Round Two!!!!

It is that time again!!! I am three months out from my next tournament. You can view details about the tournament at http://www.hayastangrapplingchallenge.com/. The date is June 7th. I have started to watch what I eat so I can cut the weight in time. I am currently weighing 185lbs, and I want to get back down to 155 again. I am very excited to see how the turn out is with this tournament since I only had two months of training and was not in tip top shape for the last one.

It has been another five months that have past and I feel like I am 150% better than I was before. I make the joke that if I can prolong the time of getting tapped out by my instructor (John), then I know I am improving. And well, I am blessed to say that I have actually tapped him out a few times in the last couple practices and that it is not an easy thing to do. John has been a great teacher and I feel with his knowledge and how hard he has been working me, I am going to finish no less than first place this time around.

I know that cutting the weight wasn't a problem this past tournament, but the conditioning was. I have already designed a weekly program leading up to the fight to prepare my physical endurance to be in the best shape I can possibly be in. I have alternated my days with a circuit training routine from hell or miles of running. Training in class is going to be my main workout because there is no perfect training for grappling, but to do the real thing. I am going to push myself in class to grapple longer rounds and with heavier people than me, so I can hold my ground when I am competing with someone my own size. John is a great person to roll with because he is a lean 192lbs and stronger than hell! He makes me work hard and pushes me to new limits. The other guys in the class are really good too because they all bring different techniques and skills to the table, and I must say that no one in our class is a breeze to grapple with.

John decided that we should change our training strategy up a little and instead of just going live from the standup all the time, he decided to put us in different situations. Whether they are good or bad, he wants us to work every situation until it becomes more familiar to us. So sometimes I will be stuck with a guy on my back trying to sink a choke in and my goal is to get out of the situation by hopefully reversing it. The guy on my back has it easy because all he has to do is finish me with a choke and he is already half way there. The hard part is that we are not drilling, we are going live and hard! All this technical training will prepare us all for our fights, tournaments or on the street if need be.

My future goals at this point will be determined on how well I do at this tournament and the next. The following tourament is in September and if I do well at both, I am going to train and focus a little more on my stand up game and try and get a ametuer cagefight somewhere. If you go to http://www.mma.tv/, you can see that there are fights all over the place looking for fighters, so it won't be too hard to get in somewhere. I just want to make sure that I am confident with my ground game that I can get in the cage and take it to someone because most fights are taken to the ground anyways. I just need to keep in mind that I am not going to get anywhere unless I bust my tail! So please say a prayer for me that I stay healthy and continue to give it my all.