Wrestling part one: Training!

A few weeks back we ran a Twitter poll asking what you would like to see more of here on the blog and Fitness and Wrestling won the poll by quite the high percentage. We love reminiscing about our wrestling days and we enjoy telling stories, so the fact that you would like to hear them made us smile.
 Over the past two years we have been busy at work on a book that bought together some of our most favourite wrestling memories, mixed with many delicious cupcake recipes we have concocted over the six years we have been in Louisville KY. The book is an on going project for us and we hope one day it will see the light of day. However, for now we thought it would be fun to start a fortnightly (or possibly every three weeks) post that shared a sneak peek at some of these stories to see what you guys think. If you like them then please let us know and we will continue to share! :) Without further ado, lets start at the beginning...

Entering the world of training at Ohio Valley Wrestling!

Imagine yourself sweating from head to toe, to the point where you can see the sweat dripping off your face and pouring from every crevice of your body. You feel sticky and ache all over and all you can think about is getting an ice cold drink, maybe even a McFlurry...mmm thanks Devorah (fellow OVW femme fatale Epiphany ) and sitting down. Before you can do that though, you have another three hours of having to stay focused. You have to concentrate hard on your breathing and try to calm the butterflies fluttering around like crazy in your stomach. You have to hold tight and stop yourself from getting winded for the 5^th time and beg yourself not to throw up. Can you imagine it? For the first six months upon arriving in Louisville KY, this was how we spent every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday, sometimes Friday, and we LOVED it! Saturday and Sundays we had the privilege of being pushed to our limits by the one and only Rip Rogers. A true wrestling genius, who terrified us yet made us laugh, smile and come out of our shells. On Monday and Tuesdays we would be trained by Chris Silvio, James Long and Mike Mondo. Chris you should know plenty about by now, he's an all round amazing person, insanely talented wrestler and my husband. James Long, we have mentioned on here on numerous occasions. He now works for TNA and is an incredible artist and one of our most favourite people. And what can we say about Mike Mondo? He is a former member of The Spirit Squad and former WWE tag team champion and an absolutely wonderful human being. We consider ourselves lucky to have been able to train with him. To us, these training sessions were what wrestling was all about. We were one of the boys, at our happiest and our most nervous, but with each passing hour we were learning so much about what we were capable of and about what we loved, wrestling. We would get shouted at and our emotions would be bubbling, but there was no time for tears or excuses. We listened and just wanted to do better and be the best we could possibly be. There would be times when our bodies felt so tired that we didn't want to take another bump, but with Rip shouting encouragement and the boys all working their butts off around us, it gave us all the motivation we ever needed to keep going. We don’t think there’s any better feeling than when your brain suddenly clicks and understands something that Rip has been teaching you for months. Some of our finest accomplishments have been in the Davis Arena, away from the approval or critiques of the world and those other than Rip and the boys. The whole world doesn’t need to know what went on at training, fans will always have their own opinion of talent, success and wrestling itself, but deep down in our hearts, we can smile and be proud of who we are, be proud of the wrestlers we became and know that you can’t go 20 minutes on the fly with Chris Silvio and not be a badass! :p

We would go on to spend three years under these conditions. Introducing the likes of James 'Moose' Thomas, Ali Vaez and Shiloh Jones to our list of mentors. Looking back on these crazy days we can only smile, and on the occasion shake our heads in disbelief. This kind of high intensity training could be rather overwhelming, from the physical drills themselves to the emotional toll of just trying to get 'it' but we are so thankful for our time at OVW. We often wonder if we could get back in the ring again and take 15 arm drags and hip tosses all in a row from people twice the size of us, our minds say 'hell yes' while our bodies cringe at the thought. :p Honestly though, we thoroughly enjoyed every 14 man tag match we had, every history lesson we were taught and every bump we took. We wouldn't change the bruises, sprained ankles or painful bouts of tennis elbow for the world!

Have an awesome Friday!
Love Lucy and Kelly xx