Old School

Okay so I got to thinking about the whole back in the day business that I put in this post, and I’ve decided that this coming Monday night will be Old Skool night. What does that mean? Well you can expect to learn a simple armbar, then beat the living shit out of each other for some insane amount of rounds. Ah no just kidding it was never that bad, but I think I’ll do something special to commemorate the old ways. Maybe I’ll get you all doing a few Taekwondo patterns, or axe kicks or something. We’ll see. I’m also planning on having another inhouse tournament soon. Possibly to select a grappling team for the Next Generation Team Tournament on November 22nd, or possibly two teams!

This week is the ramp up week for The Fight Before Christmas, both in terms of training and organisation. Training wise, cardio becomes more important and while strength is still increased, it will be slightly less empahasised. The important thing to remember is that some of the guys are still very raw, so they’re picking up skills all the time that will help them to fight, so I have to be careful not to impede the development of skills while at the same time give them the best chance of getting fitter and stronger. It’s a fine balance and while I try to spot everyone on the mat, getting people to feed back is really important. Most guys are afraid to admit when something was sore or difficult or they were having trouble so it’s not always easy to get that, but ask and you shall recieve. They say there’s no such thing as a stupid question and there isn’t, unless Grant is asking it. I see that he will be an army man soon though so we may have to worry about encountering stray bullets as we drive by the Curragh.

In terms of organising the night itself, I’m losing more and more of my precious, precious hair each day. I’ve decided that it would actually be easier to go out on the street and BEG for money to get the new equipment than to do this show. Still, it’s not going too badly, there’s a lot of tickets sold already (about one third of the capacity), the fight card is looking solid and the ring girls are picking out their Santa’s elves costumes. I’m having some difficulty booking a DJ, but I expect that someone will appear soon. Also I’ve just booked another pro fight with another really exciting fighter so we’ll have yet another great fight on the card. I’ll be announcing that later today on all the websites along with the revised card. I have to say I’m really looking forward to it now. It’s 6 weeks away and while there’s still a lot to do and a long way to go in terms of organisation and training, it’s a fun kind of pressure that I’m under. I’m still looking for a lot of help though, in particular for ring erection (tee hee), screening off the warm up area, putting out seats, warming up fighters and so on. Lots of things to do, lots.

I’m doing an interesting thing with the young kids in the Wolfpack tomorrow night. We’re having a mini Olympics. This may hark back to some of the earlier posts in this blog, so read down if you’re not familiar with my stance on coaching kids. They came up with the events by themselves last Thursday, with a bit of prompting so it wouldn’t be 100 rounds of dodgeball (they love dodgeball). I can’t remember all 10 events now, but there was definitely
1) The Obstacle Course (or as I like to call it, the 20 metre steeplechase)
2) The medicine ball shotput
3) The long throw (overhead behind your back)
4) The standing long jump
5) the three hop jump (not the triple jump, this is 3 jumps all counting to your total)
6) the high jump
7) The limbo (oh yeah!)
8) 3 point sprint
9) something else
10) another thing.
There’ll be prizes and other stuff for them. As soon as the teens heard about it, THEY wanted one, so I’ll have to do something for them. I have a bit of an idea of a session for the fight team along the same lines too, might involve a field trip though, and be slightly more evil.

Oh and sorry for the incoherent rambling of my 3am post this morning. I was a tired boy.