By Sarah Kuper
Haley Tenbarge was tired of being scared.
When the Birmingham native lived in Dallas, she and a group of friends were attacked while enjoying a night out.
Now, Tenbarge is back in Homewood training at a mixed martial arts gym. She said that if she could go back to that moment in Dallas, she would fight back.
Tenbarge practices mixed martial arts (MMA) at Spartan Fitness in Homewood. The gym offers classes in kickboxing, Muay Thai kickboxing, Jiu Jitsu, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, boxing and more.
Mixed martial arts may be better recognized as the fighting style made popular by the reality TV show “The Ultimate Fighter” and by female Ultimate Fighting champion Ronda Rousey.
If those names don’t ring a bell, imagine an eight-sided, boxing-style ring where competitors fight to knock each other out and anything goes: kicking, punching, striking and grappling. (A word of caution: If you look up a fight on YouTube, there will be blood.)
Young, single and manager of a software company, Tenbarge isn’t training for UFC greatness.
“I don’t want to get hit in the face,” she said, “I came because I felt helpless, and I kept coming because of the atmosphere.”
At Spartan Fitness, athletes wrestle on a massive red mat and divide into skill-appropriate groups for instruction and practice. They don’t warm up with a light jog, but rather by practicing a Jui Jitsu technique called “shrimping,” in which one wriggles on the floor like a shrimp. Behind a curtain of punching bags is the boxing ring.
The gym smells like rubber and sounds like a butcher shop as bodies thump the mat. The most striking piece of equipment in the gym, however, is a child’s Pack ‘n Play set up outside the mat.
Owner and lead trainer Chris Connelly said that’s not unusual. In fact, he said, a large percentage of his membership is not knuckle-dragging, aggressive, want-to-be-rockstar fighters. Women make up half of the gym’s membership and many are moms learning to protect themselves and get fit.
Connelly is proud that his gym has something for everyone.
“You’ll see all socio-economic backgrounds, all races,” he said. “People are training for competitions or people are coming after their 9 to 5 jobs for a work out.”
Connelly is a Birmingham native and former UFC fighter. When he began training at 17, he found there was no one to train with in the area. He decided to change that.
Connelly traveled out of state to seminars and learned to coach. After training anywhere he could find, he got 50 interested people together and set up a space in Steel City Fitness.
Connelly’s classes soon outgrew that space and forced him to move to Sportsplex in Hoover, where he used a racquetball court. He eventually opened his own gym in an office warehouse in Hoover. Finally, seven years and 300 members later, Spartan Fitness has its home on Green Springs Highway.
The classes at Spartan Fitness may help someone lose weight and gain muscle, but Connelly said that is sort of secondary. To him, the purpose of MMA is to learn self-defense and gain confidence. When training properly, the weight loss and muscle tone will come naturally.
A large part of Spartan Fitness’ programming is geared toward kids and young adults. Connelly said he knows no parents want their children to start a fight, and that isn’t what mixed martial arts will teach them. It’s all about self-defense.
“If someone puts their hands on them, they will know how to deal with it without going overboard, using the appropriate amount of force,” Connelly said. “How are you going to teach a kid not to be bullied by showing him push-ups?”
Though TV shows and feminist icons have made MMA more popular than ever, Connelly reminds people that different styles of martial arts have been around for centuries. Watching participants grapple on the mat and practice submission holds may turn away some, but he said these ancient techniques are useful for anyone.
“You learn to use technique over power and strength, and that no matter how big or how armed they are – you can beat them to a pulp.”
Tenbarge doesn’t foresee beating someone to a pulp where she lives in Inverness, but she wants to be prepared.
“You go to the movies and you are walking back to your car, now you aren’t terrified,” she said. “You know what to look for and if something happened to you, you’d at least have a fighting chance.”
