Road From Victim To MMA Champion
Martial arts is a knowledge that one learns about. Diz Chang Kai Yang, age 23, began involving himself in the world of martial arts more than 5 years ago. His main mentor when he started off was YouTube, and with it, his passion grew bigger with several different types branching under the hobby, such as Kung Fu, Boxing, Muay Thai, Taekwondo and Mixed Martial Arts (MMA).
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Often, Diz has at least 2 hours of training a day. Sometimes, his training session goes up to 3 hours or more. But if he is so happen to be busy on a particular day, he will carry out a 30 minute quality training. This is because he thinks that for most of the time, it’s about quality not quantity. Ordinarily training sessions are always a hard time for the trainees. This is due to the fact that they have to stay determined, keep pushing themselves, so that they can learn to adapt to the training courses. At any time when he encounters a problem during the learning process, he seeks advice from his coaches. He also keeps up his practicing despite his busy schedule because to him, being busy isn’t an excuse.
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For any sportsman, diet is a very important element. A well-balanced diet makes sure their body and mind stays strong and healthy at all times. Without a proper diet, they are easily exposed to diseases and more prone to perform poorly. But for a food lover like Diz, proper diet is hard to follow. He usually eats whatever he fancies and only cuts down his weight during the times he needs to fight onstage. Besides that, he plans his own training courses to overcome overweight issues and ensures that his performance is always top notch. On a usual basis, Diz doesn’t take too much fried or fast food, drinks a lot of water and says no to sugary stuff.
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In his five years of experience, he has participated in various competitions, of course, winning several awards. For example, he gained the title of Overall Champion for a category he participated in, and 4 gold medals in the Seven Star Praying Mantis Competition 2019 in Penang. He also won 2 MMA fights that he joined in the same year. The spirit of not giving up and hard work is what supported him throughout his trainings, resulting in all these achievements.
Diz Chang use to warm himself up with the equipments before he start the daily training session.
Everyone has a story. For Diz, it was bullying. His inspiration to begin this hobby came from a moment of vulnerability. Diz experienced bullying since his primary school days. These bad experiences prompted him to invest more effort into learning martial arts’. In addition, this hobby also made him stronger and more motivated. Other than that, it taught him how to live his life and how to have compassion.
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According to Diz, crime is a very popular phenomenon that can happen anywhere, anytime and to anyone. So you would never know when a skill like martial arts may come in handy. It is without a doubt not everyone who trains for martial arts can protect themselves, but at least they can learn a thing or two about defending themselves.
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He believes that learning martial arts as a hobby is very useful compared to other conventional sports, even though applying it into one’s daily life can be challenging. Throughout training sessions, trainees are also able to meet with different people from different backgrounds. Sharing experiences among themselves as a means to help expand their knowledge and learn to become more confident.
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The process of learning martial arts so far has benefitted Diz a lot in his daily life. For example, Diz gets to learn to manage his time wisely balancing his study time and training time. As a university student, he knows the importance to keep his schedule balanced between university life and his hobby. One of his many ways doing this is recording down times he should go for training and times he has to attend class in his personal planner. This has proven effective for planning around deadlines and training days.
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However, there is always a risk that exists with anything. For martial arts, the risk is getting injured. Diz has said to have hurt his leg more than 5 times this year. He knows that the possibility for him to injure himself is high and he bears the risks willingly without complaints, continuing focus on his daily training. Pain cannot bring him down when he has a strong determination and a steady mind constantly pulling him up toward the successes he continues to achieve.
Besides studying and training, he also works as a part time kickboxing trainer in Octagon Asia MMA Penang. In order to prevent what happened to him, to happen to other students, he works in order to teach them how to defend themselves. The stereotype is that those who like martial arts like to fight, but in actuality it is merely an avenue to self-preservation. In fact, some traditional martial art trainings focus on aspects like moral values, self-intellect and spiritual teaching. It is a sport that teaches youths to become better people without encouraging violence.
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According to Diz, a few tips to those that want to indulge in the hobby is before entering a training session, trainees have to prepare well physically and mentally. Besides that, exercising regularly is also needed as that is the way to build up your body foundation so that you won’t hurt yourself as often. Next, researching online to know more about what martial arts is, what types of martial arts you are interested in, and the philosophy behind every martial art is quite vital. Finally, keep a positive mind set while attending training as you could hurt yourself if you are distracted. Be sure to always keep in mind that the skills you learn are meant to protect and not hurt.
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As mentioned by Diz, when it comes to attires, it is basically just normal sport attire. Although most MMA trainees only wear pants without a shirt whilst training. For kung Fu and Taekwondo on the other hand, they are required to wear a traditional Kung Fu costume and a Dobok respectively. The trick is simply to wear something light and comfortable which will enable trainees to perform smoothly. Different types of martial arts have different types of attires and every attire has meaning behind it, closely related to their philosophy.
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Modern martial arts such as taekwondo, boxing, MMA and others are slowly becoming more successful in Malaysia. Many people are beginning to show interest in these new rising hobbies and are willing to take the time to understand and learn them. But unfortunately, for traditional martial arts, such as Kung Fu there is a gradual decline in participation. This is because most people think that the training methods are quite boring and less efficient for combat. In this situation, a necessity arises for traditional martial arts to go through certain transformations in order to continue staying relevant.
