When you have the support of loved ones....

I'd like to thank a couple of the people in my life for supporting me in my preparations for IKFs. First, I'd like to introduce my friend Elise Humbert.

Yes, she is a pilot. Basically like Tom Cruise from Top Gun except a cute chick instead. Elise and I met at the gym I used to train at. She had to move to go to flight school. She has had to go through a ton of crap to get into flight school and to go through flight training, but she never gave up.

Here we are at the old gym. This photo was taken right before she moved. We had just finished doing padwork. Elise and I are about the same size, so we were well suited as training partners.

Elise is one of my basic sponsors. The thought didn't occur to me that my friends might buy sponsorship packages. When you are blessed with the kind of people I have in my life, sometimes they just surprise you with spontaneous acts of kindness and support.





I also want to talk about my coach for a minute. Everyone knows he's awesome, so what more could I say, right? Well, you may not have realized the significance of his next fight date when reading his blog. His fight is on the 26th. I'm in IKFs on the 19th. Yeah. That means that he's flying out to Florida to help me just days before his fight.
I have an unusual coach. Most people's trainers are retired from fighting. They rarely have conflicts like this. They rarely face a situation where they have to take time away from their own training to help their student. This may seem of little importance to the average person- a scheduling irritation and nothing more. That's hardly the case. Training for a fight is grueling work. You don't have "spare time." When you're not training, you're thinking about training, or studying, or planning for making weight, running, sitting in a sauna, or any variety of other things to get ready. Now add to that having to schedule someone else's training activities, helping them with nutritional issues, dealing with their injuries, dealing with their mental preparation, formulating strategy for them, not to mention the actual training time- holding pads, doing drills, and all the rest. I'm not sure that I would do it for someone else. I would have to care about their welfare and success a great deal. And I guess that's my point. Having a coach like that is everyone's dream. It makes an enormous difference in your life when someone believes in you to that extent. It changes you. It makes you powerful. And on that note, I'm going to get ready for the gym.