Gracie Family

Another great video... quality is a little poor but you can still see it.

A look at the Beginning of Jiu Jitsu in the United States

I ran across this video on one of my daily reading websites www.txmma.com which was posted by Mike Calimbas who does AWESOME work in the MMA and BJJ community with pictures, videos, and interviews all over Texas.  The video is extremely interesting so I thought I would share with my loyal followers.

Product Review - Universal Ultra Whey Pro

For this product review I wanted to switch over to a supplement that all athletes should be taking during the day or most importantly after a workout and that is Whey Protein.  There are so many different types of whey protein out there and most them do the same things for you with alot of the same ingredients to fill them.  What in my opinion that makes a whey protein worth buying is a couple of different variables, taste, ease of mixing in a shaker cup, and of course affordability.  This past week I received some sample packets from the good folks at Universal of their Ultra Whey Pro.  The samples I received were the flavored Double Chocolate Chip.

TASTE

The taste of the Ultra Whey Pro was surprisingly good!  My experiences with whey proteins that are flavored other than plain ole' chocolate and vanilla have not been good so when I saw the flavor listed on the package I cringed a bit.  To me nothing is worse than  having to choke down a protein shake, or holding your nose while drinking it as fast as you can to avoid actually tasting it because you know you need to get it in your body.  So when I'm reviewing these products I want to do it with just the protein powder itself and whatever beverage I decide to add to it, so I know what it taste like without anything else there to mask it.  For Ultra Whey Pro Double Chocolate Chip it was one scoop/package and I mixed it with about 8 oz. of water and the taste was good.  No holding my nose or anything, I was able to drink it normally with out gagging or having no terrible after taste.  The flavor was just as the package read Double Chocolate chip, which to me was closer to plain chocolate flavor but I'm not complaining one bit.

Mixing

Now I'm not one of those guys who walks around with a blender handy.  So as stated before I want something that mixes easily in a shaker cup or better yet even mixes well with just a spoon.  Most of the whey proteins I have tried, mixing with a spoon left you with a clumpy mess, and using a shaker cup left your arm dead from shaking violently for 5-10 mins.  In the case of Universal's Whey protein using a spoon or a cup will be just fine.  With the shaker cup the powder mixes easily with a few hearty shakes.  There is no protein residue left on the bottom of the cup so you don't waste any of the protein.  The powder itself is fine so its similar to the consistency of your everyday chocolate milk mix so the spoon would definitely do the trick as well. 

Affordability

As for the pricing of this protein, it seems to be competitively priced with the other major label supplement companies.  On their website Universal Nutrition you can find the 2 lbs canister for $40.95 and the 5 lbs. canister for $69.95.  I think for a good tasting, well mixing protein coming from one of the largest nutritional supplement companies around that price is on point.

Here is the nutritional values on the back of the product. You can click on the picture below to see it more clearly

Dada 5000?

You have all heard of Kimbo Slice and his backyard brawls, well here is another character by the name of Dada 5000.  He is a promoter of backyard fights in Florida.  Now while some of these fights may very well be entertaining, they are very illegal.  In my opinion these kind of things are very dangerous and is what gives alot of fighters a bad image, even if they are not involved in this kind of activity.  There are no medical personnel, there is no commission  no regulations, just their little set of rules and these guys literally go out and try to kill each other.  Let me know what you think.

GSP and Frankie Edgar Training with Renzo

You can see why people flock to Renzo's school.  The guy breaks down little details about techniques.  This is a must watch!

Lane Yarbrough Interview

For anyone who thinks all MMA fighters are bad guys just take a look at Lane Yarbrough.  Lane is one of the classiest guys I have ever met.  Very humble and respectful, last night was the final MMA fight of his career as he works towards his master's degree.

After fight Interview

Brian Lightfoot Vs. Jared Taylor

Here is the video of my good friend from last night's IXFA.  This is the result of a great training camp and alot of hard work.  Congrats my brother!  I am proud to be a friend and training partner of Brian "Murillo" Lightfoot!

Professor Ulpiano at Gracie Barra Westchase

I had the pleasure to go out to GB Westchase today and had a great class with Professor Ulpiano and his students there.  I also had the opportunity to roll and get tapped out repeatedly by Professor Ulpiano, all in all it was a great experience for me.  Professor was a great guy taught an awesome class and I really look forward to going out there again for another great session.  Thanks to him, his students, and also a special thanks goes out to Moon Kim for asking me to come out there and setting everything up!

Francisco "Paco" Rodriguez a REAL HERO

Wow!  This is a great story.  This gives everyone of us hope that there still are some great people out there.  Even in tragedy this family and their son give other people the greatest gift of all, life.  If this doesn't make you shed a tear you are not human.  Rest in Peace Francisco Rodriguez! You can read more about the story and the letters the video talks about here:  http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=6390758

Explosive Workout

Here is an explosive type workout that I found online that can be used for MMA and BJJ.  The workout hits alot of major muscle groups and also looks like a conditioning type workout.  The guy in the video explains what how many sets and reps for each exercise.  The best thing about this work out is, there is minimal equipment that is needed to do it.  Check it out!

GSP is SICK!!!

This video shows just how sick GSP is!  It is amazing the amount of strength and body control he has during this video.  This guy in my book is one hell of an athlete!

Great Video

Good Single Leg Combinations

Check it out!

Evans vs. Jones, Starting to Heat up, From MMAMania.com

Poor Rashad Evans.
The former UFC light heavyweight champion took a lot of heat for sitting on the sidelines and waiting for "Shogun" Rua's knee to heal up after earning a title shot at UFC 114. His much-criticized plan ironically backfired when he suffered knee injury of his own in training which forced him out of his title fight.
In stepped teammate Jon Jones and the rest, as they say, is history.
Now Evans is on the outs with his former training camp, Jackson's Submission Fighting, and he's scheduled to face his former training partner, Jones, sometime in September or October. It's something "Bones" swore in previous interviews that he'd never do.
"Suga" discussed his current predicament with Pro MMA Radio, making sure the MMA world knows his side of the story.

The sidelined former champ got things started by updating the status of his injured knee.
"The knee's doing good. It's about 80-percent right now, just trying to do a little bit of training. Just trying to work and get my movement good. I don't want to go too hard and too fast. Don't want to injure myself further."
After leaving Greg Jackson's camp, Rashad moved from Albuquerque to Florida and began training at newly christened Imperial Athletics with American Top Team castaways Jorge Santiago, the Villefort brothers and JZ Cavalcante, as well as Antonio Silva. Evans believes his upcoming title fight with Jon Jones will go down sometime this fall.
"I was ready to fight this summer but I think Jon needed a little more time. He had the two fights back to back so he deserves a little time to relax. I thought it was gonna be August but I'm pretty sure it'll end up being September or October."
There's likely nothing worse than watching an opportunity to reclaim a title slip through your fingers. Rashad experienced it first-hand and regaled his experience cage-side at UFC 128 in New Jersey.
"It was tough for me to sit there and watch it unfold. I knew I would have been able to beat Rua. I knew there was a chance he'd look bad coming off of surgery because of the last time he fought [Forrest Griffin] coming off surgery. I was extremely happy for Jon. That kid, he fought crime at day and then beat a world champion at night. You can't be nothing but impressed by that despite how much you want to hate him."
There's been considerable drama with Team Jackson lately. After the public split with the famous training center, the former champion admitted that he had been against Jon Jones joining Jackson's camp in the first place.
"[About Jon Jones joining] I told Greg no and Greg went to Phil Nurse and talked to him about it and tried to convince Phil to convince me to let him on the team. Chris Luttrell is pretty much the guy that's Greg first guy. He's from way back in the day. He told Chris that he wants Jones because he's the wave of the future. Ask any of those guys and they'll corroborate my story. "
"I told him I didn't want [Jon Jones] on the team and I didn't feel comfortable with him on the team. Greg was really hard-headed about it. Greg said we'd never fight and we were brothers. I trusted Greg with my life so I finally said 'to hell with it.'"
Evans wasn't the only fighter in Jackson's camp that didn't want Jones on the team.
"I never felt comfortable with the idea. I went through the situation with Keith [Jardine]. Keith didn't like it either because he was fighting up-and-coming guys and he was concerned he'd have to be in a situation where'd he's be forced to fight Jon to keep his job. It took Keith a really long time before he was comfortable enough to even train with him."
Rashad doesn't want to say "I told you so!" but he admitted that at least one trainer regrets their decision.
"I talked to Phil Nurse the other day and he told me that he feels like crap because, 'you told us this was gonna happen and we didn't listen.' I say this because I don't want people to feel sorry for me. It wasn't about him being on the team. What's done is done. The thing that upsets me about Jon is how he threw me under the bus because he said he'd fight me after all that time we said we wouldn't fight each other... It was a snake move and I don't like snake moves. Be a man."
Jon Jones presents himself as MMA's golden boy but Rashad believes he's human just like anyone else.
"Jon is always trying to say the right things and be perceived a certain way. Just keep it real. Now I know what time it is. Now I know that you would fight me. You must have been thinking of this for a long time. You must have been keeping score, taking notes during training for a long time."
"He gets beat in practice, he gets beat up just like anybody else, just like any other fighter. I'd never take away his talent but when it comes to acting with integrity. It pisses me off beyond belief."
When it's all said and done, Evans doesn't think he'll ever be able to reconcile with Greg Jackson or Jon Jones.
"I'll be respectful when I see them. I don't think I'll be friends. When you see people's true colors, what more do you need to see? I want real friends. I don't want friends who are only circumstantial. I want somebody who will be there for me when I need help. I don't need weak, fake friends."
"The last thing Greg [Jackson] said to me was if you can't trust your friends, you can't trust anybody."

Article Written by Brian Hemminger