Strikeforce sent me to Las Vegas to shoot Gina Carano training and shooting some video with the Showtime crew.

We started the two day shoot session at Warrior Training Center with Gina’s Muay Thai coach and later with Norm her strength and conditioning coach, affectionately and appropriately nicknamed, Satan. Watching her workout exhausted me. And even after all that, we had a studio photo session atop the BJJ class’ mats.

From there we broke to pick up equipment and head to the boneyard, a “graveyard” on the North end of Las Vegas where all the neon and lit signs of the Strip go to die. It’s an amazing location. It was still super hot but everyone powered through and shot late into the night.

And the next morning we shot all day at the Xtreme Couture gym. I don’t frequent Vegas that often despite doing this MMA thing — I have an aversion to driving and I’m a horrible gambler. So seeing the pro practice was surreal. It’s odd to see all the pros you see in the UFC and some guys that were training for Affliction, running laps together. Jay Hieron, Chris Horodecki, Forrest Griffin, Amir Sadollah, Martin Kampmann, Tyson Griffin, Gray Maynard, Mike Pyle, and on and on — right? Surreal. Despite being up in their space all day with cameras and lights, the group seemed used to, even bored of, the showbiz goings on in the gym’s center cage. Though, a few guys did hassle Gina for being all gussied up.

Frank Shamrock and Randy Couture sat down for a conversation with Gina and they spent the entire time laughing, having a great time. Gina is always quite fun and lovely to shoot, her smile lights up the room.

Here is a set of photos that Showtime posted on their Flickr site: