MMA Hit Pit - UK MMA News, Event Reviews & Fighter Blogs

Yes, I know. As a blogger I’m crap! 04 Apr 2010 9:07PMYes, I know. As a blogger I’m crap! My main defence is that our gym has expanded at an exponential rate and I have had to put all of my energy into maintaining the Club website, Cage Warriors club hosted Forum, Facebook Fan Page and dealing with all the new students. It’s almost a full time job in itself as the Club has gone from 20 students to over 200 in less than 9 months.

Whilst I’m not directly taking any of the classes as lead instructor myself, the management time is huge running a club of this size as well as managing the fight team’s schedule. We have had a couple of excellent fights so far and are on an unbeaten run in 2010. We also have fighters appearing on Pro Kumite, Shock N Awe and I’m hoping Angrrr Management and KAYO MMA as well later in the summer if we can get the matches.

Phil and I also organised our first big in house competition a few weeks ago with 13 excellent fights from our newer students who gave it their all. To see how far along some of them have come so quickly was very rewarding. My two female sparring partners Rachel and Hannah went head to head with each other in a grappling round, but I couldn’t run the whole event and focus to compete myself so I missed out. I think to compete I need to go external when it’s someone else job to keep the whole thing running smoothly.

Although I’m still at our gym 6 days a week, I spend a lot of time warming up and stretching out the students between the hour sessions so my gym time to actual training ratio is poor but I am starting to finally feel my ground game is improving. My x–guard work is coming on well and I’m still working on my rubber guard. I think my posture is looking better and I’m getting swept less often than before. The strength and conditioning sessions with the weights and kettle bells are paying off and I’m feeling the strongest I ever have and I’m holding my own much more in the line drills.

I’ve even been doing some stand up rounds in the cage but an unfortunate MMA round involving a taiotoshi left me out of training for 2 weeks again with a left knee injury. Whilst I have a strong background in kickboxing and my pad work really powerful, I feel I’ve lost some of my speed and finesse on my feet so I need to get my ground/stand up ratio back in balance before I lose it all. Add/View comments (0)

Its been a while06 Aug 2009 10:39PMIts been a while since my last blog update but in my defence I have been pretty busy. I've been training hard and managed to work off the stay puff spare tyre through lot of fitness drills, sparring and healthy eating....well mostly healthy anyway. Oh and I am also sitting here with a glass of wine writing this...lol.

Lots has been going both for me and the club, I was really excited to work on the last Pro Kumite in June with Rich and Mick checking hand wraps and taking the fighters out to the ring. That was an awesome evening and I met so many great guys in the changing rooms. To cap it all off James Mattingley and Steve Neesham both won their fights on the night so a few more wins for the team.

Also, one of the amateur team Mike Jones entered the ZT Tournament so Phil and I went down to corner with a few supporters down to sunny Brighton. Awesome set up Sol has there! So I got to thinking after ZT that if we want the Gods of War MMA to continue growing, we needed more space like ZT. Our classes are getting so busy we are literally falling over each other during striking and sparring. We have a loyal student base now with 5 Pro Fighters training regularly at the gym plus a strong amateur MMA and great grappling team. In order for them to get the best coaching and training facilities we decided we would have to look to move to our own dedicated MMA gym.

Finally found a rather attractive unit across the other side of Reading and signed up on the spot. Matt Follain of the Southwest Blackbelt Acadamy and Leigh Remedios have both given me some sound advice on how to make the gym work and I'm really excited at the new challenge. Phil is also very excited at being able to be in the gym all day working on his own fitness and conditioning as well as teaching even more sessions. I'm not actually sure he will ever come home tbh.

So, we have had a mad 6 weeks of getting the website finally up and running (www.godofwarmma.com), arranging some cash for the set up, placing an order for the mats, kettle bells etc and taking Pro Kumite up on their rather generous offer of a free training cage. Cheers guys-you are awesome! And without much further delay, the mats and cage went in yesterday and now I'm busy planning the launch party on 29th August.

During all the planning I have still had to make time for training-don't want all my hard work to go to waste getting back into shape. I've recently started drilling some rubber guard work which is great for me as I'm pretty flexible and not always as strong (or as heavy) as a lot of the guys I train with and I'm developing a pretty good rear naked choke. Although I have been banned from demonstrating the RNC whilst under the influence after nearly choking out another student when out with the guys for a few beers. Apparently whilst drunk I don't notice people tapping.........who'd have guessed!

My main training partner Rachel has buggered off to Thailand for 6 months and Hannah has gone home for the holidays. This leaves me with the heavier and much less pretty smelling lads to train with so I'm certainly building my strength up. Got a great split lip last night doing the striking and a few funny looks at work today but I'm loving being back at training properly and cant wait to get my first roll in our new cage.

Oh and I also found time to send a slightly better profile pic without my tongue out!
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Stay Puff Marshmallow Man16 Apr 2009 2:03PM

Well 4 weeks in the States has taken its toll not only on my actual training and fitness but also on my waist-I feel like the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man. First session back the 3rd lap around the rugby pitch as a warm up was enough to leave me getting short of breath so some serious work to do on my fitness. Dam that IHOP! Got tight plan in place with lots of cv and strength training so I'm giving myself 4 weeks to get back to where I was before my trip. Also got tapped out on 4 consecutive rounds of sparring but I'm back to 3 long sessions a week now so it can only get better. 2 of those tap outs were to an arm bar-Boooooooo!!!

The great thing about the US other than the pancakes was watching TUF 1st whilst all the rest of you in Britain were sweetly sleeping! Team UK gave a much better account of themselves than Team USA and I think we are off to a strong start. Don't want to be controversial but I have to say though that some of the British guys in the eliminations were not looking as fit as they should be when given an opportunity to go on a show like this but hey, with my extra junk in the truck at the moment maybe I shouldn't be commenting.

On the business side, we have been lucky enough to hook up with Evolution Fightwear to sponsor Phil’s BFC first round so I've been busy designing the layout of the 'Gods of War' fight Team logo for new hoodies for the Club. We have one of our team fighting on AMMA in a few weeks in his second amateur MMA fight. Marc puts on a fantastic event so I am really looking forward to it. We also have two other guys booked onto other events all before the BFC kicks off so things are pretty busy on the coaching & business side of things.

I'm also hoping to help out Rich Austin on the next Pro Kumite show which again is a really well put together and run event with a great card. If you haven't ever made it to an AMMA or Pro Kumite event get in quick before the ticket sell out (nope, I’m not on sales commission!).

So that’s it for now, promise to get my photo updated to something a little more training orientated, although to be fair it was from one of our infamous club nights out so it kind of counts as MMA related!

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Blog 225 Mar 2009 9:19PM

Well training is all a bit out of the window for a few weeks whilst I'm working in the USA. However, I am making myself go to the gym everyday first thing to make sure I earn the pancakes I'm eating for breakfast. Whilst the area of Illinois I am in seems fairly safe, nobody walks anywhere and the few trips around I have taken as a pedestrian have gotten me looks like I have 10 heads or something. So the gym it will be with 30 mins CV everyday and an alternating circuit I can do in the comfort of my own room. I'm here for 3 weeks so I have to try and keep in some kind of routine or I am going to gas my first sparring session back in the UK. My hotel has a pool which I thought I could incorporate into my training but its not much more than an indoor paddling pool so there goes that idea.

Trying to eat as healthy as possible whilst I am away but for anyone that has been to the States before have you noticed its cheese with almost everything?? I'm vegetarian as well so its just cheese with more cheese as the vegetarian option most of the time. I'm going to be big enough to fight at heavyweight by the time I get back unless I start eating better. Even my salad today came with an entire days fat content of dressing on it.

I'm only about 2 hours drive from Chicago and I'm trying to decide if I take the trip up on my own to watch the WEC in a few weeks. Still got tickets available and I'm sure it will be an awesome show.

Really looking forwards to the British Fighting Championship and if the organiser pull it all off it could be a pivotal point in the UK's MMA development. I'm planning on heading to all the events at the moment to check out the best Britain has to offer in terms of MMA fighters. My favourite to win featherweight I would have to say is Phil Else but I'll be the first to admit I'm biased.

So I'll keep you all updated on my battle against the bulge whilst in the US...so all that leaves me to say for now is 'have a nice day'

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Introduction18 Mar 2009 9:20PMBeing a fierce follower of MMA news I do read a lot of the MMA sites and couldn't resist the opportunity to have a go at writing a blog for MMA Pit. Never written one before and not to sure what is expected so apologies if it isn't up to the usual blogging standards.

Introduction first and foremost, my name is Catherine Else and I am not a cage fighter but I am a huge devotee of the sport and I do train 4 times a week. I have background in karate and kickboxing but got into the grappling and the progression to MMA followed shortly afterwards. I train with The Gods of War in Reading with Phil Else and yes I am married to my coach. We met through the sport and its great getting one on ones training sessions for free!

A lot of our time is taken up by the MMA, either training at classes, organising classes, (paper work for classes-boring!!!), travelling to events whilst one of our fighters competes or Phil getting ready for a fight himself. So we do almost eat, sleep and breath MMA.

Last weekend I actually got to corner at Pro Kumite for one of our fight team which was really cool. Rich Austin puts on a really good show and I'd recommend going to the next one in June. It was Mikes first fight and he won by referee's decision. I think I was almost more nervous than he was when the entrance music started and we had to walk out behind him. You are so blinded by the lights though you can't see anything outside the cage so I couldn't see anyone in the crowd.

This weekend we spent the whole of Saturday at the Brazillian Ju Jitsu Open in Bristol. I have to say that Gi grappling was interesting to watch but isn't something I can see myself getting into any time soon. Too much jumping to guard! It was also interesting for the first 7 hours but I'd gone to watch 2 of our team compete and their category still hadn't been called by 7pm so it was much less so by then! We had to head back to Reading so the poor guys spent the whole day there for nothing.

Just getting over a neck injury I picked up last Monday whilst taking down a 97kg guy but should be back at training tomorrow. We do have some girls in our class now which is great and they are mostly around my weight so I'm hoping to fare better in the sparring than I do against the guys.
Well thats my first blog entry done...will let you know how training goes this week. Add/View comments (0)