Everyone is welcome

If anyone wants to step foot on to the Lockdown mat, regardless of skill and talent, they are welcome. If someone is a good fighter, then they are more than welcome. The more skilled people we have, the better everyone gets.

I have to admit; this wasn’t always the case at Lockdown. Before I went to Xtreme Couture in Vegas, had a bad attitude toward people from other clubs. I am not sure when it started or even where it came from, but I do remember someone walking into Lockdown and them saying they trained at another gym. I cringe at this now, but I did say to them, “how do I know you don’t want to take everything I show you back to your gym?” He looked at the ground, I proceeded to make it awkward for him and he ended up leaving. Then I went over to America. They they had a live web feed for the pro training for everyone to see, and I had some questions. After a week or so of training, I was lucky enough to have had some sessions where I trained one on one with Randy Couture (not for the entire session, just drills and rounds). After a condition session I was sitting on the mat next to Randy and I asked him about his theory regarding how other fighters come here for training and how people can see what he is doing for his own training. His answer stayed with me – he said that people know what he is going to do in a fight more or less as he was a top wrestler. Randy would look for the takedown and ground and pound them into dust. He didn’t care that they knew what he was going to do, it was simply up to them to stop him. At the elite level everyone has seen you fight as the fights are on tv, so you can’t hide what you do. Of course, there are subtle changes and plans against specific opponents that fighters keep quiet but overall, you know what they are going to do. 

When I came back from America I had changed, yes, I had learnt techniques that helped out and so on, but the real change was my mentality. The more skilled people you can train with, the better you will be. As New Zealand is such a small country to get more competition, it makes sense to go train at another gym for the odd session. At Lockdown, we have been lucky to have a few people from overseas come and train and some have had a very strong background in fighting, and it is great to see. The other thing that I leant in America is that there a people a lot better than me out there, which took a lot of pressure off me. This means that if someone turns up to Lockdown who is better than me then I welcome it, it is great for the guys to see me get beaten. It is also great for me to go up against people better as you get instant feedback on what you are doing wrong. With this new attitude, I noticed how it flowed down to everyone else at Lockdown. When someone new comes in people are welcoming, when someone who is good comes in, they line up to train with them and spar with them. They are after the new challenge and to see how they go against someone new and skilled.

I went and rolled at another club recently and it started with my worst nightmare, I got introduced to everyone, which puts a target on me right away. Then the instructor told me to take it easy and just be gentle and made sure he put me against someone good. This is exactly what I would do as well, if I only knew someone by reputation. Considering it was a BJJ club and I am a MMA guy over 6ft and 100kg it made a lot of sense to take precautions. Then after a couple of rolls he knew I was safe and it was great. The instructor was very skilled and very welcoming, he made me feel very comfortable to go back and train there any time. For me that is what fight gyms should be like, good skilled people with a good attitude looking to train with new people and that is exactly what I got.

At Lockdown, everyone is welcome, with me going out and training at other places I hope that it may change people’s perception of Lockdown MMA. If just one person from each club I visit thinks they would like to train at Lockdown for a session then that makes them better and makes Lockdown better, therefore everyone wins. I do not want people to feel that they have to do anything other than just turn up and train, no nonsense, no ego, just new people to train with. There are two more places in Wellington that I will go train at just to train with new people and get new challenges and hopefully some of them will return the favour. No matter how often I train at other clubs, I still call Lockdown home, and in terms of BJJ, GSW is my home, that will never change and by training at another gym it does not mean you are being disloyal to your home gym. From what I have seen, the other instructors have the same view. It is what it is, just a training session nothing more nothing less. There a lot of skilled people out there so go make the most of it.   

Gareth Lewis
Head MMA Instructor