Introduction

So, I decided to get in a couple of entries before I introduced my blog because I had already written them up and visited the respective gyms, but to eliminate any confusion, here is my introduction:

My name is Parks, and I got into MMA the first time I watched a full UFC event with my friends about three years ago. One of the fights was Chael Sonnen and Nate Marquardt duking it out for the spot as number one contender for the Middle Weight Championship. Sonnen was considered to be a huge underdog at the time from what I understood, but he won the fight. I wouldn’t be telling this story if it weren’t an awesome fight. It was a grueling and bloody three-round fight that went to decision. What stuck with me from the fight was the fact that Sonnen not only resisted but also muscled through multiple guillotine chokes while bleeding heavily from his head (as seen below)

After watching that fight, I gained a huge respect for the athletes in this sport and the kind of limits that they push through. Everyone thought that Chael Sonnen was on the verge of passing out or tapping out multiple times throughout the fight, and I wanted to find out how I could get to the point where I could push past my own limits.

I kind of fell into a job my freshmen year of college at an MMA gym and slowly started taking the classes offered at the gym myself. I very quickly discovery that I’d finally found a sport that fit me. I’ve been training in different areas ever since, and have loved it.

Sources:

http://www.mma-core.com/gifs/_UFC_109_Nate_Marquardt_vs_Chael_Sonnen?gid=10001096&tid=101

http://www.mmaconvert.com/cards-archive/ufc-109-fight-card-betting-odds-tickets-results/

Dallas Martial Arts

The third gym that I decided to visit was a gym that’s called Dallas Martial Arts that is conveniently located on Preston just north of Frankford. It took me less then ten minutes to get there from the campus of UTD. This gym calls itself an mma gym on its website and plays itself up to be a professional gym for people interested in sharpening their mma skills. Upon entering the gym for the first time, I would have guessed that it was a legitimate mma gym. I talked to the owner for a long time (who happens to be a UT Dallas graduate) and got set up for a trial class that he said was their “Adult Core Conditioning” class. Based on the name and the way that the instructor described the course, I expected the course to be very physically challenging. A few days later when I finished the course, I realized that it wasn’t challenging at all. I barely broke a sweat. There was very minimal conditioning in the course, and the fighting techniques were taught from a self-defense, on the street, outside of the octagon perspective. There were also a handful of kids in the class that weren’t taught anything, but were rather told to practice hitting a punching bag for the entirety of the hour-long class. I was way ahead of the curve and wasn’t challenged at all. This turned out to be a gym that used the term “mixed martial arts” to attract more people when realistically, it was a non-competitive, generic self-defense school for people of all athletic ability. Aside from the fact, that it was a very disappointing experience, they tried to sales pitch me into becoming a member of their gym. That described their pricing as “dirt cheap,” and said they’d even give me a discounted rate: $119.99 a month for a maximum of four classes a week, all of which would be the same class that I had just taken. I’ve worked at enough gyms to know what a good deal is, and that was one of the worst values I’ve ever come across.

I’ve looked at three gyms so far, and two haven’t even been true mma gyms. I’m hoping that Fuller MMA Time will not be disappointing, but even if it is, it’s still an mma gym, and that’s what I’m looking to discover and compare for everyone.

First Two Gyms

This week I went to three different gyms to look at what they had to offer. In this first blog entry I’ll be discussing the first two gyms that I got to check out.

The first gym that I visited is called Vision Martial Arts Center. It is in Plano about nine minutes away from UTD’s campus with traffic. This gym was anything but an mma gym. I could tell right away that this was a martial arts gym geared towards kids because I saw window paintings of kids doing karate on the outside of the entrance to the gym. I was correct in my assumption. I went in to go talk with someone, and there was a young woman at the front desk that looked very much like she could be an elementary school teacher. After speaking to her for a few minutes I gathered that it was a karate gym primarily for children. In fact, it didn’t sound too far off from a form of daycare center. If you visit their website: http://www.vmacplano.com/ you’ll find that the homepage has a video on it that shows mostly kids getting trained by adults.  Disappointed, I scratched off this one on my list of gyms to check out.

The next gym that I went to is called Fuller MMA Time. It’s located on Spring Valley Road in Richardson 18 minutes away from UTD’s campus with traffic. I don’t actually know too much about this gym yet, but what I do know so far is good. It’s got a variety of classes available that are apparently taught by professionals. The first thing that I noticed upon entering this gym was that they had their own octagon in the corner of the room. That’s a pretty clear indicator that they actually host organized cage fighting. The reason I don’t know that much about this is gym is that I visited it during their off hours unfortunately. They happened to have one person working the desk at the time who told me all of this, but I didn’t get any information on specific class scheduling or pricing. I did learn that I could come in for a trial class on Tuesday at 5pm. So, I will do a follow up on this soon and let you all know how that goes, and what new things I will have learned about this gym.

Sources:

http://www.vmacplano.com/