CSA BJJ and MMA Camp report

Almost three weeks ago me and a buddy of mine attended the CSA.dk BJJ and MMA Camp in Copenhagen for 5 days. We also met there with two friends of mine from Finland and I want to thank them for the nice time we spend there.

The main trainer was Christian Graugart also well known in the BJJ Community as the BJJ Globetrotter who also recently published his book in a Kindle and Print version. I allready bought myself the Kindle version and read through the first 100 pages. What I can say so far is, that it is well worth the read and a must for every BJJ and Grappling enthusiast. From my point of view there are not enough books like that, that not only focus on techniques but also display a little bit the lifestyle of BJJ and Grappling. One other which comes into mind, in this segment is the "Cauliflower Chronicles" of which I wrote in previous posts on this blog.

So back to the camp itself, me an my buddy arrived on Wednesday in the morning right before the training started of. On Wednesday the training was done by Robson Barbossa a Black Belt from Checkmate who lives in Sweden, who is also the one who gave Christian his black belt. On this day there were four 1,5 hour sessions on the plan with Robson, I ended up doing three of them as I was a bit tired in the afternoon due to the fact that I had to get up at four in the morning. Further more, the training was pretty brutal and consisted almost only of sparring in various forms. We did a lot of guard passes and what was funny, that Robson represented exactly the checkmate mind set, which is, never pull guard or even go to full guard yourself…

On the next day, we started out with a de la riva sweep session which was one of the topics that I asked for, so I was pretty pumped. Christian showed us the basic application of the De la riva Guard and some sweeps that work for him. After midday, we did the Stiff arm escape, which is a pretty nice move to get some off you when get your guard passed and your opponent lands in side control. It looks pretty simple but is damn effective. The nice thing is, that yesterday, I was able to apply the stiff arm escape as well as a de la riva sweep in no-gi sparring at my home Dojo which is the Enomoto Dojo of Yasubey and Felipe Enomoto. The third session of the day was the guard passing session, we drilled basically two open guard passes when you are standing yourself. I have to admit, that the trainings were a little bit easier than the ones from Robson and I was quite happy about that fact as otherwise my body wouldnt been able to coop with the massive amount of training. I also decided not to attend the sparring sessions and only go for the open mat on Friday as I wanted to safe my energy for the actual trainings. In the evening there was one more class, which was the no-gi guillotine held by Kari Gunnarsson a brown belt of Christian. I only set on the side and watched this class…

On Friday we started out with a spider guard class, also a topic which was on my wish list. Christian also showed us there the basic applications and little hints on how apply your foods properly, than we were going over some basic sweeps and a transition to the omoplata. After this session there was only one more which was the Open Mat. Due to the fact, that the Swedish Open were just around the corner the mat was packed with students from various academies which led to a proper sparring session.

On Saturday there was a little competition to be held for the guys from CSA and the participants of the camp. As soon as the brackets were released I knew how this was going to play out as I was matched up with some tough tough white belts from Moldavia. I was pretty certain, that this two guys were going to get there blue belts on this day and as I sparred with them before I knew my chances were slim to none to submit these guys. I didn't know the fourth guy in my bracket and I set my goal to win against this dude and make the third place an gather my first medal. As you can see in the picture below it worked out as planned and I submitted the buy via Kimura from guard…

In the afternoon Christian took us out to visit Copenhagen and showed us around town. Although the weather was a little depressing as most of the time over there I found Copenhagen to be a nice little town ;)

In the evening we met up to go for a all you can eat Spareribs session which ended in having some drinks in various bars around town. I don't know why, but I think my last beer was old or something as I had severe headache in the morning, but I was sure it didn't came from to much drinking…

On Sunday there was only one more session which was called "Fancy shit" and Christian showed us some nice little moves and so the camp ended and me and Lukas went back home to Switzerland. All in all the camp was pretty great and Christian is a real good teacher, he told me one interesting thing about my game after we rolled with each other. He told me, that I need to relax a little more and don't be to serious and always think about that I want to win and nothing else. Certainly he was right, as I was not gonna win against him, so the best thing to do would be just to have fun and think move per move…

Thirsty for Jiu Jitsu Podcasts

As my interest in Jiu-Jitsu grew, I started to stumble upon some podcasts related to Jiu Jitsu. If I remember right, the first podcast I discovered was the one from Stephan Kesting at grapplearts.com – at that time he updated his podcasts on a regular basis, which is not the case anymore. I haven't heard of new podcast from him since a long time. So than I though okay, there must be more out there to allay my bloodthirst for more Jiu-Jitsu information and to pass my time during the long rides back and forth to Frankfurt.

So the dark Jiu-Jitsu shadows were gracious to me and I found the Fightworks podcast. Damn I though and had to rub my eyes, have I finally discovered the whole grail of Jiu-Jitsu podcastisem? Jup it seemed like I did… With more than 250 podcast up an ready for grabs, I started downloading and burning Cd's like a mad man.  But as time passed by the Fightworks podcast didn't upload the weekly dose of Jiu-Jitsu goodness and I had to move on look for other sources…

And I got quite lucky again and as Jiu-Jitsu was booming like never before, some new podcast germinated on the net. The first one I found was the InsideBJJ podcast and I was a listener from almost day one. If i am right, the first episode I listened to was Episode 3 with Crosley Gracie and I was immediately hooked to InsideBJJ. This podcast was a little different than to what I was used to, drawn to the fact, that they weren't just interviewing the respective persons but also were going back an forth on each other before and after the the actual interview. I have to admit, that pretty funny stuff was and is being said during this banter sessions. Never the less the actual interviews were top notch and the persons appearing on their podcast have been the creme de la creme of the BJJ and MMA Scene.

But as m thirst couldn't be sated by just one podcast, I searched a little more and found the OpenMatRadio Podcast, which seem to appear almost at the same time as the InsideBJJ Podcast. This also is a great source for well structured interviews with top players out of the BJJ scene and as with the InsideBJJ Podcast, I was hooked from day one. They are more on the serious side of things and so their podcasts aren't as long as the one from InsideBJJ, but with this two my thirst was almost sated.

After some weeks and month, I found a third podcast, which is part of the Fight Fans Radio and is called BJJ Addict Radio. They didn't seem to have like the top notch guest in the past, but are also catching up with  Gianni Grippo and Victor Estima being their last guest. I really enjoy listening to their podcast and I am curious to see what they will provide in the future…

So my ranking for audio podcasts at the moment is the following:

1. InsideBJJ
2. OpenMatRadio.com
3. FightFansRadio
4. TheFightworksPodcast
5. GrappleArts

Within of my next posts, I will go over some of the video Podcasts out there... Have a good time until than and train, train, train

 

CSA BJJ and Grappling Camp

This Wednesday a good friend and I will take off to Copenhagen to join the BJJ and Grappling Camp of BJJ Globetrotter Christian Graugart at his CSA Gym. I have to say, that I am really really pumped for this camp and from what I can say now, the organization was pretty top notch. We got a detailed description of everything in relation to the camp two weeks ago and yesterday they released the actual training plan. We were asked in the mail about the topics we want to train during the camp and I was more than happy to see that both topics which i wanted (Spider & De la riva Guard) have been chosen.  Further more we will go over some guard passing stuff, stiffarm escape, guillotine and some other stuff. Further more there will be seminar day on Wednesday with Robson Barbosa and a BJJ competition on Saturday.

The Camp is not only for BJJ and Grappling but also Muay Thai, MMA and Crossfit courses which be held. So maybe I am gonna drop into some MMA beginners class or something like that. But I guess this will all depend on how my body will react to 17 hours of BJJ and Grappling training and 6 hours of sparring in five days. Also a good friend from Finland which is a purple belt and his girlfriend will join the camp which is pretty nice and will lead to ongoing BJJ and Grappling related talks outside of the actual trainings...

I will keep you updated regularly on the progress of the camp…

Metamoris PRO

Yesterday the first Event of the Metamoris Pro Series was being held in San Diego, as I was stuck in traffic here in Switzerland I couldn't make it in person and had to watch the live stream they offered… So to start it off, if you haven't heard of the Metamoris Pro, I guess you are not to much in to Jiu-Jitsu as it properly was the biggest super fight event ever held on planet earth. There were six fights with the Creme de la Creme of the current BJJ scene as you can see below:

1. Jeff Glover vs. Caio Terra
2. Kayron Gracie vs. Rafael Lovato
3. Kron Gracie vs. Otavio Sousa
4. Dean "The Boogyman" Lister va. Xande Ribeiro
5. Andre Galvao vs. Ryron Gracie
6. Roger Gracie vs. Buchecha

The rules of this event were a time limit of 20 minutes for all fights and there where no points or advantages as only submissions counted. If there was no submission after 20 minutes the match was considered a draw. To start things off the event started about 1,5 hours later than it was scheduled, which was a bit shitty, as in Europe it was quite late in the night and some of us have to work in the morning just like me. Never the less the Event started off with a boom as Jeff Glover and Caio Terra showed a really really nice and smooth roll. The match was going back and forth and Glover was somewhat playing defensive all the time and Caio looked quite frustrating during the process but than finally managed to armbar Glover from a sneeky sitting triangle. The next two matches also got ended by submission and I was thinking okay this submission format definitely pays off. The next three fights although, did go for the full twenty minutes but even there was no submission the fights were really a blast with Dean Lister escaping a deep locked armbar of Xande where you saw why Dean is called the Boogyman. The match between Galvao and Ryron Gracie was the expected grind match, with Ryron mostly on his back defending the attacks of Galvao. Although it was four in the morning it definitely payed of to stay up, as the last match between Roger and Buchecha was a blast with some fantastic sweeps from Buchecha and an almost finish via armbar only seconds remaining on the clock. Roger showed big hard after close to 20 minutes by escaping this deep armbar.

The only thing I found a little disturbing was this "Gracie Jiu-Jitsu" praising thing, I mean if you looked at the fight card, it was obvious that there were a lot of Gracies involved in the fights not really surprising if you know that Ralek Gracie was on of the organizers of the event. But the video at the mid time break was a little to much, I mean come on who of the viewers wants to go and learn at Gracie University. I defnitily think, that they didnt had a realy clue what the target group of this event was. In my opinion it was the hard core jiu-jitsu Fan and not a casual UFC fan or a person completely new to Jiu-Jitsu. I think this was also displayed from the people which were watching the event live. The venue was really big and set up well but I guess, that there weren't more than a fourth of the seats occupied. I have read today, that the live stream drew 8'000 viewers which is quite big I think and so I am going to stop the Gracie banter here ;)

I am definitely looking forward to further Metamoris Pro Events and they announced, that they will do two events per year and I am quite curiouse who will be the next competitors and if there will be a lot of Gracies on the card again…

Leo Nogueira Seminar at Alliance Frankfurt

I havent been writing since I came back from Portugal as not to much has been happing lately but never the less, the last weekend was quite fun in terms of BJJ. As I am now in Frankfurt often for working purposes and as my fiance is living there, I contacted Alliance Jiu-Jitsu Frankfurt to evaluate the possibility to drop in there when I am in Frankfurt. I have to say, that I got welcomed pretty nice and to start off I joined a Seminar week with Leo Nogueira from Alliance. If you dont know who Leo is, check out the link below - this guy is a real beast. 


LEO NOGUEIRA

So I joined the two days weekend seminar on Saturday and Sunday, each lasting for three hours. What was really nice, that we did a lot of Open Guard stuff during this two days, which is what I am working on at the moment anyways. In addition to that, we did some set ups from guard for back takes and sweeps from the armbar out of full guard. I found the teaching style of Leo a little different than what I have experienced during other seminars. On the first day we did a lot of techniques, and when I say a lot I mean a lot ;). He is also not the guy to repeat the moves over and over, mostly he showed the move two times and than it was our time to try it out. Don't get me wrong his explanations were clear like crystal water and I found him to be a really good teacher. But without my new app I would not been able to remember all the techniques and especially the details that he showed. So speaking of the app I am currently using the following: 


JIU JITSU LOG

The guy who programmed the app, put it out for free so it was a no brainer to me, that I am going to try it out and I have to say, for a bascial notebook it is really okay as you can organize your notes in folders and you don't have to carry around a heavy notebook. So never the less at each break I set down and wrote down all what I could remember and as I said, it was a lot of techniques as you can see below:

• Back Take from full guard
• Three sweep variations from armbar out of the guard
• X-Guard entry from open guard on standing opponent
• Sweep from open guard on standing opponent
• Omoplata set up from open guard on standing opponent
• Three variations from the Omoplata set up to sweep the opponent
• Open guard to sit up guard
• Sweep from sit up guard
• Open guard pass
• Take the back from turtle guard
• Open guard to back take

What was also pretty new to me, were the sparring sessions after the technical training. We did ten minute rounds, yes TEN MINUTE rounds of sparring, which I had never done before. This showed me clearly, that I definitly have to work on my cardio what so ever. I was pretty worked after three rounds... and so was the guy in the photo below

 
On Tuesday I than attended the "normal" training led by Leo, which was supposed to be a 1,5 hours and what I found really nice, that Leo actually did 1,5 hours of technique and afterwards 30 to 40 minutes of specific training (from bottom --> escaping mount and from top --> submit from mount). What I also have to say, that the level of guys training at Alliance Frankfurt is amazing. There were like 5 brown belts, a huge number of purples and blues and some white belts including your humble whitebelltiness himself as you can see below

 
 So I am really looking forward to training and learning from the guys at Alliance Frankfurt...

Vacation and Training in Lisbao

So I am back from my Vacation in Portugal and I have to say, that it was a blast. I went there with my fiance mainly to visit Lisboa and go to the beach for some days. My finance was so nice to grant me two days of BJJ training during our 7 day stay. So as stated in my last post, I contacted Sergio Vita who has his Vita Team Jiu Jitsu in Cascais and he warmly welcomed me at his academy. The nice thing was, that a buddy of mine, which I first met when he attended the Ryan Hall Seminar I organized in Zürich currently lives the dream in Cascais. He is currently a purple belt training with Alliance in Finland and it was really nice to talk jits with him and get an other perspective on certain things.

One of the first things is that I am probably  gonna rethink my current training structure, but I will wright on that when the time is right to do so…

So the first training I attend was a little unusual, normally training starts at 20:30 from Monday to Friday, but this time on Wednesday Vita was showing the guys from the local rugby team some single and double leg takedowns and afterwards, some of the guys from Vitas were put on their backs and the rugby guys lined up to do some sparring. If the rugby guys passed they Vita guys had to change and if the Vita guys submitted the rugby guys have to change. It was nice to see the power of Jiu-Jitsu as not one of the Vita guys had to change during the whole session, which lasted a good twenty 20-30 minutes.

Afterwards there was no technical training but we got directly to sparring. First up I sparred with my buddy and he definitely let me work some things, as I got submitted only once ;). Next up I went against a Two Strip white belt which I handled pretty well. Next up after sitting out due to fatigue (man having 7 min rounds in this warm environment, really fucked me up) and talked a little bit with Vita and he paired me up with one blue belt and I knew that this guy was probably on the upper end of the blue belts and the look of my buddy also confirmed my impression. Never the less, I only got armbared two times and cross chocked once ;)

On Friday of that week I wanted to schedule a private with Vita, which unfortunately didn't happen due to some miscommunication, but I will be back next year and take the chance to do a private with him. But after all we had a pretty good alternative Program, we went surfing to Guincho. I have never surfed before only body boarded and it was such a perfect day and after some teaching by my buddy on the main moves, we just went into the water and as you can see below i did catch some waves on my first day. I wish I would have the chance to surf more, but around here, wake-boarding is the only thing to do in the summer…

 

Somehow Lisboa felt a lot like Brazil not only due to language but I also found a place (thanks to my buddy) which is called "Feel Rio" where you can get Acai and a lot of different shakes, so who needs Brazil when you got Lisboa ;)

Off to Portugal to do "some" training and holidays

so I just wanna give a little update, as I am heading to Portugal with my girlfriend tomorrow. Main focus for this trip is holidays but I will also train at the Vita Jiu-Jitsu Club in Cascais at least two times. I have a BJJ buddy who trains there and I allready contacted the head coach Sergio Vita who was more than nice and told me to come and train with them.

Here is the link to his homepage: Vita Team BJJ 

Here is the link to the blog of my buddy, which is pretty sweet: http://webjiujitsu.blogspot.de/

I also got myself the quotes for private sessions and they are pretty sweet in comparison to what I have to pay in Switzerland. One private hour is EUR 50 and it lasts for 1,5 hours. They also have some pretty sweet deals if you take more privates - damn pitty I won't be able to do more over there - I will let you know how the training and the private went. 

see ya...

New training plan and drilling...

A few weeks ago I posted my personal training schedule, but I felt, that I am not doing enough Jits through the week. So mainly there where three options for me to get my number of hours per week up:

1. Join an other Jiu-Jitsu Club in addition to my current
2. Drill with my dummy
3. Get a training partner to doing additional drilling session on our off days

After some considerations and contact with one of my training partners, who is currently a blue belt and also wants to step up his game, we came up with the following idea. As I am myself always found that some of the fundamentals where missing and he also wants to go over them, we are now starting to drill the "Gracie Combatives". For those who don't know what the "Gracie Combatives" are, this is Program consisting of 36 lectures of the basic and intermediate moves one should know if he wants to reach blue belt. Below you can see the "Gracie Combatives" tree chart were the techniques you will learn through the course are listed:

Further more besides drilling the "Gracie Combatives" we also give each other the chances to do drills or practice techniques which we pick up during class or somewhere else. At the end of every session we are going to make a light rolling (which is pretty new for me) drawn to the fact, that I am training at the Enomoto Dojo which is a MMA Gym and people are going pretty hard during the sparring sessions. All in all this what my new training plan looks like:

Though this is only valid, when I am here in Switzerland, as one week of the month i am in Frankfurt and my schedule will look a little different. I am currently working out a plan for Frankfurt as well, which includes finding a gym where I can train BJJ at least two times per week. I allready found a place where I can drop in to train crossfit once week.

I am really certain, that this new schedule will help me to reach my goals, now it is all in my hands to strictly follow it.

Acai baby...

For a long time a have been looking to get some proper Acai in Switzerland and/or Germany. I got to taste a little of it through my protein powder from XTFC which tastes pretty great for a protein shake. During the Braulia Estima Summer camp I also had the chance to taste the coco nut water with acai from Vita Coco which also tasted allright. For sure like most of you I heard numerous stories of how good it is and that everybody who went to Brasil was swarming about that stuff.

So as I am recently one week per month in Frankfurt for working purposes and I searched the Internet and found the following provider of frozen Acai Pads - Fine Fruites Club. A few days ago I ordered myself a couple of Acai and some Mango and Maracuja pads. Yesterday the pads where finally delivered after two days, in a box with dry ice, so it was no problem to get the pads delivered to my office and put them into the fridge in the evening.

For my first smoothy I didnt go to nuts and just went with the proposal from the distributor for a Acai smoothy:

• 1 Pad of Acai
• 1 Pad of Mango
• 150 ml Orange Juice
• 2 table spoons of Honey

I really have to say that this stuff is just great and I am looking forward to experimenting with it and mix some new things to it.

For sure I am going to try the famous Rener Gracie Acia Bowl soon – here is Video of that sweet bastard

Dean "The Boggieman" Lister Seminar

Yesterday three of my training partners and one of our trainers went to the Dean Lister Seminar which was held near. St. Gallen Switzerland.

The Seminar began with some warmup routines. What was really nice, that Dean made us do almost the same warmups as we do in our Dojo. The thing is, that Dean Lister and the master of my trainers booth trained at Rickson Gracies in San Diego and I guess that is why the warmups where almost identical.

The Seminar than started with a sneeky armbar from the north south position, than we went over some americanas from the Kesa Gatame postion as well as a reverse triangle from that position. Last but not least we did Leglock. I mean come on, it was a Dean Lister seminar, so leglocks had to be. We started at the rather infamous 50/50 Position and first did the kneebar from there, which could easily be changed to the dangerous heelhook. The technical part of the seminar than ended with a footlock from the 50/50 position.

After that we were allowed to ask questions about techniques and what ever else would interest us. Below you can see Dean perform a triangle escape.

All in all the seminar was really good, as it were quite basically but sneeky moves. Dean is an al around nice and funny guy.

Crossfitting

Yesterday I did my first real crossfit exercise with my buddy Lukas who is doing this stuff for some time now. I first got in touch with it at the Braulio Estima Summer Camp where we did a circuit at the El Toro Training Center.

The Workout of the day was as following:

5 x 200m sprints followed by 200m slow running (not a big Problem)
3 x 10 burpree Pull-ups (dude that was a big problem)
3 x 20 Airsquats (it was going allright)
3 x 30 seconds handstand

We did the whole program at a sport facility which recently also got a Crossfit "Cage" as you can see on the picture below:

 

I was asking myself the last weeks, if I should start with crossfit or not, as I am doing Kettlebells and other stuff, but I think that this would really benefit my overall cardio and body strength, so I will try to do it once a week on weekends, at least as long as the weather is good. Because that way I dont have to pay a cent for the whole thing which is always nice.

I recently found a pretty nice article about the benefits from crossfit for BJJ on the following blog:

Benefits of crossfit for BJJ

In the next days i will post my new training plan, which will be a little bit more divers than the old one and also will involve more BJJ related things, such as stability ball drilling and drilling with my Zebra dummy

The Cauliflower Chronicles III & Olypic Games 2012

So today, I did my first self draining of my ear, as it did fill back up since Monday. I have to say, that I really see improvements after every drain and I am pretty sure, that I will get it back to looking almost normal. For those of you who have never done it or a planing to do it, I would suggest the following equipment.

• disposable syringe with a capacity from 2 to 5 milliliter
• acus with dimensions of 0.6 mm x 25-30 mm
• liquid alcohol or alcohol pads
• acyetic pads  to press on the ear

That stuff and little bit of courage is all you need ;)

Futher more the Olympic Games are approaching pretty fast with Judo beginning on Saturday. The drawing of the matches has also been done and it doesn't look to good for our Austrian Judo to potato Ludwig Paischer, as he was matched up in the first round against the no name Jacob Gnahoui (BEN) which he should beat, but in the second round the world ranking first Rishod Sobirov (UZB) is waiting which is going to be a though matchup for Paischer.

If you wondered where to find a livestream take a look at the link below and type "Judo" into the search field

Judo Livestream Olypic Games 2012

For a detailed shedule of streaming times through all disciplines have a look here:

Schedule of all Events and streaming times

The Cauliflower Chronicles II

Allright so in my last post, I described the problem with the cauliflower ear I got during training, which looked like that after an other training:

 
So I was offered the kind help of one of my training buddies who's girlfriend is a surgeon and she drained my ear, as you can see in the Video below – comments are in german, mainly in austrian slang, so they might be a little hard to catch ;)

After the drain was done, I guess we failed to compress the ear properly as after the night and next two days the ear started to refill again. So on Monday after taking a private, I happily went again to my personal ear drainage, which from todays point of view worked out bette, as my ear was compressed properly. I kept compress on for the whole night and now it looks way better than before – lets hope, that it wont refill again and that it wont ruin my good looks ;)

The cauliflower chronicles

Damn it, I finally got my first cauliflower ear, as you can see in the picture below

At the beginning of last week i recognized a little bump in my inner ear, but as it wasn't to bad and I was on a business trip the whole week I didnt worry to much about it. I think this is also a little present I took home from the Summer Camp, as I wasnt able to do any jits due to my bad shin. Never the less, went to No-Gi training yesterday and now it has swollen to a point where I am definitely gonna see a doctor today. I curiouse what he will say, but from my point of view there is only one option, which is, to drain the damn thing…

If you never see a proper drainage have a look at Kurt Osiander in the video below

As I  lended the title for this blog entry from one of my favourite books related to BJJ, I have to give it a shutout. 

The book is called: The Cauliflower Chronicles: A Grappler's Tale of Self Discovery and Island Living and was written by Marshal D. Carper. I've read the book twice so far and I can really recommend it, as it is well written and an easy and quick read for those who love BJJ and are intrested to get a little insight into the Hawaiian Culture

Judo and Wrestling Olympic Games Schedule 2012

Soon the Olympic games are about to start off and I am really looking forward to seeing some though Judo action and some wrestling as well.

Below you can find a schedule of the respective weight classes and there starting times:

JUDO:

Saturday, 28th of July 2012:
03:00 pm – 05:50 pm : Judo – till 48 kg (Women)
03:00 pm – 05:50 pm : Judo – till 60 kg (Man)

Sunday, 29th of July 2012:
03:00 pm – 05:50 pm : Judo – till 52 kg (Women)
03:00 pm – 05:50 pm : Judo – till 66 kg (Man)

Monday, 30th of July 2012:
03:00 pm – 05:50 pm : Judo – till 57 kg (Women)
03:00 pm – 05:50 pm : Judo – till 73 kg (Man)

Tuesday, 31st of July 2012:
08:00 pm – 10:00 pm : Judo – till 63 kg (Women)
03:00 pm – 05:50 pm : Judo – till 81 kg (Man)

Wednesday, 01st of August 2012:
08:00 pm – 10:00 pm : Judo – till 70 kg (Women)
03:00 pm – 05:50 pm : Judo – till 90 kg (Man)

Thursday, 02nd of August 2012:
03:00 pm – 05:50 pm : Judo – till 78 kg (Women)
03:00 pm – 05:50 pm : Judo – till 100 kg (Man)

Friday, 03rd of August 2012:
03:00 pm – 05:50 pm : Judo – over 78 kg (Women)
03:00 pm – 05:50 pm : Judo – over 100 kg (Man)

WRESTLING:

Sunday, 05th of August 2012:
06:45 pm  – 09:15 pm: Wrestling – till 55 kg greco-roman (Man)
06:45 pm  – 09:15 pm: Wrestling – till 74 kg greco-roman (Man)

Monday, 06th of August 2012:
06:45 pm  – 09:15 pm: Wrestling – till 120 kg greco-roman (Man)
06:45 pm  – 09:15 pm: Wrestling – till 60 kg greco-roman (Man)
06:45 pm  – 09:15 pm: Wrestling – till 84 kg greco-roman (Man)

Tuesday, 07th of  August 2012:
06:45 pm  – 09:15 pm: Wrestling – till 66 kg greco-roman (Man)
06:45 pm  – 09:15 pm: Wrestling – till 96 kg greco-roman (Man)

Wednesday, 08th of August 2012:
06:45 pm  – 09:15 pm: Wrestling – till 48 kg freestyle (Women)
06:45 pm  – 09:15 pm: Wrestling – till 63 kg freestyle (Women)

Thursday, 09th of August 2012:
06:45 pm  – 09:15 pm: Wrestling – till 55 kg freestyle (Women)
06:45 pm  – 09:15 pm: Wrestling – till 72 kg freestyle (Women)

Friday, 10th of August 2012:
06:45 pm  – 09:15 pm: Wrestling – till 55 kg freestyle (Man)
06:45 pm  – 09:15 pm: Wrestling – till 74 kg freestyle (Man)

Saturday, 11th of August 2012:
06:45 pm  – 09:15 pm: Wrestling – till 120 kg freestyle (Man)
06:45 pm  – 09:15 pm: Wrestling – till 60 kg freestyle (Man)
06:45 pm  – 09:15 pm: Wrestling – till 84 kg freestyle (Man)

Sunday, 12th of August 2012:
01:45 pm – 04:15 pm: Wrestling – till 66 kg freestyle (Man)
01:45 pm – 04:15 pm: Wrestling – till 96 kg freestyle (Man)

Please be aware, that the times mentioned, are in relation to the CEST (Central European Summer Time), so if you from the US or other parts of the world, calculate your respective starting time.

I know it is an onging and for some odd discussion, but I personally think, that it would help our Sport to get into the Olympic Games and gather some more attention, not only from the media but also for possible sponsorships and the general public. We will see what happens in the next years...

3rd day of the Braulio Estima Summer Camp + El Toros S&C Session

On day three of the BJJ Summer Camp we focused at the morning session again on back escapes which really seem to work good for me. What I really found quite funny was, that during the positional sparring session, which we did after every technique session, I was able to execute the moves pretty well, also on higher belts, but when it came to sparring I mostly got demolished by the same guys. I was thinking, that maybe the links between certain moves could be the reason for that – who knows…

After the morning training, we went to El Toros Circuit Training, which was quite some fun, although it rained most of the time. This strength and conditioning session really showed me, that I have to work more in this area and that this sort of trainig could really could benefit my jits.

Here is the link to El Toro where you could also see video of the S&C Circuit: EL TORO

Here is the picture of our illustrious round which did the circuit. 

At the end of the session El Toro also talked a little bit about the Paleo Diet, if you havent heard of it take a look here: 


The Paleo Diet


I thought about doing some cross fit in the near future, cause there is on CF Club in Zürich, which also offers early morning classes two times per week, which would be perfect for me and my though working schedule…

2nd Day addon Braulio Estima Summer Camp

so trough the antibiotics I got at the hospital, my infection got way better and I will be back training at the beginning of next week. 

Never the less, one thing I forgotten to mention, that on the second day of the Braulio Estima Summer Camp, there were also some promotions going on – I mean what could be better, than receiving your belt from Braulio Estima. He handed out one blue, one purple, one brown and also one black belt. You can find more information on here

Gracie Barra Channel Islands

It was great to see these promotions and also the feelings attached, especially for the higher belts - I mean, come on, everybody especially as a white belt, dreams of the day receveing your black - and it was somehow emotional to see such things happen, after years of blood, sweat, tears an commitment - allthough i knew Rob at that moment only for a few hours, I could imagine the effort he put in to get to this level .

Bad infection on the shin...

Damn it, it seems that I brought something not so nice home from my Training Camp at the Chanel Island. The thing started last week on Thursday when I woke up during the night we some notable pain in my left lower leg. I recognized that it was swollen up a bit and put some counterpain on it and got back to sleep. The next day when I woke up the leg was still swollen but I didnt put to much thinking on it and went to training. During training i asked on of the local Black Belts for some ice and showed him the shin – we agreed that it might have come from a shin to shin hit and that it was not more than a simple contusion.  I dont necessarily think, that the infection came from the camp itself, but I also was doing some body boarding on Friday with some open wounds on my feet. Who knows where the shit is from...

Things went pretty well until Monday when i first recognized that my left shin an foot were swollen pretty badly in comparison to my other foot and that the shin began to turn red. But I thought okay – lets put a little ice on it and it will be good anyhow. Yesterday things stayed the same, only the leg got a little more red, but never the less i decided that I want to attend wrestling class at my Dojo, when I came in and changed one of my instructors saw my foot and told me to go immediately to the hospital as this could properly be a bad infection.

So I went to the local hospital near the place I live and they took some blood, X-Rayed my leg and than told me not be surprised that I had an infection on my foot and that I need take antibiotics for one week and that I will have to wear a cast on my food which i neglected, and they give me some sort splint which can be taken on an off instead. 

At least this enables me to drive and walk around at work. I will keep the splint on during night and from what I have seen and feel the antibiotics already started to work as the redness got lighter and a notable war is going on in my leg. I really hope that everything turns out good and that i will be back training in about 10 to 14 days. The sad part is, that I wont be able to compete this week which would have been my first tourney in preparation towards the European Championship.

But: HEALTH IS A TOP PRIORITY and I will be able to compete and train an other day

2nd Day of the Braulio Estima Summer Camp

On the second day of the camp two Gi trainings where scheduled, one at 10:30 pm and one at 02:30 pm. The day started with a "good" breakfast, man I don't exactly know how these guys good it loads of that stuff in the morning. All I could see were sausages, bacon, beans and eggs in all variations. The sportsman I am I sticked to Cornflakes with with various fruits and the occasional bread with marmalade.

After breakfast it was time to take the 30 Minutes walk to the fort regent, which was
indeed a pretty good warm up. An to say the least it was typical british weather, raining all day long. Training started with the self warm-up. During the week these self warm-ups gave me the option to come up with my one warm-up routine which I will use before tournaments. The funny thing about warm-up was that some guys didn't really warm up, but just rolled at a freaking high pace. So my buddy Lukas came up with the word "einrollen" which still makes laugh pretty hard – it is german and translates to rollin in.





As nobody was seriously damaged during "einrollen" the second day started again with the topic "escaping the sidemount" where Braulio added a few twists to escaping that position. It was unbelievable to experience the teaching skills of Braulio, as for him BJJ is like driving a bus through various junctions where you have the options to go where you want.




On Sunday Braulios Brother Victor also joined the camp and a few more people where also there as you can see on the picture on the right. In the evening it was soccer time as the quarterfinals of the European Championship were going on although matches weren't that exciting.

1st Day of the Braulio Estima Summer Camp

As stated before in this blog, I travelled with a buddy of mine to the Braulio Estima Summer Camp held at Jersey Islands (St. Helier)

We landed on Saturday the 23rd and had a modest time before the first training started at 2:30 pm, so we first went to our hotel which wasnt that beautiful as I thought from its Internet presentation. After a quick check-in we went to a grocery store nearby to get some proper food and than went on to explore our way to the Fort Regent Center. As big as the Center was, it wasn't that easy to find, but after some searching we managed to get our way up to the center.

I have to admit something like this is not really common at our lines of latitude – this center provides you with a single point of contact for various sports related activities, ranging from the classical muscle pharm, were the big boys are lifting steal to various martial arts academies and a superior children's playground. After some further searching we found the playground of the guys from Gracie Barra Chanel Islands and were first a little unsure, if the announced 45 people would even fit into this room, but after a few minutes of waiting we were guided to the training area for the camp which was pretty big as you can see below

I really have to admit, that I was immediately impressed, looking around and seeing 4 Black Belts, 5 Brown Belts various Purples and Blues, which is not common for the gym I am training – not taking anything away from this guys. So after a short periode of self-warmup Braulio divided us in groups of four to five with the task of writing down some topics which we would like to be covered during the seminar. In addition to his topics this lead to the following three main topics for the week

• Sidemount Escapes
• Back Escapes
• Open Guard

The first day started for us with Braulio showing us a nice side mount escape when also your right arm is trapped an you can only maneuver with your left – to my surprise this escape ended in a sneaky arm bar, which I cant wait to try out on some of my training buddies ;)

After that relatively short session, we ended the day with a group photo rocking our free Camp T-Shirts

Caio Terra Seminar - the resumê

So on the 19th of June we hosted a Seminar with Caio Tera, at the Enomoto Dojo in Zürich. The Seminar day began, when we met Caio and two of his buddys from BJJ Team Basel at the early afternoon in Zürich. We walked him around town and had the chance to talk with him about several topics. Hands down, Caio is a really nice down to earth guy with an humungous knowledge about BJJ and Grappling. 

After our visit in Zürich my instructor had a private session wiht Caio where I assisted as a practicing dummy. The topics of this private where mostly focused on BJJ for MMA, as my intstructor is an MMA Fighter. He did variouse set ups vom "de la river guard" to sweep and attack an opponent from the bottom. And what I experienced there was, that Caio is not only a top notch BJJ Player but also has a deep knowledge of what to do, when punches and kicks are involved. An other position they played was a counter from an opponent in half guard which is getting the underhook and tries to mussle his way back up. The counter there was pretty impressive, as it lead to taking the back of the opponent.

Okay, so next on was the seminar, and we began it with a voting of the topic for the seminar the topics were:

- getting out of bad spots 

- leg attacks and leg locks

- leg drag 

- terra guard

- i cant remember ;) 

After a split decision we all agreed on the topic "leg drag". So to start the seminar Caio was rolling with every one of the participants, which is a quite cool warm up programm imho. Than the leg drag journey began with Caio showing us, what the leg drag is. I myself had not really a clue about it and was thinking, okay so this will take us 3 hours ;) but than everything began to make sense. 

We practiced to get to the leg drag from variouse positions, such as half guard, standing and so on. What was also nice, that Caio made us drill with variouse partners so we could learn to apply the moves to different body types. I was really impressed by his teaching skill overall and at the end the obligatory Q&A session began where he answered questions for different positions in real depth.

So all in all I can only say, that this was a great experience and i can only reccomend attending a Caio seminar when possible.

Caio Terra Seminar in Zürich Switzerland

Next tuesday I will be organizing a BJJ-No GI Seminar with Caio Terra here in Switzerland. Location will be the Enomoto Dojo of MMA Fighters Yasubey and Felipe Enomoto which are also my teachers. No to mention that the seminar will focus on the bread and butter techniques of Caio - which is the Half Guard

this is the second Seminar I am organizing via my Buddy Remo from BJJ Team Basel, the first one was with Ryan Hall and was pretty successful, I hope everything works out fine again this time and I cant wait to get destroyed by Caio during rolling :)

Training Plan for the Summer Camp

Finally I got my hands on the training plan for the BJJ Summer Camp of Braulio and Victor Estima 

I am really looking forward to training a lot this week, all in all it is going to be 15 hours of BJJ Gi and No-Gi training and I hope that this will take my game to an other level and that i can profit a lot from the skills of Braulio and his brother.

There will also be some recreational activities and I am really looking forward to meeting other BJJers from around the glob - allthough I am guessing that the vast majority will be out of U.K.

Competing to prepare for the Euros

As I stated in my first post and also in the name of the Blog, my goal is to compete at next years European Chamionship in Portugal and eventually win the gold medal in my class. 

So as it would not be a bright idea to just go to the Euros and compete, with no competition experience before hand, I decided to draw up a competition plan and do at least five competitions before next year. Here is what I will try to do:

1. Bavarian Cup BJJ an No-GI Tournament Round 1 in Ansbach (7th of July 2012)

2. Bavarian Cup BJJ an No-GI Tournament Round 2 in Ansbach (4th of August 2012)

3. Bavarian Cup BJJ an No-GI Tournament Round 3 in Ansbach (1st of September 2012)

4. West Germany Championships in BJJ (BJJBD) at Prüm (6th to 7th of October 2012)

5. International German Championships XII in BJJ (BJJBD) at Neuried (24th to 25th of November 2012)

As the Euros will be a Gi-Tournament I will mostly focus on that, but also gonna compete at the No-Gi ones were possible. 

I hope this will give me a little groove when it comes to competing, and will decrease the jitters a bit.

Cross trainig soccer... not recommended

So last Sunday I participated at a soccer tourney in Germany, due to beeing stupid before hand and telling everybody what a good soccer player I am ;) so I had to catch up to my loud mouth and play some soccer...

long story short, I can say that playing soccer is not recommended for crosstrainig purposes, as it can cost you some days of trainig jiu-jitsu - in my case a big fat bastard stepped on my right big toe (okay in reality I am not as good of a soccer player as I thought and so instead of hitting the ball I hit the mother earth) and now i have a blue toe that hurts like hell and there will be no running for the next days...

lesson learned:

being a stupid loudmouth doesnt always pay-off ;) 

 

MGInAction...

Yesterday i finally decided to join the website of Marcelo Garcia www.mginaction.com due to recent posts on variouse BJJ related forums. All the posts stated that this site could really help to boost your game at an affordable price. 

The price per month is 25 Dollar to access the site. If you calculate that in comparison to a private lesson which normally costs around 100 bucks and lasts for 60 minutes this is well worth the money. 

At a first glance I really have to say, that this is some sort of holy grail for BJJ and grappling. The site has more than 10'000 videos available at the moment and is very well structured as you can see from the picture below:

You can either browse through a certain position, down to the actual technique or just search for key words e.g. a technique you learned in class or something like that. What is also really nice, that you can create your own personal folder structure and put in the videos you like the most and that every video you have watched gets highlited. 

For me personally the "Fundementals" section is the one where I am going to spend my time for now and learn escapes, sweeps, transitions and submissions from every common position. 

Later on I might dig a little deeper into the X-Guard, which is Marcelos signature guard and see what I can get out of that. 

But its not only a database for moves as you get access to almost daily updated Gi and No-Gi sparring sessions of Marcelo and his students and him discussing different situations.

All in all, at a first glance, it is worth the money in my opinion.

taking notes after class

Since the beginning of May I decided to take notes after every class, particularly on the moves which were thought. I have my notebook were I write down the move of the day in  and a detailed describtion on how to apply it in handwritting.

Here is a little article why handwritting is superior to typing ;)
why-you-learn-more-effectively-by-writing-than-typing

Futher more I generated myself an Excel-sheet were I track the number of hours I have trained BJJ and Grappling and always write down the move of the day and also the page number in my notebook, so I can easily find moves and how to apply them.

I know its a little nerdy - but what the heck, I think it will help my game...

My little Dojo

Yesterday I posted my training routine - and most of the things mentioned, if not done outside or at my regular dojo,are going down in my own little dojo at my flat - here is picture of my massive space I have ;)

all in all i have 9 square feet to use, which is enough for workouts, solo drills and swiss ball drills. Can't wait to receive my submission dummy from http://www.zebramats.com/ in the next days and get my drilling to another level. 

I will be reviewing this bad dude after I have used it for a while...