It seems as though Sundays will be the day I update the blog, I was hoping to post more regularly but since Finals have been destroying my extracurricular activities there hasn’t been anything going on over the last few weeks. I figured since Matt Lindland fought last night today would be the perfect time to bust out this post, regarding the seminar I attended where both Lindland and Dan Henderson came to the gym. It makes sense since they both showed up on Strikeforce last night.
On December 5th I woke up far earlier than I normally would. Generally I sleep in till noon on the weekened, but today was special. It was the grand opening of Team Quest Redding, the fight club where I train whenever I find time to do so. Redding has been blessed with quite a few black belts spread between the two main gyms up here, so for the most part we are mainly grapplers. That was one of the reasons why this seminar was so important, with 9 BJJ classes (and two submission wrestling classes, making it of 11 grappling classes) a week, but only two classes for standup, means this would give everyone some much needed instruction.
Since the seminar started at 10am I showed up 15minutes early, in order to stretch and pump myself up. As I’ve stated in the first blog entry I haven’t trained in well over a year, my first class back had been two weeks prior to this event, and I was pretty nervous. Generally with so many people in the gym we wouldn’t do warm-ups, but for some reason we did. For a big guy, like myself, warm-ups are pretty dreadful in general so I was pleasantly surprised when I made it all the way through without having to slow my pace down. The only thing I had problems with was pushups, mainly because I fear I’ll dislocate my shoulder. After the warm-ups we paired up and got to work. Since it’s been a while I didn’t really know anyone, so I got paired up with this random guy. His name was Ryan, he turned out to be a great guy who came up from Santa Rosa to train with us. He actually trains at our Pure BJJ club down in Santa Rosa, which is cool. So we started off working on our Clinch game. Hendo was taking us through the steps leading into the clinch, and what to do after you’ve achieved the clinch. I learned some interesting techniques that I’ll probably use whenever I get a chance to do so. Sadly he didn’t go into takedowns, mainly covered the striking aspects of the clinch.
After a little over an hour of Hendo teaching the group Matt stepped in. He’s a cool guy, easy to talk to, and I’m wondering why he hasn’t started to focus on coaching rather than fighting. Matt focused primarily on the ground game, and how to deal with the BJJers…which is ironic for more than one reason. One of the youth instructors stepped in to demonstrate, and Matt was able to control him while on the ground fairly well. As Ryan and I worked on our skills something horrible happened, I ended up slipping on the mat, due to the ridiculous amount of sweat on the floor, and dropping my entire weight onto his ribs. Normally this wouldn’t have been an issue, but Ryan already had a preexisting injury so I ended up breaking his ribs. I felt horrible about it and Ryan if you read this blog I am sorry, though you’re probably tired of hearing this. So Ryan, being the trooper that he is, continued to train. I lasted the entire 2 and a half hour of training and felt pretty good aside from ruining my training partner. We took a team photo and called it a day.
3 hours later I arrived in order to get a pair of Hendo tapout shirts signed, the line was pretty ridiculous. There was free food and drinks but no one really took advantage of it, rather we all waited in line to get our stuff signed. After 2 hours of waiting in line I wanted to hang myself, but finally made it to the table. Hendo was cool, even remembered my name…though I do standout, it was neat. Carlos, the gym owner, tossed me the Gi I had ordered weeks ago but had arrived the day before, and I made my way home to sleep. It was a great experience, and I can’t wait for the next seminar.
On another interesting note last week I won some Manto gear from FightTrends.com. They do drawings every few weeks and it’s a great chance to get gear. There’s a few different ways to enter, and it looks as though Hayabusa or Jaco will be next manufacturers for the equipment. Check it out; Cody is the administrator and posts regularly on the Sherdog.net forums. Happy Holidays, I hope you all get in some training because whenever I don’t I feel horrible. Till next time, be safe.
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