awesome highlight by my mate Stuart, checkout his blog [Hello Japan] for more freakin’ awesome MMA and grappling highlights.

This highlight is of Jose Aldo. Now if there’s anyone you could watch that could get you motivated for a training session it’d definitely have to be Jose Aldo. Just watching those leg kicks and the vicious aggression behind his attacks, makes you believe you could be deadly too and attack like that in training hahaha.

If you’ve been living in a cave or under a rock and don’t know who Jose Aldo is, read the following blurb put together by Stu OR go right ahead below, watch the video and get acquainted with the champ.

Jose Aldo (21-1-0) is the former WEC and current UFC featherweight champion. A stand out fighter from the Nova Uniao team he began his MMA career back in 2004, where he debuted with a 18 second head kick knockout. Fighting in his native Brazil for organizations such as Shooto Brazil and Jungle Fight he went 10-1 with 7 victories inside the first round. In 2008 in debuted for the WEC who were looking to establish the 145lb division. He continued his impressive run of knockouts working his way to a title shot over champion Mike Brown in which he won via TKO. Aldo would go on to defend his title twice before the 135lb and 145lb divisions of the WEC were merged into the UFC. Since his UFC debut he has successfully defended his title 3 times. An amazing striker and extremely well rounded Aldo is one of the top fighters in the world.

 

Links:

http://hellojapan01.wordpress.com/  – Hello Japan wordpress blog
Jose Aldo – I’m coming home [HELLO JAPAN] from Hello Japan on Vimeo.

Leave a comment   MMA, Videos    

Nothing like recovery after hard training

By DirtyWhiteGi, on March 4th, 2012

Well this week has been full of some pretty hard training. I was aiming to enter a BJJ Tournament next Sunday so have started doing some strength and conditioning circuits and picking up my intensity in training in preparation for it. Then on Thursday I was asked if I wanted a match up for a MMA fight soon on March 24th. I’ve said yes and things are still being sorted but now the focus has shifted towards fighting MMA.

It’s great having that focus to training for something though. Immediately upon being offered the fight I started to visualise fighting and all the training needed to be done before it. You even notice the difference when shadow boxing or warming up, there’s an extra snap in the punches you’re moving around more and really visualising fight situations compared to the normal mundane shadow box routine you put on to look like you’re doing something.

 

Recovery

After a hard week of training my muscles are aching and feeling in good need of a stretch. I didn’t stretch properly after some classes which I immediately regretted the next day when I started to feel tight in the leg muscles. You’d think after doing 3×10 roundhouses on each leg, then 3×5 power kicks each leg I would of stretched them out good. But I guess I didn’t do a good enough job because when we went for hill sprints yesterday they REALLY started to feel tight and almost like they would cramp or I’d even pull a muscle if I pushed too hard.

Lesson learned…. again.

The best thing after the training session was we had an Ice bath. Jumping in an ice bath initially sucks, but you really do feel better after it. Especially if you’ve picked up some bumps and bruises through training. My legs still feel tight today but they’d probably be a lot worse if I hadn’t had an ice bath. I think I’ll go get a Thai massage later this afternoon to help.

The Official IMA Ice Bath

 

Something I should of used before doing hill sprints is some Muay Thai Oil or Boxing Liniment Oil (see below pic). This stuff is the shiznit and before each jog when I was at Sitmonchai I’d apply some of this to my legs to help them get warm and loosen the muscles. It’s a bit like Deep Heat and has a distinct smell to it. Luckily I bought a little stack before I left Thailand, but stupidly I keep forgetting to put them in my gym bag. They’re definitely going to be in there from now on though :)

Boxing liniment

I’m looking forward to another week of challenges in training to overcome. Tomorrow I’ll post some of the details of what we’ve been doing for our strength and conditioning training.

Train hard, train safe – Peace!

Leave a comment   Everything else    
« Newer Entries  
  Older Entries »