Mark your Calendars, and  RSVP via the facebook event page. We are hosting this fundraising program to raise money that will help St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital find new treatments for childhood cancer and other catastrophic diseases. You can help St. Jude continue its life-saving work against [...]]]>

Mark your Calendars, and  RSVP via the facebook event page. We are hosting this fundraising program to raise money that will help St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital find new treatments for childhood cancer and other catastrophic diseases. You can help St. Jude continue its life-saving work against pediatric diseases with your donation here. Thanks for helping us reach our goal for the kids of St. Jude!

New to A1 FC

Family Style Zumba

Mondays & Fridays: 4:15-5:00pm

Sundays: 11:30-12:00pm

The Family Style Zumba classes fun, high energy fitness parties! Packed with specially choreographed, kid-friendly routines and all the misic kids & parents will love!

Family Martial Arts

Saturdays: 11:00-11:45am

Sundays: 10:30-11:15am

Learn and grow [...]]]>

New to A1 FC

Family Style Zumba

Mondays & Fridays: 4:15-5:00pm

Sundays: 11:30-12:00pm

The Family Style Zumba classes fun, high energy fitness parties! Packed with specially choreographed, kid-friendly routines and all the misic kids & parents will love!

Family Martial Arts

Saturdays: 11:00-11:45am

Sundays: 10:30-11:15am

Learn and grow as a family.  Classes will meet the needs of each family member while promoting a healthy and strong family unit.

You know you’re gonna love these classes, so why not take advantage of this incredible offer? What you waiting for? Go ahead get started on the right foot, or the left foot if you choose. We added YOGA to the starter special!!

Our Unlimited Started Special includes the following [...]]]>

You know you’re gonna love these classes, so why not take advantage of this incredible offer? What you waiting for? Go ahead get started on the right foot, or the left foot if you choose. We added YOGA to the starter special!!

Our Unlimited Started Special includes the following for only $120!

1 month of Unlimited Kickboxing,  Zumba & Yoga- $148 value
1/2 hour Kickboxing intro  class- $40 Value
Free Kickboxing Gloves- $20 value
Free T-shirt- $12 value

Over $250 in Savings

Call now to set up your Intro Class! 203.376.9480

Please help raise money for awesome people with Downs Syndrome. Saturday,October 16, 2010, my family and I will join hundreds of others provide support to individuals and their families living with Down Syndrome by walking in the 2010 CDSC Buddy Walk. By making a pledge on our behalf, you [...]]]>

Please help raise money for awesome people with Downs Syndrome. Saturday,October 16, 2010, my family and I will join hundreds of others provide support to individuals and their families living with Down Syndrome by walking in the 2010 CDSC Buddy Walk. By making a pledge on our behalf, you are helping the Connecticut Down Syndrome Congress improve the lives of people with Down Syndrome by promoting equality, opportunity, inclusi…on and empowerment.As many of you know, I have a personal stake in this particular organization. My daughter, Yasmine Mazie (short for Amazing), has Down Syndrome. Not only do I want to help her, but also many others diagnosed with DS. DS is a disorder caused by an abnormality of the chromosomes, the pieces of DNA containing the blueprint for the human body. In addition to the characteristic physical features and decreased mental abilities, other serious health problems frequently are seen in people with DS. These can include, but unfortunately are not limited to, hearing deficits, heart problems, intestinal abnormalities, eye problems, low levels of thyroid hormone, skeletal problems such as joint instability and poor weight gain in infants.

How to Donate: Our goal is to raise at least $7,800, which represents
Yasmine’s remarkably healthy birth weight of 7 lbs, 8 oz. Please help us reach our goal with your pledge. Your donation is tax deductible and many companies offer employees gift matching opportunities so please make sure to look into it. If you wish, you may mail your donations to Sandra Cassidy 96 Cinnamon Road Milford, CT 06461 (checks made payable to CDSC); otherwise, credit card donations can be made @http://www.ctdownsyndrome.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=179&Itemid=222.

Select Team AMP Yasmanian Devils as the Buddy Walk Team/Family to pledge for by clicking the down arrow to the right of the field and selecting our team name. In addition, please forward this email to your friends and family who may be willing to help us reach our goal. Also, keep in mind that our deadline to reach this goal is October 11, 2010.

Thank you so much for your support. Please call me if you have any questions or comments about the Buddy Walk 203-376-9480

Sincerely,
Ryan Griffith
Owner/Founder
A-1 Martial Arts

By JAMES DAO, NYT

FORT JACKSON, S.C. — Dawn breaks at this, the Army’s largest training post, with the reliable sound of fresh recruits marching to their morning exercise. But these days, something looks different.

That familiar standby, the situp, is gone, or almost gone. [...]]]>

By JAMES DAO, NYT

FORT JACKSON, S.C. — Dawn breaks at this, the Army’s largest training post, with the reliable sound of fresh recruits marching to their morning exercise. But these days, something looks different.

That familiar standby, the situp, is gone, or almost gone. Exercises that look like pilates or yoga routines are in. And the traditional bane of the new private, the long run, has been downgraded.

This is the Army’s new physical-training program, which has been rolled out this year at its five basic training posts that handle 145,000 recruits a year. Nearly a decade in the making, its official goal is to reduce injuries and better prepare soldiers for the rigors of combat in rough terrain like Afghanistan.

But as much as anything, the program was created to help address one of the most pressing issues facing the military today: overweight and unfit recruits.

“What we were finding was that the soldiers we’re getting in today’s Army are not in as good shape as they used to be,” said Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, who oversees basic training for the Army. “This is not just an Army issue. This is a national issue.”

Excess weight is the leading reason the Army rejects potential recruits. And while that has been true for years, the problem has worsened as the waistlines of America’s youth have expanded. This year, a group of retired generals and admirals released a report titled “Too Fat to Fight.”

“Between 1995 and 2008, the proportion of potential recruits who failed their physicals each year because they were overweight rose nearly 70 percent,” the report concluded.

Though the Army screens out the seriously obese and completely unfit, it is still finding that many of the recruits who reach basic training have less strength and endurance than privates past. It is the legacy of junk food and video games, compounded by a reduction in gym classes in many high schools, Army officials assert.

As a result, it is harder for recruits to reach Army fitness standards, and more are getting injured along the way. General Hertling said that the percentage of male recruits who failed the most basic fitness test at one training center rose to more than one in five in 2006, up from just 4 percent in 2000. The percentages were higher for women.

Another study found that at one training center in 2002, 3 recruits suffered stress fractures of the pubic bone, but last year the number rose to 39. The reason, General Hertling said: not enough weight-bearing exercise and a diet heavy on sugared sodas and energy drinks but light in calcium and iron.

The new fitness regime tries to deal with all these problems by incorporating more stretching, more exercises for the abdomen and lower back, instead of the traditional situps, and more agility and balance training. It increases in difficulty more gradually. And it sets up a multiweek course of linked exercises, rather than offering discrete drills.

There are fewer situps, different kinds of push-ups and fewer long runs, which Army officials say are good for building strength and endurance but often lead to injuries. They also do not necessarily prepare soldiers for carrying heavy packs or sprinting short distances.

“We haven’t eliminated running,” General Hertling said. “But it’s trying to get away from that being the only thing we do.” (The new system does include plenty of sprinting.)

Some of the new routines would look familiar to a devotee of pilates, yoga or even the latest home workout regimens on DVD, with a variety of side twists, back bridges and rowinglike exercises. “It’s more whole body,” said First Lt. Tameeka Hayes, a platoon leader for a class of new privates at Fort Jackson. “No one who has done this routine says we’ve made it easier.”

The program was largely the brainchild of two former gym teachers who now run the Army Physical Fitness School based here. They are a military version of Click and Clack, finishing each other’s sentences and wisecracking with the alternating beat of gas-fired pistons.

One, Stephen Van Camp, is a former professional kick-boxer who unwittingly ran a marathon with a fractured ankle. “That’s not tough. That’s stupid,” he now says. The other, Frank Palkoska, is a former Army officer and West Point fitness instructor who adorns his office here with black-and-white photographs of 19th-century exercise classes and an assortment of retrograde equipment like medicine balls and wooden dumbbells.

“It’s back to the future,” Mr. Palkoska says before starting into a lament about the Xbox generation. “Technology is great, but it’s killing us.”

As he and Mr. Van Camp started developing what became a 434-page manual, they began by considering what combat soldiers do and came up with a checklist of things like throwing grenades and dodging gunfire.

Then they matched those needs with exercises. Some of those are already in use by the Army, but others are new and still others are drawn from century-old routines. There are drills that mimic climbing, that teach soldiers how to roll and that require swift lateral movements. Some are done in body armor.

The old style of physical training, he said, was less relevant to soldiers’ tasks, which entail lots of jumping, crouching and climbing. “What we did in the morning had nothing to do with what we did the rest of the day,” Mr. Palkoska said.

Under General Hertling, the new regimen will also include a makeover of the mess halls at its training bases. At Fort Jackson, there are more green leafy vegetables, less fried food, and milk instead of soda. The food line includes color-coded messages to encourage privates to eat low-fat entrees (marked in green). And there are other changes: no more assaulting tires with bayonets, but more time spent on rifle marksmanship and fighting with padded pugil sticks.

The trick now will be to push the program into the rest of the Army, where evidence suggests many soldiers are becoming overweight, particularly during or soon after deployments. The Army Training and Doctrine Command recently distributed the new fitness policy to the entire Army, officially replacing a physical fitness field manual that was first published in 1992.

While the training posts will have to follow the new program, since they are under General Hertling’s command, it is not mandatory for officers in the field. Every unit’s exercise routine is determined by its commander, and the current generation of officers has been indoctrinated under the old system.

The key, Mr. Palkoska says, will be to revamp the Army’s fitness test, which is taken twice a year. It measures a soldier’s ability to do situps, push-ups and a two-mile run. Since soldiers often train to the test, those are the exercises most of them do.

Mr. Palkoska and Mr. Van Camp hope the Army will revise that test by including new kinds of exercises and perhaps eliminating the situp.

“We know kids today are less fit,” Mr. Palkoska said. “We have to adjust.”

Compiled by Dave Itzkoff Published: August 31, 2010, NYT

After the bitterly fought contest for its professor of poetry seat, and the appointment of Trevor Nunn to a visiting professorship that bears the name of his colleague-turned-nemesis Cameron Mackintosh, Oxford University is now bracing itself [...]]]>

Compiled by Dave Itzkoff Published: August 31, 2010, NYT

After the bitterly fought contest for its professor of poetry seat, and the appointment of Trevor Nunn to a visiting professorship that bears the name of his colleague-turned-nemesis Cameron Mackintosh, Oxford University is now bracing itself for a visit from Dana White, the president of Ultimate Fighting Championship, who has been invited to address the Oxford Union Society in the fall. Mr. White, the 41-year-old athlete and entrepreneur who has helped guide the championship from sideshow status to a mainstream, internationally televised mixed-martial-arts competition, has been asked to speak to the Oxford Union on Oct. 13. The Oxford Union is the 187-year-old debating society that has been addressed by a variety of speakers, including the Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa, as well as Jon Bon Jovi and Kermit the Frog, none of whom were previously associated with an octagonal fighting ring.

Stay up-to-date with the latest happenings at A-1 Mixed Martial Arts right on your iPhone. Add us to your home screen and keep class schedules, events, and news at your fingertips.

Here’s how:
1) Using your iphone, ipad, or ipod Touch: use [...]]]>

Stay up-to-date with the latest happenings at A-1 Mixed Martial Arts right on your iPhone. Add us to your home screen and keep class schedules, events, and news at your fingertips.

Here’s how:
1) Using your iphone, ipad, or ipod Touch: use Safari to go to www.a1mixedmartialarts.com
2) Tap the “=>” or “+” sign, then “Add to Home Screen”
3) Give it a name like A-1 MMA and you’re done!

Give a call or shoot me an email if you have any questions about our programs. Or best yet, drop in and say hello- and get ready to work out!

Hope to see you soon!

Rya

You’ve see it on T.V.  You’ve heard the buzz.  Come see for yourself the Mixed Martial Arts phenomenon sweeping the nation.  A-1 Martial Arts has developed the most effective and complete MMA style with the focus on realistic Self-Defense.  Anyone can do it, even if you’re not in shape. [...]]]>

You’ve see it on T.V.  You’ve heard the buzz.  Come see for yourself the Mixed Martial Arts phenomenon sweeping the nation.  A-1 Martial Arts has developed the most effective and complete MMA style with the focus on realistic Self-Defense.  Anyone can do it, even if you’re not in shape.  In fact, this is the best way to shead those unwanted pounds and get in the best shape of your life and have fun while doing it.  At A-1 Martial Arts we use the most innovative and exciting drills in our state of the art facility to provide you a safe and challenging workout!

Top 10 reasons you should train @ A1MA

State of the art facility is safe & clean

Realistic self defense including kickboxing, Jiu-jitsu,  weapons and more

Get in the best shape of your life

Innovative and exciting drills

You don’t have to be a MMA fighter to train like one

Flexible schedule  5 nights a week & Sat

It’s Affordable (packages as low as $45/month)

It’s fun

Relieve stress

Anyone can do it, even if you’re not in shape