Been promoted to blue belt and new goals

Hey everybody, 

It has been a long time since my last post and I am happy to tell you guys, that I have been finally promoted to blue belt after 2,5 years of sometimes less but in the last month more and consistent training. The blue belt was given to me by Christian Graugart who organized the CSA Summer Camp at his gym in Denmark. 

As I was allready registred for the IBJJF Rome Open at Adult/White/Feather, I now swichted up to Master/Blue/Light so I dont have to cut the missing 4 kg in the next two weeks ;). I see this tournament as good experience for me, to have my first IBJJF tourney in my pocket and see how things are done there. I don't expect to much success as I am pretty new at this belt level, but I am definitly looking forward to the good experience this will give me. 

Further more, I am going to change this blog a little bit and tell you guys more about my training etc. 

My next big goal will be the IBJJF European Open next year!

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...

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.

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 .