Today I plan to do an article on an experience’s I’ve had when I was younger.
I will talk about certain training clubs I’ve been to and the experiences I’ve had.
I plan to discuss my experience with the US marines and when I trained with them.
And finally, I also plan to discuss a few of the most unexpected moments I had in my training career so far.
The article will be done in three parts in total.
As many of you know, I have competed in numerous martial arts competitions from a young age. I’ve competed in boxing, Karate, Muay Thai, kick boxing, BJJ, Judo, I could go on and on about the Martial Arts I’ve dabbled in.
As I got older I began to get into styles such as Krav Maga and a lot more “self-defence” orientated. I loved the weapon defence, and I loved sparring, and of course grappling. In fact, I once went to a BJJ club that had just opened in my area. It was advertised as “Former professional fighter opens up club.” Of course, the professional fighter was basically some guy who’d trained for 30 possibly 40 years but never really achieved anything. Basically the label should of read “local amateur fighter opens up his own club,” but alas, I entered. The level of everyone in there was quite poor, to say the least. Within minutes I found myself making opponents tap out in the grappling sessions over and over again.
I’d offer to show them a way to defend against it or fight out or some general advice but they’d refuse. They didn’t want to work on moves, only grappling. So this continued until the owner had a bright idea. There was 23 pupils in the class besides me. How about we do a little competition? We will do a grappling competition. The first two start it off with BJJ rules. The one who makes the other individual tap out continues on until he taps out and we go all the way through. The one who beats the most opponents wins.
While this sounds like a fun little thing, you need to remember the level these guys currently were at. they needed to be spending hours learning how to block, roll someone over, how and when to apply an armbar or a choke. Hell, how to defend against a rear naked choke. (I must of used that over 40 times already that day.)
So the owner of the gym’s name (I’ll tell you his name for the sake of the article, it’s much better than if I keep repeating “the owner of the gym”) was Aaron.
So Aaron told me I would be the first to start. Then he picked one of the youth to start with me, a young Asian from Pakistan. “Now I want you both go to go full force, you are here to impress me! We have [insert upcoming tournament trophy name which name escapes me here] to qualify for.
What I found myself thinking was no one here is anyway near the level required.
We started and within 20 seconds I’d made the said individual tap out. The next one went onto the mat and we continued. After I’d gone all the way through all 23 individuals and the longest one couldn’t have lasted much longer than a minute. He yelled at a lot of his regular students and demanded we had to redo it.
He wanted me to grapple with all 23 individually all over again. I did. The results? No change. If anything, I did it even faster. He called the session to an end before calling me to the corridor he was located in. Before I could speak he said he thought it’d be best I didn’t return to the training centre as I didn’t “fit in.” I laughed before announcing I had no intentions of returning and giving a funny line about not quitting his day job.
A few months later I remember going past the area and took a glance over A huge grin spread over my face before laughter did as I saw it now said “Welcome To Aarons boxing Academy!”
This is one of the many reasons I am always weary before entering any new training facility. Ive found it best to never stick to one and constantly move from club to club learning new styles. Not only is this the best for self-defence purposes, it also allows you to spar with numerous individuals. Anyone looking for real life situations and real life self defence, I can’t recommend this highly enough.
I hope you enjoyed this article I look forward to doing Part 2, which is my disappointment at training with the US Marines.
Until then, join the forum and feel free to discuss more.
