Hulme Street MMA

Anybody who is familiar with my private life know that I donate my spare time to coaching youths at Proctors Youth Centre on Hulme Street in Manchester.

Headed by John Joe O’Regan, I was asked to help him coach the youths in the basics of MMA. Since neither of us are overly experienced enough to coach advanced techniques, we teach fundamentals in boxing (footwork, head movement, elbows in, chin down when punching), Thai boxing (footwork, kicking, kneeing, basic clinch), wrestling (head position, importance of underhooks, how to shoot a double leg takedown, finishing single leg takedowns) and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (guard, side control, mount, basic sweeps such as scissor sweep, butterfly sweeps etc).

These classes were put into place to assist in the growing rate of crime in the area, to ‘keep the kids off the streets’ so to speak. And it’s surely been emotional. Especially since we initially struggled to get the numbers up. But morale has been soaring recently with the same faces turning up every week.

The improvement from the dedicated students in Remeio Gray, Troy Bennett, Devarnio Edwards, Steven Samuel and others have continued to impress John Joe and I. And we can’t thank them enough. Not for their consistent attendance, keeping the club going or inspiring others to come but with invaluable coaching experience they’re helping us gain week in week out.

Although my day and night jobs prevent me from helping them out as much as I want to, turning up whenever I can and getting swepped by Remeio, hit with a straight right from Devarnio, relentless outpacing by Steven and an open mind and hard punches from Troy makes me proud to be a part of their first steps towards MMA.

I dont know what those guys get up to outside of Proctors or what their attitude towards school, college, work or life is but I know that they’re genuinely a nice group of guys. Regardless of where they were born or raised, their attitude towards these basic MMA classes proves that their postcodes do not define these young men. That everybody can be different and find outlets in different ways.

Most adults are quick to judge people from areas such as Moss Side, Hulme, Longsight, Cheetham Hill, Salford and other areas in Manchester. But most dont understand the pressures that those residents have to face. Sure, they’re not as blown out of proportion as the media makes them out to be i.e. the way the media writes certain news pieces imply to middle class Britons that these young men constantly shoot each other and carry guns and deal drugs. The main point that the media misses out is one key word – choice. Everybody has a choice and although peer pressure is high, there is enough respect on these streets for others to acknowledge choice.

Bear that in mind when reading the article by the Daily Telegraph which informs people we were amongst 5 to win a £1000 grant to support the aforementioned classes.

Click here for the article.

Hulme Street MMA has relocated from Proctors Youth Centre to Moss Side Powerhouse Youth Centre on 140 Raby Street, Manchester M14 4SQ which is approximately 1 mile away.

Sessions are held every Monday and Wednesday evenings from 7pm to 9pm and are free to under 21s.

 

For more information please visit the Facebook page.

The End of a Beautiful Thing…

Sunday 14th February 2010 marked the end of SBG Manchester. How long for, nobody knows. I’m not going to go into the details as to why or what could have been done to prevent it purely because I don’t know all the facts.

Since around August 2007, I’ve spent more time in SBG than most people spend in their home, especially when first starting out and one thing I’ve learnt more than anything from this unpredictable situation is that nothing is forever. I could waffle on for the next few paragraphs about how much I’ve learnt there and the people I’ve met but I’m not. There isn’t anything to say about the situation.

A few people have suprised me in getting the gym together training , a couple have looked around to start opening their own places and a few have let me down personally – there’s no beef… just disappointment.

Just one of those days…

Those days where you got hardly any sleep, those days when you leave the radio alarm going for 15 minutes, those days where you feel like death when rolling out of bed, those days where when you step out of the house it’s wet and miserable, those days where you almost fall asleep at work due to the lack of sleep, those days where you wish that you had the balls to just walk out of work, those days where you realise you’ve got no money, those days where you dont want to be bothered, those days where you REALLY dont want to train, to go home after work, eat, shower, crawl into bed and sleep until the next morning because it’ll all be better then…

THOSE are the days you suprise yourself the most.

You could be gassing and so close to collapsing and jacking it in but something tells you to keep going, to drive, switch for the other leg, switch back to the original leg, posture, breathe, roll, stiff arm, shrimp, bridge, sprawl, defend defend defend.

You may get home a an hour later feeling like you’ve been hit by a truck but dammit… it feels goooooood….