After my last fight, I took some time to reflect on where
I’m pointing my compass and who I want to surround myself with for the next
step in my journey. I don’t want to suffer a loss in order to be reminded that
I need to constantly be making improvements in my training and my personal
environment. That being said, I knew I needed a new head coach and training
partners with better skills in certain areas that I naturally am good at. Why
focus on areas I am strong in? Because for the past seven years I have trained
and competed in areas of mixed martial arts that I am weaker in. It’s now time to focus on my strong suits.
Through the right circumstances I found a new gym, head
coach and manager. Fortunately, I have earned numerous national titles in jiu
jitsu and depending on the MMA camp; I can walk in at the top of the food chain
amongst fighters with this skill set. This
success and my dedication to becoming a mixed martial artist and not merely a
cage fighter allows me to keep pace with the most talented fighters in the
Valley.
The new gym is called One Hit MMA and the head coach is a
Brazilian, named Aldo Oreggia. He is
a former world champion kick boxer who is going to take my striking skills and my
career to an entirely new level. Not
only is Aldo highly skilled, but his fighters are loyal to him and have been
with him several years. Fighters can be
fickle, so this is a true testament of his ability to coach and lead a team of
fighters. Fighters also remain loyal to
a coach when they are making improvements and meeting with success in
competition.
Even though I won
my last fight under my former coach, he and I lacked chemistry. The journey to being a champion is multi-faceted.
If one of the ingredients for success is missing, you must be prepared to move
on.
The list of
ingredients is lengthy, but based upon my experience, some of the most
important ones are:
1.
Synergy
with your coach—a champion needs to feel like the he and his coach are
co-conspirators in bringing out the very best there is within him.
2.
Trust
and autonomy with training—a champion needs the freedom to train outside of his
base team with experts in other disciplines as well as with other athletes that
provide practice with areas of the fight game that team sparring partners might
not.
3.
Ability
to create a personalized support team—a champion’s team is those whom he
attracts as well as those whom he feels contributes to his success. A champion’s team is not based upon the team
at the gym or the team the head coach trains.
When I fight, my
corner support includes my wife, my head coach and maybe one additional team
member or special focus coach that I feel I will need to perform at my best. I
determine who’s on this roster in collaboration with my wife and my head
coach. It might sound selfish but fighting
is a selfish sport. In the end, it’s
only you and your opponent in the ring— toe to toe. You want the best minds to have been with you
in your fight preparation and for those minds to be the voices and the energy
supporting you when fists and legs are flying.
4.
Diversity
in my training environment—this ingredient is extremely personal to me as I
grew up in the Bay area of California. I
was surrounded by people of different cultures, ethnicities, religions, beliefs
and ideas. Unfortunately Utah is
dominated by gyms whose coaches, staff and fighters are not used to being
around people of color. They saw me is
the stereotypical black man that the media has been so keen in creating over the
past several decades. No coaches and
only a few fighters took the time to get to know me as an individual or had the
paradigm to include me within the “inner circle. Little do they know that I am an immigrant
from West Africa with a completely different cultural background and life
experience than that of black America.
Fortunately, One
Hit MMA is diverse. From its head coach,
to its gym members and fighters diversity is represented. Further, even the gym’s white athletes are
more forward in their thinking and have all reached out to get to know me as an
individual—not a label.
I’ve studied
world champions and they don’t have a bunch of cage fighters in their corner.
Nor do they keep changing coaches. They seek out specialists and maintain the
same coaches for a long period of time. I wanted to wait until my skills were
at a level where I could walk into any gym and be noticed for the time I’ve put
into this sport and the skills I have acquired. It looks like I found the
coach, manager and team at One Hit MMA.
