The shout-out

Eight guys are walking in a circle through the room – everyone is shaking out his arms and legs, stretching the neck or rotating the upper body to relieve the muscle tension. You can hear dozens of drops of sweat hitting the mats with a silent "Tuk", wiped off from sweaty, gleaming foreheads or dropping down from soaking wet rashguards. Velcro’s of gloves are torn open, tape is ripped off from ankles and cups are thrown off the mat.

For one and a half hours we drilled and sweat together, pushed and punched each other, explained and learned techniques, choked the necks and overstretched the joints of our training partners. Now the fun is over.

The end of a training session is always the same – it is like a ritual. After a few minutes of cooling down and taking off your gear, Dylan´s voice fills the room: "Okay guys! Bring it IIIIN!"

He stands in the middle of the room and we join him – all of us standing in a small circle. The coach starts to speak: "Great job today guys! It´s awesome to see how you find the perfect intensity. Pushing each other to the limit, beating the shit out of each other but no one gets hurt. That´s great! There are big fights coming up. These are the last weeks of preparation!"

He stretches out his hand to the middle of the circle and everyone follows, building a tower of hands in the center of a net of arms. "Team Quest on three!" Dylan shouts, "One, two, three..." - The tower and the net disappears as all hands are pushed down at once and a shout-out from eight voices thunders through out the room – "TEAM QUEST!".

All the energy spent on the mats in the session is concentrated in this one shout-out. Everyone puts as much energy as possible into this shout to make it a demonstration of power. Shouting together the name of the gym is a way to say thanks to the coach for the good instructions, to thank your teammates for the great work together and to show everyone that this bunch of guys loves what they do.

hanging around on the mats and having a chat after training

It really supports the team spirit and makes me begin to get excited for the next session. Often the shout-out is followed by applause, shaking each other’s hands or simply by telling your team mates that you will not let them catch this submission so easy the next time.

When I step into the ring, I may be alone and may be the only one who can beat the other guy. Nonetheless, I am nothing without a great team behind me.

Fighting is no sport for a lone wolf.

MMA is a team sport.