I’m sure everyone reading this can look back on time when they were young and did something that now, in hindsight, they realize made them look at little foolish. Some of you might also remember a time when you rolled around and wrestled with your friends in their basements and thought what you all were doing was something like jiu-jitsu or MMA. I can remember both…..vividly.
Some of my friends had started watching The Ultimate Fighter and soon there after started a basement fight “team”. As you probably gathered from my last blog post, I was always the fattest, least flexible, and slowest member of this group of wannabe UFC fighters. During any given match between me and a “teammate”, I was typically getting choked and arm-barred (and I use those terms very loosely) about every 5 seconds or so. But, convinced we were destined to be future UFC champions, we practiced our poor imitations of the latest techniques we saw used on The Ultimate Fighter and spent a great deal of time beating on each other. Our drilling consisted of jumping onto an unchained heavybag and “moving” from side control to side mount to cross mount to cross body (at this point I actually thought those were names for different positions….so embarrassing). Our conditioning was non-existent. Well…..except for that one kid that tried running on a treadmill while breathing thru a snorkel. And I know what you are thinking, but I swear to you that this wasn’t me.
At some point I guess I finally decided I was tired of being the guy that always got beat up.
If I had ever learned anything from Joe Rogan, it was that Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu was what you needed if you wanted to be able to submit your opponents. So, I googled “BJJ in Manassas”. A few sites came up and I clicked through them trying to figure out which one to choose. One of them offered a free trial period. Since I had no intention of actually signing up, I figured, at worst, I could go there and learn a few techniques which I could surprise my training partners with. So, I asked my mom if I could try it out. I’m sure she figured that my obsession with learning MMA was just another in a long line of passing interests and that I would abandon it a few weeks later. So, playing along, and despite knowing very little about the sport (other than it was something like Pro-Wrestling), she took me to the gym that Friday to start my free trial period.
To be continued…..
andrewbabeu 