It’s true for just about any walk of life, and professional fighting is no different. If you want to improve and take your game to the next level, you have to work outside of your comfort level so that your old weaknesses become your new strengths.
Clay Guida is a power player. He likes to take his opponents down, grind them out with a humming-bird like work rate from on top, and give them two options: take the TKO loss or turn over and give up the rear naked choke.
But Guida also knows that best case scenarios don’t always work out during the course of a fight, so perhaps that’s why during his final workout in Chicago at Team Dino Costeas housed within POW Martial Arts before leaving for Miami and Thursday’s UFC Fight Night, he chooses to focus on worse case scenarios.
In preparation for his battle with American Top Team black belt Din Thomas, the top instructors under Dino Costeas himself, Ramiro “Mito” Mota and Mike Contreras work bad positions with Guida for the better part of two hours.
Two days before he leaves for his second UFC fight in Miami, it’s a Training Day for Clay Guida, and tonight it’s all about defending the mount, back mount, side mount and all sorts of other perilous positions.
Thursday’s evening workout at Team Dino Costeas caps off a long day of training that begins early in the morning with running and intense conditioning work for Guida. This writer had heard on good account that Guida, who always trains frenetically, had been training harder for the Thomas fight than he had ever before.
Given that Guida was in the practice of keeping up a six-week fight camp-like training schedule all year round, it was hard to imagine how Clay could possibly be working out more than he had before.
But Guida says that, in fact, he has not just been working on conditioning more intensely, but in a much more sophisticated way, thanks to friends Mike Davis Jayce Sayler that have opened up a new state of the art gym and have been training him.
“I’m doing stuff I’d always wanted to for conditioning, speed, agility and coordination, but just never had the resources to” Guida explains.
Guida also feels that certain areas in his game have also sharpened up in a relatively short period of time. Speaking of a fight just 13 months ago against Joe Jordan, Guida laughs at all the technical boxing mistakes he was making just a year ago in his young fight career.
“I was looking at the tapes from that fight in December, and I wanted to close my eyes or look away. We stayed standing most of the fight and my boxing was so bad. I was throwing punches with a foot off the ground, it was horrible” laughs Guida.
“I still need to improve so much, but I feel that I’ve been getting better” he says honestly.
That’s part of the difficulty in fighting guy like Din Thomas. Thomas is older, more experienced, and pretty darned good at the areas Clay himself is trying to improve upon, striking and jiu-jitsu. Just as Thomas has stated in interviews that he sees ways he can capitalize on Guida’s mistakes, Clay feels that his pressuring style will open up windows of opportunity for him against Thomas.
“He’s very good on the ground and he like to throw. I’m just going to try and push the pace like I always do and wear him out” Clay says.
Outlasting his opponent is always a big part of Guida’s game plans. Remember Guida’s biggest career win over heavily favored Josh Thomson? Guida largely controlled a hard fought five-round war of attrition and won by decision.
Well, upon returning to his corner after the fifth and final round bell, Guida wasn’t excited about assuring a win. He stayed focused for the next round ahead. That is to say, he thought that it was the third round had just finished, and that two more were to follow. No doubt that was an awkward moment for both he and his corner as they tried to get their fighter cooled down while he tried to stay warm for more action.
Everything was sorted out in a matter of moments, but the point is that not only had Guida beaten a highly ranked favorite soundly for 25 minutes and earned a decision win, but after five championship rounds, Guida wasn’t even winded enough to realize five rounds had elapsed.
But as much of an argument can be made for Guida being the marathon man of MMA, when you get to the higher level of competition, the sport often plays out more like chess than a race. And this is why Guida is in Chicago tonight, to get pointers from “Mito” and Contreras at Team Dino Costeas.
On the class mats, Clay begins his night working out of his half guard and from being side mounted by “Mito”. They drill the position and escape a couple of times, then Mota offers some correction and explanations for Guida to consider and implement. Then they do it again.
Jiu-Jitsu, just like wrestling which Guida is accustomed to, is mastered through repetition and constant drilling. Costeas had a lifetime of martial arts training before discovering Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for himself in the early nineties and training with Rickson Gracie and Luis Heredia, and hasn’t stopped training Jiu-Jitsu since then.
All three coaches, Ramiro “Mito” Mota, Mike Contreras and Dino Costeas are experienced competitors and fight trainers, with Mota and Costeas also having competed in MMA themselves. They’ve honed their ability through the types of drilling and repetition that they take Guida through tonight.
The training is tailored towards Thomas and the dangers he poses on the ground, so the focus is on what Guida should do should he find himself in vulnerable positions on the ground, how to work out of them and what to do once he lands on top of Thomas.
Clay moves to the ring next with Mota and Contreras where he drills his own offense from inside the guard position. Next Clay works defense from the back mount, when an opponent gets behind him and gets both “hooks” (feet) in and legs wrapped around him.
This is not the fun stuff of an MMA career. Time and time again Clay works out of the back mount only to have the action stopped and return to the same position again. The scene repeats itself as the trio moves to mount defense.
Soon, it’s been over an hour and a half straight of drilling and the session ends with a recap and some final advice for Clay from “Mito”, Contreras and Costeas who has stopped by the ring several times throughout the evening to observe and now chimes in with summary tips for Guida.
As the gym empties, Guida remains on the training floor to get a couple of rounds in with a muay thai bag. He’s spent the whole night on the bottom or defending chokes and arm bars but it’s been a good night for Clay.
“This is good work for me and those guys are great. I always want to spar, you know, because it’s fun. No one wants to do this stuff, with all the drilling, but it’s good for me” he says.
Next it’s a solid of dinner of sushi and “Crazy Noodles” at local Japanese and Thai restaurant “Butterfly” for Guida. Ever disciplined, Guida explains his choice of eating after 9pm.
“I don’t usually eat this late, but I’m right on weight and I have a killer workout planned for early tomorrow morning.”
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