ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE)- Diabetes and childhood obesity are problems felt across our entire country, but these problems have hit the Native American population especially hard as studies have shown at least 2 out of 6 Native Americans have diabetes. The Santo Domingo Pueblo is now combating this problem in an unorthodox way with the help of Jackson Martial Arts and Fitness.
“Knowing that they are coming down to do this for us, like it’s something special,” said Santo Domingo Pueblo MMA participant Joseph Chavez.
The Santo Domingo pueblo along with Jackson Martial Arts Fitness are holding a youth movement demo this Saturday at Santo Doming elementary at 10 a.m. to promote the active lifestyle program by teaching MMA to the community.
“We are expecting hopefully 30 kids and 30 adults to be doing the program. I would like to get, I want to get as many people as possible and touch as many people as possible,” said Professional MMA fighter and head MMA instructor for this program, Isaac Vallie-Flagg.
Isaac will teach the basics of MMA along with nutrition education, and just an overall guide to a healthy lifestyle. It will be a way for the entire community to exercise and everyone is excited to work with someone who trains with the best in the world at Jackson Wink MMA.
Some people might think, ‘Is MMA the right things to be teaching these kids?’ However, there really is so much more that goes in to mixed martial arts than just fighting. “It is a fighting art but you know you are giving yourself the confidence to not have to fight a lot of times with it,” said Isaac Vallie-Flagg.
“You know this goes back to our traditional beliefs too. You know, we are going to do women’s self-defense classes and hundreds of years ago when the Spanish were invading and other tribes were invading our women knew how to defense themselves. It’s somewhat of a cultural resurrection we are trying to retouch base with what we used to do that we don’t do too much anymore,” said Youth Movement Department Manager at Santo Domingo Pueblo Dustin Garcia.
Filed under: Home, New Mexico, SmartTV, Sports, Top Video 
