Leverage and the Fate Gods

Now, occasionally, through the fog of sweat, adrenaline, ripped-out-leg-hair, eye pokes, testicle shots and gi burn, I will actually learn something on the mats! Every now and then, I will have one of those enlightening moments where you understand something fundamental about a certain aspect of jiujitsu, whether its part of your game, why you can never pull off that x guard sweep or why you keep getting those nasty red, circular rash spots when you don’t shower after training (duh!). I was lucky enough to have one of these moments during class this evening, and thankfully it wasn’t about staph or ring worm!

We recently covered a deep half guard sweep combination which I used to use a lot as a white belt. Over the past few months I have been trying to work as much De La Riva as possible, as I feel it very comfortable in this position and it fills an important gap in my game plan. However, while my De La Riva game is coming along nicely, I have found myself struggling in what I used to count as my strong guard, namely the deep half guard.

This led me to take a step back and assess the situation. Several nights spent tossing and turning, with uncomfortable dreams involving Ricardo De La Riva, Jeff Glover and Raphael Mendes (yes, insert gay joke here – very funny), I realized that I would need to revisit some of my old techniques to bring them up to par.

With some wise words of wisdom from Fabio Gurgel resounding in my head, I decided to focus on working on my closed guard. When Fabio came out to Alliance Bahrain, he discussed the importance of taking advantage of the opportunities of the closed guard before moving to your favourite open guard. Now, many of us at that time were really working on our open guard games, whether it was De La Riva, Spider guard, or Ali Seena’s particular brand of guard torture, and were always quick to jump straight to these positions when sparring.

Well, it seems this post has gone on quite the tangent! Anyway, back to my main point for the evening; leverage. Continuing on my plan to work on techniques which used to work well for me but have slipped to the wayside, one technique we recently went over was the deep half guard. Back in the UK, this used to be my go-to position, and I used to relentlessly fight for the deep half guard, much to the dismay of my sparring partners who had had enough of me kneeing them in the balls during my sweep attempts. So for the past week I have been attempting to work my closed guard game, and if things don’t go to plan and my guard is threatened, I will go to the deep half guard instead of the De La Riva. As usual, the more you use a particular position the better you will get at it, I have been having a rising success rate with one particular deep half guard sweep. And this evening, an opportunity presented itself to utilize this move! So off I went - fight for the under hook on one side, shoot the other arm under your opponent, move hips to opposite side, sneak in a quick ball buster, etc. But as I attempted the sweep, my opponent resisted and put all their weight on one arm, the other being stuck between us. As I was hanging there with my head upside down and various thoughts on the hygiene clenliness of my opponents groin guard (who wears these things for BJJ anyway?) running through my head, I had my enlightening moment!

In crystal clear clarity, I realized that my opponent’s weight was distributed between his one leg and his one straight arm. With my foot mere inches from his cursed arm, I simply gave his arm a little kick, and he toppled like an obese red neck trucker after 50 beers and a spare ribs eating competition! And in that moment, I truly understood the ins and outs of this particular sweep I was using. Once I understood this, it was easy to predict where an opponent might be able resist and stop my sweeps, therefore providing me an opportunity to think of a counter strategy.

Now I know this is quite a simple lesson, but there is more here than meets the eye. I feel every now and again the Fate Gods will give you that little push which is the beginning of a BJJ growth spurt. Everyone knows training isn’t linear, and many of us will go through plateaus before experiencing a sudden improvement in our game. And I think this might just have been one of those moments!

OS!

Tatami Gi Review coming up!

Since me and Rach are heading back to Bahrain in a couple weeks as we both have finished our university courses here in the UK, we both agreed we needed to go back with a good stock of gis, as they are hard to come across in the Middle East! Seeing as I have been pretty much broke for the past month, my selection was limited to UK based companies (due to lower shipping costs and shorter mailing time) and heavily influenced by price range. The best deal that I could find was between the Tatami fightwear competition gi and the Feral fightear gi. I briefly considered a Faixa Rua gi, but as far as I am aware they don't do them in black! And seeing as I have a Feral gi already, I decided to go for the Tatami one. I wasn't a huge fan of the white trim on the sleeves of their forte BJJ gi series, but this was of little concern as I decided to go with their Competition BJJ gi series, which is all black. Rach ordered one as well so hopefully there will be two new reviews floating around the web in the next couple of days! Check this space for updates!

3rd Brighton Grab and Pull

Crazy times! Last weekend was the 3rd Grab and Pull tournament held at the King Alfred Leisure centre in Hove, right next door to Brighton. The Eastbourne branch of BTT UK, took up a big team for such a small town, with around 12 of us competing across most of the white belt categories. The last tournament saw only 4 of us taking part, so this was a huge improvement and a good reflection on how BJJ is really taking off, especially in Eastbourne!

The venue was set up with 8 huge matted areas and several cameras, which were used for a pay per view on the event - pretty cool hu? As usual, the competition was running a bit late, but once the rooster and feather weights had weighed in, they started the fights quite quickly. One thing I noticed straight away was the level of BJJ was very high, with almost all the competitors demonstrating alot of skill, strength and technical ability. Usually theres quite a few real beginners competing, but not this time!



While I know I should warm up properly, stretch and drill some technique before getting called up, I'v developed a bad habit of doing some half hearted stretches but nothing else before stepping on the mat. I prefer to sit around and watch everyone else fight and just try to relax and chill out. The first fight always seems to be the hardest for me and it takes me some time before I get into the game plan! This first fight was no different - we started and my opponent pulled guard, which I was very happy about :)! I quickly set up my standing guard pass, stood up and passed top side control, before moving to north/south. Then I set up my favourite choke and finished the fight. The next two fights were pretty much the same with my opponents pulling guard and me using the same guard pass and choke to finish the fights! I almost got stuck in a triangle, but thankfully we have been drilling triangle escapes to death and all the hard work paid off! Its strange, but I have only ever used two submissions in competition - the near naked choke and a particular north/south choke.

The semi final fight went a bit differently :P. After a bit of messing around standing up my opponent got a sweet double leg takedown on me. I managed to get a sweep from half guard, but then I got swept and had my half guard passed. Ended up loosing on points. Ah well! The winner of the lightweight whitebelts was some 16 year old Brazilian kid who came and cleaned up with some pretty sick armbars!



Overall it was a great competition! My one complaint was the cancellation of the white belt absolute division because the tournament was running too far behind schedule. It was great to see many of my team mates compete in their first BJJ tournament, as well as other more experienced friends medalling in their categories! Everyone did really well with Pete killing it in the heavyweight division, getting gold, Rach and Sophie cleaning up the women categories with 2 golds, a silver and a bronxe between them, and myself getting a bronze in the light weight!

300 Brazilians!!!

Todays class was hard! Hard enough to deserve a blog entry anyway. We had a quick warm up, break falls, abs circuit and some stretching before everyone was told to go get their protective gear, water, etc. Then for the next 2 hours we rolled constantly till we got a cumulative 300 rolls! Out of a class of 17 people, that means alot of rolls. We divided up into a lightweight mat (under 65kg), a middleweight (under 85g) and a heavyweight mat (85kg+). As usual, even though I weigh around 74kg, I was told to to go over to the heavyweight mat!

For the first hour, thing were going well and I managed to stay on (winner stays on and no time limit - basically till someone taps or gives up) with 3-4 wins before being beaten and circulating back in to win a few more and eventually get tapped again. However, after 60 minutes we were still at only 80 rolls across all three mats so a two minute time limit was introduced, and then for the last half hour a one minute time limit. While this meant very short rolls, it also meant a maximum of 3 mins between each roll, which was considerably shorter if someone managed a submission in that one minute.

After 2.5 hours we finally got over 300 rolls and held a final on each mat between the two people who managed the most taps throughout the session. I got a good guard choke on, but had my guard broken so I switched to half guard and managed to squeeze out the choke from there! Quite happy that at 74kg I can tap 90kg+ guys! Rach won the lightweights easily, and also got the most taps out of everyone. So all in all, a good training session :)

BJJ British Open 2009

Yesterday was the biggest competition in the UK, and possibly in Europe, excluding the Europeans. It was a really great tournament with such a high level of jiujitsu! I was quite suprised the distance people travelled to compete, with some competitors coming all the way from the US and many travelling from Europe and all parts of the UK. Brazilian Top Team did very well, claiming silver in the team trophy category and taking quite a few golds and silvers. The guys from the Eastbourne branch of Ze Marcelo won two golds and two silver...there were only 5 of us!

Training for this competition was a little less than some of the other ones I have done this year because I had my final exams and wasnt as focused as I could have been and have been in the past. I checked my weight on the Wednesday (the competition was on Sunday) and was around 4 kg over! This led to some serious sweat sessions and hardly any food over the next couple of days. I was still trying to loose weight on the night before the competition at 1230, even though we had to be up at 3:30am to drive up to Birmingham! I can't tell you much about the drive up there as I was in pretty much a zombie state by this point and ended up sleeping the whole journey up there.

In what is turning out to be a routine for us, we got there way before anyone else - before the place was even open infact! Rocking up at 0730am when the event was supposed to start at 0930am wasn't great, but better early than late eh? After much standing around and clock watching, all the competitors were let in and everyone went off to establish their camps in various corners. While the venue had a huge matted area consisting of 8 mats, the spectator and warm up area were very small and cramped. Basically if you were not fighting, you were stuck standing as there was no room to even sit! Luckily we found a bit of space and used our bags to create a little fortress for ourselves.

I was on quite quickly as the call for lightweight was pretty much as soon as the doors opened! For once I was really calm and relaxed before going on the mats, and had time to stretch as best as I could and run through my game plan a couple times in my head. I was also lucky enough to have Ze Marcello in my corner, which helped out loads! The first two fights were hard and it took me a while to get my head in the game properly, but I managed to get through the first and second round, winning on points. After that I got with the it a bit more and finished the next three matches by north-south choke. Since me and another team mate, Sushi, both made it to the finals, we split the gold between us!

Rach did a great job aswell, despite having 5 stitches in her arm and having a cold, winning Gold in the female lightweight division, adding to her winning streak :). Sophie Cook got silver in the rooster weight female division and Pete got silver in the heavyweight division. Well done guys! Lee Fynch also competed for the first time, doing a great job and representing the team.

Once I finished my fights I stuffed my face with sausage rolls, sandwhiches, chicken, cereal bars, chocolate and loads of energy drinks! Eventually I began to feel normal again and hlped the other guys with their fights. The rest of the day was a mad rush of running from one corner of the hall to the other, screaming encouragement and causing general mayhem. It was great seeing the black belts and brown belts fight as well as all the purple belts from Ze Marcello's team. Oliver Geddes was also there and didn't disapoint, pulling and winning using his great half guard game, something I am trying to work on myself at the moment.

I am going to do another entry in more detail in a couple days when I have got together all the pictures and videos, but that should be enough for now. Happy Training!

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!

Ze Marcello seminar Eastbourne

Last week we had a very informative seminar by Ze Marcello, who came down from the Slough Academy to teach at the Canton gym. I am used to seeing around a maximum of 20 people on the mats at Canton, so having 32 participants running around and doing breakfalls was quite shocking, but fun.



During the seminar Ze went over the half guard game, focusing specifically on sweeps. I think we went over around 3 sweeps, each with an additional counter move in case the opponent blocked the original one. Unfortunately I only managed to record the last two, but these are more than enough to keep me busy for a while! Its nice to have a bit more half guard in my arsenal as half guard is usually just a transition position for me. We rolled for around 45 minutes at the end of the seminar and I was lucky enough to go with a black belt from Barcelona who came along with Ze. Here are some photos from the day:

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

A Quick Update

I have been very busy with university work this week with several deadlines coming up and havn't had time to check the blog out. So I was pleasantly suprised to see there is a (very) modest amount of traffic on the site! Yay! It should be getting much more interesting on here in the next couple weeks as I have a competition coming up next week and then a trip back to Bahrain where I'll get to train with the guys at Team Reza. Bring on the hardcore training! This is just a quick update to tell everyone to keep reading as there is going to be loads on here very, very soon! Here are some pics of Rach finishing her Bristol Open final fight with an ezekiel choke, right as her opponent was tapping. Well done Rach!

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...

Bits and Bobs

I decided to change the name of my blog to something a bit more original so that later on, when this blog is hopefully more successful, I won't need to worry about the name being a reference to a local gym. It is still early days so no harm done!

So whats been going on with training? Well Monday was a good BJJ session where we started going over knee on belly and a few chokes from this position. Ever since the Bristol competition I keep feeling a pull on the outer side of my abs. Knee on belly really seemed to irritate this and made it really uncomfortable. The thing is I have the Brighto Open competition in 3 weeks and I can't afford to take a week off to let it heal. I am hoping that I'll be ok till the competition and then I can recover when its all done and dusted. On Tuesday me and some of the guys got together to help Tolly train for his MMA fight in April and did some no gi grappling as well as worked takedowns. No gi is so refreshing after wearing a gi all the time! We had a good session but I need to try and work on some no gi submissions and sweeps when I get the chance. On Wednesday we continued with the knee on belly position, adding another choke and an armbar which all worked really well.

In today's sparring session I decided that I was going to try and get all the submissions I like to use from guard, north/ south and mount. For guard these are: triangle, arm triangle and the new baseball bat choke. North/ south: Tolly's choke, baseball bat choke, Mount: arm triangle, ezekiel choke and settig up a transition back to guard with a triangle submission. As you can see I like triangles, arm triangles and that new baseball bat choke alot! Anyway, today we only had one round of rolling and I was paired with a beginner. Even though I only had five minutes I managed to get all my guard submissions and north/ south positions before he complained his neck was sore and we had to stop with 2 minutes to go! Oh well, on Saturday there will be two classes and a larger variety of opponents so I will continue to try and get all my submissions in one rolling session.

I think its a good way to work my submissions and I won't only focus on one position too much. These days I am feeling a bit drained and more sore than usual, probably due to having to wake up really early everyday, having alot of university work due very soon and the endless training. Having this pulled ab isnt helping things either. Luckily tomorrow is my break day so it will let me recover a bit.

On a separate note I found a good picture of me getting my three stripes on my white belt over Christmas and thought I'd put it up! Note the huge judo gi.

Baseball Bat Choke

On Saturday I had a long, long training day! It started off in the morning with 1.5 hours at Canton Martial Arts. It was a good open mat session where we got to start from standing, giving me a good opportunity to work some takedowns. I got a nice north/ south choke a couple times (new move that my instructor showed me and I am trying out so no one saw it coming!)and got a triangle from transitioning from mount. After this me and rach went home and got some food. I decided to go to the next calss my instructor was teaching at a different gym. We went through a guard position which is the starting point of many submissions. One hand loops over the opponents are and holds onto their gi, keeping them very close to you. From here we worked a three finger choke, lapel choke, armbar and sweep. We then rolled for half hour and I got my north/ south choke again and another triangle, before I had to roll with my instructor and got my ass handed to me! Once the class finished everyone paid and left but Tolly asked me to hang around, along with one of his blue belts and a guy with loads of wrestling background. His two of the guys have up coming MMA fights, we rolled no gi for another 45 mins. Its great rolling with these guys as the level is so much higher and I learn so much more when I am tapping compared to submitting people. By the time I stumbled back home I was completely toast and ended up taking a nice bubble bath, making some good white chocolate cookies, and watching TV with Rach.

Anyway, I drifted a bit. In fact I havnt drifted as I havnt even said what I originally wanted to rant on about yet! In the last rolling session of the day, I got caught with a baseball bat choke a couple times before catching on to what was actually going on. When I got home I googled the move and found out you can do it by allowing your opponent to get side control! How cool is that?! Anyway, long story short, I got all excited and watched all the videos I could find and have decided I am going to try and work this move as much as I can in the coming weeks. It seems to come on super quick and catches people by suprise. I tried it out on Rach a few times an was suprised on how good it was! So tomorrow at class I am just going to try and catch everyone with the basebal bat choke, whether from standing, guard or half guard. Heres a video:

Ronaldo 'Jacare' Souza

Well now that my blogging skills are evolving and I can upload videos there are a few things I want to share! I recently came across a highlight video of ronaldo 'jacare' souza and thought 'WOW' this guy can kick some serious ass! Now when ever I roll I judge everyone, including myself, on how 'jacare' they are. I googled him a few times but I couldn't find anymore info on him apart from some other videos.

Bristol Open fight 2

This was my second fight - I am fighting in the white gi. The first match was really boring anyway with me scoring points for the takedown and then not much else happened.

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!

09.02.08

Right lets recap on what I'v been up to these last few days. Saturday was a busy training day as usual. In the morning class we helped one of the guys get ready for his MMA fight. There were only 4-5 of us so we split up in groups, with some people doing a round of stand up with Ian trying to take them down as they punched him, and some of us did no gi grappling right after the stand up round. I was in the no gi grappling group. It was fun to roll no gi as its nice to be free of all the grips and collars of the gi for once. Feel so much more fluid and free with no gi! Anyway the sparring went well even though I didnt get a submission - Ian weighs in at 95kg so out weighs me by a good 20kg. In the afternoon session we went over the bramber (I thin kthats how you spell it) choke from half guaard and then from side control. This slotted into my game very well as now I have a move to use when someone tries to pull half guard! Got to roll with some newbies who were going all out (as usual with newbies) and got a good string of submissions off. Agin it was no gi as they didnt have gis yet. Also had a roll with Rach where she got me in a really good triangle from spider guard but I managed to hold it till time was called.

Sunday I went down to Sparta gym to help Tolly out with a private. He is training Rob for an MMA fight aswell and needed someone for him to spar with as his knee is a bit messed up at the moment. We did stand up with takedowns in MMA gloves before working on escaping side control. I felt I could hold my own again a considerably bigger opponent. Always good! However after the session I went home and started to feel a bit under the weather. Had a nice hot bath and did some revision for an exam I had on Monday.

The exam went well but I cant shake the feeling I am getting sick. I had a nap when I got back from my exam and woke up feeling hot and cold, headache, usual fever symptoms. Also all my body feels very achey and tired. I decided to skip training tonight and just eat as much food as I can in the hopes I will stop getting properly sick. Tomorrow I have another exam, helping Tolly with a private lesson and then we should be going to London to train with Ze Marcello from BTT UK! Lets hope I feel better by then. Time for some more chicken legs.

05.02.09

Today I was supposed to go help Tolly with a private but his girlfriend wasnt feeling well so he cancelled. Nevermind! Went down to the gym anyway and had a good upper body workout taken from the 'body for life' website. Its a nice simple workout plan and the training before breakfast will help me loose a bit of weight. The workout has one exercise per muscle group with a superset at the end e.g: incline bench press x 12, 10, 8, 6, 12 (last set of 12 supersetted with dumbell flyes x 12). Heres what I did today:

incline bench press: x 12, 10, 8, 6, 12

(supersetted with)

dumbell flyes: x 12

upright barbell rows: x 12, 10, 8, 6, 12

(supersetted with)

front raises: x 12

barbell rows: x 12, 10, 8 ,6, 12

(supersetted with)

close grip pull ups: x 12

overhead dumbel extensions: x 12, 10, 8, 6, 12

(supersetted with)

french press: x 12

preacher curls: x 12, 10, 8, 6, 12

(supersetted with)

dumbell curls: x 12

I checked my weight and it was at 77.8kg after eating one meal. Could i get down to 76kg in gi? That would be good! I would have to be around 74kg to get into the lightweight category. Thats 20 days exactly to loose almost four kgs. I'm going to try and get down there anyway and see where I am on the 20th and then I'll choose my category.

Apart from this I didnt do much else today. Just going to make some food and chill out and watch some TV with my girlfriend. I am thinking about going down to Brighton tomorrow to a different BJJ school and see how I compare. Theres no training tomorrow so I wont be missing out on anythingand it will be good for me to see how I compare with other white belts that I dont usually roll with. We shall see! For anyone looking for more info on the Bristol Open 2009 winter leg here is the website:

http://www.bristolopenbjj.org/

01.02.09

Yesterday's training was a good one! Saturdays are always brutal with 1.5 hours at Canton Gym followed by another 2 hour session at Sparta Gym. Its nice to get so much mat time in one day and really helps me to work on anything I need to improve. We went over guard passes and side control escapes in the first session with some sparring from stand up. In the second session it was a submission combination from guard involving breaking posture and moving to the side of your opponent, almost as if you were taking their back. From here we drilled a kimora, collar choke, sweep and armbar combination, and finally taking the back from the same position. It was a small class with sparring consisting of rolling with a newbie, my girlfriend (more on her later) and my instructor Tolly. Was fun and I got to practice my triangles from guard and a few reverse ones! One move that I picked up over Christmas which I am finding very effective is to pull guard and then go for an armbar. Once the opponent begins stacking you, let them pull out their 'armbared' arm and switch your grip to their other arm which should be inbetween your legs. Move your knee that is closest to their head to the other side of the neck and close the triangle. Move hips to opposite side to finish! I seem to be pulling off a good amount of triangles with this move as people stack you which brings their head nice and low making it very easy to slide your leg over their face and lock in the triangle with suprising speed.

I have a Human Resources exam tomorrow so today I need to get my act together and get a bunch of revision done! It is way too easy to distract myself with training - before I know it I am going through different game plan options of formulating a plan of attack for a particular opponent in one of the BJJ classes! Must Work!!! I will probably break up my revision with a gym session just to get some sort of training done. I am still in two minds over whether to train for strength or mix it all up. One day I will feel like doing some traditional powerlifting routines and others I want to train everything in one workout. Right now I am playing it however I feel it and doing what I want. After the Bristol Open I will try to get my weight back up to around 80kg so I can compete at 82kg. Right now I am at 77kg down from around 85kg and feeling a bit skinny! Never mind, after the competition I can work on getting some size back but right now I need to focus on coming up with an effective strategy.

One last rant! I cant get my beautiful koral gi clean! For the first 6 months of my BJJ training I used a huge, baggy judo gi which made it horribly easy for opponents to use it against me. Now that I have an actual BJJ gi, I appreciate it so much. But one of the gyms I roll at has these mats which tend to make your gi go a grey/black colour on the back, knees and elbow areas. I currently wash my gi on the 'hand wash' setting at 25 degrees but it still comes up with 'patches' of colour on it. These gi is new! Like brand new! Someone help! I might just leave it in a lukewarm bath tub for 3 hours and see if that works. I should have just got a blue gi like Rach did so that the dirt doesn't show up. Anyone else have this' dirt patch' problem?

31.01.09

In a few weeks is the Bristol Open. This is quite a popular BJJ competition in the UK and seems to attract alot of top athletes. I was planning on trying to go to the Europeans Novice competition but the weak sterling means it would have cost a bomb, and as a first competition there were others to choose from. I think my game is at a suitable place to begin competing and getting some experience under my belt. I'v done a local no gi tournemament and won the light weight division and came second in the heavy weight (loosing to my current BJJ instructor!). I am in the black rashguard, finishing with a RNC and arm triangle.


















So its times to step it up a notch and get serious about doing well. This got me thinking about game plans and how to approach a strategy - no point just showing up and seeing how it goes! Right now my game revolves around pulling guard and trying to get a triangle or trying to get the back. Is this enough? I don't know; I have been told I need to be more aggressive. Work, work, work. Just need to keep working at it. I have a bit over three weeks to work on my game til the Bristol Open. I think its best if I focus on what I am good at and work on my guard - while I am happy being elsewhere, the guard is where I fell strongest. But I do find myself getting stuck there if I cant pull off a submission. Maybe I need to focus on some good sweeps to advance my position if I find myself getting stuck. Work, work, work.

While I didnt have any BJJ training today, I did go to the gym to do some weights. Before, I used to focus on pure strength training and getting as strong as possible. Recently I have been mixing it all up and getting alot my workouts from www.gymjones.com . They provide great workouts involving all aspects of functional strength and compliment BJJ quite well. Todays workout went:

power cleans/ front squats/ power cleans
2 rounds of 5/5/5 reps
2 rounds of 5/5/5 reps
2 rounds of 5/5/5 reps

Kettle Bell press x 1 min
50 burpies
3 rounds

Was short and brutal. Tomorrow is a very busy training day. I have 1.5 hours training at Canton Martial Arts followed by 2 hours at Sparta Gym for Tolly's private class. Will be fun! Till then