Thursday, December 13, 2007

Competitive Training Center to unite fighters and athletes alike

It’s a cold Monday night, and the front window of the mixed martial arts gym, KO Sport, is fogged over. Inside, a few students finish up their training, stop to catch their breath, and start packing up their gym bags to go. The gym is in a small warehouse off Grey and Rutland in North Austin, with a few punching bags, a mat, and a boxing ring. If you aren’t paying attention, you could miss the tiny sign at the end of the narrow alley where KO’s is hidden.

This is only a temporary location for KO Sport. Owner and instructor Rodney Solis, along with two other partners, is working hard on a new facility that will be one of the premier martial arts and athletic training center in the nation.

Competitive Training Center, geared towards martial arts and all around athletic performance, is slated to open up at the beginning of the new year. “We’re doing two things. We’re taking mixed martial arts, teaching people how to fight, teaching self-defense. The second thing we’re doing is athletic performance, taking athletes and making them faster, stronger, more explosive,” says Solis.

The new gym will feature 20,000 square feet of MMA and athletic equipment, including at least 16 heavy bags, a full size octagon, a boxing ring, and plenty of mat space for grappling. The first floor will also have a sport turf and sprint track for drills. Next to the gym will be a full-size football field for athletes to work on outdoor drills, such as pushing tires for strength and stamina, and for whatever else they may want to do.

Solis and his two partners have invested in specialty cardio equipment, and stresses that each machine is designed specifically to enhance athletic performance.

“Oh, it’s very expensive equipment alright, not what you’d see in a mainstream gym,” he says. “It’s not gonna be a place where you go to lift or have just a bench or a squat rack. Yes, it’ll be there, but we’re going to have specialty equipment that will improve strength, speed, explosiveness.”

As always, safety first. Competitive Training Center will have a physical therapy section with two to three therapists on hand, as well as a chiropractor, massage therapists, and saunas to help athletes recover from injuries.

Upstairs will be a pro-shop where athletes can buy all sorts of equipment, including shin guards, gloves, and fightwear. There, you will also be able to buy products from the gym’s sponsors, whom Solis will be solidifying deals with this month. “We’ve got Under Armour flying out, Cytomax, and we’re talking to Nike. Being the top dog they are, they’re saying, ‘We’ll think about it,’” he says, with a twinkle in his eye.

If you are a little hungry or want to treat yourself to a healthy smoothie after working out, there will be a smoothie and sandwich shop too.

From 6 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, the gym will be bustling with the sounds of training and the rhythmic pop, pop of punches. CTC will offer at least three open gym slots a day, Aerobic kickboxing, and Brazilian jiu-jitsu and Thai boxing classes. In addition to MMA classes, CTC will offer training sessions for all athletes of all ages, including after-school programs for kids, high school athletic programs, and sessions for athletes at the college and professional level.

On Saturdays and Sundays, fighters can go in for open gym and sparring sessions. To help fighters gain experience and build their amateur record before they go pro, Solis will hold amateur fight nights on a regular basis. At the end of every month, CTC will host “Smoker Night,” where guys can bring fighters from different gyms and spar. These events will require fighters to wear headgear and thick MMA gloves and shin guards to keep it under the Boxing Commission. Solis stresses that it’s important to gain a lot of fight experience before you go pro, and there aren’t a lot of opportunities in the MMA world to expand your amateur record.

“The way the state has it right now makes it very easy for anyone to come in and do a professional MMA event, where they’ll try to make money,” he explains. “Most think it’s easy, but it’s very hard to do, and lots of people end up losing a lot of money.”

His goal is to build up fighters that won’t just get by when they go pro, they’ll knock the competition out of the water (or ring, or cage). “There’s not a lot of incentive to do amateur events, and that makes guys want to go straight to the pros and make money doing it. They should structure it more like boxing, where you have good amateur programs. You’ve got Golden Gloves, where you can get experience and go pro. Some guys in MMA go pro too quick, then turn around and say, ‘Alright, I’m going to get the experience that I should have done,’ but then they got to go out there and fight a pro who’s got 130 amateur fights and is gonna kill them.”

As far as instructing and pushing MMA students to their limits, Solis is top-tier material. Originally hailing from Brownsville, Texas, he has owned KO Sport for 12 years, has been boxing for 17 years and has trained in Thai boxing for 14. He pauses and laughs, “Wow, that’s pretty long. I lied on my resume that I sent to Pat Miletich—said I boxed for 14 years because I felt kinda old.” Solis is a certified instructor under the Miletich Fighting System, which incorporates muay thai, boxing, wrestling, and Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and trains with Pat Miletich—who has trained Matt Hughes, Tim Sylvia, and Jens Pulver—in Iowa whenever he can.

In his earlier days of martial arts, Solis learned Brazilian jiu-jitsu from Royce Gracie, an art in which his father, Helio, had in essence invented. In later years, Solis spent most of his training with Carlos Machado, a cousin of the Gracies.

There will be four other accomplished instructors alongside Solis at Competitive Training Center. So far, Jason Webster and Andrew Goldwaithe will instruct Thai boxing, and Ernesto Perales will teach Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

Keep an eye out for the grand opening of Competitive Training Center, located at 9185 Research Boulevard in Austin, TX, 98758. For information on class schedules or athletic training, call (512) 330-4269 or visit the website at www.ctcaustin.com.

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

COLLEGE

As I walked to class today, a girl ran out of Fleck Hall in a flurry of tears muttering all sorts of unrecognizable words. She jumped into her red SUV and that's the last I saw of her before she buried her face in tufts of Kleenex.

With finals exams and papers due all this week and next, she must have been prepared for some bad news to have a box of Kleenex in her car. I don't blame her. Just thinking of exams and all the projects and papers due this week makes me want to crawl up in the fetal position and just pray for a catastrophe that would somehow postpone them for another week or so. 

Last night on the Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert made a joke on seagulls stealing Doritos , saying that all they need is a plasma TV, a couch to chill on, and marijuana to make them college students. 

WTF. College is nothing like the stereotype people make it out to be. Instead of chilling with a bag of Doritos and a Bud Light every night, I am either dragging myself through a cheer practice or game, slaving away on assignments and papers that are usually past due, and working almost 40 hours a week to pay the bills. 

But for the record, I do have a box of Kleenex laying around at the house that I will for sure be putting in my car first thing in the morning.