If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn't lead anywhere.

Frank A. Clark

A little over five years ago, I started to pay attention to MMA. I remember catching a marathon of The Ultimate Fighter, and I found it far more interesting then than I had when I watched a few of the early UFC shows as a kid.

When I started watching MMA again, it was the striking aspects of things that fascinated me most of all. The knockouts, the roundhouse kicks, the knees, and all that fun stuff just grabbed my attention, and I wanted to learn that skill set. So I hit the net, typed in Maryland Thai Boxing, and of the options that came up Evolve Academy stood out to me the most. I filled out the contact form, someone called me back that day, and I went out that weekend to give it a try.

I arrived early despite the slight difficulty in finding the location since it was little off the road. I went in and did my intro which consisted of a explanation of the program, technical basics, and hitting an air bag. It’s actually funny now to think of how terrible I was at kicking that bag.

After that, I jumped into the regular class, and it was hard. At that time, I was around 350 pounds, overweight, and I had never done any sports. The class had a significant cardio portion, and it was quite the shock to my system, but I didn’t quit. I made it through the pushups, through the running, through situps, and everything else, but it felt like my heart was going to beat out my chest.

When it was all done, I went up to Master Mike and told him that I really wanted to do this but I didn’t know if I could. I would love say now that he gave me the greatest pep talk ever that just motivated me to come to the gym every day and put in that hard work, but it didn’t happen that way. Instead, he just looked at me as if to say that it wasn’t up to him to make that determination it was up to me.

Then, he actually told me that if I wanted to perform better in the gym I had to put in work outside the gym as well. That lesson stuck with me. Even to this day, I sometimes wonder if I had went anywhere else, would I still be training now.

It’s difficult to know the answer to that question, but I feel lucky to train at Evolve, and you will too.