What is Staph?
Staphylococcus aureus, or staph as it is more commonly referred to, is a normal skin germ and can cause infection, inflammation and swelling, which is a cellulitis or deeper infections. Even though it is a regular skin germ, when it comes into contact with a cut, staph can get into the bloodstream and cause a grim blood infection which could lead to serious illness or death.

One of the most threatening staph bacteria to be found in training facilities and locker rooms is MRSA (Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus). Contrary to popular belief, this threat is not just limited to hospitals, and if a person is affected then the results could be fatal.

It is quite a common hazard for grapplers to catch a staph bacteria infection from the sports facility that they use, which, at the very least, is unpleasant for them and will lead to missed competitions or tournaments.

Professional Pride FC fighter, Kevin Randleman had one of the most horrific cases of staph ever seen. He ended up with two Grand Canyon sized holes in his side and three weeks of hospital stay in critical condition. Go ahead and google “Kevin Randleman staph” and get a look at the photos. Gross!

Athletes, especially contact sport athletes, like MMA fighters are more vulnerable to catching staph infections and MRSA because they commonly pick up cuts and injuries, allowing the bacteria that are present to infect them with greater ease. A lot of care should be taken to avoid problems from occurring in the first place.

Mats and cages in Martial Arts schools, are the ideal place for staph bacteria and mold to develop. Warm and humid, and with lots of people using them on a regular basis, the potential for the presence of dangerous microscopic organisms is perhaps greater on a sparring mat than in any other common or training area.

Athletes due to the nature of their sport, spend a lot of time together in close quarters when training at their athletic facilities, and this means that when an infection is picked up by one person, it can easily spread between the Fighters. So, not only does one have to worry about contracting an infection themselves, but passing it along to others and causing a potential epidemic.

However, as well as the actual physical effects posed by the staph bacteria, there is also the reputation of the establishment to consider. At Vaghi Martial Arts in St. Louis where we practice MMA, Brazilian Jujitsu, Muay Thai, Wrestling and Boxing, we make sure we mop the mats with an antibacterial solution or water and bleach solution after every practice. Martial Artists are expected to wash their equipment and gear often. It is also intelligent to utilize antibacterial soap after practices to insure that one doesn’t allow an infection to set in if they have been cut.

If you want to work out in a great school where the Brazilian Jujitsu, MMA, Boxing, Wrestling and Muay Thai training are top-level and the facilities are clean and students are helpful and quality, then you should honestly consider training at Vaghi Martial Arts. If you are not in St. Louis you should check your listings for local schools and be sure that the facility that you train in is of the highest level you can find. Your health and well-being are at stake. Any credible school will be clean, well-run and well worth your money.

About Rodrigo Vaghi: Rodrigo started his Gracie Jiu-Jitsu at the age of 14, in the original Gracie Academy in Rio de Janeiro. Vaghi’s instructors were Grandmaster Helio Gracie and his sons: Rickson, Royce, Royler and Rolker. After many years of training with the Gracie Family, Rodrigo has become a close family friend and black belt instructor representing the undisputed champion of the Gracie’s: Rickson Gracie. Rodrigo Vaghi is the proud owner of Vaghi Martial Arts and head of its Brazilian Jiu Jitsu St Louis Program.

When people think of the concept of ”pliability” as it pertains to human activity, visions of ballerinas, gymnasts, and yoga masters usually flash through their heads; the typical mixed-martial artist typically does not. Even so, despite initial assumptions, flexibility can be a great asset in any martial art, including Ultimate fighting, both in stand-up situations and on the ground. Fighters such as BJ Penn and George St. Pierre have displayed the benefits of flexibility when coupled with powerfulness.

Having crazy flexibility helps in two main ways: In Muay Thai, flexibility in one’s hamstrings, quadriceps, groin, hip flexors, and back can increase a fighter’s potential to connect with not only high kicks, but also have a significant amount of extension and, therefore, power in his low kicks. In wrestling, pliability in one’s legs is important to preclude injury during takedown attempts and defense. In Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, pliability can be an monumental advantage, in particular in the guard. The “rubber guard” and other styles of controlling an opponent from the bottom can be an incredibly aggravating obstacle for an opponent, even one that is bigger and stronger. Back and neck pliability are great assets for bottom and inverted positions and allow for greater range of movement and the ability to tolerate being stacked or sprawled upon. Flexibility of the joints, such as the ankles, elbows, and shoulders can give a fighter more time to escape an approaching submission.

Flexibility is usually a natural asset for children under the age of eleven. However, once puberty starts, elasticity, especially in boys, tends to greatly decrease if it is not worked on actively. Teens that stay flexible through puberty generally are flexible in their adult lives. Obviously it would be great to have a time machine to go back and apply this knowledge to our pubescent lives, but the reality is that, like most things in life, we are stuck with the decisions that we made when we were younger and less knowledgeable and motivated. All is not lost however. Flexibility is something that can be gained; it is simply harder won for some people.

If you want to increase and keep pliability, it is important to make a commitment to making stretching part of your regular workout routine. If you stretch every day for a week then take two weeks off, you will destroy the gains that you made during that first week. Part of the flexibility commitment is stretching not only before you work out, but after as well. In fact, some of your biggest elasticity improvements will be after your workout, after your muscles have been warmed and broken down for an extended amount of time.

As with anything else, you should have goals in your flexibility training that pertain to Muay Thai, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, or mixed-martial arts. If you are having trouble with your leg kicks, go about focusing on your legs, especially any muscle groups that you can feel tightness in when you throw the technique. In Juijitsu Brazilian jujitsu, if you are having hurdles withstanding guard passes because your back is too tight, start focusing on your back and neck. When choosing your goals, it is important to remember that our muscles, tendons and ligaments are all somehow connected to each other and you may need to work on your problem area’s “next door neighbor”. A common pair of problem muscles are the hamstrings and the lower back. If one is tight, it will be hard to increase the elasticity of the other.

In propercorrect stretching to gain elasticity there is a fine line between comfort and pain; in order to gain, you need to push yourself into a zone of discomfort without entering the zone of injury. A good way to do this is: after a brief warm-up or after your workout, begin with dynamic stretching. In dynamic stretching, you will be lightly bouncing in and out of your comfort zone. For example, if you are stretching your hamstring in a hurdler’s stretch, you will lower your body with your back straight (to isolate the muscle) until the stretch becomes slightly uncomfortable. From there, lightly bounce lower to your leg and back to the edge of your comfort zone for at least one minute. Again, listen to your body! You do not want to injure the muscle by pulling or tearing it; however, you may be slightly sore the next day. Continue to breathe while you are dynamically stretching.

When you are done with the dynamic stretching exercises for however many muscle groups you are working on, move on to a more static stretch that is more like the stretching found in yoga. Breathing and relaxation are extremely important during this exercise. Start in a resting position; for our hamstring example, you would be sitting upright in your hurdler’s stretch position. Take a deep breath in. As you exhale slowly, lower yourself into the stretch and begin to relax your body. Try to relax as much as your body as possible while keeping good form in the stretch (keeping the muscle isolated). It may seem like your body is going to go farther than it is able- that is the beginning of your pliability gain! Relax and stay in the stretch for at least one minute.

Once you commit to putting it in your workout routine, it will start to become normal, a good habit to increase the condition of your body and your game. Martial artists do not need to be ballerinas and yoga masters, but flexibility training should be part of any fighter’s regiment to both advance their technique and prevent injury.

Rodrigo started his Gracie Jiu-Jitsu at the age of 14, in the original Gracie Academy in Rio de Janeiro. Vaghi’s instructors were Grandmaster Helio Gracie and his sons: Rickson, Royce, Royler and Rolker. After many years of training with the Gracie Family, Rodrigo has become a close family friend and black belt instructor representing the undisputed champion of the Gracie’s: Rickson Gracie. Rodrigo Vaghi is the proud owner of Vaghi Martial Arts and head of it’s Mixed Martial Arts St Louis Juijitsu Program.

Find out more about Gracie Jiu-Jitsu at www.submissionjiujitsu.com

When you think about contact sports the main ones that probably pop into your head are football, boxing, hockey and mixed martial arts. Of all of these sports the most hated currently is Ultimate Fighting. People tend to criticize it as barbaric and potentially deadly. And while there is considerable potential for bodily injury there are a myriad of factors that help to keep it safe. In its nearly 17-year history there have only been two verified mortalities. Further there is evidence to suggest that the two individuals who died were the victims of pre-existing physical ailments that contributed heavily to their untimely deaths. The other sports listed above with MMA have been directly responsible for more deaths in their histories, both in total and on average, than MMA.

Take hockey for an example. Hockey players can skate as fast as 25mph. Consider that that is top speed. Even when two players skating toward each other at less than top speed, maybe 20mph each collide, that is a 40mph collision. At that speed it is easy to leave someone unconscious. Hitting an unforgiving surface like ice while out cold can be deadly. There are more than a handful of players that have died from on ice head injuries. There are players that have died from taking a frozen puck to the chest also; And this is not old school hockey, this is modern-day hockey. Graham Christie died in 1997 from having his heart stopped by a puck in the chest. And what about Miran Schrott? He died on the ice after being slashed in the chest by an opposing player, stopping his heart. The swiftness of the players and the swiftness of the puck, combined with player-to-player and player-to-surface (i.e the boards or the ice) contact are bound to collect more lives.

Football’s history is much more violent than that of hockey. The origins of football are littered with fatalities. (This is not to mention all the career ending or other crippling injuries such as paralysis that have occurred) According to The National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury, 325 men and boys have died either directly or indirectly from playing football at the high school and college level between 1982-2008 (26 years). Direct injuries are defined as those fatalities, which resulted directly from participation in the fundamental skills of football (such as tackling and blocking). Indirect injuries are those injuries that are caused by systemic failure as a result of exertion while participating in football activity or by a complication, which was secondary to a nonfatal injury (such as heart failure and heat stroke). 1990 was the first and only year there was no fatality in any level of football from the years 1931–2008.

It is remarkable to think that football goes largely uncriticized as a potentially hazardous sport while a sport like mixed martial arts is still referred to by people, ignorant of the rules and practices of MMA, as “barbaric” or “human cockfighting.” This basic misconception of the sport is a detriment to its legitimacy as a high level athletic endeavor.

The worst sport to this day for deadly injuries and certainly life altering injuries is boxing. Boxing gloves are 14oz – 16oz and are designed to protect the hands of the puncher and not the head of the punchee. Oddly enough it does a great job of protecting the punchers hands to the extent that he can deliver far more blows to his opponents head and thus cause much greater cerebral damage than if he were simply able to knock his opponent out with smaller gloves like MMA participants wear.

MMA gloves are 4oz. They protect the hand to a moderate degree, but still allow knockouts to occur. I bet you never thought a knock out would be safe. But in comparison to repeated blunt force trauma, it is by far the safer alternative. The main goal in boxing is to hit your opponent until he is unconscious or unable to continue from repeated blows to the head. Further, it is unusual that a fighter’s corner will throw in the towel to save their fighter. It is considered embarrassing and unmanly. Mixed martial arts, however, has a variety of ways to end fights. Furthermore there is no stigma to submitting whether it is to a Brazilian Jujitsu technique like a choke, joint lock or due to strikes. It is actually considered intelligent to submit to joint locks or strikes to avoid serious injury. Maybe that makes boxers (and football player and hockey players) tougher than MMA guys. I guess you can just keep stacking those tough dead guys on top of each other while the less tough, but smarter MMA guys live to fight another day. There are many places to train to be a fighter or participate in MMA St Louis, Chicago, New York, Las Vegas, Bettendorf, IA or even Appleton, WI. Simply make sure you find a solid, safe school in which to train.

About Rodrigo Vaghi: Rodrigo started his Gracie Jiu-Jitsu at the age of 14, in the original Gracie Academy in Rio de Janeiro. Vaghi’s instructors were Grandmaster Helio Gracie and his sons: Rickson, Royce, Royler and Rolker. After many years of training with the Gracie Family, Rodrigo has become a close family friend and black belt instructor representing the undisputed champion of the Gracie’s: Rickson Gracie. Rodrigo Vaghi is the proud owner of Vaghi Martial Arts and head of its Brazilian Jiu Jitsu St Louis Program.

The origins of today’s MMA stretch far back into history. Far away from the lights of Las Vegas, down to A Cidade Maravilhosa, or “The Marvelous City” of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where five brothers named Gracie (Carlos, Osvaldo, Gastão, Jorge, and Hélio) were practicing the art passed on to eldest brother Carlos by Mitsuyo Maeda (a.k.a. Conde Koma, or Count Coma in English), an expert Japanese judoka and member of the Kodokan.

Imagine, if you will, a small, sweaty, matted room in the third most populous area in South America, where four of the five brothers train and give lessons in the sweltering heat. Very crowded and often quite dangerous, the city of Rio de Janeiro is known for its carnival celebrations, samba music, gorgeous beaches, and great surfing. It is also the country that gave the world the bikini, the thong and the 38M tall Christ the Redeemer statue. But that first scorching gym was also the birthplace of the martial art that was to change the course of modern athletic competition in the latter portion of the 20th century. It was there that Helio Gracie, a young man, small in stature but stout in heart, with a tremendous ability to reshape the judo he had learned from his oldest brother gave the world the gift that was to become known as Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

(In Brazil , the art is still called “Jiu-Jitsu”. When the Gracies went to the United States to spread their art, the system became known as “Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu” and “Gracie Jiu-Jitsu .” “Jiu-Jitsu” is an older Romanization that was the original spelling of the art in the West, and it is still in common use, whereas the modern Hepburn Romanization is “ju jutsu.” Other common spellings are Brazilian Jujitsu Brazilian Jujitsu and Brazilian ju-jitsu.)

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu kicked open the doors to the international pantheon of sport in the 1990s, when Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu expert Royce Gracie (Son of Grand Master Helio Gracie) won the first, second and fourth Ultimate Fighting Championships. The original UFC competitions were single-elimination, eight-man tournaments. Royce fought againsttremendously heavier opponents who were practicing other styles, including boxing, shoot-fighting, karate, judo, tae kwon do and wrestling. In fact the reason the UFC started was to showcase the efficacy of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

It is generally understood now that to be a well-rounded MMA fighter one must have a good grasp of several martial arts. Whether it is a mix of boxing, muay thai, wrestling, karate, Brazilian ju jitsu Brazilian ju jitsu or any combination of those, simply knowing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu by itself is not sufficient to be successful. However, it has since become a staple art for many MMA fighters and is largely credited for bringing widespread attention to the importance of ground fighting. So, if you are among the millions of people watching MMA because you love seeing some of the top athletes in the world battle it out, try to remember that the fight you are watching started with a 145lb man in a small oven of a room in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil almost 90 years ago.

About Rodrigo Vaghi: Rodrigo started his Gracie Jiu-Jitsu at the age of 14, in the original Gracie Academy in Rio de Janeiro. Vaghi’s instructors were Grandmaster Helio Gracie and his sons: Rickson, Royce, Royler and Rolker. After many years of training with the Gracie Family, Rodrigo has become a close family friend and black belt instructor representing the undisputed champion of the Gracie’s: Rickson Gracie. Rodrigo Vaghi is the proud owner of Vaghi Martial Arts and head of its Brazilian Jiu Jitsu St Louis Brazilian Jiu Jitsu St Louis Program.