First Two Training Sessions.

I have had two nights of "training" and so far I can tell it is going to be hard. My trainer's name is Nathan Bethell. He is pretty much a beast. He has had me doing a bunch of different things. It is only my second week into this so excuse my "i-have-no-idea-what-anything-is-actually-called" perspective. There is so much that goes into MMA it is ridiculous.
On my first night I had to go a few minutes of non-stop jump roping. Let me be the first to tell you that my jumping roping skills aren't actually existent. I'm not quite sure how someone can be bad at jump roping, all you do is jump and rotate your wrists. Obviously my body doesn't understand that and I'm left hitting my head with the rope and sometimes even forgetting to jump - which then I have to take a break because I can't help but laugh.
After the jump roping we worked on our kicking. When working on kicking one person holds onto this big pad, really firm, pillow looking thing (I am not sure what it is called) while the other person kicks the pad. Nathan kicked first, so I held the pad.

The white, shirtless guy above is Nathan. Now, quickly in your head imagine him kicking me full force. Now you should be picturing me dead, if you aren't then obiously your head is wrong. The pad was probably 4.5 inches thick, and even though he wasn't kicking it full force I almost fell over after every kick, I am still surprised that he didn't crack any of my ribs. It was insane. After the kicking we did some sparring (which is just punching eachother), which is fun. The only problem is that while punching it is also (extremely) important to keep your arms up to protect your face from your opponents punches. My arms are never protecting my face, therefore I get punched in the face a lot. That is definately one of the more important things I need to work on.

On the second night of training we went to a gym (the first night we were just at his house). We started out with a warm up that involved several different little activities and stretches. (I am not a very flexible person...so I looked pretty dumb doing some of them). We did some more punching and stuff like that. We also worked on some new stuff. I got my first lesson of "jiu-jitsu". For those who don't know anything about jiu-jitsu it is pretty much legal rape.

 The picture above is pretty much true. It is a really...physical sport. You have full body contact with the other person the whole time. While working on some jiu-jitsu I couldn't help but think about what the people who might be walking by and watching us were thinking. It must have been slightly awkward for those old people that walked by what looked like a 32 year old taking advantage of a teenage girl. But anyways, jiu-jitsu is pretty cool. It really focuses on moves that could make smaller people have full control of people who are three times their size. Which is pretty hardcore. But is also takes an insane amount of brain power. Pretty much everything that Nathan teaches me has been something that I have had to stop and think about, only to have him explain it to me a few more times. It is ridiculous and goes to show how little I know. I am excited to see where this can take me. There is a new MMA gym opening up that I will hopefully be able to get a membership to, and once school starts I hope to start working out more. It will be filled with hundreds of bruises, hopefully a few black eyes, and a lot of hard work. I'm really excited.