MMA UK

Fatman to Batman: 7 weeks down…many more to go.

Peter Knox 19/06/2018

49 days into the journey are over…did I think it was possible I would ever get here???? Absolutely not. I thought the usual thing would happen where I would end up giving up, falling back into bad habits and generally being lazy as feck! Thankfully, the weight is continuing to drop off, my diet is on point (pretty much 95% of the time, but yes there has been moments involving pizza…which btw…tastes even better when you are on a diet!!!) and I have actually begun to like the 4.30am wake-up calls…well, almost. I am still hovering around the heavyweight region, but my big weigh-in in 2 weeks time will hopefully see me losing 11.5kg in 2 months and I should be looking like a drawn-out Scottish version of Daniel Cormier…but less obnoxious and much less tough obviously. I have recently started a PT session in morning, a class at lunch (usually consisting of yoga, boxing or BJJ) and a session at night. This clearly isn’t sustainable (my legs are due to give way at any moment, but I am trying to get that bod before my summer vacay to Vegas Baby!!!), but for the next few months, I will power through! The cravings are getting less, but in saying that I’d still roundhouse kick a toddler in the head for a bag of crisps and for my birthday weekend I don’t plan on going on some beer rampage, nope. I am a man of simple tastes. I plan on decimating a multi-pack of crisps. 12 cans of Irn Bru. A large Pizza. 10 doughnuts and probably have a stroke afterwards. Man, it is going to be the best. Until next time!!! The Fatman oot! https://www.instagram.com/p/BkFWpMCBz_S65pPGL-Uyb54yXDnRG9SKY0UQMs0/?taken-by=leithmonz

Fatman to Batman: Month 1

Peter Knox 06/06/2018

If this blog was a tv show this part of the story would be the be when we flash forward in time… So last week was my introduction to the blog. I have a confession, it wasn’t week 1, in actual fact, I had been training/dieting and generally missing junk food for the past 27 days. 27 long arduous days… Flash forward to the present day and here I am on day 36. I won’t lie or spin it, it sure has been tough. My body ached for the first 2 weeks (my old man knees still take some coaxing to get going in the morning). For about 21 days I yearned for a can of fizzy juice, a bag of crisps (scrap that, a MULTIPACK of crisps, any flavour, even roast chicken flavour, which I HATE), pies, takeaways, you name it, I would have loved to devour it. The 4.30am wake-up calls are still brutal from that miserable horrible shitebag, the Amazon Alexa. For 36 long days, it still doesn’t shut up on the first command. It isn’t anything to do with my Scottish accent, it just does it now for shits ‘n giggles…the machine is learning and it knows how to punish me. AI will kill us all people!!!! A funny thing has happened on this journey, however…I have begun to like the dieting, the having to hit 12,000 steps a day, along with the training (which still makes me yelp out from time to time) But truthfully, I am enjoying being active. People who haven’t seen me in a while comment that my face actually has a glow about it, rather than its previous angry, scrunched-up greyness to it and my body is “less Stay Puft Marshmallow Man and a little bit more solid looking ” (an actual quote from a ‘friend’) My mentality has changed somewhat too. Being Scottish, there tends to be something ingrained in our DNA where the fire in our bellies naturally make a few of us angry (me)… Anyone who has known me long enough knows I have a tendency to lose my shit and have a meltdown at the slightest thing, so much so that it has become a bit of a joke to see me throw my toys out and have a tantrum like a toddler. In the past 36 days, I have had 1 ‘hulk out’ moment and that wasn’t even my fault. Honest. The biggest achievement in all is that at this very moment of writing this article I have gone from 111kg down to 105kg! In 36 days! Clearly, there is still a long way to go, as I am still a heavyweight, but I have moved from being Francis Ngannou down to Stipe Miocic in the space of a month…(if only I had either man’s fighting skillset). The next step before the end of July is to get myself down to light-heavyweight. Without going to ‘gym-bro’ on things, my upper body is starting to go through a definite change visually and little by little the belly is shrinking. I feel good, so much so that this week I have begun training in the morning and at night. I have also been boxing once a week and now feel confident to go into a BJJ class without worrying that I would have the mobility of Teila Tuli (look him up kids if you don’t know who he is). I have even signed up for hot yoga to ensure I am supple and ‘loosey goosey’ which will inevitably help my flexibility?! What has become of me?! All in all, things are going well and the road to be like a 5’10 version of Ubereem (minus the horse meat) is slowly beginning to take shape (pun intended) Month 1 down…lots more to go.

Fatman to Batman: Week 1

Peter Knox 29/05/2018

“Goddammit, I could fight a homeless man for a bar of chocolate right now” Leith Monro, day 1 into a lifestyle change. After a conversation with the team at MMA UK, it was suggested that I should introduce my blog to the MMA masses. This is going to be slightly different than what most of you are used to reading on this wonderful site; for some, this will be too much “Why on earth do I want to read about a fat guy getting into shape?! This isn’t ‘Mens Health’!” for others this actually may be some form of inspiration…” look at the fat-ass go!!!” So, therefore ladies and gentlemen, similar to Chris Weidman’s post-fight speech from 3 years ago ‘This is my last invitation. Join the team” (you know things are bad when a writer is referencing a pretty terrible quote from a former vanilla middleweight champion, but I won’t back down (sorry, couldn’t help myself there…) GET READY FOR A LOT OF REFERENCES TO FIGHTING AND THE DARK KNIGHT!!! Anyway, let’s begin and start the journey right back to many, many years ago…Leith Monro (that’s me btw) had just started his career in the ‘wonderful’ world of recruitment. My first office job where I didn’t need to work on weekends (or so I thought…). After 8 years of being in this industry 2 major things happened 1. I lost my beautiful barnet (I maintain this was through the stresses of the job and not genetics or any of that pish) 2. I steadily gained weight, lost weight and then 2 years ago decided that the fat-suited me and I would stop going to the gym, walk anywhere, eat food that was good for me, and generally go on a rampage of booze and takeaways to the point where my blood pressure was through the roof, I had a fatty liver and pretty much looked a like a bald, bearded Jonny Vegas Despite the doctors telling me that my chaotic lifestyle needed a drastic overhaul I took more pleasure in sitting on my arse, eating crisps and saying “I’ll defo look at dieting next week” – that next week actually ended up arriving on Monday 30th April 2018. I had an epiphany, probably similar to the time Bruce Wayne finally realises he is going to dress up like a giant bat in Batman: Year One “Yes Father, I shall become a bat”…my year one moment was “FFS, I cannae fasten these suit trousers, absolute shitebag!!!” At this point, something had finally clicked in my head that once and for all, there would be no more promising myself I would do it next week. My love affair with Irn Bru, Crisps and Pies needed to stop. At 34 years old I needed to get in shape. I also needed to completely reset my life in terms of nutrition, health and wellbeing (we will get into more of that hippy world in future posts readers, brace yourself…) I decided that the only way I could realistically be held accountable during this transformation was to get into contact with a Personal Trainer. Last year, I had flirted with the idea of doing something about ‘the belly’ and got into contact with a chap called Harry Thomas at ‘No.1 Fitness’, yet didn’t go through with it. Last month I finally did. I told him of the predicament I was in. We discussed my goals, timeframes, along with my current diet – needless to say, admitting to drinking 24 cans of Irn Bru along with devouring every last morsel of a 24 pack of monster-munch any weekend there is a fight on (which is every weekend!!). This raised a few eyebrows, to say the least! So began my training the next day…Harry, for all you bat-geeks out there, is essentially the Ducard/Ra’s Al Ghul to my Bruce Wayne. Day 1 was particularly brutal. I was weighed and body scanned. What great fun that was. The results were gruesome – 17.7 stone (or 248 pounds, yay…I made heavyweight!!!), my body fat percentage was 35% and my metabolic age was 49 (I’m 34 ffs people!?!?!?), the only saving grace was that the scan did show I was quite muscular and rated 19/24 (yeah buddy!!! screw the lifestyle change, I’m powerful!!!) Day 1 was supposedly “a light workout mate, to test your fitness” – I nearly had a stroke. The plan is to go from Roy Nelson to Ubereem (minus all the horse meat shenanigans). I need to drop from being a heavyweight to a welterweight…like the opposite journey Anthony Johnson took (hopefully just a shredded too) Join me on the journey and witness a fat man get his shit together and prove that anyone can! You can keep up to date on my Facebook page and medium page! https://medium.com/@leithmonro / https://www.facebook.com/Fatman2Batman/ Until next week! Thanks for reading!

Ben Affleck: Batman fights are UFC influenced, like Conor McGregor

Peter Knox 28/03/2016

Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice star Ben Affleck said in an interview that his character’s fighting style is inspired by Conor McGregor. “It is a little bit more of a brawler, more physical,” said Affleck. “You kinda get the feeling of a more physical, visceral, slugger thing. The fights are more smash mouth, UFC-influenced, Conor McGregor style.”