Rosi’s Blog

I’ve just spent the last five days doing one of my Osteopathy residential weeks. It’s been damn good in parts, and dull in others. Even a healthy dose of PhD’s wired was hard pressed to keep me awake through six hours of clinical medicine on one day.

One of our lectures about spinal mechanics, though, got me thinking again about MMA and the problems that fighters tend to pick up.

How often do you hear someone say something like “I can train five times a week and don’t get injured, and then I wrecked my back just getting out of bed the other morning”? Or “I don’t know how it happened, I didn’t do anything to it in training, I just woke up one day and it had started hurting”? If you’ve been around the sport a while, you probably know someone this has happened to, and there’s a good chance you’ve said something similar yourself at some point.  

The thing is, as I keep telling the fighters I work with, injuries don’t “just happen”. Most have been building up for months or years, and then something insignificant just pushes them over the edge and suddenly you’re in agony. Not wanting to be too gloomy about it, but there are a hell of a lot of MMA fighters out there walking around with ticking time bombs just waiting to go off. Often the very training that is supposed to be “conditioning” the body and making it stronger has the effect of storing up chronic long term problems that might appear years later, perhaps just as the fighter is hitting the peak of his career. At MMA shows, I see these fighters walking around. Just by looking at them, I know that if they don’t already have an injury in a particular place (often neck and/or shoulders) then they soon will have. So what could they do differently?

Wear and tear on the body is sometimes seen as an inevitable result of being a fighter. We know we’re going to end up shredding the cartilage in our knees, or giving ourselves arthritis when we’re older… but we try not to think about it because, well, it’s depressing.

It IS worth giving some thought to, though, because there are plenty of ways of minimising the damage. An intelligent, balanced approach to training, and catching potential problems early on before they develop into bigger ones can make a huge difference to the length of a fighter’s career, and his long term health. It’s with this in mind that I’ve been writing a series of articles for Fighters Only Magazine about the common postural imbalances that fighters tend to pick up as a result of training, and a few simple exercises and stretches to help combat each one.

Of course, this isn’t a substitute for getting individual advice from a professional, but my main aim is to raise awareness that MMA ”conditioning” should be about more than having great cardio and being able to lift large weights. Having a body that is balanced with the right amounts of mobility and stability at each joint will not only keep you in the game longer, but will also improve your performance.

Photo courtesy of Hywel Teague

I was at an amateur MMA event in Wales on Saturday night, with a couple of our guys who were there to have their first fights.  We had a great night. It was good to see such a healthy amateur scene, and I was reminded of how much standards have improved over the last few years. Mike controlled his fight and won a solid decision, and Percy scored a 17 second KO. It was also one of my first experiences of being in the corner…. but that’s a whole other blog!

Anyway, talking to Karl afterwards, and enjoying the post-fight euphoria, he commented that he was going to put a sign up in the gym “you do it for you”. His point was that he doesn’t want fighters who feel that they have to do it to prove something to someone, or to be accepted in the gym, or because they feel they should. He’s a coach who really believes that he’s there for the fighter, and not the other way round.

Then surfing the internet later in the hotel room, I come across this post on the internet:

Why girls don’t fight 

There has been a lot of talk of the forum lately as two why girls dont compete more, although I train loads and love sparring and fighting I havent competed in years (most comps were full contact but only very little mma). The main reasons are: ……

This got me thinking, and I posted the following reply.

Actually, I think the OP makes a very valid point, although not one that is unique to women. Everyone, male or female, has lots of reasons not to fight. And if you, personally, don’t want to do it badly enough to find a way past the reasons why not - then you shouldn’t do it.

The only good reason to fight is because YOU want to.

The guys and girls that get in the ring or the cage don’t have fewer reasons not to - it’s just that they do want it badly enough. The fight I’m most proud of is the one I fought seven months after having a baby (by c-section). Aside from recovering from surgery, losing the weight, getting back in shape, there was the whole thing of finding time and energy to train while having a baby to look after…. I’d be up all night with a teething six month old, then have to be in the gym at 9 the next morning to spar. And if you think turning up to work with a black eye is a problem, try explaining it to your baby’s health visitor. I’ve trained for fights in the middle of major personal upheaval that I can’t even talk about on here. I’ve sat for days in hotel rooms on the other side of the world, hungry, thirsty and terrified. I’ve put up with being yelled at in training by my (then) ex (who, for the record, is an excellent coach… but still…)

I’m not saying all this to get a pat on the back. I didn’t do it to impress anybody else. I did it for me. I wanted to do it badly enough, so I found a way. And it’s the same for everyone who fights.

Watching the other guys and girls on our team compete, every single fighter who gets in that ring or cage makes sacrifices to do it. Whether that sacrifice is not spending time with their family, strain on relationships, having no social life, waking up every morning in pain, starving yourself to make weight, risking injury, the pain, exhaustion, emotional stress, fear, sleepless nights, training session after training session of intense frustration that makes you want to pull your hair out, sticking with it even when you want to find an excuse to run away…. everyone has their own personal demons to overcome and goes through their own individual hell in the run up to a fight.

But - to quote Abraham Maslow - “A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.”

And a fighter must fight.

If that doesn’t stir anything inside you, if you don’t feel an urge, bordering on an obsession, to fight - then you probably shouldn’t be doing it. All that means is that you’re probably rather more normal and well balanced than those of us who do. Congratulations. Just don’t attribute that to being female.

Another good night for SBG Manchester

Turkish get up with toddler (17 kgs)

A new take on the old mother and baby exercise theme. Luis thought it a great laugh, as usual. He loves being around the gym, but I do worry occasionally that it’s giving him a slightly warped view of reality. 

People sometimes ask me whether I’m going to “get Luis into MMA” when he’s older. I usually say something like “well, I’ll encourage him to do some kind of sport, but it really depends on what he’s interested in”. I don’t want to push him to do something just because I like it. Maybe he’s destined to be a UFC champion, but more likely by the time he’s a teenager, he’ll think MMA is terribly dull and un-trendy because it’s what his parents do. For the moment, though, it’s not so much a case of “getting him into” it, as trying to keep his enthusiasm within reasonable limits.

The other day, we were having breakfast, and out of nowhere, he said to me “mummy… what’s that thing daddy puts in his mouth at the gym?”. “Oh, you mean his gumshield?”. “Yes. This my gumshield”, he says, putting an entirely unsuitable piece of plastic in his mouth. “Er… no, better not use that”. “But I want a gumshield”. He looks devastated. I cave in. “OK, wait here, let me see if I can find you one”. I dig out one of my old gumshields that I no longer use. From the delighted look on his face, you’d think it was the best toy in the world. “Thank you mummy! Can we play fighting now?”.

As a special treat, I took him down to the gym for a few hours. We got out all the gloves, focus mitts, swiss balls, medicine balls, punch bags, foam rollers and cones. We did some grappling, he showed me his forward roll, I threw him about for a bit, and a great time was had by all.

Photo courtesy of Hywel Teague

Frustration - everyone gets it. But being a small(ish) female in a male dominated sport is just asking for more than your fair share. One of the most common things I get asked when I talk to other women who train is how to deal with bigger, stronger training partners who seem to just want to sit on top of them. Maybe some think that I’m immune to this problem, or that I have some kind of magical solution. The real answer is…. get used to being frustrated. A lot.

That’s easier said than done, though. A few months back, I got a message from someone who was suffering from exactly this. Recently, I dug out the reply I wrote to her, because - well - I needed reminding of my own advice.

I spent pretty much the first six months of training grappling, more or less just getting sat on. Eventually things did start to improve, but even now I still go through periods where I get really frustrated with it all. When I’m trying to drill a new technique on someone twice my strength whose only goal in life seems to be to pull hard enough to detatch my head from my body… or when someone who’s been training three months gets a submission using pure brute force and ignorance, and I just wonder whether I’m wasting my time… or someone won’t take me seriously because he’s 200 lbs and I can’t make anything work on him… or when I’m rolling with guys who just want to sit on me and hold me down for a five minute round…. or if I’ve got a coach calling instructions to me, and I know what I should be doing, but I’m simply not strong enough to do it. I get annoyed when they use too much strength… but I feel patronised if they’re “going easy on me”.

Over the years, there have been many, many occasions when i’ve left the mat wanting to either hide in a corner and cry or to break something. I know exactly how you are feeling - and i know it’s tough. Often, I wonder what I’m actually doing in this sport. But stick with it.But… if there’s one thing I’ve learnt from doing this, it’s that frustration is not just normal, it’s an essential part of the learning process. You’ll keep going through it over and over again… but in between the frustrating bits, you’ll have wonderful moments where it all comes together and you manage to do something that makes you smile for weeks just thinking about it. And then it gets frustrating again. But eventually, you start to realise that the times when you’re experiencing the most frustration, when you feel like you’re wasting your time - they’re the times when you’re actually learning and growing the most. So that’s the time to hang in there, grit your teeth and dig deep… because it WILL all be worth it. When all of a sudden, one day you find yourself able to do something you couldn’t do before… when a new guy walks into the club and you see the look of shock on his face when he gets tapped out by the small female who he thought would be an easy roll… when one of the bigger guys looks at you in confusion because they can’t work out why they can’t get you off them… when you catch a beautiful submission out of nowhere on someone you thought you’d never submit…. when you win that competition, or that title that you’ve been aiming for…. THEN you’ll look back on these times and understand what it was all about.

One of my motivations for starting a blog was that I’m spending too much time on the internet. That logic is going to take a bit of explaining, I know, but hear me out.

I’ve lost count of the number of times over the years that I’ve been absolutely certain I was right about something…. until that something turned out to be wrong. It’s happened so often, that I’ve more or less given up on the idea of being right. There’s always going to be someone out there who knows more than me about any given thing. Some things I’m no doubt righter about than others, but they’re only ever closer approximations to the truth, whatever that might be. It’s a great reason to procrastinate indefinitely. I couldn’t possibly do that… I don’t know enough. I might be wrong.

That’s where internet forums come in. They’re great, because it’s so easy to tell other people why they’re wrong. Everyone’s wrong about something. And it gives that lovely fuzzy warm reassuring sense of being right, without actually having accomplished anything very useful. Much easier than actually getting out there and sticking your own neck on the line. And then we can sit around bemoaning the fact that there are people out there being successful when they’re so obviously wrong.

The thing is, being right isn’t everything. It’s about being close enough… and then having the conviction to do something worthwhile with it. Strictly speaking, Isaac Newton was wrong about gravity… and yet his theory was good enough to put a man on the moon.

So, this blog is a way for me to do get my thoughts down in a more productive way. It’s my way of staking out my territory and saying “this is who I am, and this is what I’m about”. It’s a way of playing with ideas and creating something of my own. Hopefully some of these ideas might take on a life of their own, and a few might even make it out of cyberspace into the real world. Others I’ll look back at the next day and think “pah! what did I know”. Either way, if it gets me (and maybe other people) thinking and more importantly acting on some of those thoughts then I’ll have achieved something.

So, after months of nagging by various people to get myself a webpage, this is a start at least. I expect it to be a fairly random collection of news, thoughts, opinions, and notes to myself, with the occasional rant thrown in for good measure.