Surfing the internet, I have found a nice Martial Arts Manga which also envolves some BJJ Aspects.
You can find the manga under the following link All around Meguru Manga . I haven't had the time to start from the beginning, but hope I will find the time to do so in the near future.
Further more I have discovered a new BJJ related podcast which is called the "Just the Gi Top Podcast", they regularly interview current players and talk about their training regime. I am going to download the Gianni Grippo episode right now and I am quite curious about this podcast and what Gianni has to tell.
I personally caught up with Gianni at the CSA.dk and BJJGlobetrotter summer camp and also had the chance to roll with him for a bit. Surely I got crushed, but it was a super nice experience and I am still using one of his over under passes, which he showed in my open guard passing game. I am following Gianni since his purple belt days and hope to catch up with him again during my NYC stay and hope to get a private or two with him.
I recently also started to write for the new and upcoming website BJJ.EU which as site dedicated to European BJJ News and articles. The site also has a forum running so you might wanna check that out if you need some help or have a question.
I focused mostly on doing interviews with European BJJ players and doing some info posts about tournaments which I participated in so far you can check out the following interviews:
A journey to jiu-jitsu greatness with Thomas "Mastwo Oyarzun"
Living the dream with Stuart Cooper
No Ape Shit with Daniel "The Raspberry Ape" Strauss
I have ligned up and also sent out questions to the following guys:
- Luciana Machado - Owner of MKimonos
- Rob Staples - Instructor at Gracie Barra Chanel Islands
- Nic Greogoriades - founder of jiu-jitsu Brotherhood
- Oliver Geddes - guess I dont need to tell you who he is...
This is also why I slowed down my posting frequency over here, but I want to step it up again and get back to regularly posting mainly about my training. I am currently preparing for some big Tournaments over here in Europe which will be the Naga in Mai, IBJJF Rome Open in June and the Grapplers Quest Amsterdam in August. You can also expect some post from the CSA/BJJ Globetrotter summer camp in June - which is going to be a blast...
I will also do some Gi Reviews in the near future as I bought me some new gis to satisfy my gi addiction ;)
Hi everybody, its been a while since my last post and I have to admit, that I haven't been doing to much over christmas and new year. But all of this to really recover my body and get rid of the little itches here and there and to start full blast into a year full of jits 2013!
As mentioned in my last post I had joined the CSA Winter Camp of Christian Graugart also known as the BJJ Globetrotter. Latly he has now released his on BJJ Team which is also affiliated to the IBJJF. But this team is a little bit different to the normal teams which you can see on the points outlined below:
The members of the team share a common set of values:
- We don't pay each other any affiliation fees
- We wear any patches we like on our gis
- We are free to represent any (or no) team in competition
- We encourage training with anyone regardless of affiliation
- We are willing to promote anyone who deserves it—members or not
- We arrange camps, seminars and visit each other for training and fun
- We believe everyone is equal both on and off the mats
- We strive to enjoy life, people and the world through Brazilian Jiu Jitsu
On the Homepage BJJ Globetrotters you can find all affiliated clubs and individual members, where I am also a member now. I think this idea super fantastics because it exactly shows the values I stand for in my training. As you might know I train with Alliance in Frankfurt and Enomoto Dojo here in Zürich – which might change as we have a really nice project coming up which surprisingly just came up the same day as the BJJ Globetrotter thing. As I see it, the BJJ Stars are really alining for me to start this year and everything is set to reach my overall goals for this year which will be gaining my blue belt and compete in as many GI comps as possible and win the IBJJF Italian Open in June.
So have a good start into the year everybody and as Kurt would say it – NOW GO TRAIN!!!!
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…
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…
Surfing the internet, I have found a nice Martial Arts Manga which also envolves some BJJ Aspects. 
