Martial art is the most ancient form of sport in the world. As we roll back in time, people have been practicing different forms of combat even before when there were no arms and ammunition in the world. Initially emerged as self-defense tool, Martial art in the contemporary world has evolved a lot and get improvised in more than 100 to 159 distinct forms across the world. During the course of the period, the martial art has evolved a lot, now coming to the mainstream, an amalgamation of different martial art forms have made a very new form of sport so much in talk these days viz. ‘Mixed Martial Art’.
In order to comprehend more about Mixed Martial art how its training is being in Delhi, Kumar Abhinav of Sportz Business brings an elaborate tête-à-tête with the founder of Delhi based Knock Out Fight Club, Mannan Dattah.
Q What is our vision?
Our vision is to transform the world. One can think that we are selling martial art classes however, what we are really selling is power, and that composes the main fragment of what we are doing! Our sole objective here is to make people powerful. That is what we are doing here. Physically and mentally, we are making people a better version of themselves. SO, IT’S NOT ABOUT SELLING GYM MEMBERSHIPS and not about becoming famous as in coach or simply achieving your sales target.
Now being a part of KFC or anywhere, you are going to comprehend the theme and will relate to it. As after knowing the fact about yourself, the phenomenon is going to stimulate a lot to your performance. After knowing this thing, it is literally going to affect your performance wherever you work. Keeping a firm believe that you are working to help humanity deep within your heart, you can work tirelessly up to 8 hours, 10 hours and 12 hours Nonstop and that with a lot of energy and authenticity.
Irrespective of other one in which all you need to sell gym membership meeting the target of every day, this will make you bored and tired.
Q Which kinds of aspirants come to join your club?
We have a lot of people who come to our for fitness to learn self-defense, even there are a lot many people who come to us to become real MMA Fighter, like they really want to get into professional MMA fighting. These people are the ones who do MMA Fighting as a full-time career. Besides, we also have people who want to change their attitude, who want to become more confident and want to get control over their anger. So, a lot of different kinds of people come to us.
However, the beautiful part is that no matter for what motto you are here; you will get the benefits what other people are getting.
So, the person who is coming for fitness also gets to learn self-defense, he also gets an opportunity to try professional fighting, (if he wants to) on a small level. The person who is only here to control his or her anger gets physically in shape, loses weight, toned up their muscles, etc.
Q How do you segregate those MMA aspirants?
Talking to the people, we listen to our people and understand what they want. It might be possible that the coming person does not talk about what he actually wants, as in the most of the cases, it remained uncommunicated! Everybody wants to be more confident and to look sexy in his or her own way. So, there are these other things that people will want to say, but you should be able to read it in a person.
Q What is the right age to kick-start MMA in your life?
We basically don’t work with people over the age of 40 and we start training people at the age of 4(so the child of aging 4 can join MMA). Mostly we have people between 18 to 30-35.
Q How do you see MMA market in the present scenario
Martial art is a niche thing; it is not something that everybody is into. If somebody has shown interest to joining Knock Out Fight Club and doing martial art, they are very special kind of persons, you have to understand this, you have to treat every person who has shown interest in joining, every lead in a very special way. Because, they belong to a different breed, a normal person will join a gym or a yoga class, only a very special person will go for a martial art class. So it’s a niche market and when somebody shows interest in this then you don’t need to do much convincing at all. Like I earlier said, you just have to show them that you genuinely care, you genuinely believe that the training that you are giving is powerful and it helps them in many different ways. So in this niche market, people will show up ontheir- own and our job is to gently counsel them like a counsellor.
However, this market is growing, there is one thing to note that more and more people are getting interested in learning martial art and it is an excellent time to be in this game because as more people get interested in this we have a chance become to be the best training in India, even in Asia and yes if we are bold enough even in the world.
Q How do you assure a consistent fitness as well as wellness to your MMA aspirants?
Fitness is like nothing in front of Martial art. So, I often tell people if you have done PHD, nobody is going to ask if you have done BA or not. So, if you are doing martial art, fitness will be automatic. It won’t be any concern anymore.
Q How do you channelize Amateur Fights? Throw some light over the whole scenarios.
What we do with those people who come for a professional MMA fights. Well Step one: Local Opportunities, first they do sparring, which means fighting with other members of the gym, practice fighting. Step two: Small district tournaments which are followed by state level tournaments then national and international. Just like any other sport. We give them all these opportunities.
Because we are very well connected to all India Mixed Martial Art Association, the governing body of India, anybody who wants to be a professional fighter we have step by step procedures to help them to build their career.
Q Since when you are operational in Delhi? Any other branch out of Delhi NCR?
We have been in Delhi as Knock Out Fight Club for seven years. We have some of the best trainers including the founder which is me; I am the Chief delegate of Delhi for All India Martial Art Association. That’s why we get information very first about any tournament happening.
We are the oldest and the best in the business. Nobody can provide the kind of MMA and self-defense training that we provide.
Q Tell me about your future goals, are you planning to diversify your Delhi Based Centers?
We want to grow our customer base, and we want to expand by touching more and more lives. But we would like to expand but don’t like a commercial centers opening everywhere. We want to be a strong team. We want that our employees who have been working here for two year and three years, they become our partners and they open their gyms, their own franchisee of Knock Out and we will give them really good deal so that they are happy and they open it and they continue spreading the mission, spreading the transformation. So we want to grow like a strong structured way. Slowly steadily but affecting the lives of each and everyone connecting to us really changing those people. Not like any random center where you go and kick punch and sweat a little bit.
We want to be like a Gurukul, so slow growth is acceptable in terms of quantity, but in terms of quality we want to grow fast and hard! And all over the nation people will know us, in Delhi people are already knowing us as martial art is like knock out!
But it time now, that we build our name in all over India.
Q There is a concept which every gym center is tossing around these days, ‘Cross Fit’ can you tell me something about the same.
Now when it comes to strength training conditioning all of that, we do something called ‘functional training’. Functional training is something that has ‘real life application’.
So if I give someone heavy weight and say pick it up and walk, what are you mimicking right now? You are mimicking a very fundamental human movement which is just to lift something heavy and walk. We have been doing this since the cave man era that you have to carry loads and walk since forever which is realistic human movement. It can help you in real life, I can lift groceries, and it can help to lift even in emergency while lifting a person.
So we use functional training system in our training to build athleticism.
Q What should one do to his diet to be fit?
Well our diet and fitness approach are quite different, usually everything about us is different.
We don’t believe in diet charts. We believe in a permanent lifestyle change which is easy and natural so, if somebody asks you what am I am going to do with my diet you can suggest supplements which is not a problem at all.
Supplements are a part of our business model, if there is a supplement which can actually help a person then why not? But when it comes to diet, one of the first things that we ask people to do who are concerned about his diet is to maintain a diet journal.
For 30 days of period, just write everything you eat once in a day at night or whenever you get time then just sit down and write down everything you eat in that day, everything, don’t miss a single thing if you put a single peanut in your mouth, note down that in the journal. This is such a powerful exercise, it completely changes the way, and you view food because you become conscious about everything you are doing. Another thing is that we tell people are to use just common sense. We suggest them to decrease fried food, to decrease sugary content, and to increase vegetables. Basically, we say you know what needs to be done. If we give you a paper directing you to eat this in the morning that in the night, you can do it for one month or 2 months but then you get bored and tired of it.
So change how you look at food and the first thing is having a diet journal. And then you can show that diet journal to your trainer. Every week, every 15 days and the trainer can just look at it and give you suggestions. Okay change this little bit, change that little bit.
So we do small changes and overtime without putting any will power and effort, you will realize that you have changed your eating habits. That’s how we view our nutrition.
Disclaimer:
The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a health advice. We would ask you to consult a qualified professional or medical expert to gain additional knowledge before you choose to consume any product or perform any exercise.
