Thiago Alves ‘When the Pitbull Bites’ documentary

Thiago was an awesome sport. For one, he checked out my original edited layout from all the collected footage of his career. Including some from his hospital visit (more details in the final release soon). The most mesmerizing thing positively had to be with him standing in front of the laptop, looking at the work I produced of him kicking ass. No a moment like that can be equaled, I believe- it was truly surreal. Beyond that, we just basically hung out for a few as I filmed, chatted about typical random stuff and I became acquainted with more members of the team, such as Gleison and reacquainted with Din and Gesias.

Half of the action with the American Top Team facility was organized by Boxing trainer, Howard Davis Jr. He had the guys go through some round robin sparring sessions, which included Gleison, Din and this unnamed badass kid in read headgear, who was probably, at most, 17yrs old. I haven’t seen Boxing technique like THAT in an MMA gym in well—ever, really.

Thiago’s part within the main gym in Coconut Creek was in a long warm up stretching session, for which I caught for establishing the brotherhood relationship of the entire ATT family. After that, it was catching the moments of these guys joking around, rolling (a jiujitsu term, meaning sparring) and tidbits of a Capoeira demonstration. Needless to say, it was VERY difficult trying to leave- almost immediately felt like I belonged there.

Later on at 6pm, we headed over to IHP in Boca Raton. This was another place that I nearly marked out in, as I follow a lot of their articles on fitness regimens. Especially for training fighters. This place is essentially the ATT members’ second home. Speaking of which, famed Light Heavyweight/Heavyweight fighter, Jeff Snowman Monson was just finishing up his training and leaving the facility when I arrived.

Thiago arrived shortly thereafter with members of his crew, including his Muay Thai trainer and Strength and Conditioning coach. This entire session would consist of 3x 5min. rounds of cardio, pad work, resistance training and other exercises. With respect to his training camp, I won’t reveal the exacting details of his session, but it WAS grueling. One of the workouts included a neck strengthening machine, which looked like something out of Star Wars. Lessons learned on that one- I need to get myself a neck/weight harness for home.

The entire shoot ended sometime around 8pm, which we then got some dialogue from Thiago. Mostly about his mindset during the training, what changes he’s done in his life to improve his performance and his goals toward retaining another title shot. In these types of confessional segments, I always try to capture the audio in a richer format. Namely with the H4N. Then afterwards, sync it up in post with the video and make any other appropriate edits later. The entire project came out well for that visit, so I’m happy Thiago was kind enough to invite us to his entire training day.

Unfortunately we didn’t get Friday’s sparring session with him, which I really wanted to capture. However, we caught more than enough for provide a 10min. hybrid- a Documentary Highlight short film, based around Alves himself and marquee members of the ATT family.

Hopefully I’ll be able to do it all over again, but with more time on my table. These guys are truly a welcoming family and I would definitely like to do a more detailed short film on American Top Team as a whole in the near future.

OSU!