Ready to rumble

One of the reasons I loved Boulder so much was how athletically conscious the city was, which meant great opportunities for exercise and fitness. I remember when I lived within walking distance of the campus, I went to the gym every day during the summer. I took good advantage of that campus's rec center.

I also had a great opportunity to study Muay Thai under K-1 and MMA fighter Duane Ludwig and the equally awesome Tyler Toner. For being taught out of a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu school, I was fortunate to take in some quality Muay Thai instruction.

When I first came back to the Springs, I knew that I needed to do two things. Find a gym and find a boxing gym. My mom had gotten a membership to a 24 hour fitness a few months back and has really thrown herself into improving her fitness and so signing up for a gym membership was easy enough as 24 hour proved to provide everything I would really need in a weight room. Not to mention it's open 24 hours which fits my odd hours perfectly. I haven't been going every day, since I'm still adjusting to work, but I'm definitely getting back into things and starting to go more consistantly.

The second task proved to be a bit more difficult. There tends to be three types of schools that offer muay thai: 1. The Karate/Taekwondo school that offers "kickboxing" to attract customers and pursuade critics that they can teach "practical" martial arts that work on the mythical "streetz" or cardio kickboxing to attract soccer moms. 2. The MMA school that is cashing in on the sucess of MMA by offering a buffet selection of different aspects of MMA (bjj/muay thai/boxing/wrestling/etc). and 3. A traditional yet legitimate boxing gym. The occurences of these gyms occur in popularity in the same order, there being more Karate schools than Boxing gyms. MMA schools can offer decent Muay Thai instruction but not always, in fact Easton BJJ (the place I trained in Boulder) is probably an exception more than the rule.

I checked out a few MMA schools since boxing gyms are few and a Karate-fied watered down Muay Thai was not what I was looking for. The first gym I checked out was Pikes Peak Combat Sports. Fairly spacious place, offering a wide variety of training from cardio kickboxing to wrestling to krav maga, the buffet style of school that also offered cross fit training. What's nice is that there's a flat fee for the gym and students can take any and all classes they want to take. That's nice and all and it would be neat to pick up wrestling and jiu jitsu all in one place but I'm not focused on learning that stuff currently. I stuck around for their Muay Thai class, which started late because the guys were still rolling around doing BJJ, which is irritating. It's okay for the guys that stay all day and train since they're not in a hurry (which is what the students in the class that day were) but if I'm there to train seriously for Muay Thai and I'm coming there just for the Thai boxing, I'd be annoyed by the late start. The students wore fingerless MMA gloves, which isn't very practical for boxing and also reinforces that Muay Thai for the sake of MMA mentality. There was also a lot of goofing around. Certainly a relaxed and loose atmosphere is great but training should be serious and focused, instead I saw one guy strike goofy ninja poses and whenever they messed up they'd take a break from the training drill and go mess around on some nearby gymnastic rings before coming back to the training drill. If I were training with someone like that, I'd be pissed off for that guy wasting my time. I think the manager must have sensed that I was bored or unimpressed because he reassured me that the guys I was watching were still fairly new. To me they definitely looked like wrestlers trying to kickbox so I figured they had to be new. I guess I came on the day their veteran guys were out of town or something. I stayed a little while longer for their "Bag Circuit" class which turned out to be nothing more than a cardio kickboxing class. I left unimpressed and disappointed.

I met a fighter from the Fight Factory at 24 hour fitness and asked him about the gym. He said some great things but when I asked him about Muay Thai he said they don't really offer it. I guess they're an MMA only gym.

I wanted to but didn't get the chance to check out Rough House MMA. Heard good things about it and it seems like a legitimate MMA school. They only offer MMA twice a week though and I was starting to get fed up with not kicking something so I went with what I had originally figured would be my best bet for advancing my kickboxing.

I checked out a boxing gym called Boxe Francaise Sports. Originally a Savate gym, the gym has the feel of a genuine boxing gym. It's headed up by Ali Rezgui, who's apparently headed up boxing gyms and competed for French National teams. His website has competition pictures and videos of 8 year old kids (as well as adult fighters of course) that have better boxing and footwork than what I've seen from some adult amateur MMA fighters. I went in to his gym (which is modest but at least has heavy bags and a miniture ring, all the proper necessities) and met the guy and got the chance to talk to him. When I told him I was training under Duane Ludwig he nodded in recognition and told me he knew Duane and had actually coached him when he was little. That surprised and impressed the hell out of me and I was ready to sign up for a membership right then and there. He instead suggested I come in tomorrow and bring my gear and train and see how I like it. Today I'll be taking him up on that offer and I'm hoping I can impress him and make a good first impression.

I've been excited about it all morning and can't stop shadow boxing in anticipation.

Courage

After an epic struggle with html, coding, and photoshop, I present the new layout. I'm still disappointed with the loss of the art that comprised the old layout, especially since the banner was made up of original sketches of mine and such but I put some effort into the new banner on this one and I think it came out alright considering my amateur photoshopping talent. It's still a pretty simple layout, 2 columns, about three colors but I've learned that a layout can be overwhelming and overkill and so I like the simple and practical look of it. It's a modification of blogger's own rounders 4 layout, which on reflection probably wasn't the easiest of the layouts to choose to modify but oh well. I did decide to widen and adjust the widths of the layout to create some more reading space but that proved to be a lot more trouble than expected. You'll notice that I was able to keep the corners on my sidebar and footer. These were surprisingly tricky as rounders uses images to simulate corners and that meant adjusting those images to adjust the widths. I'm certainly not fluent in photoshop and css/html so it took quite a bit of trial and error and internet reading but the result is what you see now. Oh, I also mean to put up a horizontal navigation bar below the banner so I can create subdivisions on my site...but that'll wait.

So with all new phases in my life comes a blog theme reboot. This time, my current "it" word is "용기" pronounced "Yong gi" meaning "Courage." It's pretty self explanatory and fitting now that I've entered the brave new world of "real life." It's also something I've always lacked in my life and I've realized that the strength I've always been envious of and searched for has always been courage. My admiration is demonstrated in the banner's art. The original picture (sans the filtered photoshop effect) is of the boxing match between korean boxer Kim Duk Koo and champion Ray Mancini. Severly overmatched, Kim entered the ring as a challenger. The night before the fight he had scribbled "Live or die" (contrary to popular misconception "Kill or be killed") on his hotel room mirror. Kim fought Mancini in the sweltering heat of Las Vegas only to tragically fall in the 14th round. He fell into a coma shortly after and died. Gruesome but I've always fancied tragic heroes. Yet it's not Kim's death that I idolize but the courage it took to go in that ring and lay his life on the line, the metaphor made real with Kim's own death. That mentality as a challenger, that courage is what I adore and respect.