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WALKER: Team Curran MMA Training Blog Week 5 - The Kids Can Do It Too!
Apr 16, 2012 - 11:20:40 PM WALKER: Team Curran MMA Training Blog Week 5 - The Kids Can Do It Too!

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By: Brad Walker, MMATorch Columnist

This past week has been a slow one for me in the gym, I haven't been able to spend a lot of time both working out and doing classes since my wife is on the brink of birth. So, last Wednesday I asked Jeff Curran if it would be ok if I took my 3 ½ year old daughter in for one of the children's classes called “Lil Champions”. He said it was cool, and I naturally made sure it was okay with my wife before tossing my munchkin in a pair of shorts, a t-shirt and heading to the gym. As soon as we arrived I found out that my muay thai instructor (Chuck) was also her Lil Champions teacher – pretty cool that he can educate such a diverse age range of people. What I didn't know was how very in tune the children would become when their tiny little selves stepped onto the mat with the teacher and his helpers.

My daughter is huge for her age, she is about 50 pounds nearing age four and stands nearly four feet tall, she got daddy's growth genes. So I was worried at first that she wouldn't want to partake in class like the other kids did, but as soon as she walked onto the mats and ran around like a crazed kid for a few minutes I knew she was in. After her spastic running, she walked over to the 120 pound grappling dummy that was lying on the floor, she tried to lift it – that wasn't happening. So what did she do? Exactly what I would expect her to do, she leaned in real close to its face, and BOOM she sucker punched the dummy right between the eyes – I was crying from laughing so hard.

Finally class started and four other kids joined her on the side mat to learn from Chuck and his two helpers. They practiced stabilizing your balance by shifting weight from one foot to the other, and also worked on jumping without falling. Chuck has a touch with the kids that is admirable, I know he has kids of his own, but I'm used to the nose down whoop some ass version of him. They did some simple workouts, running up and down the mats and jumping in specific ways so as to make or not make noise, it was actually really cool. Then Chuck pulled out a jiu-jitsu belt and announced that it was time to play a game.

My daughter has an epic jumping ability - hell, if she could jump instead of walk she probably would - but Chuck's game tested her timing as well. He would swing the belt around in a circle on the mat and tell the kids which kind of jump to do over the top of the belt as it swung beneath them. Most of them didn't make it on their first few tries, but got the hang of it as the belt moved faster. It was at about this point that I pointed my wife toward the cage where Jeff Curran was doing some pad work in preparation for his upcoming bout with Johnny Eduardo, but she was too into the belt and jumping. After the class my daughter wasn't as tired as I expected her to be, but she was NOT ready to leave the mats or the punching bags – she was legitimately having a great time.

Now, onto myself, my knees have been chaotically messing with me all week, so I have basically spent an entire week on the treadmill. My broken toe is pretty much back to normal and I suffered through some intense foot pain at the start of the week which faded over the time I spent on the treadmill. I didn't get a chance to attend a class due to being needed at home, but the gym is still a second home to me – where I go to burn the calories from the morning before I regain them when my wife cooks an insanely delicious dinner. I have also found that Jeff will be passing me on some of his personal knowledge on dieting and losing weight after his fight with Eduardo – which put a big smile on my face since losing weight is one of my main goals at the gym. Team Curran is a place where you can find everything that you need, friends, MMA lovers, fighters and even advice when you need it the most; it's like a resource gym – pretty awesome in my book.

This will be my last training blog until the end of April; my wife was due this weekend and if the baby hasn't arrived by Tuesday they are going to induce labor so she will finally come out, fashionably late as it were. I'm going to do my best to keep columns of some sort coming during my first few days as super dad while my wife recovers but only time will tell. Thank you all for the encouragement you have sent my way on twitter – it means a lot to see readers who are there to encourage the assclown writing the things they love to read! I'll be back with Week 6: Back to Class in a couple of weeks!

Follow me on twitter- @BradMMATorch
And Team Curran - @TeamCurranMMA