Coach Brent Weedman brings a completely different style of kick-boxing to DCMAA and although it is one I am very familiar with – if you haven’t been in a Dutch Style gym before some things might seem quite foreign.

Crisp hard American boxing combinations, nasty leg kicks, and lots and lots of footwork is a very basic overview of the style (and hard work, all the time).  ”Catching” drills on the gloves and shin-pads will take some getting used to for most people and is really a skill all in itself.

As someone who is now in the 12th year of dabbling in this sport – it makes a WORLD of difference when someone knows how to be a good drilling partner.

Brent Weedman – DCMMA’s new head kickboxing coach

Coach Weedman and I had a brief conversation last-night after class about the starry eyed up-and-comers and where some people fall short.  If you love combat sports – be it wrestling/kick-boxing/bjj/sambo etc – try and be a student of the entire fight game, not just what you enjoy watching on the weekends.

Educate yourself on the greats of the sports you love  if you want to improve – past, present and future.  Always be learning – the moment you shut that off is the moment you stop improving.

We very lightly introduced the low kick to some people last-night – especially in the live drill style of catching and checking.  Remember to take it easy, breathe and try not get frustrated.  None of this comes overnight – it takes YEARS to learn properly and decades to perfect.

A Checklist of things you’ll eventually need for Kickboxing at DCMMA:

• 16 oz. Boxing Gloves
• Hand-wraps
• Shin-pads (Thai or Dutch Style)
• Mouthpiece
• Groin Protection

If you have questions about any of this be it sourcing, price, styles etc – please ask Coach Weedman and he will be happy to help you out.

I will leave you with a highlight from one of my all time favorite practitioner’s of Kickboxing – Ernesto Hoost.  He as well as anyone who has ever competed in the sport utilized leg kicks to their maximum ability to neutralize and end fights.

-John

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Brandon “The Sandman” Sandefur will take on Josh “The Pitbull” Cooper from Russell Springs, KY.

&

BJ Ferguson will face off against Charles “The Trinity” Stanford” from Cincinnatti.

The Full Fight Card can be found right here.

Tickets on sale  (click here) | Doors open at 6:30pm, Fights start at 7:00pm. The whole thing goes LIVE on AXS tv at 9pm

Get out there and support your local MMA community!

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Why Boxing?

There are the usual answers to that question:

• Fitness
• Competition
• Self-Defense

Personally I think the best way to answer that question is: it begins with a genuine interest and love for boxing as a sport and as a tradition.

Boxing as a discipline

When asked to consider boxing, a lot of people seem to have the misconception that they are walking into a fist fight.  This isn’t really the case.  While at a certain point in the upper-ranks of boxing the competition IS fierce, and punches are exchanged in a real way, the most important part of a boxing is the ongoing mental game that needs to be learned and implemented.

Boxing for Health

Boxing is an enjoyable and also a practical way to get fit, learn self-defense, and boost confidence.

While boxing at a competative level does require a very high level of physical fitness, I have had the opportunity to work with students that have never stepped foot into a gym or practiced any martial arts.

Boxing will, within a short period show you vast improvement in mobility, cardiovascular endurance, and because I try to focus on stretching, flexability is also improved.

When approaching my boxers I try to let them decide how much of a part of their lives boxing will be.

From those that want to compete, to those that just want to box for fitness and fun.  While our students vary in age, occupation, and goals, we all enjoy the common interest and love for boxing.

Involvment in boxing long term is almost a given.  When you settle in and start learning its difficult not to gain a passion for your sport.

You get to meet and exercise with people you wouldn’t otherwise get the opportunity to.

That’s why I enjoy coaching at DCMMA.  We try to be an extended family and a lot of us have known each other for 6+ years.  We all check our egos at the door and that encourages others to do the same.

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Over the years I’ve learned that there really isn’t a typical Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ for short) student.

Other sports require a very high level of natural athleticism or certain natural gifts to be successful. For instance in basketball if you aren’t tall, it is highly unlikely that you will achieve any serious success. However, BJJ allows people of all shapes and sizes to succeed using technique.

This is why in BJJ you can see a 150 pounder beat a 250 pounder. In competitions there are weight classes which match up opponents fairly.

Finally this is an individual sport and while you train with a team, it’s about personal success and achievement.  This allows for a wide mixture of people to train together.  Big, small. . .old, young. . .men, women. . . competitors and non-competitors alike.

The long and the short of it is. . . the typical BJJ student is someone who enjoys doing BJJ, because everyone can do Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

Teaching Kids Brazilian Jiu Jitsu

I’ve been teaching kids since 2009. Just like adults, there is no particular type of kid who can be good at BJJ.

I have kids ranging from 5-12 of every shape and size imaginable. All that is required is that the kid enjoys it. If they enjoy it then they will be able to grasp the concepts and abilities we teach.

Parents bring their children in for many reasons. The most common reasons are

• Exercise
• Respect
• Discipline
• Self-defense.

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu has some great benefits for children.

1. It’s a great form of exercise. 
2. It helps them realize the positive effects of working hard and determination. 
3. It is an excellent form of self-defense.

We teach kids Brazilian Jiu Jitsu using a combination of techniques. We do solo drills, partner drilling, games and also a fair amount of sparring(which we call “rolling”).

During rolling sessions, kids will wrestle and try to execute the techniques they are learning. Rolling is one of the most important aspects of BJJ.

In many traditional martial arts, kids punch and kick air making loud noises. This does nothing to prepare a child for a kid who decides to grab their head and throw them to the ground.

Kids grabbing and wrestling with each other in the gym will help desensitize them to it and it will make the situation less scary should it ever happen.

Does anyone ever get hurt?

I’ve never had kid get seriously hurt. The kids do not throw punches or kicks in class but they do wrestle a lot, so little bumps or bruises can be fairly common. This is fair trade off when you compare it to the possibility of being seriously hurt from a bully in school if they are unprepared.

Five years of age is about the earliest I would start a child off in training.

If I had a child I would definitely enroll them at Derby City.

I don’t know of any other gym around that has a black belt and world champion teaching their kids on a daily basis.

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We also figure out our sound situation and Nick “Chewy” Albin stops by and says nothing decipherable!

Enjoy!

Transcript Below:

Derek: Alright guys this is our first Podcast.  I’m sitting here with Brent Weedman Bellator Competitor and new coach here at Derby City MMA.

I’m gonna be talkin to Brent about his last fight with Marius Zaromskis and his broken hand that he just recently got.

Brent tell me about your training at Derby City

Brent: The training’s really good up here with all the guys we’ve got at Derby City.

I got a lot of training in and still got the opportunity to do some of the coaching and some of the teaching on the side.  We’ve got a lot of tough guys up here and everybody was always willing to get together and have stand alone sparring sessions at night or on the weekends.

Anything Chewy thought I needed to do we were able to get the guys together and make it happen.

D: I wanted to talk about the fight with Marius.  Obviously they assumed it was going to be a kickboxing match and that changed pretty quick.  You kept him on his back the majority of the fight and even in the stand up it was obvious you were getting the better of him.

Walk us through the fight the first round and obviously the third round when you took a couple of illegal knees to the face.  Tell us what that was like.

B: Yeah… I felt like the fight went really well.  This is the first fight in a long time that I can sort of hang my hat on.  Sign it… that’s mine I’m proud of it I’m proud of the effort.

The game plan was to get up in his face the whole time and to really put the pressure on him.  He needs a lot of space for his flashy moves or his flashy kicks.  He’s really comfortable at a boxing or even a kickboxing range but you get guys up in his grill and he didn’t have much for that we thought.  That was Chewy’s take on it and I agreed with him and we brought the pressure to him right away.

The Plan was to score a quick take-down, work him over on the ground a little bit.

In the process in the first round I broke my hand.

That made it really difficult to judge my distance using the left hand in the stand up the way I thought I was going to.

While I had trouble using my left hand while I had trouble obviously finishing him.  I felt like with two good hands I could have choked him in the second round.  The whole second round was spent on his back practically it seemed like.

I couldn’t really do much with my left hand… I couldn’t make the hammer lock to switch of to the straight-arm bar like I was looking for.  But I still beat up Marius Sarampskis for 10 minutes with a broken hand so I was pretty pleased with the performance.

D: Well tell us about when you got kneed in the face.

B: Yeah it sucks!

I’ve got a curse.  People think not having a glass jaw is a blessing.  I think its more of a curse.  The memory has since returned to me.  I remember seeing the knee I remember getting hit with it I remember thinking that isn’t legal but I was out ofit.

Until I saw the video I didn’t remember any of the third round and I still don’t remember like 20 minutes after the fight in the back room.  I’ve gotten an MRI, I’m fine.  There was no actual damage or long term damage.

But Those knees hurt. They hurt real bad.  He knew he was down big.  Two Big rounds.  I’m still not willing to concede he won the Third round like they have

He was just trying to put me on deaths’ door and then maybe just pull out a finish.

D:  Obviously with some of the moves and techniques he was using.  At one point he turned his back on you and did a back flip.  I still have no idea what the point of that is.  Was it to pass the guard?

B: I don’t either.  You can’t stomp in Bellator like you can in Japan.  That was my first thought.  In japan you can stomp the head of a downed fighter but in Bellator you can’t, so maybe to Pass the Guard.

D:  It was still a big mistake because obviously you took his back and it ended up very bad very fast.

B:  Yeah I have a very clear memory of that.  Where I happened to be looking when he turned his back was at his upper back.  So when he jumped to the back flip your upper back and shoulders don’t move that much so when he started to jump, as his feet came over top of the back of his head like the rising sun I was like holycrap he’s doing a back flip.

D: Well you ended up dealing with it well.  At one point it looks like he double knees himself in his face because his head hits your feet and his knees come forward.  And he does the weirdest thing after that which is crawl away from you.  What was your thought when he does this flip and then crawls away?  Was it like “Oh my gosh I can’t believe I’m in this good position?”

B:  Yeah.  What snapped to mind was to up kick him in the upper back and maybe stop his spin dead in the air and then he would just fall his back on my chest.  Like you said I kind of missed and made him knee himself in the face.  But when he started crawling away I was just trying to take the back.  I was trying to isolate that left arm thinking maybe I could take a straight arm bar a technique I’ve been training on a lot in Jiu Jitsu, been really focused on the straight arm bar.

But by the mid/late second round my left hand was just a bag of mush.

It was difficult to hammer lock and to get the grip I needed for a straight-arm bar.

Put the body triangle on to try to squeeze some of the life out of him

D: I think obviously it worked and it was a really good fight.  Tell me what surgery was like and your recovery time what’s it look like moving forward from now.

B: Yeah I’d actually like to thank my Orthepedic Surgeon, I actually have one his name is Dr. Zach Stearns, and he did this exact same surgery on my right hand I’d say 5 years ago now same bone same everything just the opposite hand. So he had that experience.

And apparently the procedure has improved a little bit.  They put the plat on the side of my bone instead of the top.  I got the cast off the other day and I can almost make a complete fist now.

So it’s a little tender but I have another check-in in 3 weeks and by then hopefully I’ll be cleared to do some rolling and some light grappling.  I’m not gonna punch with it for like another month but I want to start grappling and get ready for the pan ams and some of the tournaments coming up.

D:  That brings me to my next question.  Upcoming fights.  I know for the last 6 weeks or so we’ve been talking about the evil and conniving game plan, the master plan of 2013.  What are some upcoming fights and how does that plan go into place.

B:I talked to bellator I talked to my management.  I’ve been told that I’m in the next tournament.  I didn’t lose so it sucks to be out of the tournament but I’m not gonna be ready by next week…  SO that’ll probably be Sept. Oct.

It’s not out of the question that I’ll have another fight before then but I don’t expect that Bellator will really go for that.

In the mean time we have the IBJJF Pan Americans in California in March.

The doctor is optimistic that I’ll be 100% and ready to go a few weeks before that.

B:  The hand delayed the master plan, which is rule everything… so I’ve gotta wait til the next tournament which is next fall.  And then to sort of keep the competitive edge we’ve got 2 big Jiu Jitsu Tournaments with the IBJJF.  Training lots in Jiu Jitsu.

D:  So, You teach BJJ at Derby City MMA.  Tell us what it’s like to balance your training and your coaching?

B: First I’ll say that teaching beginners is a blessing because when you teach beginners you’re giving jiu jitsu to people that don’t have any jiu jitsu yet.  By the time you’re a blue belt or a purple belt you’ve sort of already fallen in love with the sport but white belts come in and teaching them just the basics is like teaching kids magic tricks.  They just work.

It’s so addictive and its so much fun.  I really enjoy sharing my passion with beginners, with white belts.  Just helping them build a strong foundation to be good fighters down the road.

It is a little tough sometimes to balance work and training but you’ve gotta think My whole career coming up I worked full time, I’m married, I’ve got a kid now.  You’ve always gotta balance responsibilities in your life.  Now I’m lucky that my job is still Martial Arts.

A few hours teaching in my day I mean… that’s my job.  It’s not punching a clock every day from 9 – 5 it’s a smaller time frame then that.

And then I get all my training in in the evenings here.  I get a lot of my strength conditioning training early in the morning.  Or Especially during fight camps family will help out and watch the baby for a few hours in the afternoon.

My wife works.  I’m a stay at home dad.  I stay with the kid.

D:  I wish when I started jiu jitsu I think we only had blue belts to train with and now we have high level brown and black belts.  Obviously we’ve created a several Jiu Jitsu World Champions now at the Gym and the Gym is growing faster than anyone would have thought.  We’re half way to a hundred new members just this month alone.

Of course many of them are beginners and this is the gym for beginners to start out with.  And I invite anyone out there who would ever like to train with Brent to come out and see the gym or contact us at derbycitymartialarts.com.

Do you have anything you want to say to anyone who is training or thinking about training with you, who may be nervous?  I can see how it may be intimidating to walk in the door and the first person you see is a World Class Fighter.

B:  The ultimate thing is the proof is in the pudding.  You just have to prove it to yourself a little bit.

People see the end result of my study, of my following of Jiu Jitsu as me in a cage, in my underwear, fighting another dude and it’s kind of scary.  But that’s just a path that I take where I use my Jiu Jitsu.

Jiu Jitsu, for example, in training in sport jiu jitsu, we don’t do any striking.  So that’s the first thing right off the bat.  Nobody’s gonna punch you in the face, nobody is gonna kick you you don’t have to do any of that stuff.

Jiu Jitsu teaches you to win a fight without any of that.

Jiu Jitsu there’s a lot less injury and a lot less pain, I think that scares people off.

I always tell people that Jiu jitsu as far as for street self-defense, having to defend yourself against somebody trying to beat you up… it’s like cheating.  Jiu Jitsu is just  like cheating because it’s the very very basics… the first 5 techniques you learn your first week in the class will work the first time you use them.

The techniques are used by military and police all over the world and of course there isn’t a single MMA fighter in the world that doesn’t know at least some Jiu Jitsu.  It’s incredibly effective.

It’s fun, it’s excellent exercise, so people that are looking to improve their fitness.

You know it sucks getting on a treadmill and being a garble and just running.  Fitness for the sake of fitness is terrible, cardio is terrible.  Nobody likes doing cardio and people that tell you they do are lying to you.

But jiu jitsu is a lot of fun and it distracts you from the fact you just burned 1000 calories and if you don’t eat you’re going to pass out.  It’s really, really intense exercise that you don’t notice you’re doing because its incredibly fun.

It hits all the major points.  I don’t think there’s a good reason not to do Jiu Jitsu but of course I’m a little biased.

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Every January the desire to be a specimen of peak physical fitness seems to be on everyone’s mind. People with no fitness history wanting to shed a decade of unwanted fat flood the local gym determined that this will be the year they make the big change in their life.   Most of them will pretty quickly find out they don’t quite know how to actually accomplish those goals.

This is where the fads kick in. You’ll see everything from binge dieting plans, pills, shakes, workouts, and equipment promising you all the glorious results you’ve dreamed of, so what do you do?

Buy Buy Buy!!!

Fitness is a billion dollar industry mostly praying on the weak minded soul that cannot climb out of their rut they’ve dug themselves in after years of bad eating, stress, lack of exercise and motivation.

I consider these people criminals robbing you the opportunity to achieve your goals! So if the newest thing (insert gimmick name here) isn’t the answer Then how is it someone with no experience, lack of motivation, and years of bad habits actually get their results?

Well let’s look at what stops results.

1. No fitness knowledge.

This is the most common problem people take the first step in attaining their goals by joining a local gym but once you’re a member its “good luck!” from the staff. You can’t really blame the gym for this one you joining and never showing up is actually their business model.

Think about it if the gym has 6,000-10,000 members if everyone showed up one day they would go out of business. What do you expect for $10-$20 a month?

So maybe you decide to get “personal training”. The average price on that is $50 a session in my area and you want to workout 3 times a week so just roughly $600 a month. Who can afford this!?

2. Bad eating habits.

Everyone thinks they eat clean I hear all the time “I got the grilled chicken sandwich, it’s not that bad for you” . The lack of knowledge is what keeps everyone from success. Fad diets tell you to “just eat meat, I mean no carbs, no I meant just drink this shake 3 times a day, wait umm no now eat breakfast no lunch, and tree bark for dinner.”

This is the roller coaster eating that will destroy your body. I don’t blame people for not knowing how to eat properly because they were never taught how to do so.

3. Motivation to get in shape and train!

Everyone needs to be pushed and reminded what their goals are from the weekend warrior looking to lose 5 pounds to the professional fighter getting ready for a fight.

When you decided this was your year to change you most likely found a friend to join the gym with you. The problem is if that person doesn’t show up, isn’t motivated,  or doesn’t have the same goals in mind, you will fail together.

If everything out there seems to be wrong how can you actually get the results you’ve always wanted?

Simple.

I believe my gym provides 3 things you will never find somewhere else. As a matter of fact I guarantee it.

1. Fitness Experts who want you to succeed.

When you step in the door from day one you will be instructed in what to do and how to do it.

Our world class trainers are paid to educate you in the particular discipline you are training in to make sure you understand what you’re doing and why .You will be training with people who know how hard it is to achieve goals and have done so themselves.

2. Proven Diets

You will actually learn how to eat properly.

You will NOT be on any roller coaster diet.

We teach the fundamentals of proper nutrition so you will get your results and most importantly keep them. Don’t worry,  you will not starve!  In fact,  you will be eating 4-6 meals a day to speed up your metabolism.

3. Partners and Friends in your Fitness Journey!

Here is what separates us from everyone else.

When training at Derby City MMA you will be plugged in to a group of people on the same path you are on. Over 40 people a month decide to make Derby City their fitness home.

By joining them in training you will have a guaranteed training partner each time you show up to the gym. No more hoping your friend gets off work in time or that they won’t be too tired to go to the gym. You will make new friends that want success as bad as you. We will add you to our newsletter and Facebook group to keep you accountable to your goals.

Unlike the other gyms we want you to show up!

So to answer the question can you lose 57 pounds in 28 days…

No! or at least not in a healthy way.  I guess if you caught a deadly illness it could happen but I’m sure that’s not what anyone would want.

That being said I’ve had students lose 57 pounds in less than 3 months and some students who have lost over 100+ pounds in 12 months.

The best way to get real results is proper nutrition, a solid workout plan, and a group of motivated people to support you along the way.

Thanks and best of luck with all your fitness goals!

Derek Cissell

Owner, Derby City MMA

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