Fruitful stint for Garie Tang, who earned scholarship to train at UFC performance institute in Shanghai
SINGAPORE — For four weeks across September and October, Garie Tang lived and breathed mixed martial arts (MMA), as he trained at Ultimate Fighting Championship’s (UFC) newly-opened performance institute in Shanghai.
The Singaporean professional MMA fighter was given the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity after he was chosen in August as the recipient of the UFC Training Scholarship presented by AirAsia.
It gave him an all-expenses-paid trip to train with top MMA athletes at the performance institute in Shanghai, which had just opened in June and, at 93,000 square-foot, is nearly three times the size of the original UFC performance institute in Las Vegas.
While Tang, 29, is the second recipient of the scholarship after Indonesia’s Linda Darrow in 2018, he was the first to train in Shanghai. And while he was very impressed by the state-of-the-art facilities at the performance institute, he returned with a crucial takeaway: the recovery process after training.
“Many of us do recovery work occasionally, but what I learnt from the training stint is that recovery should always be factored in my training schedule,” he told Yahoo News Singapore in an interview at Swissotel The Stamford on Thursday (24 October), two weeks after returning from Shanghai.
“If you recover well, especially after being a little banged up after a tough session, then you can train better the next time. And if you keep at it, in the long run, you will feel the positive effects on your training capabilities.”
As Tang trained with top Chinese MMA athletes six times a week at the performance institute, sometimes up to three sessions a day, coaches also encouraged recovery work after each session. Tang would do different types of recovery work such as ice baths, sauna and cryotherapy.
The performance institute has a strong support staff in the fields of strength and conditioning, nutrition and physical therapy – all in a bid to maximise and sharpen a fighter’s skills in the highly-competitive MMA scene.
Tang, who has a win-loss record of four wins and a loss since he turned professional in 2011, believes he has already felt the benefits of his Shanghai stint.
“Obviously, training with the top guys in China almost daily, your skills are definitely sharpened. I can understand better how to train and recover up to the require standards to be successful in the sport,” he said.
“Now I have to implement what I have learnt back in Singapore. I have already discussed with coaches at my gym, Impact Gym, on how we can train according to what I had undergone in Shanghai.”
His training stint comes at an ideal time, as he prepares to represent Singapore at the upcoming SEA Games in the Philippines – not in MMA, but in the obscure combat sports of sambo.
Sambo, a martial art developed by the Soviet Union army in the 1920s, is being competed for the first time at the biennial Games, and Tang – who will compete in the Under-57kg division – has set himself on winning a gold medal for his country.
“It has motivated me to train a lot harder in the last few months, and I think with the knowledge and training that I got in Shanghai, I’m feeling quite positive for the SEA Games,” he said.
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