I'm a lazy bum... in regards to this blog. But I know people who are worse (Matt & Seth). Anyway, I'm here in Iowa and am learning my way around the training circles in the vicinity. As I am sure you can imagine, the vast majority of the time I have spent here thus far has been dedicated to learning my way around my new city, finding hot spots and finding people to train with.
Before I go further, the big news is that my friend from back home in Michigan, Don Richards, has made the cut to fight for the IFL. Congrats to Big Don. He's also slated to fight Dan Severn on November 21, 2007 in a King of the Cage match. Big Don is a Team Caique brown belt from Warrior Way in Walled Lake, MI. Keep your eye on him to get his black belt within the next year or less.
In my first month that I have been in Iowa City, I have trained with the University of Iowa BJJ club, the University of Iowa Judo Club and Miletich's Academy BJJ (inactive website) class with Rodrigo Uzeda.
Everybody here that I have trained with so far has been nothing less than extremely nice to me. The UI BJJ club is phenomenal in terms of how they run a class. As far as a University Sports Club goes, this club runs their class like an true academy (30 min. warm up, 30 min. instruction, 30 min. roll). On top of that, they have several blue belts that are very good. Overall, I was very impressed with how this University Club ran it's program. The club also has Pedro Silveria down quite often to teach classes and conduct privates.
Rodrigo Uzeda is a BJJ Black Belt under Fabricio Martins. He is currently living in eastern Iowa and is a friend of my instructor, Saulo Ribeiro. Rodrigo recently began teaching BJJ (with the gi) two nights per week (Monday & Wednesday 7:30 - 9:00 P.M.) at Miletich's academy in Bettendorf, IA. I have been attending his biweekly classes as often as I can, but it is a 2 hour round trip for me to do so. The training area is huge and there are tons of exercise equipment and kicking bags.
The University of Iowa Judo club is currently being run by Richard Finley and is quite different from the Judo club from which I've come (Eastern Michigan University Judo Club). The UI Judo club is more formal, and is run as an instructional club, whereas the EMU Judo club was run primarily without instruction with focus on self instruction/workouts. I have a good feeling that this club will fill in the many gaps in my Judo game and make me not only a better competitor, but also give me better knowledge of the sport overall. I highly recommend training with this Judo club if you're in town.
Pat Miletich's academy also offers a Judo program, but as they are so far away from me right now, I can only make it down for just the BJJ program on Mondays & Wednesdays and must forgo the additional Judo training at the moment.
Unfortunately, within the month that I have been down here I have incurred 2 slight injuries. The first being my lower back with the UI BJJ club, which seems to have become an increasingly recurring problem, and a dislocated pinky toe with the UI Judo club (last night).
I plan to post pics soon of the different training facilities that I have been to, as well as pics taken before I left Michigan.
On another note: Due to the increased prevalence of MRSA in schools I have been getting a lot of hits on my MRSA article. And, the Padilla and Sons Kimonos review has still been getting a lot of attention. Read the comments on these articles for updated info.
Pics (probably) coming soon.
J
