FREE 30 Days Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) in Miami & Davie

Our former wrestling coach, Mike Rio, is a former 3-time Wrestling Collegiate National Champion.  Mike Rio used to teach our wrestling part time 3 times a week but got a promotion at his main job and now doesn’t have the time to teach.  Coach Mike is still with our fight team and still training, he just doesn’t have the time to teach anymore.

For now, I was going to take over the wrestling classes but I figured why not ask on here and see if there are any qualified wrestlers that I may want to hire as a wrestling coach for our mixed martial arts school.

For a wrestling coach, we have four classes a week that can be taught – plus the would-be coach can train with our pro MMA team.

The pay rate depends on the credentials.

This is for our Miami MMA gym.  If you are interested, please email your resume to info@FFAgyms.com.  Do NOT call the gym.  Thank you.

–Master Marcos Avellan

WEC Fighter Mackens Semerzier Visits and Reviews Freestyle Fighting Academy (FFA) Miami! Mackens is top MMA fighter at 145lbs and he visited the FFA Miami MMA location and left a video review on his twitter, which you can follow at http://www.Twitter.com/MackDaMenaceMMA Mackens got to train under Master Marcos Avellan and Master David Avellan.

We have locations in the Miami, Doral, Kendall, Weston, Fort Lauderdale, Davie, Pembroke Pines, and Sunrise areas. For more info about our mixed martial arts and UFC style training, call 1-888-FFA-GYMS (1-888-332-4967) and learn more about our 30 Day FREE Trial! We’re open 24 hours a day, so call now!

A lot of people ask me if weight training is good for mixed martial arts… and my answer is yes.  Weight training, if done properly, can be very beneficial for MMA and UFC style training.

However, there are several things to keep in mind… for one thing, you should have a workout that is custom tailored for your fighting style.  If you are primarily a striker, you shouldn’t be loading up too much on the curls – but if you are primarily a wrestler, then hit the curls hard.

As a striker, it is important to keep your arms elastic and flexible (hence a striker should avoid bulky arms) but as a wrestler, having powerful arms is good for finishing double legs and other takedowns.

Another thing to keep in mind is a proper warm-up before lifting weights.  If you go the weight gym, you’ll see people just do a few stretches and then start lifting… and if you look around in the same gym, you’ll see bulky dudes walking around with their arms all curled in… you don’t want that.  You want long, smooth, flexible, and strong muscles.  You don’t want to leave the gym with your arms curling in.

To avoid that, a proper warm-up is important.  Personally, I like to do a big shadow boxing routine, break a sweat, and then stretch out my arms.  Once you are warmed up and stretched out – begin your lifting.  Make sure you do each exercise with a light warm-up set first.

In between sets, instead of just sitting and waiting, stretch your arms and shadow box.  The stretching and shadow boxing between sets will keep your arms loose and flexible.  Try this, you will notice a big difference.

Then at the end of your workout, burn out with some cardio.  Either do some intense shadow boxing (until you are sweating) or go for a one mile run.  Afterward, do a nice long stretch.  You’ll notice the difference when you get home – and especially the next day.  Your arms will feel loose and flexible – not sore and curled up.

If you guys see me lifting weights at our Miami MMA gym, that is why you always see me shadow boxing in between sets :)  That being said, it helps to have an ipod with your favorite music playing while lifting.

–Master Marcos Avellan
www.FFAspace.com

P.S.  Don’t forget to reserve tickets for the Banquet! You can reserve them online at www.FFAspace.com on the front page – everyone is invited!  You can bring friends as well!

To make your reservations, please visit www.FFAspace.com and register online!

The Freestyle Fighting Academy and Women-Only Fitness Bootcamp are very excited to invite everbody to our EIGHT year anniversary celebration & Awards Banquet! The FFA Awards Banquet is a yearly tradition and this one also marks our eight year anniversary! This is a HUGE milestone in our gym’s history!

As many of you know, 30 days ago, I started a 30 Day Push-Up Challenge.  The goal was to create some discipline in our lives and implement a healthy habit that hardly anyone does!  The challenge consisted of doing 40 push-ups a day and posting a video of it on youtube for confirmation.

Everybody I told about the “challenge” had the same initial response, “ONLY 40 Push-Ups? That’s easy…”

And I AGREE!!!!!!!!!!!  It is easy.

But then comes the million dollar question…. ARE YOU DOING IT RIGHT NOW? 30 days ago I wasn’t!

There is a statistic that says that when a good idea is presented to someone, that if they agree that the idea is good, only 3% of the population would act on it!

But isn’t that true? Wouldn’t you agree that it would be great to do 40 push-ups a night? That would come out to 1,200 push-ups a month! We can all agree that the physical benefits would be great – but equally beneficially is the discipline required and the psychologically commitment you are making to your health.

So why weren’t we doing it? That is what this challenge was about, it was about helping us develop the discipline required to do all these great “easy” things we hear about on a daily basis.

Now that 30 days have passed, Tracey, Jason, and I have done 1,200 push-ups each!  I’ve even asked my pro fighters if they have done 1,200 push-ups in the past 30 days… so far not one of them!

By working to create this simple and EASY habit, we have now accomplished a lot of push-ups.  Instead of trying to hit a homerun and do 100 push-ups a night, we focused on making base hits and just doing 40 a night.

Jason Ford on his first day couldn’t even do 20 push-ups… now he pumps out 40 with ease!

The exercise also taught us the skill of not accepting any excuses!  The video had to be submitted by 12AM or else they would lose.  If Tracey or Jason lost, they would have owed me $50.  If I lost, I would have owed them $1,000 each!  Each of us had situations that came up (as everyone does in life) and the push-ups were done anyways.

There was a time that Tracey’s camera was off when she thought it was on, and she had to re-do her 40 push-ups (basically she did 80 in a row).  I did my push-ups at the hospital waiting room the day my daughter was born!

I will be putting together a compilation of all the push-ups and a video summary of the whole challenge.

So now that 30 days have gone by, I had promised a secret prize for finishing the challenge….

Here is the prize:

For Tracey Goodell, I will be flying her and one guest down to Miami for the weekend.  Her and Jason will have dinner with me and then I will give them each a free private lesson.  I will be covering her flight, hotel, and dinner for her and one guest – congratulations Tracey!

For Jason Ford, since he is a local from my south florida mma gym and can’t get that perk of being “flown in”, I will be flying him with me to the next fight I am coaching – and he will work the corner with me!  This will be a cool experience for him to see behind the scenes what goes on preparing the fighters (cutting weight, warming up in the locker room, etc.).  He will also have dinner with us and a free private lesson – congratulations Jason!

Jason and Tracey, I will be getting in contact with you about the trip and private lesson, I should be in touch with both of you by the end of this weekend.

To everyone else, in a week I’m going to announce another 30 Day Challenge!  But it will be something different… so stay tuned!

–Master Marcos Avellan
www.FFAspace.com

Hey everybody, I just wanted to give a sneak peek into some of the daily MMA action that goes on at FFA!  This was some random peeks into our Friday 10:30AM class, February 5, 2010.  Whether you want to do martial arts in Miami or MMA in Davie – you can see we got it going on at either location! :)

So if you aren’t training at our gyms, why wait?  Give us a call right now at 1-888-FFA-GYMS (1-888-332-4967) and ask about our 30 Day FREE Trial!  Looking forward to seeing you at the gym!  Remember, both our gyms are right off of the highway, so if you are in the Miami, Doral, Kendall, Fort Lauderdale, Weston, Pembroke Pines, and Davie areas then we got a  gym for you!

–Master Marcos Avellan
www.FFAspace.com

Freestyle Fighting Academy Mixed Martial Arts & Women Only Fitness Bootcamp Help Out with Haiti Project. To learn more about FFA and our 30 Day FREE Trial, please call 1-888-FFA-GYMS (1-888-332-4967). We have gyms in the Miami, Doral, Kendall, Davie, Weston, Fort Lauderdale, Pembroke Pines, and Sunrise areas.

–Master Marcos Avellan
www.FFAspace.com

WEC Fighter Mackens Semerzier interviews Master David Avellan of the Freestyle Fighting Academy in the video above!  In the video, Mackens asks about the gym and also talks about Master David’s impressive grappling credentials, such as his 3rd in the World finish at the Submission Wrestling World Championships (ADCC).

Master David teaches at both our Miami MMA and Davie MMA locations, to learn more about training with him, email FFA right now at info@FFAgyms.com or give us a call at 1-888-FFA-GYMS (1-888-332-4967).  Both our gyms are right off of the highways which make them accessible to everyone in the Miami, Doral, Kendall, Davie, Weston, Sunrise, and Fort Lauderdale areas.

Thank you Mackens for the kind words, it was nice having you train with the team.

–Master Marcos Avellan
www.BestFreeTrial.com

I just want to let you know that tonight, Thursday night (Feb 4), FFA & Bootcamp will be on TV!

We will be on the spanish channel “Galavision” on the show “Acceso Maximo” at 9:00PM!  Galavision is on the following channels:

There are three general forms of sparring that most kickboxing schools will do… everybody does full sparring (punches, kicks, and knees), then the second form of sparring all schools do is just boxing, and then SOME will do body sparring.

However, very few gyms do a special kind of sparring for MMA and kickboxing that is very beneficial… I learned this in Thailand… which is kick sparring.

Kick sparring means sparring with ONLY kicks… but there are a few ways to play.  One is straight up any kick you want, head kicks, body kicks, leg kicks, round, front, side, etc.  You can keep your hands up for defense but no punching or clinching.

Another way to play is leg kick sparring – where you can only attack each other’s legs.  You can defend the kicks – but all the kicks are to the legs.  Then there is body kick only sparring and head kick only sparring.

You can then spice it up a little by allowing kicks to be caught and countered.  So you can call a round of body kick sparring that allows people to catch the kicks with their hands (and then counter with punches, trips, etc.) which will teach people how to time catching kicks and kickers how to kick without getting their kicks caught.

I just did this drill today in my Miami kickboxing class and it was a big success… give it a shot in your own training!

–Master Marcos Avellan

P.S.  Reminder, reserve tickets for the FFA Banquet that is happening on Feb 28 by visiting www.FFAspace.com right now!  Everyone is invited (you don’t have to be from FFA), please visit FFAspace and see the video!

P.P.S.  We have a new kickboxing sparring class on Wednesday at 8:30PM at our Miami MMA school, if you are interested, speak with Master Efrain.