The injury bug has me...

The injury bug has caught me lately. First I got a pretty nasty infection on my elbow which held me of the mats for two weeks. After that, I left Switzerland for a one week vacation at home in Austria. I arrived there with my girl on Saturday and on Monday I found myself in the hospital due to a imploded left lung. 

This stuff hospitalized me for almost two weeks and I am forbidden to do anything sport related for an other 4 weeks. But whats even worst, I am forbidden to fly for 8 weeks, which meant, that I had to cancel my trip to Toronto and NYC and thus my training at Marcelo Garcias Academy. But as I my dad always said, you have to get something positiv out of negative situations, I was resting in my hospital bed and came up with the idea of going to Brazil. 

After some further investigations, I am going to stay at Connection Rio for two weeks in February and most likely gonna train at Checkmat Copacabana (Fight Zone).

I am thinking about doing two to three training sessions per day, plus a one hour private with one of Ricardinho's Black Belts. I am surely pretty pumped about the whole thing and cain't wait to be back on the mats and start my preperations for Rio - Osss

Special Offer from MGinAction

As I wrote in my last post, I will be going to New York for 7 days in October. I was thinking a lot about where I should train and If it is better to train at different academys, or just stay at one for the whole stay. 

I came up with the solution, that I will be "just" training at Marcelo Garcias Academy, which is situated at the chelsea district in Manhatten, cause I feel that this might give me better training as I would get by hopping around to different academys. Maybe they take you more seriouse if they see your not just there for one class but for some days. 

What concerns me a little bit is, that the ADCC in China will be right the weekend after my stay and alltough Marcelo is not competing, it is possible that he will join Bernardo Faria to go to China. Would be a real let down if I am there and he is not, allthough I quite confident, that his other instructors like Paul Schreiner will also provide superior training. 

Just in time, the MGinAction website is now offering the follwing:

I will get one week of training plus a one year membership for the MGinAction website for $220. Normally one week of training would be $150 dollars, so I am actually getting the membership for $70 which is pretty sweet deal which I can't resist. Also this might be good to review some of the tequniches they will show there.

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!

so you wanna train like in the 80s??

I have got a pretty simple solution for - just listen to the Blood Bros. mixtapes of DSJ and DJA...

I guess this discussion is pretty old by now, but what music are you listening to while sparring or drilling? There are some people that are more on the relaxed reggae/rap side of things, including myself and than there are the metal guys, who like it loud and hard.

But I got something new for you - why not listen to some good old 80s action movie soundtracks and go ape shit??

Sounds not to weird to you? Than you definitely got to check out the Blood Bros Mix Tapes 1-3 which you can find on Soundcloud. My personal favorite is the second one:

Blood Bros Heaven2Hell

download it --> listen to it --> train to it

But be carful, there will be some weird looks exchanged at your local gym when you turn it on first, but those weird looks will turn into bright smiles TRUST ME!
BJJSebi

Supplements and Nutrition

I lately started to put some more thinking and personal research into the matter of nutrition and which supplements to take. I read on several forums, that it might be a good idea to take some fish oil in combination with Glucsamine and MSM, there for I searched the net a little bit, to find some studies that actually proof the benefits of taking these supplements. Also my girlfriend was saying that this stuff doesn't work and is only marketing and yadi yadi yada…

So after some research, I stumbled upon the following studies:

http://bjjlegends.com/bjj/jiujitsu/item/1036-joint-supplementation-for-the-bjj-athlete

http://www.charlespoliquin.com/ArticlesMultimedia/Articles/Article/964/Five_Reasons_Fish_Oil_Will_Make_You_Stronger_Leane.aspx

and decided to give it a go and order some stuff. At the moment I am taking the following supplements

• Omega 3 salmon fish oil capsules (2 capsules 2 times per day )
• Joint X with Glucosamin, MSM and Gelatine (2 capsules 2 times per day )
• Super Mulit Vitamine (1 capsules 2 times per day )

I have to admit, that I really feel the benefit of these supplements, as I am not that worn out after a hard training sessions and that my muscles and joints aren't that stiff and in pain. I also did my regular Kettlebells session yesterday and don't feel that shitty today…

Further more I always try to take some protein right after training, at it is commonly said that you have a window of maximum 45 minutes to get the protein back into your system. At  the moment, I am taking the XTFC FX4 Acai Protein Shake powder with water.

This stuff actually tastes pretty decent and is a pleasure to sip down after a hard training session. Never the less I recently stumbled over a blog post form the Raspberry Ape Daniel Strauss, where he is stating that protein alone won't do the job as a pre workout shake.

http://raspberryape.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/post-workout-shakes.html

In his first post he didn't really say why, but promised to give a little more insight in one of his following posts…

Generally I try to get my diet a little healthier then I used to, which is also paying of if you ask me. Normally I start the day with a high protein bowl of mixed berries with cottage cheeses (for the receipt go to one of my earlier posts) in the forenoon I will eat a fruits (banana or apple), for lunch I keep it simple with a turkey sandwich on wheat bread or some eggs. In the afternoon again fruits and in the evening chicken or beef in various forms. At the moment I'm also high on the Acai bowl and try to eat one per day (you can also find a receipt for that in one of my previous posts)

As I am taking training and competition a little more serious this year, I feel like this will greatly help me and my body to conquer the challenges which will be on my path…

The BJJ Globetrotters

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!!!!

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…

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.

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

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

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…

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.

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 ;)