It sucked. I was going to review it, but couldn’t help myself from sleuthing into the details. Basically, Dave or Kevin Howell or Tim Ferris (of 4-hour fame) paid for something, very very dirty.
And by that I mean paying for positive reviews on the book to help it sell. And not prostitutes. Although that would be an even spicier story.
Before I dive right into a rant about how I can nearly 100% prove this allegation, let me say that I think Dave Camarillo is an amazing instructor. I hope that he had nothing to do with the dubious promotion of a book I think he had actually little to do with in the first place. I give him the benefit of the doubt. I’m not here to bash him, nor the book (seriously). I have a fascination with publishing, Tim Ferris, and other shenanigans Basically, I just wanted to look into it.
So onto the meat.
Read the rest of this entry »
Just found out that two MMA Brits have ridiculously low resting heart rates.
And of course when I found out, I thought of you.
Tags: Bisping, heart rate
As you might know, I’m not a pro MMA fighter but I am pro when it comes to laundry so I thought I dish a few tips.
First, if you do not want foul smelling boxing gloves, you need to wear hand wraps (always!) and wash them often. This is non-negotiable; safety and smell go hand in hand with this one. How often you say? If we were in a perfect universe, I’d say after each use. Practically, I’d go with every 3 wears – if you let them hang out and air dry between uses.
As for the actual washing, I like to keep them wrapped and jam them into a sock or the sleeve of one of my rashguards. If you have more money than sense, you can always buy a handwrap wash bag. Use a mild, non-bleach detergent.
For comparison, I washed two of my hand wraps with the differing methods; wrapped up in a coil (above left), and the toss-them-in-carelessly method (above right). When you just wash them as is, they often get kinked and tied up, which is super annoying. I employed the sniff test to the wrapped ones and even the core of the roll was fresh – despite my initial fear of the inner part of the wraps not getting washed correctly.
One word of warning though, some hand wraps are notorious for bleeding color into your laundry – sometimes I’ll wash hand wraps for the first time while I take a shower, oldschool style, to avoid the possibility of dying my other clothes.
As for drying, hanging up the wraps, I suggest the air-dry method. Hang them up somewhere with as little self-contact as possible and wait. Letting them dry out in sunlight will help deodorize them a bit, although sunlight can slightly degrade certain fabrics/colors. Some wraps claim they can be put into a clothes dryer. I’ve foolishly entrusted a few pair to my dryer – only to be spurned with twisted, knotted, ripped and shrunken hand wraps.
Two other miscellaneous tips: wrap the fabric in reverse (Velcro ending up in the coil’s core) so they roll directly onto your hand when putting them on and invest in several pairs of hand wraps so you’ll always have a clean pair- they can often be picked up in a cheap 3-pack of wraps online.
Do you have any spiffy-clean tips? Let me know in the comment section below.
Tags: Gear, handwraps, laundry
Seagal was recently on “The Voice” for a for a full hour interview. All in all, it was pretty entertaining and if you can use your internet skills or Tivo’d it, its worth a watch.
- Seagal talked about his training history, his time in Japan, getting into movies etc. This part is pretty cool – Seagal is a legit aikidoka and has some depth in traditional martial arts. At one point, he mentions that Lyoto Machida’s dad is a bit envious of his trainers and vice versa.
- Steven alludes to having to use his skills “hundreds” of times, also suggested that he may have actually used the cue-ball-in-the-bandana weapon (from his movie Out for Justice). Moreover, he jabs at Micheal Jai White and Jean Claude Van Damme (The Voice asks if they are real martial artists and he responds, “Can I laugh in your face?”). He does give a nod to Jet Li and a begrudging acceptance of Chuck Norris as a “tough guy”.
- On the Judo Gene Label story – where Gene chokes out Seagal and Steven poops his pants – Steven says it is hogwash and Gene’s a liar. I’m not normally with Seagal’s worldview, but the choke-crap-caper is a bit too … mythical? Much like Steven’s magic powers.
- On training Lyoto an Anderson Silva: his official record is that one of Anderson’s guys phoned him, knowing about Seagals “lethal stuff”, and started teaching him. Yes, he acknowledges that people have seen the front kick, but they way he teaches it is different in some important [mystical?] ways. I’m totally going to write a whole post about this front kick.
- On being one of the first Mixed Martial Artists; sure he was studying all sorts of different systems and mixing it up, but so were thousands of other guys. The notion that MMA is somehow new doesn’t fly with him; Seagal also makes distinctions between fighters, warriors, athletes and true martial artists.
- Seagal acknowledges that he’s made some good movies and some terrible movies; he’s not too broken up about admitting that; this seems like a pretty grounded thing to say, +1 to you Steven.
- Seagal thinks that he may be faster now than he was a two decades ago; – 1 to you Steven.
- Of all the things he’s done, he seems to enjoy helping people – especially with his law enforcement and humanitarian work.
In summary, if you hate the guy, you’ll find plenty more to latch onto. If you like him, you’ll find enough here to substantiate that too. Personally, I like the guy. He’s weird, exaggerates and is a bit deluded – but he really does love traditional martial arts and is both knowledgeable and passionate.
On the bizzaro spectrum, Steven Seagal is more normal than Mayhem Miller and Bob Arum, but crazier than Diego Sanchez and Tito Ortiz.
Tags: Steven Seagal, The Voice
You my not know that I have a twitter account; or if you do, you know that my twitter has been dead like a run over buzzard. However, I’m turning over a new leaf and going to start tweeting on a semi-regular basis.
http://twitter.com/SLCMMA