The following is a guest post by Chad Kurle, the North Dakota State Athletic Commissioner.
Well, doesn’t time sure fly…Let me start off by wishing everyone a belated Happy Thanksgiving. That was my original excuse for putting off writing my weekly blog.
Training for weeks seven and eight was non-existent, with the exception of making it to crossfit. Healthwise I feel pretty good, save some standard aches and pains that come with being 37. Any Mixed Martial Arts training/practice has taken a back seat to getting the new gym open. I am happy to report that as of last Monday Bismarck Combat Sports is open to the public.
Bismarck Combat Sports is a 1,750 square foot shop with 1,200 square feet of mats and a heavy bag cage that will soon have 6 bags. I was able to cobble the gym together with a combination of cheap used wrestling mats and free used carpet and padding as well as a couple of church pews that were being thrown away. Two guys from the gym built the bag cage from steel we were able to purchase at an auction so we were able to keep the price down. All and all I am in about $4,000 including some new gear that was purchased. Need about 20 paying members to break even. I expect about ½ of that.
Our grand opening is this Saturday and will feature a 4 hours seminar with UFC/Pride/Shooto veteran Chris “The Westside Strangler” Brennan. I have seen footage of his seminars before and it should be great. Expect an update next week.
MMA this week is going OK. It is hard to get my head into something that is so far away. Spent more time working on my feet than on the ground. I still haven’t shaken the whole “cower when someone is punching” sort of feeling, but it is getting better. My right leg kick is coming in with some authority; my left however looks like it could have been thrown by a small girl. The majority of the people I train with were either high school or college wrestlers. Right now my ground work basically consists of me getting squashed. When we add punches, it is me getting squashed and punched, which really isn’t that much fun.
My crossfit workouts are going to be suffering in the near term, as real life commitments (read: work) are going to keep me in the office more than I would like. Which reminds me, it has been interesting to open this gym because to make the money to subsidize the gym I have had to work more and more at my other job. It is like you have to sacrifice one aspect of the dream to make that dream happen.
An update from the seminar next week.
