Rougheart MMA Journal

When I first tried to do a Tuesday conditioning session with Full Circle Fight Club of Bremerton, I was smoking about a pack of camels a day, and the most excersise I got was while I worked at the hospital.
James Bergstrom had incorporated a jump-roping session into the conditioning workout, and I remember thinking that if it wasn’t for the embarassment of people seeing me give up, I would have just rolled over and fallen asleep on the mats. It was an awful display of my lack of endurance, flinging those ropes around like my arms were made of tar, and like my legs weighed three hundred pounds each.

That burn you feel in your stomach, and in your muscles, and in your lungs, if you’ve ever tried to push yourself further than you comfortably want to go, faster when your body is telling you to slow down, was enough to drive me away from trying it again. I had to make changes. That I knew.

Well, the birth of my now eight month old daughter Harper marked the beginning of my battle against cigarettes. I am officially a non-smoker, and on my daughter’s first birthday, I will be celebrating a year without cigarettes.
I owe a lot of that to the realization that something was severely wrong while I worked out at Full Circle to try to get a taste of what MMA was about.
So now, with what I feel is a new set of lungs, and a bit more of a fire under my ass about getting into shape, my fight with Jeff Holcomb is fast approaching.
I still have a ton of work to do in the way of interviewing Tad Bremer and Mingo Reyna of Cage Warrior Combat, who I have heard are expecting a pretty decent turnout for Decembers “Pummel at the Point”. In addition to that, I have a dozen very serious bouts to consider coverage on for the paper.
I am hoping to get all three gyms, Rough House, Hybrid, and Full Circle, on front pager. Something about the holiday season seems to be getting these MMA fighters pepped up, and I think it is just that this is what they love to do.

I can’t lose momentum now. Things are too close. I have to get out there, ask the hard questions, and keep bringing that burn. I was excited to make it through a session at Hybrid with Andrew Ramm, and Brock Gorang, who are on the upcoming card. It is encouraging, but humbling, seeing what people in the appropriate condition for an MMA match are capable of.
So keep your fingers crossed for me this week. I am going to be doing a lot of running, a lot of striking, a lot of pushups, sit-ups, eight-count body builders, squats, and dare I even say it… saying my prayers baby.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 22nd, 2012 at 6:40 am by Joshua Scott Beranis and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.