ZT Fight Skool BJJ Competition

Yesterday was the first ever BJJ competition held by Ivam Maciel of ZT fight skool in Brighton! It was a really smoothly run event, with all competitors having their own name tag displayed on a huge white board which were moved around depending who they had to fight next. It was a really good system and made it so much easier to find out what was going on! While the original categories were only above 77kg and below 77kg, so many competitors signed up they had to add categories for under 88kg, under 98kg and over 98kg!

The morning of the Sunday saw a bunch of guys from BTT Eastbourne meeting up and making our way down to Brighton. As usual, I had just enough time to weigh in, stretch for 15 minutes, and then it was time for the light weight division. I had three fights, finishing two of them with a north/ south choke and winning one on points, before coming up against my team mate Adam ( Gym Sparta) who beat me on points! After helping everyone else with their fights and coaching a few of the guys who were competing for the first time it was time for the absolute. This also went well, seeing me beat two guys with the north/ south choke again before loosing to a 130kg judo black belt who went on to win the whole thing! I was happy with how I did on the day considering I haven't had time to train as much as I would have liked, due to having so much work to do for university.

Overall Team BTT Eastbourne took gold (Adam Urbanski), silver (Steve Stone) and bronze (me) in the lightweight, gold in the light heavyweight (Peter Kuapil) as well as silver (Pete again) and bronze (me again) in the absolute. For a small town team we did really well and I think its a great demonstration that Team Eastbourne will definitely be a force to be reckoned with in the near future!

It was a really well organised competition and a really great local tournament to help guys with their first competition jitters. The British BJJ Open is coming up in June so its going to be time to step up the training again! Hopefully I will be done with unviersity in the next week or so and then I can focus on BJJ 100% again!

ZT fight skool competition

New competition coming up on the 10th of May! Its going to be held at the ZT fight skool in Brighton by Ivam Maciel and should be another great tournament - check out the ZT website for more information. I think the entry is limited to Ivam's students and his student's students but I am not too sure.

Brighton Grab and Pull Competition

Last weekend was the Brighton Grab and Pull competition! It was a great tournament which was run very smoothly and on time. Although there was only 10 of us from Brazilian Top Team competing, we walked away with 5 gold medals, 2 silver and 3 bronze out of a total of around 250 competitiors! Well done guys! I was much less nervous than the last competition and had a good game plan to work with. I made it to the finals of the light weight devision (5 fights) and then unfortunately lost by referee decision... there had been no points or advantages scored. I was pissed off, but i guess it could have gone either way, although I would have liked the fight to have gone into extra time. In the absolute devision there were some big guys, but I managed to make it to the finals after another 5 rounds. However, as it was me and another member of BTT in the finals (team members dont fight each other at our club)we drew and both got gold.


Rach won the girls devision, continuing her winning streak from the Bristol Open! Well done Rach! It was great day and was the ultimate reward for all the training between now and the last competition. I am off to Bharain for a two week holiday, where I should get a few training sessions in at Team Reza's academy. However, right now all I am interested in is eating lots of good food and relaxing for a few days. Videos and pics to follow

Cardio for Jiujitsu

Alot of people seem to gas when we roll during class. Like really gas. Like hyperventilating gas. They start by going all red around 3 minutes into the round. Then a vein begins to throb in their forehead as they start foaming at the mouth and their eyes bulge like fish. Yes. Just like fish.

Is it unfair that we judge people who don't train as hard or as often as we do? I don't think it is...

Anyway, as the Brighton BJJ competition is approaching in a few weeks, we decided to start two extra classes a week focusing just on cardio for BJJ. Some of the guys have MMA fights soon, while some of us have BJJ tournaments and others just want to improve their game. So now we have BJJ classes 3 times a week with 2 additional cardio classes. And this is only at Canton Gym! There is also the saturday Sparta Gym class, the sunday BTT slough class and the ZT fight school BJJ class on the other days! Alot of training do to, alot of classes to attend, alot of stuff to think about.

Today was the first cardio class. My girlfriend is in her last year of a sport and exercise science degree so she put together a class to improve both aerobic and anaerobic cardio applied to BJJ. We started off with half an hour of constant drills such as frog jumps, prayer jumped, seated leg jumps, bear crawls, crab walks, high knees, butt kickers, breakfalls, front roles, back roles, kart wheels, take down shuffles and a bunch of other stuff. It was a constant tempo which slowly got everyone sweating like crazy and breathing hard at the end. Then we did some stretching to bring everyone's heart rate down before doing some anaerobic drills. These were 3 intense circuits, 6 minutes a circuit with explosive exercises like sprawls, burpies, running man, knee to chest jumps, etc. The class was rounded off by doing 50 frog jump/ take downs. It probably doesn't sound like much in writing but it worked very well and it felt me with a feeling of anticipation. If everyone keeps this up there won't be anymore red faces, throbbing veins, foaming mouths or bulging fish eyes...

Bristol Open

Well the Bristol Open came and went and what an experience! We left at 4am in the morning to get there for 9am. After briefly stopping at the petrol station we all relaxed and settled down for the long journey, only for the car to stall not even ten minutes later! Apparently one of the guys put petrol instead of diesel in the car! A full tank too! We ended up having to push the car into the next car park, get a taxi back to someones house and then use a different car. Eventually we made it to Bristol. We knew we were in the right place because where else would you see a bunch of people walking around in kimonos at 9am in the morning on a saturday?!

First thing that struck me was the amount of people there! There must have been over 400 people milling around and waiting to start. We wondered round for a bit, said hello to the organiser (Pedro Bessa) and eventually found the rest of the Brazilian Top Team Ze Marcello. They had four mats set out for the day and lots of space for everyone else to watch and relax until their fight came up. Suprisingly, they called light weight white belts quite quickly and before I knew it I was on the scale and being told to warm up. I dont think I'v ever been so nervous before! My first match I got the takedown, and then proceeded to forget almost everything I'v learn't over the past 7 months! The match stayed in his guard the whole time, went to half guard for a bit and then back to guard. I eventually won on points. My second fight went much better. I pulled guard , secured a nice arm triangle, swept to mount, took back and got a RNC just as time was called. Luckily my girlfriend filmed this match so I'll upload it later on today along with some pictures of the day. My third fight started off with having a takedown scored against me, a pass and then mount. Not the best start! I managed to get my own sweep, pass and then like a complete idiot I got mount. But instead of holding it for 3 seconds I went straight for an armbar (which I didnt get) and missed out on the points. Eventually I tapped from an ezekiel choke - not my proudest moment haha.

Anyway, as a first competition I was really happy with the way things went. I got my feet wet, won a few fights and had a blast watching everyone else fight. My girlfriend won her weight class and then the absolute, walking away with two chunky gold medals! Well done Rach! It was great to feel part of the BTT team and have some big names in my corner such as Ze Marcello. Thanks to everyone who was screaming at me and telling me what to do especially Tolly, Ze, Rach, Dave, Rory and Chin!

Next month there is another competition (smaller than the bristol open) in Brighton which is half an hour away! Starting saturday I need to work on takedowns and developing my game plan to work a bit better in competitions!