Zhoozhitzu do Graugardo

Behind the scenes of BJJ European Open 2012

2012-02-01T06:33:00.000-08:00

Here is a little video, I put together from my trip to the Europeans in Portugal :)

Sun, surfing, segways and silver medal in Portugal

2012-01-30T16:40:00.000-08:00

I got back home from Portugal last night, and what an action-packed trip it was :)

Our little team performed really well and we took home three medals, one of each kind. The goal was to get a medal, so I am very satisfied with the result. It was a huge event over four days with a swarm of people filling up the sports hall. I met lots of people, who were reading this or my other blog, and many of my friends I trained and lived with on my trip around the world were there too. It was nice to see so many of them again.

For myself, it went pretty well, in fact a bit better than I had expected. I didn't really have any ambitions for myself, but ended up getting to the final in the master middle weight division, losing on points to the guy who also won the absolute.

I had three matches on the day, and it was nice to compete in master, where the time limit is six minutes instead of eight. It suited me really well, and my energy level was fine. Especially considering, that I haven't been able to do any real cardio or strength training since august.

Let's get straight to the matches :)

First up was a german guy, who had already won his first match. I was seeded one round, so I got the chance to check him out before I met him on the mat. His game looked pretty good and I noticed, that he used his left leg as lead in guard top, which puzzled me a little bit about my tactics. I can do all my moves to both left and right side, but with most people leading with their right leg, that is where I have most experience.

Anyways, I pulled guard right away and for some reason, I got my left leg over his arm right from the start. He was in the wrench, and I was not going to let him out. Broke posture, then locked in a reverse triangle to stabilize while he tried to pull his head out. As he paused, I switched it over to regular and finished when he stood up to escape.

A short first match, that didn't really even get me warm as I hoped for. But it was nice to be able to save some energy for the next ones.

Second match was against a guy I have known from the danish BJJ community for something like ten years now. It was a pleasure to compete against him, and we had a good time before and after the match. I knew his guardpassing style suited my guard really bad, and he also has a tight closed guard. So I couldn't really decided where to play the game, but I eventually picked his guard. From the moment he pulled it, it was survival mode for the rest of the match. I had a decent attempt at passing, but I was mostly defending his sweep and submission attempts. My hope was, that there would be scored no points or advantages, so I would get the referee's decision for being on top. It was a tactic with a tiny margin for winning, and it worked. It could easily have gone either way, but I pulled home the smallest possible win and advanced to next round.

We'll have a rematch another day, where I'll promise to play less boring tactics :D

My opponent in the finale was exceptionally strong. I just couldn't move any of his limbs at all, and when I tried to sweep him, it felt like he was bolted to the floor. My technique and cardio felt good, but he was just physically too big of a handful for me. Usually I try to handle the big guys by taking the pace out of the match in the guard, but eventually he passed using a grip from hell on my ankle.

I managed to keep calm, recover my guard and sweep via deep half, but it was too late and I lost 5-2.

All in all, I am very satisfied with the result. I don't think I made any big mistakes in my matches, really. Of course, that is not always enough to win, but over all I am pleased with my own performance.

Apart from the competition, we had a great time in Lisbon. I wanted to focus on doing other things than just sitting in the sports hall for ten hours a day, so I had arranged for the team to go on a Segways race around town thursday. We did it last year, and it was still just as fun racing up and down those steep, narrow streets of the old town. Walking with my legs seem like such a waste of time after having tried a Segway :D The guys renting them out are super cool and one of them even does BJJ. I highly recommend dropping by GoCars Lisbon if you are there for the tournament next year and - like me - are getting tired of sitting indoors all the time in the noise.

The last day, we went surfing before heading to the airport. It was really nice to be back in the water, and despite difficult conditions, we had a great time there. I got to try my new camera on a surfboard for the first time and got some cool footage out of it.

Good things:

Silver medal at major IBJJF tournament
Cardio and endurance felt ok
Nice to work on guard top defense
No nervousness really

Bad things:

I need to fix my shoulder to get back to weight training
Deep half needs some polishing and experience

Off to Portugal tomorrow

2012-01-24T13:45:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow afternoon, I am heading to beautiful Lisbon in Portugal, to compete at the European Open.

Last year, I set a team with the goal of getting a medal at the tournament after six months of preparations, and we succeeded. This year, I did the same, but we have had a lot of unfortunate injuries and sickness, which means that we will be a smaller group going. I am still very satisfied with being able to take seven competitors from our small gym (eight with visitor, Mario :)), all the way to Portugal to compete at the biggest event in Europe.

I think we have a very good chance of taking home a few medals, and I know everyone will do perform really well and have a good experience.

Personally, I am having my debut in the masters division for brown belts. I have absolutely no idea, how it will go, but will just go on the mat and see what happens. There are some tough guys there, and it is hard to focus on myself, when I am so emotionally involved in my students matches. We'll see! :) No matter what, it will be cool to once again have the opportunity to compete at this level, in one of the world's biggest competitions.

After the competition, I have planned for us to rent segways for sightseeing around town and sunday I will take the whole team to the beach for surfing lessons before we go straight to the airport :)

Interview on Fightmap about quitting my job to start a gym as a blue belt

2012-01-21T09:28:00.000-08:00

Audio interview on the new website Fightmap just got online. I had a bit of a cold at the time, so sound a little funny.

Check out the interview here: http://fightmap.com/2012/01/christian-graugart-jiu-jitsu-dreams/

Competing at the Europeans next week, shoulder not feeling good.

2012-01-19T15:04:00.000-08:00

It's been almost five months since I got some shoulder problems from surfing and weight lifting. It still comes and goes and bothers me a lot. Since it happened, I have been forced to cut down on my weekly training schedule in periods and since I was in Moldova, it has gotten a lot worse.

A full weekend of hard sparring with big guys, many of them beginners who were trying to rip my limbs off with all their power, was definitely not good for me. Add to that, that finding icepacks in Moldova is basically impossible. No one seems to use them, and they don't sell them in pharmacies. Result is, that the inflammation has gotten much worse, and I haven't been able to spar since I got back home. Probably the worst pain in 3-4 months at this moment.

Wednesday, I am flying to Portugal to compete at the Europeans. I know I won't feel anything during the match, but it still is annoying that it has affected my preparations so much. I have done zero upper body weight lifting since august and only been able to do half the amount of weekly sparring than usual.

But whatever, injuries are a part of the game, and the preparations are what they are. I have come to the conclusion, that I will never be 100% ready and fit, so just have to accept it. Worst thing I can do, would be to not step on the mat and compete. There are no excuses, and I need the experience in my BJJ backpack. It can always go good or bad, no matter how prepared I am.

More thoughts about the competition next week before I leave :)

BJJ Globetrotter wins "Best BJJ blog of 2011" award... twice.

2012-01-18T03:28:00.000-08:00

Recently found out, that my BJJ Globetrotter blog won best blog of the year awards with both GiReviews.net (tied) and Jiu Jitsu Laboratory.

Man, I miss writing that blog :)

Documentary from my trip to Moldova

2012-01-17T05:36:00.000-08:00

My weekend in Moldova was awesome. I taught six lessons in 48 hours and more than 75 people showed up to the seminar.

BJJ is just starting to really grow in the country, so it is extremely exciting to be a part of it and be able to help them on the way. I got to train and roll with lots of cool people, including some really skilled and tough Sambo guys.

A lot of impressions and things to write, but I think I'll just let the video do the talking :) It is a bit long and includes me being a bit geeky with my camera as well as lots of training and sparring footage. Hope you like it!

For more, check out a clip from a Moldovan TV station, that did a short feature on the seminar, including an interview with me: http://www.publika.md/vasile-bulgac-a-obtinut-primul-succes-pentru-moldova-la-jiu-jitsu-brazilian_659181.html

Sparring videos from Colombia

2012-01-16T15:13:00.000-08:00

Just got back from an awesome trip to Moldova - will write about that soon.

While you wait, here are some videos, I just discovered were on YouTube of me rolling during a visit to Gracie Barra in Medellin, Colombia:

Off to teach in Moldova

2012-01-12T11:04:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow morning, I am heading to Moldova to teach BJJ over the weekend. I visited during my round the world trip, and now it is time to go back, and see how much has happened since then. Unfortunately, it was not possible for me to make it to the village with the kids this time, but will definitely be back there another time.

Stay tuned for a report, when I get back home next week :)

385 flighthours

2012-01-11T04:47:00.000-08:00

After a tough night of hard sparring the night before, I did a nice and light training yesterday.

Training with Robson again

2012-01-10T13:08:00.000-08:00

Last night, Robson Barbosa dropped by to teach in my gym again. He is living in Sweden and has been coming consistently to train with us over the last 3 or so years. We had about 15 kids, 30 beginners and 40 advanced guys showing up for his classes yesterday, and everybody seemed to like the training.

As always, I got some really good sparring rounds with him. He has gotten an interesting game, that is very explosive and athletic, something that is great for me to practice handling.

I hope to be able to train with him a little more before the Europeans in the end of the month.

Season 2011 recap

2012-01-09T04:21:00.000-08:00

I had planned to write this before New Years, but couldn't find the time, so here it goes, a little delayed :)

2011 was a year, that changed me tremendously both as a person and Jiu Jitsu practitioner. I kickstarted it by competing at the European Open in Portugal for the first time. Lost my first match, but it was a great experience and marked the end of my 2010 competition team project.

Shortly after, I packed my backpack and ventured east for five months of the most intense and life-changing experience I've ever had. Carried by the hands of Jiu Jitsu, I managed to travel 57.920 kilometers all the way around the globe. On the way, I did 90 classes in 56 gyms, visited 43 cities in 24 countries and flew in 35 airplanes. Not to mention, that I made countless of new friends and connections, that will impact the rest of my life.

Needless to say, that trip has become something special to me. I could keep talking about it, but I am currently writing a book on it, where I will put it all in instead. There are just too many good stories and experiences to tell about, that I can't allow not to write it all down.

It was nice to be home in the summer. I had missed everyone here, and I could pick up on the physical training again, something I hadn't been able to do on the trip.

2011 was also an intense year of competition for me. I had originally planned to compete a lot on my trip, but it proved too difficult to practically work out with my busy travel schedule. I managed to do the Worlds in California though, which was a great experience, despite being in horrible shape for it.

When I got home, I felt more confident in my game than ever, and I used that to aim for an ambitious end of the season, competition-wise. In just two months, I did five major competitions around Europe, going to Switzerland, England, Scotland, Paris and Sweden. I took medals in all of them, a few from losing first match, but also a handful of golds from actually winning some matches :)

All in all, my 2011 competition season summed up to seven tournaments and a record of 8 wins and 6 losses. In total, it was four gold, one silver and two bronze for me. For the whole team, we managed to get 67 medals in two months. I can't complain about that :)

Competition is a great indicator, for what one needs to work on, and my experiences this year has been no exception to that rule. Even though competition doesn't really interest me as in I don't hold any ambitions to win, I find it very interesting, when I just see it as a part of my job and development in the sport. Stepping on the mat is just a part of what I do, and really has nothing to do with proving myself or trying to win something. I have learned a ton from competing this year, and all of it, I have taken back to my gym and let my students and training partners benefit from.

I have always known, that I don't have a "competitive spirit". For many years, I used this as a reason to not compete. Now, I still don't have it, but I see the enormous value of competing anyways, and will keep doing it for other reasons, than to try and reach a certain result. A longer blog post about my thoughts on competing is on it's way, as well as being written in the book to come.

I have only spent a little over half a year in the gym at home this season, but it has been an amazing time. The team seems to be at an all time high, with all the classes being full of enthusiastic and fantastic people. Beginners and experienced guys and girls work together and the development of everybody's games are skyrocketing. I recently promoted a lot of guys on the team, which is always something that makes me really proud.

Since I got home, I have had a lot of visits from around the world, which has been really great. Some of them had followed my blog and some of them, I had visited on my trip. We had Martin Aedma from Estonia over for a few weeks during the summer. Robson Barbosa dropped by as usual, a guy from Finland and an american traveller had both read my blog and came, two Scottish BJJers dropped by, a guy from Paris trained with us for a week, Fernando I visited in Costa Rica taught for two months and two days ago, the guy I stayed with in the Galapagos Islands just arrived to train with us for the Europeans. Coming home from Portugal, the man behind Kauai Kimonos and another one of my travel partners from the trip, will be here for a few weeks. This is Jiu Jitsu networking at it's best ;)

So what does 2012 hold? In three weeks, I will compete at the European Open in Portugal. I have also gotten a handful of invitations for seminars, and so far I will be going teaching in Moldova this coming weekend and Moscow, Russia, in the beginning of February. I am also planning a two week trip to Thailand in March, but probably won't be training much there. As far as the rest of the year, I don't know yet, but I will do my best to make it as awesome as 2011!

Now I gotta run, the gym and the world is waiting! :)

398 flighthours sparring video

2011-12-29T03:45:00.000-08:00

Shot a video of some training from tuesday. Most of my sparring is "silent coaching", where I do something specific in order to help my training partner improve in an area of their game, that is lacking. I rarely just go for the kill myself, maybe a result of not having many guys to train with that are much better than me.

First round is with one of my young guys, who are competing in juvenile. I am taking a few of them to the European Open in a month, and is expecting them to do really well. Last year, we got a silver medal in that age division, so we are going for the gold this time :)

With the strong focus on wrestling, I have had on my kids team, they usually end up on top in the competitions. Therefore, I need them to train a lot of defense against the different guard attacks, they will be exposed to. So in the first round, you will see me do a lot of different attacks and positions, so he can practice keeping his base and defending, while setting up his passes.

Guy in second round has a killer underhook against deep halfguard, so I made sure to get caught in that to practice defending it and also let him get even better at it. Besides that, he just recently moved up to blue belt division and needs to work his "plan B", so I usually roll a little extra hard with him.

Third round is against a heavyweight guy, who has a really good guard. It is so difficult to pass, that he doesn't get to train his bottom game escapes so much. To make sure, he gets a chance to do that, I am more aggressive in passing his guard and putting some pressure on him from top.

About listening to my body and respecting, what it says.

2011-12-28T13:50:00.000-08:00

If there is one thing, I have come to a conclusion about through out the years of training, it is, that when my body is trying tell me something, it is for a reason, and I shouldn't ignore it.

Six years ago, I got a herniated disc in my lower back after a deadlift 1 rep max test. Since then, I haven't done any lower body training because of pain in my leg. I have tried physiotherapy and all sorts of other weird stuff, but nothing really helped, and eventually, I just designed my life and training around the injury, not stressing it too much. A lot of situations in Jiu Jitsu, I just skip if I get there and if I have been standing up for about ten minutes, I always find a place to sit down, not even thinking about it.

I haven't really done any serious rehab training for my lower back since the injury. The first many years, I didn't even know what had happened. Since the pain was in my hip area, many doctors and physiotherapists failed to diagnose me. An MRI scan a few years back finally did the job, and it was nice to find out what was actually the problem.

Now, about a month ago, I re-injured my lower back. It was pretty bad, as I couldn't stand up for a full day. When that happened, I realized, that my body was trying to tell me something. It told me loud and clearly, that I shouldn't ignore my disc injury anymore, and it was now time to do something serious about it. There was no doubt about the message, and I completely got it.

The last month, I have been strengthening my lower back with a serious training programme and it seem to have done wonders. Not only is the injury gone, I feel like my back is even stronger now, than it was before. Since I herniated my disc six years ago, I have not been able to do any form of squat or deadlift. Even with the bar only and no weights on, I would be looking at a good week of nerve pain down my leg after a few sets.

I am thrilled to write, that last week, I managed to do deadlifts for the first time in six years, and I have had no pain from it at all. I am moving slowly and is currently lifting 70 kg and doing some hurdle jumps. It feels great to finally be able to do some leg training again.

Once again, I am reminded, that I should respect my body and obey to whatever it is telling me to do. I recommend you do the same :)

Ten quick tips for you, who is practicing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

2011-12-25T17:13:00.000-08:00

I am trying to organize a ton of notes for my upcoming book, The BJJ Globetrotter, on which I am writing like a maniac at the moment. It is containing a lot of my thoughts and philosophy on Jiu Jitsu, and looking at the notes, I decided to quickly boil some of them down for a blogpost.

So here are ten quick tips to make your training and life easier:

1) Don't worry about getting good. There is always someone out there, who will kick your ass anyway, no matter how "good" you get. Just enjoy the daily training, that’s the real value of Jiu Jitsu.

2) The number one factor to really learn Jiu Jitsu is time. Talent and hard work will get you nowhere without time, and there are no shortcuts. Everyone has periods, where they feel like they have stopped improving or are getting worse. Frustrations like that, are a part of the journey and they will pass. Stick with it and eventually you will be a black belt too, it’s just that simple.

3) Don't try to learn too many things at once. Focus on really learning a few things, maybe only four or five a year. Make a commitment to yourself to always go for these in sparring, and with time, you will end up with a handful of solid a-game moves, that you can pull off against almost anyone. As a beginner, trying to learn a hundred moves off YouTube is a classic mistake. Pick out a few basic things, that you have been taught in person instead.

4) Trust experience. The advantage of having a more experienced teacher is, that he made all the mistakes for you in the past. Even though something might initially not make sense or seem to work for you, trust what he tells you, keep trying and it will pay off in the end.

5) Don’t worry about the color of your belt and number of little tape stripes on it. It really doesn’t make sense to try and sharply divide the skill level of individual athletes into so many categories. Imagine a ranking system like that in any other sport, like maybe tennis, golf or basketball? Measuring your expectations of performance against who ever you clap hands with, through these nonsense visual indicators is impossible. Despite being a cute idea, belts symbolize many other things, than just how you are “supposed” to do in sparring and competition. We are each on own our own journey, and you can confidently be proud of where ever you have personally gotten to. It is normal for many people to feel, that they don’t deserve a promotion, but you have to trust your instructor on that. He probably trained a lot longer than you, and most likely knows better. There will be plenty of time to mature in your belt, and it is a part of it.

6) Compete, even though your brain tries to convince you not to. You will lose and you will suck, but it is an important and non-avoidable part of competing, that pays off in the long run. For us normal people, it takes everything from 20-40 matches to start getting a hang of competing. Everything up until that point is full of nerves, irrational thoughts and lots of bad results. And don't wait till you feel “ready” to compete. No matter how ready and prepared you might think you are, there is still a very good chance, that you will lose anyway. Just jump in the deep water as early as possible and learn how to swim there, instead of spending all your time practicing on land. The experience - no matter the result - is worth way more, than giving in to your natural fear of failing. You will agree, when you've done it.

7) Train with everyone. There isn't one correct way to do Jiu Jitsu and you might have ten different black belts show you ten ways to do the same technique, before you settle on how it works best for you. Also, the people in that other gym in town have similar interests as you, and could very likely become great friends and training partners. Why not pay them a visit next week? Jiu Jitsu politics makes zero sense, except for those, who are worried about losing money or status in a fantasy hierarchy, which basically only exists in their own heads. In the real world, where most of us lives, grown ups should be allowed to play with any other grown ups they like. Especially, if they pay for it.

8) Jiu Jitsu is a fantastic vehicle for social life and traveling. With this sport, you posses a special key to experience other worlds. You can walk into any academy on the planet and you will have an instant network of local friends. That is a bulletproof recipe for lifetime experiences, memories and friendships. Do it.

9) The final answer, on wether you should train gi or no-gi is here. Just do whatever you enjoy most.

10) If you come by a waterfall, always do a cool Kung Fu pose under it. It will improve your balance and sweep defense.

Back injury rehab exercises

2011-12-15T10:39:00.000-08:00

Someone commented on one of my recent posts about my back injury, asking about what exercises I used for the rehab. Since my new handy GoPro camera is always at hand in the gym, I brought it downstairs to our CrossFit gym today and filmed my routine.

I tried to remember all the exercises, I have been doing since I got the injury, but probably missed one or two. In the video, I show all of them, but during the last few weeks, it has of course been a progression, starting with the easy ones, building up strength to be able to do the hard ones.

My back feels really good now, and I have started to roll again. Still only sparring with the 15-16 year old boys that don't have the weight to push my back too much, but they are giving me a serious run for my money.

Maybe you can use some of it too, maybe not. At least it is here for my own future reference, if I get back pain again :)

Quick update: Back on the mats!

2011-12-09T10:36:00.000-08:00

I visited my physio today and he was surprised, how fast I had healed up. Rolled a little bit with the teens wednesday and today with some adults, just making sure I didn't have any heavy loads on my lower back. It went fine, and I am psyched to work my way back up to high intensity training again.

Rehabbing like a boss, will roll tomorrow.

2011-12-06T10:27:00.000-08:00

I've been really consistent with the rehab training for my back this time, doing it twice a day since I got the injury last friday. There is a great improvement, and I plan on trying to slowroll a little tomorrow. I'll probably start out by rolling with the kids and teens first, before I move on to the adults next week. It is such a privilege to have high level technical sparring partners in all ages and sizes to chose from, when I am injured :)

Was working on some technique for an hour today, and back didn't complain at all, so I am very pleased. I think my mental focus on fixing this injury has really made a difference to me. Instead of seeing the injury as an annoying thing keeping me from training, I have chosen to look it as a challenge. Like a competition, I am trying to win and I will work every day to improve whatever it takes to succeed. In some way, it has actually been exciting to try and fix myself. I must say I am a little surprised, that I feel this way about having an injury, but I will definitely keep this mindset for next time something happens. Makes it a little less boring to be sidelined from sparring.

Hopefully, I will have enough time to get up in gear before the European Open in Portugal in January. Just bought the plane ticket today!

Belt promotions and video from class

2011-11-29T11:01:00.000-08:00

The combination of my injury keeping me from training and the the fact, that I have just bought two new cameras (GoPro Hero2 and Canon EOS 1100D), quickly results in me being in video-nerd mode. Last night, I put together this little video of the class:

It was also an evening, where I promoted a handfull of the guys on the team. Everyone has been putting so much time and effort into training since I got home from my trip in the summer, and it was well about time for a lot of them to move on to the next level. Whenever I promote someone, they always thank me, but in reality, I am the one thanking them. It is a great honor and inspiration, that they chose to devote so much time of their lives to letting me try and teach them, what I know about Jiu Jitsu.

Every single promotion is always something special, but a few of the recent ones means a little bit extra to me. I have been teaching kids for many years, and everyone have always been talking about "that day", when they grow up and start kicking the adults asses in training. Well, that day has come, and they have already started their rampage crusade in the adult classes, where they are a big mouthful for any sparring partner. The belts given to these young boys are a symbol of all the hard work and effort we have put into those junior classes and competitions together and that they are not kids anymore. A lot of them are now blue belts and are facing new challenges in training, life and competition. As always, I am just excited to tag along on the journey and see, where it takes us :)

413 flighthours video, back getting better.

2011-11-28T12:57:00.000-08:00

I filmed a bit more sparring last week, before I hurt my back. Instead of waiting for more footage to add, I thought I'd just throw this up on it's own. Going to take a little while before I can roll again, anyways.

Had a bad day of training when it was filmed. Felt a bit stressed out that day and couldn't really concentrate on the sparring. It was pretty good practice though, since my training partners were very good and tough, so I had to try and push myself in a situation, where my mental state was against me.

After having been in the bed all weekend with back pain, I feel considerably better now. I am actually able to stand up and walk, more than I could saturday. I bit more optimistic, but will probably be out of sparring for a while.

It's official: I am getting old(er)

2011-11-27T05:08:00.000-08:00

I have been training martial arts basically my entire life. When I was a kid, I didn't even know about the concept of recovery. I was never tired. Even when I was in my teens and early twenties, I could train as much and hard as I wanted, combined with only little sleep and drinking alcohol every weekend, and still not be get tired from it. At that time, many people told me "oooh, you just wait till you get to your thirties, then you'll start feeling it!".

I think I have been cheated. It is still a good six months till I turn thirty and my body feels like a wreck at the moment!

When I was younger, injuries was something I had for days or weeks. Now, they seem to last for months or years instead. When I have had a hard night of training, I wake up the next day and feel like I have been hit by a truck.

The knee injury I got in competition last summer is still nagging me, so is the shoulder problem from August. To make things worse, I hurt my lower back pretty bad friday. I got a herniated disc there about six years ago, which had started to heal up pretty well. When rolling, I was twisted or pushed or something, I am not sure what happened, but I felt a slight pain exactly in my disc injury. The result was, that I was in my bed the entire day yesterday, not being able to stand up or walk.

Despite having gotten much better today, I am seriously worried about this back injury, as it could potentially sideline me for a long time. And I don't like breaks from training. At all :(

Anyways, I am crossing my fingers, staying away from sparring, seeing my doctor and starting rehab training tomorrow. I hope it is not bad enough to keep me from competing at the Europeans in two months, but we'll see.

Video from my kids team training today

2011-11-24T12:42:00.000-08:00

I just got a new DSLR camera with video recording ability in the gym, so I decided to film a bit of one of my kids classes I was teaching today. This is my youngest team of kids, and I really enjoy training with them. Having spent over six years on figuring out how to build up kids teams, I think I have finally found a good recipe for it, and the results in competitions (and how much the kids enjoy training), speak for themselves.

I recently promoted all of them to yellow belt after they did an amazing job at Swedish Open, and I am excited to spend many more years with these great boys on the mats.

Rolling with Marcelo Garcia, Drive In and Quico

2011-11-23T04:52:00.000-08:00

When I said, that I hadn't made any sparring videos in a year, I was not telling the exact truth. During my trip, a few videos of me rolling was filmed. Some of them are on my globetrotter blog and the rest I've just put on YouTube so I can add them here.

With Marcelo Garcia in New York (May):

With Paulo Cesar (aka. "Drive In") and student in Rio de Janeiro (June):

With Quico in Bali (April):

417 flighthours - short rolling footage video

2011-11-22T01:55:00.000-08:00

I have really been neglecting the 1000 flighthours project, not having posted a video of sparring footage since about a year ago. Well, I have been traveling for the most part of this year, but still been too lazy to film sparring. There has been lots of competition footage lately, but that is usually quite different from sparring, where there is more room to experiment and play different games with different opponents.

Now, I'll get back to that project. I think recording sparring sessions has been very valuable for my understanding of developing my jits game over the years. Every now and then, I'll click back in the flighthours archives here in the blog to find a detail on how I used to do a specific move or to check up on holes in my game, I might have forgotten to patch up.

Recorded a few rolls today and made this short video. I'll make more of them in the coming days and weeks, it will be my little project to document this stage of my Jiu Jitsu career.

If you have the patience to look all the way to the end (or just fast forward, but that would be cheating), you can enjoy a high pace round of me getting my ass kicked by Fernando Moya, a guy I trained with in Costa Rica who is visiting my gym for a few months (more on that in a soon-to-come blog post, so far you'll have to do with this video teaser :D).

Highlight video from NAGA in Paris

2011-11-20T13:25:00.000-08:00

I've made a ton of highlight videos and on a boring sunday like today, I thought I would try and change the style a little bit. Also, I just watched Drive and loved it in case you think I got some inspiration from there ;)

67 medals in two months - last competition of the year is in the books.

2011-11-15T11:28:00.000-08:00

This weekend, I went to the last competition of the year and the seventh in eight weeks for me. I had already decided to not compete myself, since my body is pretty worn down from all the competitions lately. Also, I was coaching a ton of kids and adults on my team, so I thought I had deserved a day off the mats myself this time.

The competition was Swedish Open, where we have gone every year for the last four years. The event is getting bigger and better for each year and this was no exception. It is probably one of the most well organized and well run tournaments I have ever been to and will highly recommend anyone in the area to check it out.

We had a total of 40-something people on our team this time in every sex and age group. Every single one of them did really well, and we ended up with some great results, taking home eight gold-, six silver and three bronze medals. Even better, we finally took the first place in the junior team competition, beating the swedish club, who has won every year for the last five years. It was actually a draw for the first place with another great academy, but we had more gold medals, and they were gentlemen, so they gave the trophy to us. I have put a lot of work into my junior team over the last six years and finally I am starting to see some serious results coming out of it. A new generation is coming up, and the "old" ones - consisting of one brutally good teenager after the other - is on the verge of switching over to the adult team.

Another result of the weekend, that I am really proud of is, that we ended up being the second best adult academy of the tournament. With about 600 competitors, I think that was quite a good result.

All in all, it has been a crazy fall of competitions for me and my guys, girls and boys. I managed to compete in five tournaments myself over just two months, Taking four gold, a silver and two bronze medals in those, I conclude that it went pretty alright. I still have lots to learn about competing and there are still hundreds and more brown belts out there who can kick my ass, but it has been a really valuable experience and I have learned a lot from it (<-- hang on for the blogpost on this :D).

In total, we have won 67 medals in the last two months with the team. I am super proud of everyone on the team, and super honored, that they chose to train with me.

Now it is time to go back to the lab and fine tune the technique before the European Open in end of January. It will also be nice to have some time to heal my body and get back to the physical training. I am still having problems with my shoulder, but working hard on the rehab and can hopefully lift some weights again soon.

Big win at NAGA in Paris this weekend

2011-11-08T14:01:00.000-08:00

In the weekend, I competed for the last time this year and for the last time in the adult age division (I will be 30 next year). NAGA was holding a tournament in Paris for the second time and we went a team of fifteen guys there to compete. All in all, it went really well and we took home a total of thirteen medals.

I had initially decided to only do the gi division, but when we got there, I signed up for the no-gi as well. It was a long day of waiting before I was on, and there seemed to be a bit more adrenaline than usual, I don't know why. I managed to channel it into concentration and focus of stepping on the mat and performing.

First up was the expert no-gi middle weight division. My opponent was a french black belt and judging from his first match, it was going to be an extremely difficult task for me to beat him. He was superbly athletic and played a very aggressive and powerful game. I decided my only chance - as it usually is against bigger, stronger guys - was to try and take the explosive factor out of the match and utilize my guard to stress him. I pulled guard right away to avoid his wrestling and managed to keep him from passing for the entire match. It was 0-0 by the end and I had to try something, so I set up a bodylock sweep and found myself suddenly playing his game of explosive wrestling. He immediately judo tossed me and I knew I had to just get back to my guard to survive. After 2 minutes over time, the referee gave me the decision. I don't know if I agreed with him, but I didn't mind winning :D Sometimes, the marginals fall to my side, sometimes to the opponents - that's just how the game is.

The final was against a guy who had won his first two to get there. I had one less match, so I was hoping I had more energy than him. Unfortunately, he was also really strong and keeping him in my guard required a lot of leg strength. Luckily, I didn't had to work from there for the full match, since he tried to jump over my guard, which allowed me to set up a nice heelhook to which he tapped immediately as I locked it in. I like to compete with heel hooks, it is really an equalizer for the smaller guy and it suits my game perfectly. I think at the expert level, people are good enough to know the danger and when to tap anyways.

The gi division was black and brown belts together. I had really hoped to compete against a black belt, but instead I got another interesting challenge in meeting the guy I lost to in London a month earlier. I had been working hard in the gym on closing the holes in my game that he exploited last time, and it was exciting to test it out and see if I could beat him this time.

Everything worked pretty well and I managed to defend the moves he caught me with last time. The match was only six minutes so I had to take some chances to try and score, and at one point I try to pass to halfguard to get an advantage, but he manages to flip me over. It was a little stupid that I lost my balance there on that sweep, it shouldn't had happened. Wasn't too bad though, as I swept him back a few seconds after for the final score of 2-2. This time he got the referee's decision and I was pleased to confirm, that I had evolved and improved my game since I fought him last time.

It was a really good tournament and very well organized. NAGA definitely knows what they are doing in terms of organizing events and it was a breath of fresh air to compete there after some really badly organized tournaments lately. Also, I liked the rules very much - I could wear my rip stop gi and cup as well as reap the knee and do any submission I wanted. Nice! I took home a giant belt for winning the expert adult division and it looks cool hanging on my surfboard in the gym now :D

Quick conclusion on NAGA Paris:

Good things:

Won expert division, pretty nice!
Guard worked great, not passed for ten consecutive matches now.
Relaxed and cardio felt good
My students did awesome
Improvements in my game against same opponent
Held my own against bigger guys who had weighed in the day before

Bad things:

Got swept where I shouldn't have been
Not much else, really :)

Paris was awesome, what a beautiful city it is in the fall with the yellow leaves all over the old streets. We had some great days there, walking around town and checking it out. It was nice to be back to a place that has almost symbolic value to me, since it was the first destination on my around the world trip earlier this year.

This was my last competition this year. I have decided to skip Swedish Open next week, first of all because I simply just need a break after five competitions around Europe in six weeks and second because I will be coaching my team of more than 40 guys and girls fighting there. It has been some great experiences and I will do a write up on it all some time next week :)

Good match at Scandinavian Open today

2011-10-30T11:42:00.000-07:00

I had actually decided not to compete at Scandinavian Open this weekend, since I am also competing the next two weekends in Paris and Sweden. However, on the last day of registration, I saw that there was only one guy in my division, coming all the way from Finland. I thought it was a shame for him to not get a match in his own weight, and since I live less than 30 minutes away from the venue in Sweden, I signed up.

With all the small injuries and pain during training recently, I have found, that competition is the only place, where I can really relax and roll without thinking about parts of my body that hurts. It is kind of interesting how, in this period at least, the matches I have are much easier and more enjoyable, than rolling in the gym. A slight adrenaline dump takes care of all the little bruises, sprained fingers and sore muscles, it is great :)

It was a pretty long wait for my match today and the hall was cold. I decided to just do a light warm up and not try to work as much to get the pulse up, as I usually do. I had no nervousness at all. When my division was called up, I recognized a small adrenaline release and my sprained fingers and sore body welcomed it with open arms.

Match itself went well, I think. I pulled guard and he was aggressively trying to pass right away. He almost got it, but I managed to get to my knees and stand up with the single leg to take him down. I was a little confused, why I didn't get two points for that, but with the very undefined rules of our sport, it can always go either way. I still had lots of time to score, so I didn't worry about it too much. Was more worried about my balls, that he (unintentionally) kicked really hard when I stood up, grabbing his leg (0:45 in the video). Actually they are still a bit sore this evening, must have been a solid Steven Seagal front kick. Thank you, adrenaline!

He was working very well on a variation of the reverse de La Riva spin, that I had not encountered before. I decided to stick to good old base and posture and see if my chance to pass showed itself. He had a few good attempts, but I was very pleased with my success in defending them and get back on top. In London I was swept with a similar move, where the opponent is going to the back, but this time, I had improved and defended it the right way. I had an attempt at a japanese necktie, but his head slipped out. At one point, I lost focus for a second and he managed to set up an x-guard sweep, stand up and finish it. Now, this is the third tournament where I have been swept with this move, and I still haven't improved on it. If this is not the indicator I need to go home and close that hole in my game, I must be really retarded :D

Being back in my guard, I think I was working pretty well, but he was strong and I couldn't get the sweep or positions I wanted. I shot a triangle and closed it in. His hand was in, so it was a bet if I could finish it with power or not. I took the chance and pulled it for a good while, before I eventually decided that he was not tapping and I had to try and score two points before time ran out. It did run out and I lost 0-2 with 2-2 in advantages.

Great match and good experience. He was also a cool guy on top of that, so all in all a good day at the office. Next up NAGA in Paris in six days.

Conclusion time!

Good things:

Posture in guard top worked well
Triangle setup successful again
Attempted japanese necktie
Seventh consecutive match without guard passed
Sidecontrol defense is still working, yaaay!
Very relaxed, cardio was really good

Bad things:

MUST. DEFEND. X-GUARD.
Got kicked in the balls

Free shipping on Roll Eat Sleep Repeat products this weekend :)

2011-10-29T05:36:00.000-07:00

One of my many recent projects is producing BJJ lifestyle hoodies and t-shirts with all the designs, I would buy myself if only I could find them in the shops. I never accept donations for my blogs, but if you want to support me, this is a good way to do it :-)

The Roll Eat Sleep Repeat webshop just opened a few weeks back, and right now, there is a special offer on free shipping to anywhere in Europe, Japan and the United States. Use the promotion code "WITCHINGHOUR" and the shipping will be free, but only this weekend!

Check out the store and grab some of the awesome shirts before the offer ends :-)

Semi-successful training today

2011-10-26T14:15:00.000-07:00

I am almost desperate to feel better with my body these days. Basically all my focus goes towards re-energizing and recovering from my injuries, soreness and low energy level. I have skipped way more training sessions than I wanted to, but it is necessary to prevent me from reaching a state of over training.

I tried stretching a little bit before training today, but it just seemed to hurt in some muscle, no matter what direction I moved. Eventually, I did a thorough warm up in my gi class, which loosened me up a bit. After going through a few variations of a sweep, I am working a lot on lately, I decided that we would be rolling for a full hour today.

Saturday, doing any kind of sparring, was very painful and it was hard to ignore it and focus on the training. Today was much better, although there is still a way to go for me to be 100% again.

I did manage to roll for an hour today and was very pleased. Towards the end, I was so warm that I didn't feel much of my injuries (sprained fingers and toes didn't get hit today, weeee!) and I really enjoyed rolling. I had some really good rounds with lots of tough guys on the team and after class, I felt great. I know I am probably going to feel it tomorrow morning, when I wake up though.

There are still three competitions to go, before the season ends. I just spontaneously decided yesterday to sign up for Scandinavian Open this weekend. The week after that is NAGA in Paris and after that Swedish Open. I am really looking forward to being done with these competitions and have a few months before the Europeans, where I can just focus on recovery and getting in killer shape.

One of those periods where everything hurts

2011-10-23T08:19:00.000-07:00

I seem to have picked up a truckload of small injuries lately. Nothing serious, just still some pain in my shoulder, a big bruise on my left hip, sprained toes and fingers and all the other usual stuff. Apart from that, I feel pretty tired and low on energy at the moment. Maybe all the traveling and competing has starten to take its toll on me.

I eat healthy (allmost all the time), drink nothing but water (and plenty of it), and get at least 9-10 hours of sleep every night. Still, I might be on the edge of overtraining, since so many parts of my body are in pain at the moment.

Yesterday, I was running a two hour wrestling class. My once-a-week all out, high pace, no-gi madness class, that I always enjoy doing. This time, I just couldn't focus on the sparring and drills, since all my attention went to the pain I felt, at what seemed like every movement I made.

It is not the first time, I have a period like this with many small injuries. It almost mandatory for someone who trains Jiu Jitsu for many years. Right now, it is a bit demoralizing, that everything hurts and nothing seems to work in sparring, but I also know, that I will come out on the other side and feel good again.

There is a competition in the weekend nearby, but I have semi decided to skip it. I have tickets for Paris in two weeks though, so I hope I will be healed up by then. Now it is just time for a nice, relaxed sunday to recover while doing nothing. Ok, just rolled six kilometers on my longboard in the nice weather, but that can't count ;)

Five days, three cities, three seminars and two gold medals in Scotland

2011-10-18T14:31:00.000-07:00

Just got home from a bit of an intense trip to Scotland, packing in a really busy program in just five days. It was great to experience a little high pace BJJ globetrotter-style traveling again, and I even ended up taking home a few medals.

Due to a school holiday this week, the tickets for the relative short flight of just 90 minutes, were really expensive. Most of the guys on the team decided to pass on the trip and save the money for other tournaments in the upcoming weekends. Never letting down an opportunity to see the world, I decided to go anyways. Two of my training partners, Kasper and Ben, went along and I met up with my scottish friend and fellow BJJ globetrotter, Dan, who I traveled with in Taiwan, New York and Estonia during my trip.

First stop was Aberdeen on wednesday, a city that is all gray from the granite blocks that has been used for basically all the buildings. A small group of guys are running a Jiu Jitsu gym, where I was teaching for two nights. They were mostly beginners, but there were some quite skilled blue belts in between. We also managed to do a bit of sight seeing in Aberdeen, going mountain biking in the highlands and visiting an awesome castle on a cliff.

Early (!!) saturday morning, we drove down to Glasgow for the competition. It was held in a big sports hall and there was quite a few competitors. Mostly lower level belts though - me and my opponent in the gi division were the only two brown belts signed up.

I had a loooong wait before my matches would start, so I spent the most of the day coaching the guys I had trained with. I love coaching at competitions, and they were all doing a really good job, most of them taking medals in their divisions.

I wasn't nervous about competing, as in I didn't have any particular thoughts in my head about it doing the day. Despite that, I could observe, that my heart was beating a bit faster, and I had to go take a piss about ten times during the day. Definitely a slight adrenaline release activated for all those hours. I was mostly worried about getting dehydrated during the wait, so I made sure to drink a lot of water.

First up was my no-gi division. It had been a long time since I had competed in no-gi, so I was excited to play that game a little bit again, and also had a chance to sport my sweet Kim Jong-Il "livelifelikeaBOSS" t-shirt from my recent apparel project Roll Eat Sleep Repeat ;)

There was no-one in my weight category (-79 kg) in the advanced division, so I was moved up to -85 kg with the big guys. First opponent was a swedish guy, who I had just seen win his first match with a pretty solid game. I decided to play a bit safe in the match and try and beat him with my guard. He felt very strong, so when I had the opportunity, I pulled butterfly guard. Standing up with double underhooks to try and take him down did no good, so I pulled guard again. At one point he tried to pass my scissor guard by putting his hand through my legs and I had an attempt at a spinning triangle counter. He postured up at the right time and defended it. I knew he would be difficult to sweep as his base was really good, so I went for a guillotine to try and get an advantage. Tapping him out with it would be hard, so I just held on long enough to convince the referee to give me an advantage. As soon as it was on the scoring board, it was just a question about not getting passed for the rest of the time. The whole day, I hadn't seen any referees give warnings for stalling, so I just happily stalled away in my closed guard until time ran out. At one point, I looked at the camera and made a silly face at it. Don't know why I chose to do that, in fact I think it was probably a bit douchy and overconfident, but I have pretty much never been able to take anything seriously in life.

Second match was the final against an MMA guy, who seemed to be in good shape, bigger and stronger than me. I had really missed the wrestling aspect of competition for a loooong time since I hurt my knee last year. It is something I really enjoy in training and since my knee has gotten much better, I decided to wrestle him for a while just to try it out in competition as well. I had attempts at my armdrag single leg and fireman's carry, both of them with no luck. A little bit maybe, since I got an advantage for the fireman's carry attempt. Eventually he ducked under for a nice double leg, and don't know why I am being so lazy in defending it, but I for some reason just sits down and accepts it. Getting back up, I decide to just pull guard from there on.

Being behind by two points to one advantage, I knew I just had to get one sweep then hold on to win. I went for the deep butterfly halfguard and pulled his foot across for the calfcruncher submission (with which I unfortunately popped both mine and my opponents knee in this match). I felt him rolling, so I decided to ditch the sub and go for the sweep instead. With a bit of scrambling and wrest-jitsu, I got him on his back. During a guardpass attempt, he stood back up and I pulled guard once more. He tried an ancle lock in the last seconds, but I was having none of it, and wrestled him down for the sweep and the last two points, ending the match 4-2 in my favor.

I was supposed to compete in the open weigh advanced division as well, but it started right after my two long matches with the big guys and I was feeling pretty tired. I only had one opponent with the gi, who had been driving three hours to get to the competition, so I prioritized giving him a good match instead of trying out the same guys I just fought.

The gi match was a "superfight", since we were the only two competitors over purple belt. My opponent was in -88 kg, but I accepted the challenge. He was a really nice guy and we had a good chat before the match. I had decided to pull guard and play from there, since he looked to be much heavier and stronger than myself. Initially, I was trying to set up a sweep, that I was succesful with in the open weight final of Swiss Open, but he either knew it already or had read my blog and prepared for it, because he was posturing perfectly to defend it. Since the referee didn't mention anything about my fingers being inside the opponents pants, and thereby giving me a nice solid grip, I decided to stay there and give it a few more tries, before I eventually had to change tactics and switch to spider guard. An opportunity for a triangle choke presented itself and I took it, getting the tap out.

Quick conclusion on competition experience:

No nervousness, despite slight adrenaline release during day
Cardio felt good for three matches
Wrestling was fun, will try more of that
Has build up a good amount of competition confidence recently
Change of mindset to try and win instead of trying not to lose
Competing against bigger guys was an interesting tactical challenge

I will be competing again in Paris on November 5 at the NAGA Europe.

The day after the competition, we went to Edinburgh, where I taught a class. I was ridiculously tired from the competition, night out and lack of sleep, so I sparring with the guys was horrible. I normally never ever go out the night before I am teaching, but we had to celebrate a little bit. A solid group of guys there, I wish I could have enjoyed the rolls more, but I will definitely be back one day. I promoted one of the guys to blue belt, who was doing really well in the competition the day before and was tough to roll with.

All in all, some eventful five days in Scotland with lots of cool experiences and new friends!

Off to Scotland tomorrow

2011-10-11T03:15:00.000-07:00

Still keeping the BJJ globetrotting going a bit, tomorrow, I am going on a little trip to Scotland for six days. I will be teaching in Aberdeen thursday and friday, competing in Glasgow saturday, then teaching again in Edinburgh on sunday.

I expect castles, kilts, beer, bagpipe music and just general medieval awesomeness every minute of the day.

Six years since I quit my desk job - never looked back.

2011-10-07T03:22:00.000-07:00

These days, it is six years since my training- and business partner called me at work and told me, that we got the full time rental contract for our gym. I was sitting at my desk by the computers, programming some software interface, as he called. I had probably just spend an hour and a half having lunch and playing table football to kill time. I was frustrated with my life and the outlook of my future. I was well underway to get sucked slowly down into the quicksand of spending the rest of it doing something, I didn't really want to.

I hung up the phone and leaned back in my chair for a second. I took a few slow breaths and looked out the window. The weather seemed to always be gray and boring in the suburban industrial area, where I was imprisoned by my lack of initiative and courage to do something drastic about it. I knew, that very moment would change and define the rest of my life. I got up, walked steadily to the desk of my boss.

"Hey how are you today, I would like to quit my job as soon as possible", I said.

Cleverly, I had made sure to finish all my current projects and not taking up any new ones, while waiting for the call about the rental contract. I was allowed to leave with one weeks notice, and the day after I stopped, I went on a five week training trip around Canada and the United States.

Getting out of that office and straight into adventures in the nature of Canada, bustling city of New York and tropics of Florida left me with no doubt. It was the most important decision of my life and I have never since looked back for a second.

(more about this story is in the works for my upcoming BJJ globetrotter book :))

One match at IBJJF London Open

2011-10-05T13:25:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, it was time for the first IBJJF London Open in England. It is a short flight from Denmark and we went a team of about 11 guys. Two had to cancel last minute, but it was still a good team.

Sometimes, the little things just doesn't go your way, and we had a handful of frustrating losses this time. Few important matches were lost on advantages and one of our guys were way ahead on points, but got disqualified for having a small scratch on his nose that was bleeding. Anyways, we ended with two gold, one silver and a bronze, and I was very pleased with the performance of everyone.

My own division had four guys and looked tough. I knew the guy I was facing from Swiss Open, where he did really well against the guy I lost to. As usual, I didn't feel nervous at all before the match. This time, I had time to warm up well, compared to last tournament.

The match was pretty straight forward. We had a strikingly similar game, using basically the same postures and techniques in guard. He had a very strong grip, that I managed to break in the beginning of the match, but later on it was getting more and more difficult. Once again, I got swept with the x-guard, so it is obviously a big hole in my game. I could really use some more power to open up my opponent, when he has a strong posture and doesn't make many mistakes. In the very end of the match, I finally managed to lift him up for the x-guard, but the time ran out and I didn't get a chance to try and finish. It was really nice weather that weekend and the sports hall was really warm, which I think affected my cardio a little bit. When the match was over, I was boiling hot and sweating like a pig.

I was pretty pleased with the match and think there were some good elements as well as some stuff I need more work on. Losing doesn't bother me, it is all just steps on the way and a part of progressing.

When we were done, we hurried outside to enjoy the nice weather. Walked around the city a bit, took a nap in the park and ended the evening with a cold beer by the Thames river. Went home with a bronze medal, a t-shirt and a tan, what else could I ask for! Awesome weekend with awesome friends, gotta love the Jiu Jitsu life :)

I'll be back on the mat in two weeks for the Glasgow Open in Scotland on October 15th.

Highlight video from Swiss Open

2011-09-20T17:16:00.000-07:00

Three matches at Swiss Open in Geneva, Switzerland.

2011-09-19T15:56:00.000-07:00

This weekend, I went with some of the guys from the team (haven't yet decided if we are "Team Madness" or "Team Teabaggers" this year) to Switzerland to attend the first competition of our busy fall. Everyone performed really well, and we ended up with a total of three gold, two silver and two bronze medals.

I feel like talking a bit about the event first... Switzerland is a beautiful place, and I had been looking forward to check out some alpes, maybe even walk up to the top of something. According to the time schedule of the tournament, it looked like we would finish already around 12-13 both days, which would leave us plenty of time to go check out lederhosen-land. Unfortunately, the tournament looked good, but was poorly organized.

GOOD
- Cool medals
- Nice venue with six mats
- Big screens with scoreboards

BAD
- Really difficult to get information from organizers on email or facebook before event
- Price was high for registration: 60/80/100 euros
- Start was about 3 hours delayed both days
- Only one registration table for hundreds of people in line in the mornings
- Everything was super delayed but no-one seemed to hurry
- Usually only 1-3 of six mats were in use - don't think I ever saw all used at same time
- Food options were very limited
- Very few staff members spoke english
- Information papers, brackets etc were in french

Most of all, we were just annoyed with the delays. We got up really early every day to be there well before the 9 am scheduled start, but the first matches didn't get going till around noon. And even then, only a handful of matches were running at the same time, while the rest of the referees and staff were just hanging around waiting for something to do, and the competitors were getting frustrated and wanted to get on the mats. Definitely not very positive about coming back next year :-/

And now to the matches themselves!

[Bla bla bla usual stuff about lots of injuries goes here bla bla bla]

First match was against a french guy in the middleweight division. I didn't feel any nerves or anything before the fight. Only had a few minutes from my division was called to the match was on, so didn't really got to warm up. He pulled guard and I was happy to play top a little until he caught me a few seconds later with a nice x-guard sweep. He had trouble passing my guard (succeeded once), but I had even more trouble sweeping him, so he ended up winning 5-0. He scored with x-guard from bottom and passed when I tried x-guard. I thought that was one of my strong moves, but apparently not LOL Pretty nice moves he caught me with though, I will steal them right away for my own game. Physically, he was far superior and I felt like his base was too good and he didn't make any mistakes, that I could take advantage of. Very strong opponent, that went on to win the division. He would probably beat me 10 out of 10 times that day. I got a bronze medal for my amazing performance.

Second match was in the open weight division against the winner of the -70 kg division. I had seen him compete early and he looked skilled. He was wearing a polish judo jacket, so I decided to pull guard pretty quickly. This time, I had a size advantage and I also felt I was a step ahead technically. Was pleased to do a good attempt on a guillotine from halfguard top, that I have been working a lot on. He was really difficult to put on his back and hold down, but I eventually managed to finish him with one of my favorite chokes from the back.

Third match was the final in the open weight division against the winner of the -88 kg division. He was a nice guy I had a good chat with before the match. Big, heavy and strong, but I felt like my cardio was better than his. He fell for the same sweep a few times and I scored a bit with that. It was a good, tough back-and-forth match and I didn't feel like the victory was safe at any point, even though I was slightly ahead on the scoreboard. Had a few attempts on guillotines and loop chokes that were really tight, but lacked leg-position due to his base and weight. At one point I have a tight guillotine that I decided to give up sweep and guardpass for, but end up releasing to save grip energy. I caught a triangle choke from a guard recovery and got the tap.

Another good/bad analysis - this time of my own performance:

GOOD
- Won a few matches
- Cardio felt ok
- Hit some good a-games moves
- Headhunting project, looking for guillotines and loop chokes is improving.
- Escaped sidecontrol several times (that used to suck)
- Stood up to open guard without getting swept like at the Europeans
- No nerves

BAD
- Need more strength for middleweight division
- Must improve x-guard defense
- Warmup sucked / were non-existing

I will be on the competition mats again in two weeks for the London International Open in (surprise...) London, England :)

Visit from Robson Barbosa today

2011-08-29T13:43:00.000-07:00

Robson (who normally teaches in Kaisho, Sweden) dropped by my gym today to teach a little bit. He ended up doing three classes; the juvenile team, a no-gi class and a gi class. It is always cool to have him visit and bring some inspiration to the team and everyone seemed to have a great time.

My shoulder is still not doing too well, so I had to skip most of the class today. I really wanted to roll with him now he was there though, so I sacrificed some of it's recovery for a few rounds both gi and no-gi. Always cool to spar with him as he has gotten a very special style.

I got a few stripes on my belt today too. I guess that means I better hurry up and become as good as I possibly can, before I one day get the black belt ;)

Good and bad start of the competition season

2011-08-24T03:02:00.000-07:00

So, the the second season of my competition team project has begun. We are training five days a week and I am working very specifically with each participant on gameplans, weight planning, training and so on. We started the physical training program last week and it is going really well, putting a big team effort into getting in shape for the competitions of the coming fall. Lots of people have joined the team this year, 28 in total at the moment. All the guys from last year are on board and there is a ton of potential in the beginners who signed up for the first time.

Bad thing is, that I injured my shoulder saturday when lifting weights. It hurt a slight bit monday, so I thought I could do a few rounds of rolling. It felt fine until I got cold and today it still hurts really, really bad. I hope it is just a minor thing :-/

Since I couldn't join the workout monday, I had time to film it a little bit instead. I am still not sure about the team name, but "Madness" sounded relevant to the amount of work the guys will have to put in the training this year ;)

And so it begins...

2011-08-19T04:44:00.000-07:00

Last year, I ran a six months competition team project in my gym, for those, who wanted to compete in BJJ. Now, that I am back from my trip, I am working hard to begin the second season of the project. Around 40 people have showed interest in joining, so there is a lot of potential for good results and good experiences over the next six months leading up to the 2012 Europeans in Portugal.

This week, we had a head start on our physical training routine for the team, running twice a week and named the Beachbody Workout. It has been really though to start it out again after having done basically no strength and conditioning training for my whole trip, but I can't wait to get back in the same killer shape I was in before I left.

It seems like we will be traveling a lot to competitions around Europe this fall, can't wait to see how this project will grow and what kind of people, friendships and experiences will come out of it. Will be sure to post about it here, of course :)

ShogunHQ version 2.0

2011-08-16T11:04:00.000-07:00

As you probably have noticed, I have given this blog a little design makeover. I thought it was about time after having used the same design for over 4.5 years. Still some work to do on the subpages, but hope you like it so far!

Together with the new design, I have an exciting fall lined up. Ok, I admit it will be difficult to make it more exciting than the first half of the year, but I'll do my best, stuffing it with competitions, travels, guests in my gym and interesting training projects :)

Secret BJJ move that cannot be defended

2011-08-15T14:55:00.000-07:00

(crosspost from BJJ Globetrotter)

It's been a while since I wrote, that if I got 1000 likes on my FaceBook page, I would post a video of a technique that cannot be defended. I reached the 1000 likes a while back, but the video took a while to get online. It is finally here, and you can enjoy a move, that I still haven't found any defense for.

Me and my friend have actually pulled this off in competition a few times. Depends on the mood of the referee, his nationality and your nationality, but sometimes we have gotten away with it. I don't think it states anywhere in the rules that you cannot do this?

(All credit goes to my good friend Chris Haueter, who demonstrated this move on one of the first VHS instructional tapes I ever saw)

Training with Martin Aedma and putting weight back on

2011-08-09T02:43:00.000-07:00

Training here at home is going well. It is nice to train with all my usual training partners again, and I enjoy sharing some of the experiences I have gained on my trip. Next week, I am starting up my competition team project for the 2012 Europeans, something that I really enjoyed doing last year.

Martin Aedma from Estonia is visiting my gym these days, teaching all the BJJ classes for two weeks. You might have seen his ever popular "Estonian guardpasses from hell" or read his blog, but if not, I highly recommend you doing that. Unfortunately, he just got a knee injury, which prevents him from rolling. I had been looking forward to do some sparring with him while he was here, but that will have to wait :-/

I did lose a lot of weight during the last part of my trip, going all the way down to 74 kilos at one point. I am working hard to put it back on, so I can reach a good weight for competing in the middle weight division. It is going pretty well and I hit 79 kilos this morning already. What a difference it makes to have access to a good rythm of food and training facilities.

Back from around-the-world BJJ trip :)

2011-07-27T04:09:00.000-07:00

I am back in Denmark after a 140 days around-the-world trip to train BJJ. If you follow this blog, you have most likely checked out www.BJJglobetrotter.com already, but if you haven't, there is a lot of stuff to read up on :)

It was an amazing experience to go around the world and meet so many people through BJJ. I am full of energy and inspiration, and is really excited to train with my friends here at home.

Coming home also means, that I will resume writing this blog again. I have, of course, a lot of stuff with me home in the backpack, that I will be working to implement in my game over the next months and years.

Good to be back on ShogunHQ, check back soon for updates!

Leaving for around-the-world BJJ trip tomorrow

2011-02-20T11:47:00.000-08:00

In case you haven't noticed the banner to the right, I am leaving tomorrow for a four and a half month trip all the way around the globe to train, teach and compete in BJJ.

I probably won't be posting very much here while I am gone, but you can follow my journey on my website: www.BJJglobetrotter.com

"Team Sandbaggers" and the 2011 Europeans

2011-02-19T09:06:00.000-08:00

Last summer, I gathered a group of guys from my gym and set the goal, that we should get a medal at the next European Open in Portugal. We are a relatively small gym and has never taken a medal at that tournament before, so it was a pretty big challenge for us. Several of the guys were already very close to blue belt level, so I named us "Team Sandbaggers", because there was no way I was going to promote them before the end of the project, well knowing that they would be competing against other sandbaggers from all over Europe when they got to Portugal.

It was six months of hard training, gameplanning and a lot of competitions to gather experience. For the last four months before the Portugal trip, we did physical workouts together after BJJ class, pushing each other to our limits and beyond. We traveled many weekends to competitions and there was training in the gym almost every day.

Now, the goal of a medal at the Europeans was reached as we got three of them. But that is not really what this post is about. Results and medals are nice, but the real core of a project like this, is to me the human aspect. The way BJJ has an effect to change peoples lives in a very positive way.

The experienced guys on the team have already naturally taken on a "BJJ lifestyle", but for the less experienced white belts, an intense period of focus like this had a fascinating effect. All coming from very different backgrounds, it was really exciting for me to see them evolve into the same direction of living a life with focus on staying healthy, getting in shape, backing each other up, working towards a common goal and consuming their minds with thoughts about Jiu Jitsu. All these are factors that inevitably leads to a massive increase in skill on the mat, but that again is not the important thing to me.

Obviously, these guys all got really, really good during the project, and their level could clearly match what they were up against at the Europeans. All their loses were close and on a good day, I believe they all could have taken the gold. At the Europeans, you need a VERY good day to go all the way though, and we all knew that. But putting the increase in skill aside, these guys have really changed from the day they stepped into the gym and I met them for the first time.

The 53 year old father to a boy in my junior class, who rediscovered his interest in training after many years of judo when he was younger, and ended up becoming the European Champion.

The party guys, who were smoking daily and going out almost every weekend, but decided to stop both and completely turned around the direction their bodies were going health wise.

The guy with basically no body mechanic skills, who never quit, kept competing, lost 35 kilos and eventually became really good.

The successful real estate agent who sometimes dressed up as a Jiu Jitsu athlete, but - in my eyes - became a Jiu Jitsu athlete who sometimes dresses up as a successful real estate agent.

The young guy who was one of the first on my junior team and, despite all the interesting social things happening at that stage of life, still finds time for Jiu Jitsu and is now training with the adults, where he is technically superior than and a big inspiration for his much older training partners.

The guy who lost 40 kilos, got in killer shape and can now hit a kimura on anything with a pulse.

The electrician who couldn't get a job because of the financial crisis, ended up devoting all his time to Jiu Jitsu, won a ton of matches and who I have chosen to teach all I know about coaching kids.

The foreigner who just moved here and doesn't speak the language, but through BJJ has successfully integrated himself socially in the gym and is inspiring everyone with his training and competition work ethics.

THIS is what I think is the true art of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. A vehicle for transforming peoples lives and creating fantastic friendships and experiences. The blue belt symbolizes the first big step of this change, and it was a no-brainer for me to promote all the white belts after the Europeans. They are no longer the beginners, but now have a new role in the gym, where they will help and inspire our next generation of athletes. I have no doubt in my mind that they will do the job fantastically.

Besides the (now former) whitebelts, a handful of experienced guys were also on the team, and it has been really cool to see them take their skills to the next level. They are a big inspiration for everyone in the gym and without their help and support as trainingpartners and coaches, we wouldn't have made it this far together.

For putting in all this hard work, and choosing to follow me on this journey, I want to thank each and every one of these guys. When I got back home from the Portugal trip, I got this strange feeling in my stomach. Like an addict, who doesn't get his drug, I knew that the last trip for Team Sandbaggers was over, and I already missed the feeling of being on the road with the guys. Now I am going on the road alone for a while, but we have many good experiences ahead of us and I can't wait to get back home and continue from where we left off.

And for anyone who wants to join in, there is always room for one more :)

The Icelandic Guillotine

2011-02-15T12:31:00.000-08:00

I don't know anyone who has hit guillotines in sparring and competition as many times as my icelandic friend, Kári. I have trained with him for many years now, and I've seen (and felt!!!) him do this move with an extremely high succesrate countless times, but for some reason, I haven't thought of implementing it in my own game until recently.

A few months ago, it struck me, that I have grappled for over ten years, and guillotines are still not a part of my game. In fact, I don't recall a single time I've went for that submission for years. So looking at Kàri ripping through competitions, it was clear to me that I had to learn what he was doing and I needed such a basic and simple submission as the guillotine to be an integrate part of my game. So since that day, I have been working hard on figuring out all the details, and already it is becoming one of my favorite submissions. I think that my loop choke period has helped a lot, since the mechanics are very similar to the guillotine and also just getting into the mindset of looking for the neck all the time is an important part of this.

I asked Kári to make a video on how he is doing it and he agreed reveal all his secrets on my blog. I told him that he needed a catchy name for the move, otherwise it would never be a real Internet success like all the other guillotines out there, so we decided to call it The Icelandic Guillotine. I would love to be in a gym somewhere in the world one day and overhear a conversation where someone casually says something like "personally I like the Icelandic variation of the guillotine better" LOL

This was the last instructional I planned to post before I leave on my BJJ globetrotter trip on Monday. I hope to do some more during the trip if I fall over some cool moves along the way :)

Loop choke instructional

2011-02-09T00:39:00.000-08:00

The next instructional is on the loop choke. As I mention in the video, I have been heavily inspired by Oli Geddes to work on this choke. I highly recommend checking out his blog on www.thejiujitsugame.com and also searching on youtube for his instructionals on this technique.

Next video will be on the guillotine choke :)

European Open 2011 in Lisbon, Portugal

2011-02-01T10:40:00.000-08:00

Got home from Portugal sunday evening and it was a really cool trip. The goal for our team was to get one medal, and we ended up with three, so I am very satisfied. It has been a lot of training and preparations, and it was nice to see that it paid off, and our small team could get some medals at one of the big tournaments out there. I am very proud of all the guys from my team who fought their heart out at this competition, but will write another post on that project later on, they deserve their own ;)

I competed saturday in the brown belt middleweight division. I didn't know my opponent, but a quick youtube search revealed, that I probably shouldn't try to stand up with him, as he had a highlight video with a fascinating amount of judo throws :D I would just follow my plan of pulling guard right away and try to get a sweep or submission from there.

Going into the match, I didn't feel a bit nervous. In some way, I think that I had put all my thoughts and energy into preparing and helping the guys on the team to get ready and try to win a medal, that my own part in this tournament didn't feel as important. Saturday morning when it was my turn to step on the mat, I felt like the project was already over, and I had already succeeded in reaching the goal we set. I knew my division was very tough with a lot of good opponents, but I decided to go in there and do my best.

I was a little late with timing the warmup, since they started my match right on time. The previous two days, there had been some delays, so I wasn't in a hurry with the warmup, which I should have been :) Stretched and warmed up the joints, but didn't have time to get the pulse up and break a sweat, so I would have to do that during the match.

When we started, I went for the guard right away. I have been working a lot on setting up the loop choke, guillotine and getting under my opponent to go for x-guard or deep butterfly halfguard sweeps. Right in the beginning, I actually had a pretty good attempt at the loop choke, but he got out of it despite making some choking sounds. Would have been nice to finish it already there. From there on, he was very aware of his neck, and it was too hard to set him up for the choke. My second plan of getting under him to sweep also failed, since he was constantly staying tight to my legs and keeping very solid grips on my pants. I had to spend most of my time on defending his grips and guardpass attempts, which left little options for me to work my offense.

With my a-game failing, I worked some spiderguard instead. I swept him once with a tripod sweep, but he had a good grip on my pants and scrambled back up, so only gave me an advantage. Later, I had another sweep attempt, that got him out balanced, and I was over him right away to just push him onto his back for the sweep. Lots of wrestling drills for top position helped there for sure.

When I got on top and was ahead on points, my corner shouted to me, that I had three minutes left. I thought I should just stall for a while, but the referees were really quick at giving warnings in other matches I had watched, so I decided to try to open the guard and work from there to make the time go. I have gotten very confident in standing up to open the guard lately, but when I did it this time, I made a small mistake (that I am never going to make again ;)) about my standing posture, which allowed him to drop off and go for a takedown. My balance and sprawl felt pretty good, but again, his grip on my pants was just too strong and eventually he got me down. I scrambled to get up, but couldn't get his grip off and also, we went out the mat and had to restart, which ruined my momentum and last chance to scramble up. Next time. I think I'll be a little more patient inside the closed guard if I am ahead on points.

When he was in my guard again, I could feel that my grip was getting more tired and his didn't seem to do the same. Eventually, he passed my guard to sidecontrol and held on really tight. I managed to escape back to guard and knew my only chance was to submit him, so I tried to go for the neck but it wasn't working and time ran out leaving me defeated by 2-5.

As mentioned, I had no nerves what so ever going into the match. Maybe it is not a good thing, I don't know? I was only a little worried about, how my cardio and strength would do for an eight minutes match, which is pretty long. I have never competed that long before and with the gi, there is even more pressure on the grip strength. Luckily it went pretty well, considering that he felt way stronger than me. I weighed in two kilos under the limit without cutting, so there is a good chance that he walks around a fair bit bigger than me. I was pleased to find out, that I could go for the entire eight minutes with a lasting cardio and grip strength, though. Ofcourse, I was tired in the end, but at least, now I know that I can do it. All those workouts over the last four months really paid off in this match :) You can watch the match here:

Losing didn't bother me at all. I was happy that I could hold my own in the brown belt division at such a big, high level event, and it was an honor to be allowed to compete with the top guys. I know that generating results in competition is a long process, so I am at all not worried about losing along the way. I think my technical level and understanding of the game is good enough to compete at this level, but I need some more experience and with all the weight I have lost, I should maybe consider -76 kilos instead of -82, where some guys are a lot bigger than me now.

Going to the Europeans was all in all a good experience, that I learned a lot from, and of course, we had a very good time in Lisbon both before, during and after the tournament.

I'll be back next year to try my luck again! :)

POSITIVES:

Guard defense worked fine
Executed a sweep and a half
Cardio and strength lasted eight minutes
No nervousness at any time
Sidecontrol escape succeeded (old problem, seems improved now?)

NEGATIVES:

Made a posture mistake when standing up in guard
Cardio and strength could be even better

The art of learning the art of slowrolling

2011-01-23T12:06:00.000-08:00

I think we've all read these threads on the BJJ forums, where someone posts something like:

"I was tired/injured so I asked my sparring partner to go light, but after ten seconds he went really hard, so I just had to bring it to him to teach him a lesson so he'll go light next time"

This is a classic situation from BJJ training, that many people will experience and get frustrated by. If you tell your training partner to go light, why doesn't he? There are many answers to how to deal with this, but the typical one of turning up your own intensity to "teach him a lesson", is definitely not the way to go in my opinion.

My take on this is, that learning to go light or to "slowroll" is NOT something that you can just tell someone to do. It must be taught and drilled in class, in order for people to actually acquire the skill. It is as if people expect everyone to be able to do this with no training. In my eyes it is no different than asking beginner at first class to do some coordination drill and then get frustrated that he can't coordinate his body to do it, even though you have never given him the chance to learn and practice it. And even worse, "teach him a lesson" in sparring afterwards, then go post about your frustration on the internet forums ;)

In reply to all these posts around the forums, I have made this video on how I teach people to slowroll and go light in sparring. I've been working on this "system" for quite some time, and I think I finally got it right. I have never seen anyone actually teach this before, so I think this might be one of my most relevant instructionals in a long time. It is probably most interesting for people who run a class and would like to be able to teach this skill, but anyone who wants to take out some time to do these drills on their own with a partner, can learn how to slowroll. I do, however, think that going through this as a group/team, is the optimal way to get most out of it.

Ok, no more talking, there's enough of that in the video. It's 37 minutes long, so make sure you have enough time and patience to listen to me, when you decide to press play ;) Enjoy!

Here is a quick reference of the things I go through in the video, in case you want to print it out or something:

BENEFITS
1. Everyone can spar together, regardless of the size or skill difference.
2. Good tool for warming up.
3. You can still spar, if you are injured or tired.
4. Good tool for experimenting.
5. Work on specific situations, without having to fight to get there.
6. Lifts teams level as a whole.
7. Create a training environment with room for everyone.

CHESS DRILL
1. One move each turn
2. Gentleman rules
3. No resistance
4. No time limit

MONKEY DRILL
1. One move each turn
2. Gentleman rules
3. No resistance
4. No time limit
5. Do the LEAST likely move possible
6. If it resembles something you know, do ten pushups

THE FIVE RULES OF SLOWROLLING
1. Always remember the purpose
2. Turn down speed and intensity
3. 50/50
4. Submissions are catch and release
5. Communicate with your partner

I have decided to make a video on the guillotine choke (will be taught by my training partner and Master of the Guillotine, Kári), so the next videos coming up are:

- The loopchoke
- The guillotine choke

Competing at the Europeans in Portugal next week

2011-01-22T08:43:00.000-08:00

About six months ago, I gathered a group of guys from my gym, who were interested in going to Portugal for the 2011 IBJJF European Open tournament. We made a six month training and competition plan together with an individual strategical gameplan for each of them. Since then, we have worked on these gameplans in the gym and in several competitions around Europe, throughout the fall of 2010. There has been some wins and losses along the way, and a lot of good experience has been gathered, so I think we are as ready as we can be for the biggest tournament of Europe next week in Portugal.

Only four of the original 14 guys from the project cannot make it next week. Two of them with unfortunate injuries, but all in all, I am very pleased to be able to set a team of ten, well-prepared athletes for the event. I think they will all do really well. Winning medals, I don't know, because the brackets are HUGE and everything can happen, but most importantly, they are as prepared as they can be, and from there, there is nothing more they can do but just perform on the day.

I am signed up in brown belt adult -82.3 kg myself, which is a pretty big group with around 20 guys, I think. I don't feel the smallest bit nervous or anxious about competing in such a big and prestigious event. I think the main reason (besides my usual lack of interest in winning) is, that I probably couldn't be much better prepared than I am right now. I have trained BJJ consistently five days a week for the last 4 months. On top of that, I have been doing our cardio/endurance workout with the whole team twice a week and heavy lifting on saturdays. No injuries have held me back and my game feels great. With all that preparation, I just feel, that there is nothing more I could have done to prepare better, so when the day comes and I step on the mat, the rest is up to the Jiu Jitsu gods :) If I win, then I was am better than him, if I lose, he is better than me. It's that simple. Nothing I can do to change that now.

For the team, I will put everything I have into coaching them as good as possible in their matches. I really want them to get some good experiences in this competition, they have been working so hard for it. I believe they all have a solid chance of taking medals home, like they have done in all the competitions in the fall, so let's see how it goes next week. What I lack in excitement for my own matches, I definitely have for the other guys :)

Besides all that, I am of course looking forward to five days in beautiful Lisbon with all my friends, which - in my world - can top any BJJ medal or title out there :)

Wrestling sweeps from guard

2011-01-19T06:21:00.000-08:00

At the training camp in Estonia last summer, Martin Aedma talked about using wrestling to sweep from the guard. More specifically, using Jiu Jitsu to set up wrestling takedowns, in order to take the opponent down and thereby "sweep" him. I have been playing around with this since then, and inspired by Martin's post about the subject on his new blog, I decided to do a small video on which "wrestling sweeps" that works best for me in the guard at the moment.

One detail, I forgot to talk about in the video is, that when I go for the armdrag, I don't always try and pull him forward. Sometimes, I just want him to react by pulling his arm back and posturing up, before I move forward for the double leg. Small detail :)

Enjoy the video!

Next instructionals coming up are:

- The art of learning the art of slowrolling
- The loopchoke

The Fireman's Carry instructional

2011-01-12T05:22:00.000-08:00

The next video is on the fireman's carry takedown. As I mention in the video, I have known about this for many years, but it wasn't till a few years back, when I finally got the details right, that actually made it work (Thanks, John Kohls!). My training partners rarely underhook me wrong anymore, but if they do, I make sure to hit this takedown on them ;)

Hope you enjoy the video, comments are always appreciated!

Next instructionals coming up are:

- The art of learning the art of slowrolling
- Wrestling sweeps from seated guard
- The loopchoke

Deep Butterfly Halfguard instructional

2011-01-10T06:10:00.000-08:00

I was browsing through my blog the other day, and it struck me, that it has been a loooong time since I consistently posted instructional videos here. When I was a blue belt, I was a real Ari Bolden (with better technique), eager to put as much material online as possible. All of these old videos and photo series are still to be found in the archive of this blog.

Jiu Jitsu is truly "boxes within boxes". The more I train, the less I feel I know. Whenever I think I know about a technique, position or transition, I quickly find out, that there are ten new layers of details in that particular subject, that I haven't explored yet. This humbling experience have probably influenced me a lot in writing this blog, since I haven't felt like "teaching" anything here for a while.

But with that said, I think it is time to put some new videos online here, so I have filmed a handful of instructionals, which will be posted here one at a time, as I finish editing each of them.

First one I edited yesterday, was about the "Deep Butterfly Halfguard". I am sorry for the "deep halfguard" ripoff, but I haven't found a better name yet. Basically, it is a "low" variation of x-guard, that I have experimented with for at least a year and a half now. I haven't seen much instructional video on this position, so I decided to do one myself.

Hope you enjoy it, comments are always appreciated!

One thing I forgot to mention in the video, which I think is quite important, is that when I do the calfcruncher submission, I want to triangle my legs to stabilize my knee. Unfortunately, I popped my own knee doing this submission once, and triangling the legs would probably have helped me there. I just forgot it in the video :)

Next instructionals coming up are:

- The art of learning the art of slowrolling
- Wrestling sweeps from seated guard
- Fireman's carry takedown
- The loopchoke

Don't go anywhere, I'll be right back after the break ;)

Old competition footage

2011-01-09T08:50:00.000-08:00

I was looking through my harddrive for a specific training video the other day, and ended up watching old competition videos instead. I thought it was pretty fun to watch, so I got the idea of editing it all together into one video and put it online, so I will always have it here on the blog in case I lose the files, harddrive dies etc.

Most of the videos are from 2002-2003 but a few of them are from 2001. At this time, there were no competitions in Denmark, and we were very excited about the thought of competing, so we had to make our own. A few of these videos are from competitions we held in our own gym. We even made some in-house "MMA" tournaments (inspired by the early UFC of course), wearing helmets and allowing knees, elbows and headbutts. They were held by gentleman rules, so if we ended in a situation, where we thought the fight would have been over if it was full power and no helmets, we would stop there.

Later on, I started the "Openmat" tournaments, which where more organized with several danish gyms participating. I remember that at the first Openmat tournament I organized and competed in, I had no idea on how to do a triangle or what sidecontrol was. I just remembered seeing it in a book or video somewhere, so I tried it out (with no luck, needless to say). Quite fun to see today, so many years later, I wish I had recorded more of my matches back then.

The video is quite long, over an hour, and I don't expect anyone to watch all of it really, this is mostly for my own amusement. If you do watch it however, you might even find a match against a young Martin Kampmann there somewhere :)

Happy new year :)

2011-01-01T04:53:00.000-08:00

Yet another new years evening, where I try to take some photos of the fireworks outside my window. Unfortunately, there is some construction work going on at the moment, so there is a big scaffold blocking the view from the bedroom window. But think I got some ok shots anyway.

This is also my first test of editing photos and posting them to this blog from my iPad. Something I will have to do a lot when I am on the road in a few months :)

2010 season recap

2010-12-30T06:16:00.000-08:00

Looking back at 2010, I think it was a really good year for me. The biggest thing, of course, being that I have spend another year away from a 9-17 desk job and instead lived the life I want. That, I appreciate every day, and keeping this going is the most important thing to me.

From a sports perspective, I got my brown belt a year ago now from Robson Barbosa, who I find to be a very inspirational, charismatic and enthusiastic athlete. In many ways, it was a very big motivator for me. Like most other people training BJJ, I wanna tell myself, that I don't care too much about what color belt I have around my waist, but if we really didn't care, why don't we just train without belts. Getting the brown belt is an accomplishment, I have been proud of. It is a symbol of the unbelievable amount of hard work, that has been put into learning the art of BJJ, both from myself and my training partners. Also, it became a big motivational factor for me, because it reminded me, that I can one day reach black belt. And for that, I want to become as good as I possible can. I know there is always someone (or a lot!) out there, who are MUCH better than me any day, but what is important to me, is to do my best to preserve the integrity of the belt system. We've all seen the 6-year old Karate black belts and I know how easy black belt is to get in many arts. I think that BJJ is one of the few martial arts left, where the belt actually represents a level of real life practical skills, knowledge and experience, and I want to honor that. So getting my brown belt has definitely pushed me to become better at what I do, for myself, the art and for those, who chose me to pass it on to them.

The result of this mindset has been, that for the last year, I feel like my game has evolved a lot. I decided to do some competition again, which of is a good way to stay sharp and push my development and focus. Unfortunately, I managed to get two knee injuries in competitions this year. It was my first knee injuries of my career, so was pretty nervous for it. Luckily, I just needed to rest for some time and it healed up fine. No operation needed, but of course, I am much more nervous for it to happen again now :-/

The injuries kept me away from a handful of competitions, I had planned to enter, but I ended up doing five competitions this year, which I am very satisfied with. In total, I had 9 wins, 2 losses and 2 draw, which was actually a bit better than I had expected when I decided to start competing again. My first goal was to get one submission in no-gi and to score two points against a brown or black belt in gi. I exceeded that pretty well, so I think I'll have to put my expectations higher for next season ;)

Besides the injuries, competing again has been a good and valuable experience for me. I was pretty concerned wether I was capable of even winning a match at all, and wether I could transfer my game in the gym to a competition. Apparently, winning was definitely possible, and I was kind of surprised how well I handled adrenaline and how well my game transfered. I think this comes a lot from my basic lack of interest in winning, which takes away a lot of the pressure from me.

More importantly, I have gained a lot of first-hand experience from competition, that I can pass on to my students. Cutting weight, handling the nerves, warmup routines etc. is something I have not had a lot of experience with in my typical role as a sideline coach.

However, when all comes to all, the medals are counted, technical and tactical improvements are in the notebook and so on, what matters the most about the competition project is, that I have had some really great experiences, travelling around Europe with my friends, having a good time, laughing, going out, eating good food, strolling around foreign cities and backing each other up in both wins and loses. The memories and experiences you get from the social and adventurous aspect of competitions is worth 1000 times more, than winning any medal. I think some people tend to forget this and focus too much on the result itself.

Besides my own competition experiences this season, I have had some great experiences with my kids team, which is still one of my dearest projects. Their results speak for themselves, but what I really value, is having the opportunities to take these kids away from the computers for a few hours a week and teaching them the importance of exercise and living a healthy lifestyle. The training they do now will provide them with the physical foundation they will be needing for the rest of their lives. Ofcourse, they still like to eat candy and they are also starting to get a natural interest in the wonders of alcohol, but I see how they still have that awareness of staying healthy in the back of their minds. If I can help plant that seed in just one young person, let alone 25 or 30 of them, then I think I have really helped to make a difference in their lives in the long term. Anyone taking a look at these kids will see that they are in extremely good shape, already at the age of 14-15 years. Strength wise, they already match or outmatch most grown ups who comes in my intro class, and I think that is a very good thing for them.

Besides all the focus on competition, there has been a very healthy growth in my BJJ classes in general. Not everyone have interest in competing and that needs to be fully respected as well. There are many people, who just enjoys learning the art of BJJ and I think that is an equally good and healthy - and for some people, better - way to train. These people have been a great inspiration and help for myself and my training partners, with their nerdy enthusiasm about the technical aspects and details of the sport. Great sparring- and training partners, that I value much to have the opportunities to work with.

This year has also been a year of planning. In february, when I visited my girlfriend in Australia, where she was traveling around on her own for eight months, I got the idea of doing a round the world trip to train BJJ. The BJJ community is so strong around the world, so why not use this to visit as many of these great people as possible? I have travelled many times to train, but always just to one or two places at a time. I figured I could do one big trip and visit a lot of places instead, so it ended up with project "BJJ Globetrotter". I have prepared for this trip for over ten months now, doing physical preparations for three months and now there is only 52 days till I leave for the first stop, which will be Montpellier in Southern France. I am very excited about this project, and can't wait till I sit on the first flight.

Next thing you'll hear from me will probably be my instructional video on how to learn how to slowroll. I plan on shooting this in a week or so :)

Happy New Year!

Swedish Open highlight video

2010-11-19T05:28:00.000-08:00

Just another highlight video I put together from our trip to Swedish Open last weekend. Hope you enjoy it :)

600 flighthours sparring video

2010-11-17T12:49:00.000-08:00

It's been over a year since I last posted a sparring video for my 1000 Flighthours project that I started about three and a half years back. I still keep track of all my sparring hours, hoping to one day reach number 1000 for the project. For now I have reached the first 400 and I think my game have moved a lightyear from when I started. At the moment I train five days a week and I can really feel how I am improving. I wanna be as well prepared as possible for my training trip around the world in only three months from now.

As always, I have a list of what I am currently working on in sparring:

Deep butterfly halfguard
Pressure passing the guard
Wrestling as guard sweeps (another Martin Aedma inspiration)
Loop choke from halfguard bottom (a la Oliver Geddes)
Understanding gi chokes from the back

The deep butterfly halfguard is a game I have been working on for ages trying to develop and fine tune. I have taught it in my gym and both me and my training partners have used it successfully in sparring and competition enough now, that I think I am ready to make an instructional on it. No idea when it will be ready as always though ;)

Another thing I am working on on the side is trying to stucture the art of teaching people how to slowroll properly. We have all seen these really good black belts slowroll so nice and smooth, but how do people actually learn to do it. I have had a lot of succes teaching it in my class and it is not something I have ever seen anyone teach before, so I think it could make a pretty good instructional video here on the blog.

Swedish Open champion!

2010-11-16T03:57:00.000-08:00

...after only one match in my weight division ;)

As the title says, I took gold at this weekends Swedish Open tournament, which is the biggest in northern Europe with 600+ competitors. Of those 600, only two were in brown belt -82.3 kilos, so I only had one match. That suited me really well, because I was very nervous about my knee since it popped last time I competed, and it is still very sore when I train.

We went about 40 people from my gym to the competition and before I stepped on the mat myself, I was coaching our 22 kids, who did great and won a shitload of medals as usual. I was pretty tired at the end of the day when it was my turn. Knew nothing about my opponent, which I think is a good thing, because then all I know is that anything can happen and there is no pressure to perform in a certain way against him. He could be really good or really bad, I have no idea, so I just go there and try to execute my own game no matter what his plan is.

The match itself was pretty straight forward and it went better than what I would expect. I pulled guard right away even though I love to wrestle for the takedown, but I wanted to take care of my knee. Got the sweep, passed the guard a few times, mounted and finished with the crosschoke (Thanks again, Martin ;)).

I had a strange experience with this competition, as I found myself to be completely emotionless before, during and after the match. There was absolutely zero sense of nervousness or adrenaline when I was about to step on the mat, and during the match I felt nothing really. Only a lot of thoughts about tactics and focus on listening to my corner, who did a great job of keeping me informed with valuable information and suggestions. Even after I won, I didn't really care at all, no happiness or feeling of satisfaction. I've felt like this many times before but not as much as this time.

It just enforces my feeling that competition for me is nothing but a tool to gather experience. It does nothing to me towards satisfying my ego or similar. I wish it was different and I could be a fierce gladiator-style competitor like those many athletes I look up to in sports (including some of my own training partners), but I accept that I am not. I did, however, feel a great deal of happiness for my kids team, who was cheering for me during the match and obviously was happy that I won. If nothing else, I will compete to be a role model and inspiration for those I train with.

Big win for kids team

2010-09-26T05:42:00.000-07:00

Been a busy time lately, as I am working hard daily on the official opening of our new project CSA CrossFit. I think it is going to be a great succes and it is exciting to try and create something completely new.

Also been to a few tournaments. Not competing myself, as my knee is still not feeling too good from popping at the last one. Right now I am just focusing on getting in as good shape as possible for my globetrotter trip in less than 6 months.

Yesterday, we went to the final tournament of "Skåneserien" this year, which is a sort of grappling league for kids here. With only one point to the second place, we took the trophy for the best team of the season. A very big result for the guys, and something that I am pretty proud of to be honest :)

Enjoy yet another video I made of these cool boys:

Went 3-1-1 in competition today.

2010-08-29T08:57:00.000-07:00

Went to another Grappling League competition today and had five matches. Same rules as last time - either you win/lose by submission or it's a draw.

Preparations for this competition was not impressive. I have gotten a lot of good sparring lately, but 90% of it has been with the gi. I was however tempted by the chance to get five matches on one day and gain some experience.

I needed to cut a little weight for this tournament. The weightclasses was -88 and -77 kg and since I was walking around at 80-81, I decided to cut down to -77 for the "experts" division. It went really well during the week, until I made homemade sushi friday and had way too much. Ended up at 79.2 friday evening, so it was pretty tough getting through saturday with minimum food and liquid intake. The night between saturday and sunday, I was sleeping with some extra clothes on to sweat out the last bit. I weighed in at 76.7 kg, pretty tired and dehydrated, but I felt ok a few hours later when I was about to step on the mat. Next time, I definitely need to cut the weight over a little longer period than only 6 days and also not eat sushi two days before :D

Alright, let's get to the matches. I had five, so I will only do a brief description for each of them, as I am pretty tired right now :)

***

First match was - as I expected - the toughest one of the day. My opponent, Kevin, is very skilled and strong, and I knew he would not be easy to handle. It was one of those matches, where none of us would really like to engage too much and even though I of course hoped for a submission, my best guess was that this one would go to a draw, which it did. I had a few attempts at my armdrag single leg, but SOMEONE must have read my blog, because he stepped out of it perfectly every time. He swept me once from standing closed guard, which I don't worry too much about since I almost always scramble up from there, but as I posted my left arm behind me, my elbow injury from february popped up again. Hurt through the rest of the matches, but didn't want it to stop me at that point. Last seconds, I attemt pulling guard again and gets the deep butterfly half to one-legged x-guard, but didn't manage to do anything from there.

Second match was against my old friend from the local grappling community, Torben. I had no idea what to expect, so I just went with the flow. We started out by doing some Chi Sao (not caught on tape unfortunately), then I pulled guard and got the deep butterfly half. For some reason, I decided AGAIN to go to my heelhook setup? I can still use this position to sweep, but I really need to condition myself just to sweep directly from deep butterfly half instead of setting up a heelhook I cannot do anyways. I was trying for a straight footlock but with no luck. Scramble back up, Torben jumps guard, I keep posture to prevent from sweeping (thanks, Martin Aedma), which leads right into a guardpass. From here I went with the good ol' sidecontrol series, setting up the armbar to taking the back. I got the choke in by trapping one arm with my leg and the other by wristcontrol.

Third match was against a team mate and long time training parther, so I just goof around a bit here :) Win by armbar from sidecontrol series again.

Fourth match was my loss of the day. I think it went pretty well and I felt confident and in control even though he had a very active DLR and 50/50 guard. I did before the match decide not to fall into the footlock-for-footlock game because he looked like he was good at it, so it is a very interesting question to me, why I did it anyways :D At one point I go for a straight ankle lock that feels really tight. His foot started making weird sounds so I thought he would tap for sure but he didn't. In the moment, he caught my foot for a toehold and I started rolling to get out. He had a very tight grip, but I didn't really feel like he would get the submission. Could be adrenaline or the heat of the moment, I don't know. Anyways, while rolling a bit, suddently I hear my bad knee make a really a REALLY nasty pop sound, and I tap right away. I think it might still be a little weak from when I injured it in competition earlier in the year. Anyways, I made a mistake and he did a very good job at setting up that sub, all props to him. Didn't bother me to lose, but I really don't hope it is going to be as bad as last time with my knee, where I couldn't roll for months :,(

I put some ice on my knee and made a stupid decision to take the last match. I know, I know :D Just wanted to go nice and easy. I pulled guard, got the deep butterfly half and went for the heelhook position again instead of just sweeping. Don't know why I do it really, maybe it is just a reflex. Can't get the straight ankle lock there anyways. Scrambled back up, got the takedown and passed the guard a few times (he did some weeeeird rubberguard thing move when I was in sidecontrol :D). Ended up getting the armbar straight from the guardpass.

***

What did I learn from this experience:

Do NOT make 150 pieces of sushi two days before weighin in - I obviously cannot control myself in a situation like that.
Do NOT f*cking go for anything else than the sweeps in the deep butterfly half, unless heelhooks are allowed. Really gotta work on this in sparring. Due to my knee injury, I haven't been able to work any deep butterfly half for the last five months, but I should still be clever enough to do it right in competition. Back to the lab!
Do NOT engage in footlock-for-footlock battles when I have decided beforehand not to do it.
I owned the coolest pair of grappling shorts of all the contestants today.

Next day update: I ended up placing first in my division, but my knee is really fucked.

Gi chokes reference video

2010-08-25T15:27:00.001-07:00

This summer, I have gotten a renewed interested in gi chokes. For many years, I have basically ignored them because I wanted my game to work just as well in no-gi, but at the moment, I am in a period, where I am finding the details of gi training very fascinating.

Gi chokes is one area, where you will find literally thousands of techniques and variations for finishing the opponent. I have boiled my own game down to what I can make work really well in sparring under full resistance. I hope to try it out more in competition in the future, but for now I have only tested them in that arena through my kids team, who have been doing extremely well with gi chokes last season. I recommend scrolling through my archives and checking out some of the videos with them.

Anyways, I shot a quick little video with a reference of which gi chokes I use in my game at the moment. Maybe you can catch a detail or two you can use yourself. In that case, I am always glad to hear about it :)

Enjoy!

Around the world BJJ training trip

2010-08-17T09:27:00.000-07:00

I got this idea to travel all the way around the globe to teach, train and compete in BJJ. I was trying to find just one good reason not to do it, but I failed epicly, so departure February 2011 it is!

Check out my blog for the project at:

www.BJJglobetrotter.com

Congratulations, Martin!

2010-08-15T08:39:00.001-07:00

Now black belt both in BJJ and in weird food combinations.

If you haven't yet - be sure to check out Martin's Guardpass From Hell video here on the blog!

Training camp in Estonia

2010-08-06T12:07:00.001-07:00

I know that some people who read the title of this post will already start laughing at me there, so I'll be quick to admit, that I didn't get much training done at this years training camp in Estonia ;)

Like last year, we went to Estonia to attend the training camp set up by the guys over there. The training there is really good and there are some very, very good instructors to train with. Also, Estonia also surprised us by being a really cool place to spend some time, so we were very excited to go there again. Last year, we went four people and this year fifteen uf os went, so we must have spoken well about it back home ;)

Long story short, my knee and elbow injuries got pretty bad after the first few days of training (and walking back and forth to the beach!) and that combined with amazing weather and a perfect beach just ended up taking my focus away from training. It didn't bother me too much, since this training trip also was a vacation AWAY from training for me (training = job + life at home) and what really mattered to me was to have a great time there and to see my estonian friends again.

Anyways, I did get a few really good little details out of the training. Martin Aedma, who at last camp got me thinking about pressure passing and mount chokes for a full year, had some good stuff about using wrestling to sweep from guard. That was easily enough material for me to go home and work on for the next year :)

But anyways, thanks to the guys in Estonia for putting on a great camp, we had an awesome time there!

My match at Gracie Invitational

2010-06-02T01:26:00.000-07:00

This weekend I was competing at the Gracie Invitational tournament in London, England. I had actually decided not to participate due to the knee injury I got at the last competition, but I ended up stepping on the mat anyways, and I am really glad I did it.

Preparations for this event was non-existing. My last training was about three months ago due to vacation, popped elbow and latest, a knee injury. The knee has been hurting really bad, and I had only managed a few rounds of sparring with my kids team. If anyone over 50 kilos put their weight on my leg, the pain in the knee was unbearable. I did expect to not compete in London, but since I had bought the plane ticket and we were going nine guys together, I really wanted to do it. So by the deadline for signing up, I paid up the 35 pounds, so I had the chance to step on the mat, just in case I felt like competing on the day. At that point, I honestly thought that I had just thrown that money out of the window and that it would be impossible for me to go through a match with the pain in my knee.

My weight with the gi was around 82-83 kilos at the time of signing up. I thought to myself, that if I was going to spontaneously decide compete on the day, I did not want to worry about cutting weight with no preparation. So I signed up in the -88.3 kilo class. Also, there was only one other competitor there, so having a single shot at the medal was an appealing thought to me, since I didn't expect to have cardio or energy for more than one match anyways :)

On the day of the event, I really felt like stepping on the mat. At least just to say I did it and then tap out if I felt anything in my knee. I spend an hour or so massaging my knee with tigerbalm and then wrapped it up tightly. A few painkillers and a visit from an old friend, adrenaline, took care of the rest, and I decided to go ahead and take the match. In the meantime, about five other black- and brownbelts had signed up in the weightclass, so a single match for the gold was out of the question. Also, I weighed in at a whopping 82.0 kilos, so I was actually under the lower limit of the weight class, oops :D I decided to go ahead anyways, since I was psyched to watch the other guys go at it in the higher belt divisions and I wanted to try it as well.

My opponent was Nicolas Gregoriades, a fellow blogger from Jiu Jitsu Brotherhood, so we were looking at a legendary Battle of the Blogmasters. He is a solid black belt and experienced competitor, also looking quite a bit larger than me, but I was determined to do my best and see how it would go. I had no gameplan going into this match, since I thought trying the deep butterfly halfguard would be impossible with my injured knee. So I would just go with the flow and treat it as a regular roll, focusing on breathing since my cardio is worse than ever these days.

We start the match and pretty quickly I go for my crossgrab single leg setup. I can feel he's got solid base, so I try to switch for a double, but he rolls me over and almost ends up in mount. From here I go deep butterfly/x-guard/footlock-guard crazy for a few minutes before he finally manages to pass my guard and get to mount where he finishes with an ezekiel choke. I had a calfcruncher and a few good sweep attempts from my guard, but it was obvious, that he was just bigger, better and more experienced, and he did a very good job of just basing out of everything I tried. I noticed how he grabbed my sleeve every time I got the x-guard sweep, which prevented me from getting up. Very nice detail, I will implement in my own game right away.

I was surprised to find, that I felt absolutely no pain in my knee at all during the match. I felt nothing when I did the deep butterfly guard and I even had a calfcruncher on him with my bad leg (!!) that didn't hurt me. Thank you, adrenaline ;)

You can watch the match here:

After the match, something magical happend. For the first time in many, many years, I felt like it was really cool to have been competing. My immediate thought was "wow, that was awesome, I wanna do it again", something I have not felt since I was a competing as a blue belt, and something I thought I just did not have in me anymore. So I think I am going to ride that feeling and compete as much as possible, before it goes away again :) For now though, I will take some time off to focus on healing my injuries, so I can get back in training. I am getting really tired of doing nothing.

Also, it was cool to feel that I could hang with the brown/black belt division. Obviously, I got outclasses in this match, but I got the confidence, that in my right weight class (-82.3 or maybe cutting down to -76), injury free, with preparations and some more experience, I can one day do pretty good there. So I am definitely going to give it a shot and compete throughout my brown belt.

Here is a highlight video from the trip, that I have put together:

Going to London

2010-05-27T04:18:00.000-07:00

I will be traveling to London today along with 8 guys for my gym for the Gracie Invitational tournament. If you are there and wanna hook up for some training or whatever, let me know :)

Swissball drills for BJJ

2010-05-21T14:13:00.000-07:00

It seems like all the big names in Jiu Jitsu have some swissball videos online these days, so I thought I would make one as well, to showcase my own skills with it. Enjoy!

You're the best around!

2010-05-17T02:28:00.000-07:00

I love these kids.

Teenage Dirtbags

2010-04-25T04:36:00.001-07:00

I think that my kids team is moving forward at a very serious pace at the moment. Latest, they demolished almost all opponents at a tournament in Sweden and impressed me very much.

I have spend the last 5-6 years experimenting with how to design my kids classes in the best possible way, and I think I have finally settled on my solution now. I have been running my current method of teaching with them for about a year now, and the results have been phenomenal. They are taking home tons of medals, and I really see them improve and mature technically and socially as a team.

At one point, I will do a post here about how I structure the class, teaching, training and competition for them, but I will give it some more time and also not give away too many secrets to the opponents before the big tournaments coming up (Europeans, Scandinavian Open, etc) ;)

Here is a video from the latest tournament:

Competed again: Two submissions & one popped knee.

2010-04-12T03:12:00.000-07:00

Another competition was coming up and I thought it looked interesting, so I decided to sign up even though I still had not been able to train due to my elbow injury. It has been two months now, where I only managed to compete in Germany and have maybe 4-5 rounds of sparring the following week (which made my injury much worse). I thought my arm was feeling pretty good (maybe around 75%), and since this event would guarantee me at least 3-5 matches, I thought the experience would be worth more than the slight risk of injuring my arm again. In this tournament, there is no points, only submission or draw.

Since I had no preparation for this event whatsoever, once again, I had to be very aware of my cardio. I didn't make a specific gameplan this time, other than really focusing on relaxing and treating the matches as any other saturday roll in the gym. Also, I wanted to get a chance to try out my deep butterfly halfguard game a little more, since I am working intensively on polishing this. I am planning on making an instructional video on this when I am "done", since I really feel that is has revolutionized my offensive guardgame.

Anyways, I ended up having three matches, since we were only four people showing up that day. I was competing in the -77 kg advanced, and I felt really comfortable in that weight, even though I have not been doing any physical training for two months. I think it will be my preferred competition weight in the future.

Overall, I was pretty pleased with my performance. I won two by submission and had one draw. I had the chance to try out my deep butterfly half game a few times and it worked flawlessly, both for setting up submissions and sweeps. Ofcourse, there is the factor that not many people recognize this position and then don't know what to do from there, but also it is a solid way to actively break guard posture before going for submission or sweep. My cardio was pushed, but I managed to stay relaxed so that was pretty good.

While I think my performance was good, unfortunately I popped my knee in the first match, when doing the calf cruncher submission. It made a nasty sound, but didn't feel too bad, so I decided to do the last two matches anyway. Probably shouldn't have done that ;) The knee hurts pretty bad now, but it is not really swollen so I don't think it is too bad, so I'll give it a week or so and see how it feels. My only concern is getting ready for the Gracie Invitational in London in a month and a half.

Here are the matches with brief descriptions:

Match 1:

This guy felt like he had a very slick technical game, so I wanted to focus on just keeping my base and don't get caught up in any fancy stuff that I didn't know about. I started out by pulling butterfly guard to go for butterfly half, but his feet were right there for the sweep so I went for that instead. When I got on top, I instinctually went for the heelhook position. I also use this a lot to sweep from or to get the toehold/ancle lock, but I forgot to grab the foot the right way before I went for the position, so that failed and I had to bail on the position. Probably would have helped with some sparring, where I had practiced going for the other submissions in the heelhook position.

At one point I tried my high crotch takedown, but seems like I missed the grip on his hip with my right hand to finish, and he managed to get the underhook and reverse. Nice and basic move, I should be more aware of this in the future if I get stuck low with the single.

When he reversed, I found myself where I really wanted to be, and could get the deep butterfly half right away. Instead of the sweep this time, I went for the calf cruncher and he submitted. Both our knees popped at this point, but I think his was worse than mine. I hope he is alright and will be back on the mats again soon. For myself, I need to remember to triangle my legs while doing this submission, so I isolate my knee joint a little more. My left knee is not supposed to make a nasty sound like that again ;)

Match 2:

I know this opponent very well, since we trained together many years ago, and he is now a very experienced competitor and pro MMA fighter. Very strong and explosive for his weight, so I was puzzled on how to handle him in the match. I decided to just go with the flow and see if I could catch him in my guard even though I many times have seem him staying far away from engaging in the guard top.

I managed to take him down once with an armdrag single, but he scrambled up very nicely. A few times I pulled guard, but didn't managed to get him to engage. Finally, he took me down and I managed to escape with a not so pretty, but functioning stiff-arm escape (thanks, 100 sidecontrol escapes project ;)). So pretty even match, and I was pleased with holding my own against this very game opponent.

Match 3:

Knew nothing about this guy, but he seemed strong and tall. Kept his elbows very tight, so I ditched the idea of clinching and pulled guard instead when he went for a standing guilloutine. Went straight for my deep butterfly half and got the sweep pretty easily. I went straight for the footlock position, but once again, I didn't do it quite right, so my only option was heelhook (illegal) or bail. I swept again, this time with an armdrag, and when I passed and got on top, I was back in my good old sidecontrol series that I used a lot in another competition, and I went for the kimura but he seemed like having too strong a grip to pull it out, so switched to the armlock and got the tap.

***

I also made a little highlight video for the team:

Back to competition again (again)

2010-03-22T15:07:00.001-07:00

So, I decided to compete a little again. I have been waiting a long time for my prolapsed disc injury to get better so I could do some cardio again, but I realize that I have been waiting for many years now, and it's maybe never going to get really good again. An exciting opportunity for a little competition showed up and I decided to go. It was the German Open Hayastan Grappling Challenge in Hamburg, Germany, about four hours from Copenhagen.

The event appealed to me for several reasons. First of all, we would go a small team of experienced grapplers, so I didn't have to coach too much. Normally, I coach all the time and it takes a lot of energy during a whole day. Second, ALL submissions were allowed, no restrictions. Finally, it was a 16-man tournament for each weight class in a cage with finals at night during an MMA event. I really liked the concept and wanted to support it, so I signed up.

Preparations was terrible to say the least. First, I was three weeks in Fiji, only doing a little physical training, no BJJ. When I got back home, I had ten days to prepare for the tournament. First day back at the first round of sparring, I got thrown by one of our judo guys and posted my left arm straight on the mat, so it bend the wrong way and got completely fucked. Training was impossible, so when the day of the tournament arrived, I had not trained for more than five weeks. Luckily, adrenaline and painkillers took care of the arm :)

I had lost some weight during vacation and was around 81 kg, so decided to cut down to -77 for the tournament. With some highly valuable help from my teammates and the gyms physical coach, it was no problem and I ended up weighing in at 76.2 kilos on the day.

I have been working intensively on a very aggressive butterfly halfguard game for sweeps and submissions over the last few months, so I really wanted to test that. With all submissions allowed and me having absolutely no cardio, I decided to write down this gameplan flowchart for my matches:

This should hopefully keep my mind focused on just getting that heelhook :)

***

MATCH 1

First match started out very weird, as my opponent immediately pulled x-guard. Very similar to what I had planned to do, so it was kind of funny. Luckily he was playing my own a-game, so I knew it very well and spun out pretty easily. There was no points in the first round and I wanted that heel badly, so I kind of dropped fighting for sidecontrol and let him get his guard back in order to try and catch a foot. He made one big mistake by going to the shin across guard, which is what one of my toughest trainingpartners is using all the time, so I am pretty good at catching the heelhook from there. He was not very keen on tapping, so unfortunately his knee made a very nasty sound when I pulled the heel. I hope he recovers quickly, he was a very skilled grappler and I could easily see him beat me another day.

MATCH 2

This guy was very strong, I could feel it when I shook his hand before the match. I was a little worried that he might be a good wrestler, but when I got my guard, I could feel that he didn't have much base. I went for the heelhook from my butterfly half setup, but before I had a chance to finish it, the referee stopped the match. I think she was maybe a little nervous because of the knee popping in my first match. I would probably have gotten it sooner or later but I think it was a shame for my opponent that he didn't get a chance to fight more.

MATCH 3

I was watching this guys previous matches and he looked very good there. Good base and solid positions. At the beginning of the match, I thought I would try a takedown and see if I could catch the foot in the scramble. Unfortunately, my armdrag single attempt failed pretty bad, but I didn't worry too much about it since I wanted to be in guard bottom anyways. I closed the distance and got the heelhook right away from my planned setup. He rolled out very good and would maybe have gotten out if it wasn't for the referee stopping the match again. They did proclaim that they would stop at heelhooks for safety reasons, which I think was a good and a bad thing. With this opponent, I would have loved to get some more roll going since he seemed pretty game, but I was content with the quick win anyways of course, saving the energy for the finale later that evening. I got to chat with the guy afterwards and he was very cool, asked me to show him my setup. That passion for learning is something I have always had myself, so I spilled him all my secrets with joy ;)

MATCH 4

This was a little strange to mentally prepare for, because it was against my own teammate through many years, Kári. We know each others game in and out, so it would be impossible to surprise with anything. Also, he is the one I have worked mostly with on the butterfly halfguard project, so I decided just to roll and see what would happen, trying to steer around his very dangerous guilloutines and D'Arce chokes. We talked to the ref and kindly asked her not to interfere with the submissions since we knew what we were doing and it would be a shame to get a premature stoppage in the final. We both had some very good attempts at heelhooks from butterfly halfguard, but I ended up getting the tap at around two minutes in the first round, winning the tournament.

For the rest of the team, it also went very well. We had three first places and two second places. Also, we won the best team trophy, best technique trophy (team mate Milan's crazy footsweep to armbar in the finale) and best fighter trophy. We qualified five guys for the European Open in October and I think we are definitely going to see if we can get some more wins there. Perhaps I should try another submission there ;)

Competing again was fun and I learned a lot about cutting weight. Also, mental preparation before the matches was very good, I was not nervous at all and I think I performed very well under pressure. Many thoughts go through my head when I deal with competing though, but I think I have to write that in a separate post another day, since there is a lot to it.

It was a really cool little roadtrip and I had a lot of fun with all the guys. Will definitely go to some more tournaments around Europe this year, trying to get some guys to come with me. Here is a video I did on the trip:

Hayastan Challenge 2010 from Christian Graugart on Vimeo.

My Castaway gym

2010-03-11T00:36:00.000-08:00

Just got home from three weeks in Fiji. It was really nice there, but I got a little desperate to get a workout, so I ended up making a pretty cool little gym from stuff that washed up on the beach. Did some really good workouts in the heat during the trip!

Training area with pullup tree

My first collection of equipment

This was great for sidepresses

Pushup rack

My first attempt on a barbell

Grip training

Later in the week, another cement block washed up and fitted perfect. Curl time!!

Blog

Showers

Postworkout drink (banana milkshake)

In Australia next three weeks :)

2010-02-16T21:04:00.000-08:00

I have just arrived in Sydney, Australia and will travel around here and in Fiji for the next three weeks. Brought my cup and mouthpiece so hopefully I can drop by a gym somewhere for some grappling along the way. No real plans just yet for where to go when, but will be in Sydney and Brisbane for sure, so if any of you out there are training these places, let me know and I'll come by for some rolling! Didn't bring a gi though.

Crossface alternative when opponent gets on his side

2010-02-09T14:26:00.000-08:00

Here is something I use all the time, when I am either passing the guard or in sidecontrol, and my opponent manages to get on to his side to escape. It is a little thing, but as always, little things often makes big differences in scrambles :)

In my head I always think of it as a three-step move to get him from his side to flat on his back. Roll him over -> build structure with leg -> underhook and get crossface.

Hope you can use it :)

Bodymechanics drills - Rickson style!!

2009-12-31T01:18:00.000-08:00

I think that bodymechanics is a skill you need to work on just like you need to work on technique, strength and cardio. It is something you can do on your own and for me personally, it has really benefitted my game a lot.

I have a pretty large repertoire of bodymechanics drills in my game at the moment, and I am showing my most common in this video. I have not really learned them from anywhere specific, but picked them up a few at a time along the way from seminars, training with different people, ginastica natural videos, capoeira training and also made a few up myself. I hope you can use some of the drills yourself, I would recommend anyone to do them or something similar as a part of their grappling training.

I've wanted to do this video for a very long time, since it is something that people ask me about quite often. Finally I got it done, and I really hope you like it, cause I had sand EVERYWHERE when I was finished LOL

Enjoy :)

Going to Thailand

2009-12-09T02:30:00.000-08:00

I am going back to Thailand tuesday next week, and will be there for two weeks. I was there in February with my girlfriend and it was an amazing trip. Primary plan is to relax on a beach while all the Christmas craziness is passing by at home, but I will also visit a few gyms down there and see what I can find of training.

I will be in Tiger Muay Thai from the 16th-20th, where my friend Philip will try to get an MMA fight at the BBQ Beatdown event on the 19th. Hopefully they can find an opponent for him. After that we go to Koh Phangan, and I will try and drop by Jungle Gym, who supposedly should have some grappling training too.

If anyone who reads this is in those camps at the same time, let me know and we can do some training :)

Thanks

2009-12-08T09:29:00.001-08:00

Thanks to everyone who congratulated me on my promotion. Ofcourse it is a nice acknowledgement of the time and work I have put into BJJ, but I must say, that what I am most proud of, is the fact that we just managed to hand out 11 blue belts and 5 purple belts to our team. I am honored that all these guys are inspired by the training and feel like putting so much effort into reaching these milestones together. I hope they - and many others to come - will continue to enjoy this amazing sport with me for a long time :)

Faixa Marrom

2009-12-07T13:48:00.000-08:00

Video from latest turnament in Sweden :)

2009-12-01T03:47:00.000-08:00

Went to a turnament in Sweden this weekend with a team of about 20 guys. Lots of beginners joined in who did great. Really looking forward to work with these talents in the future :)

Training with Augusto Ferrari

2009-11-24T05:41:00.000-08:00

Last night, I had the pleasure of training with Augusto Ferrari, who dropped by my gym to do a little workshop. He was teaching 90 minutes no-gi and 90 minutes gi.

I really enjoyed the training and liked his game a lot. He was all about base and pressure. I especially liked his guardpassing game which was almost identical to what Martin Aedma showed me in Estonia. Crazy pressure and balance, it was impossible to sweep him in any direction.

Another thing I really liked, was how he opened up his game when he was sparring. Although I felt he could crush me anytime, he was rolling very light and fluid, giving me some openings here and there instead of just closing me down. Awesome sparring with a very impressive grappler.

I got a little video from the training. It is me in the first round of sparring. Unfortunately, it is a little out of focus, gotta blame the cameraman for that ;)

Eighties style montage video

2009-11-17T13:29:00.000-08:00

Here is my latest video of my BJJ Junior Team in competition:

Check back soon, as I have tons of little projects for this blog going these days :)

I think this is funny

2009-10-16T02:14:00.000-07:00

I made this video during a long discussion on a danish martial arts forum with some Kyusho guys who believe in "pressure point knockouts". I had nothing else to do that day, so it ended up being a pretty long debate. I failed, however, to manage to get anyone with the "skills" to do a demonstration/test, so in the end, I decided to test it myself. The foundation of combat sports is, as we all know, constant testing of technique in sparring and competition, so why not give this a chance as well ;)

Hope you enjoy the video! (For further entertainment, I recommend reading the comments on the YouTube page as well)

I own the most awesome wrestling book in the world

2009-10-07T12:25:00.000-07:00

Got a visit from Robson Barbosa and Mauro Salomao last night

2009-10-01T02:18:00.000-07:00

About a month ago, I met this guy Robson at a tournament in Sweden. We got to talk and he offered to come by my gym to teach a bit. He is normally teaching in Helsingborg, which is not too far away from Copenhagen where I am located, so I thought it would be a good idea.

Last night, he dropped by together with his friend Mauro and they taught a good gi class. It was the more traditional approach to training that I have experienced in a lot of gyms around in the world, but nevertheless it was interesting and a tough workout with some really good sparring too. Two light, technical grapplers (with seriously impressive grip strength!!]) always makes up for some good rolls.

I learned some cool details and is looking forward to do some more training with the two in the future.

Congratulations, Gunnar.

2009-10-01T02:16:00.000-07:00

Watch out for this guy!!

My new approach to sidecontrol escapes

2009-09-30T06:16:00.000-07:00

As you might have read in one of my recent posts, I am trying to force myself to focus more on escaping sidecontrol, since I think it is the biggest weakness in my game.

I was trying to make an agreement with myself, that I would do at least five escapes every day of training. It worked pretty well in the beginning, but along the way I caught myself forgetting it and not doing any escapes some days. So now I am trying something else. My 1000 flighthours project has been a really good way for me to set a goal for my training, so I have decided to do something similar with my sidecontrol escapes.

In my top secret BJJ notebook, I have made a little table, where I set an X every time I succesfully have escaped sidecontrol in sparring:

My first goal is to reach 100 escapes, then see where that takes me. I will also keep track of the counting here in the blog (look in the right coloumn).

Going to ADCC in Barcelona friday

2009-09-21T06:15:00.001-07:00

It never really appealed to me to watch a grappling tournament in a Middle East desert, so when I found out that the ADCC was held in Barcelona this year, I decided to go check it out.

Looking forward to see the biggest submission wrestling competition of all and ofcourse to spend three days in sunny Barcelona on the beach, now it is starting to get a little colder up here in the north :)

Video of our facilities

2009-09-16T02:14:00.001-07:00

I just put together this video for our website:

Kids Team moving forward

2009-09-13T23:44:00.000-07:00

The last month since I posted last time, has been really good training wise. No injuries worth mentioning, and I have gotten a solid amount of training, sparring and teaching done. The gym is really crowded with people, and it is very, very warm to train there, especially with the gi. I just imagine it is like training in Brazil :D

One of my projects that I care about very much, is my team of BJJ kids. We started this class about four years ago, and in the beginning it was very much a "play and have fun" thing. There was no real goal with the training and we went to one tournament and lost all our fights big. Along the years, this has really changed, and the last year or so, the team has seriously taken off, both training- and ambitionwise. When we started, we had a small group of 7-10 year olds. It was pretty difficult to have them to any "serious" training. They grew older and we changed the age limit of the class to 11-15. Also, I have made set some very specific competition goals for the team and made it clear to anyone who wanted to join, that we train for competing and we expect them to be serious about it. Ofcourse, the training is still fun for the kids and the vibe of the team is most important. Also, noone is ever forced to compete if they don't feel like it.

Obviously, a team like this will naturally limit the number of kids who feel like participating, and I think that is a good thing. I would rather have 10 dedicated students than 40 non-dedicated that are going nowhere. At this moment, we have about 15 very dedicated kids, who train and compete together as a team. It is extremely satisfying to see how they do in competition now compared to how they did four years ago.

Also, I have learned a lot as a coach and teacher from the process. Teaching and coaching kids is really a very different thing than with adults, but I think I have settled on a good formula now and I am very confident that we can make it very far, as long as they feel like going on.

This weekend we went to a competition in Sweden (approx. 70 participants) and did really well. I put together a small highlight video, hope you enjoy it.

Watch out for us at the 2013 Europeans!! ;)

CSA.dk Junior Team til Skåneserien 2
by graugart

Took some photos of my gym

2009-08-11T02:41:00.000-07:00

About 6 months ago, we moved our gym down the hall to a bigger location. Since then, we have been putting a looot of work, time and money into building it up to be the way we want it. Finally, I feel like we are almost there. We would still like to get some mirrors in and a cage wall, but we need to save up some more money before that can be done.

Our (me and my business- and trainingpartner, Carsten) philosophy with the gym has since day one been to try and create the best possible training environment. Obviously, people have a very different opinion on, what that is, but the gym you see in the photos are our perception of a very good physical training environment. Ofcourse, there is also a human-, social- and training/teaching side of "the best environment", which we also put a lot of focus and work into daily.

With a good training environment follows everything else. Attendance, good vibe, serious training, etc., that all leads to performance, be it fitness, weightloss, social aspects, competition results or just sportstraining for the sake of sportstraining. At least that is our philosophy :)

I always try and travel as much as possible to visit gyms around the world, and I am also up for "returning the favor" to the community, so whoever wants to drop by Denmark for some training, feel free to come and knock on our door any day!

Hope you enjoy the photos! (click panoramas for higher resolution)

729 Flighthours video

2009-08-04T03:26:00.001-07:00

Alright, so I finally made a new sparring video for my flighthours project. Since I started, I have been sparring for a total of 271 hours. This time I have made sure, that the video contains both gi, no-gi and MMA sparring. I have had a tendency to put mostly no-gi video up for some reason.

I am sitting and looking back at older videos in the project, and I realize, that my game really hasn't changed that much strategically since I started over two years ago. I have heard many times, that purple belt is where you define your game and from there it is all finetuning and adjusting the rest of the way. I think that is true, since I basically do many of the same techniques that I did back then. I do however see, that my game has become much more tight and smooth and it is obvious, that my timing and setups has really improved. Especially my wrestling and takedowns has taken a big leap forward. I guess that is an area, where timing and explosiveness is also a much bigger factor than technical knowledge, compared to ground grappling where the techniques often can be performed slower and with fewer movements at a time.

Another thing that is very satisfying is, that when I look back at all my little lists of what techniques I have been working on implementing or improving over the last two years, all of them are now solid parts of my A-game. So making a decision to improve in certain areas, have definitely worked for me, and I have managed to succesfully incorporate new techniques and improve holes in my game with this method.

I have put some MMA sparring in the video this time too. I train a good amount of MMA with the guys every week, since we have some who are competing on a regular basis. As you might see on the video, my striking is not very impressive. I don't really have a lot of interest in striking training compared to grappling, but I wanna do it anyways for two main reasons:

I want to be the best possible sparring partner for our guys who are competing in and training MMA.
Grappling is my passion, and I wanna be as good at it as possible in all areas: Gi, no-gi, MMA and self defense (the latter of least interest). Trying to wrestle people who want to hit me in the face is a great way to push myself to make my grappling work in a very stressed environment. Especially comitting to takedowns is an area, that is really improving from practicing it with striking involved.

Ok so nuff' said, here is the video. It is pretty long (over an hour), and I don't expect you to watch it all, but maybe you can cath a detail or two that you can try and incorporate in your own game. If you have any questions or would like explanations on anything I do, feel free to leave a comment and I'll get back to you :)

My list of things I am currently working on in sparring is:

Escaping sidecontrol
Sweeping by positioning opponents point of gravity over my own hip (X-guard, etc.)
Takedowns, takedowns, takedowns (especially fireman's carry)
Holding high mount and finishing with crosschoke
Pressurepassing guard

Escaping sidecontrol is probably THE biggest hole in my game at this time. I was talking to my friend Kári about it yesterday and he has a somewhat similar problem. I think it is a product of having good guard defense, combined with being in the top level of the group of guys I train with on a regular basis. I think maybe around 80% of my sparring time consists of attacking. When I am on bottom, it is mostly in the guard and people I train with normally rarely pass it. So no wonder my sidecontrol escapes sucks :D This was really obvious to me in Estonia and London where a few high level guys put me in a lot of trouble when passing my guard and closing me down in sidecontrol.

In order to improve them, I have set myself a goal to let people pass my guard in sparring at least 5 times every class, then try and escape sidecontrol. I'll see how that goes and then maybe raise the number later. I'll do it for three months, then evaluate if my sidecontrol escape game has improved.

(For some reason, my mount escapes are really good, don't ask me why?)

I have been thinking a lot about understanding how sweeps work on a conceptual level, and is really working hard on moving my opponents point of gravity above my own, which has fundamentally changed and improved the way I sweep from guard.

Fireman's carry takedown has completely taken over my thoughts for the last two months or so. It's like having a song in my brain I can't get rid of - I constantly think of the movement of that technique. What a fucking nerd I am LOL

When I was in Estonia, one of the instructors had some great details on the crosschoke from mount. I am going for it all the time in sparring, and the rate of success for my mountchokes has gone up A LOT with these details. Will keep trying it until I can choke anyone from mount, just like Roger LOL

Martin Aedma's Estonian Guardpasses From Hell

2009-07-31T06:50:00.001-07:00

As mentioned in an earlier post, one guy from Estonia had a very cool way to pass the guard, which completely shut down my own game. Normally I think I can defend my guard pretty well, but against this pressure I was totally lost.

Thanks to Martin for letting me shoot this video, which is exposing all his secrets!! :D

Back from London

2009-07-31T04:24:00.000-07:00

Just came back to Denmark after spending 6 days in London, training in Roger Gracie Academy and Team Carlson Gracie. Got to train every day, some days both afternoon and evening. It was good to get some flighthours in with some people I am not used to roll with.

(Team Carlson Gracie)

I still wanna continue my project of looking around Europe for different places to train. Estonia was really awesome, the level there was quite high for most guys and the mentality and approach to train was as close to my own gyms as it gets. Breaking down techniques into concepts, using modern and proven teaching systems and understand how people learn and acquire physical skills are essential teaching skills in my opinion. The gyms in London had a more "traditional" approach to teaching methods and training, which does not really appeal to me in the long run (show technique, drill 5-10 minutes, then spar). Sparring was tough though, and that was mostly what I came for anyways :)

(Roger Gracie Academy)

Now I am back in CSA and the summer vacation is soon over for most people, so I am really looking forward to some super hard training over the coming period. We have some guys fighting MMA and I am looking to take my kids class to about 4-5 tournaments before the year is over. For the adults, we will pick one or two big tournaments to focus on so we can make sure everyone has the same goal in training. Last time, we had about 30 competitiors at the Nordic Open BJJ tournament and it was a great experience.

Home from Estonia - off to London

2009-07-21T06:28:00.000-07:00

I came back from Estonia a week ago, and it was an awesome trip. Had a lot of good inspiration and training there plus Estonia was a great place in itself. I knew a few of the guys a little on beforehand my (dark, dark) past in the SBG, but most of them I never met before. As always, whenever I walk into a gym somewhere in the world, there always seems to be lots of people that I connect with really well, and ofcourse this was also true for Estonia. Lots of cool people with really high level of skill, I could definitely go there more often for some good training.

I shot an instructional with one of the guys up there on his guardpassing game, which I think was pretty awesome. He applied a ton of pressure to my legs and basically completely shut down my guard. I was helpless, so I had to learn it :D I will put the video online here when I get back home.

In five minutes, I will be out the door to go to the airport and fly to London. I don't know anyone there, but I am staying there for a week and planning on just knocking the door to some gyms there and see how much training I can put in during my stay. Obviously, I wanna go to Rogers academy as well as the Carlson Gracie Team, but we'll see if I find time to check out any other places. Theme of this summer will be BJJ-networking in Europe I guess :D

I'll be sure to write about my experiences in London as well as in Estonia when I get back home in about a week. Untill then, enjoy training :)

Status & going to Estonia

2009-07-02T01:25:00.000-07:00

Alright, I know I have not been very good at updating my blog for quite a while now, but as always, I am returning and promise to post some stuff again :)

I had a pretty bad shoulder injury for about 5 months that made it really difficult for me to train, and that always makes me lose a lot of motivation for writing blogposts. Injury time is not a time where I feel very innovative about my game, I just wanna train around the injury and get over with it. But now I am fit again, and training is going really well.

I have filmed a lot of sparring lately, but mostly MMA. I will put some of it online soon together with some rolling gi and maybe no-gi. Even though it is really warm summer weather now, I train BJJ mostly in the gi. I am going to London 21-27 to train in the Roger Gracie and Carlson Gracie gyms which are mostly gi-based so all my gi-training will be good preparation for that. Also, my weightlifting has really come up in gear again, and I am focusing a lot on core- and gripstrength.

Next week, I am going to Estonia to teach and train at the Summer BJJ and MMA Camp in Tartu. I think it is going to be a really cool week with lots of training. I myself is going to teach gi, no-gi and MMA and I am also really looking forward to attend all the other classes and get some inspiration home myself.

If you feel like coming over, check out this link:

http://www.bjj.ee/?page_id=21

For those of you, who don't know Estonia, it is probably one of the most exotic places in Europe. Lots of little islands, beaches, palm trees, etc. Some people call it "the Thailand of Northern Europe".

Review: Roadmap for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu by Stephan Kesting

2009-05-11T05:59:00.000-07:00

Fellow internet-BJJ-nerd Stephan Kesting from Grapplearts.com, asked me if I would do a review of one of his products on my blog. Yes, he did give it to me for free to (hopefully) get advertisement on my blog. but with that said, I have been completely objective in my review of the product, as my opinions ofcourse never can be bought for money (unless you are really rich... are you? seriously? *makes the "call me" hand sign*).

The "Roadmap for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu package" contains two DVDs, an audio CD, a CD-ROM, a book and a poster.

The DVD and book with the roadmap is the main product. It is a conceptual overview of basic techniques and strategies in each of the common positions of BJJ. The audio CD is really just the book read aloud, I guess that is good if you wanna hear it on the road or something. The CD-ROM contains some videoclips with bonus instructional material from seminars etc. The last thing is the poster, which I think it really nice. It shows "do's and dont's" for basic submissions. I have put it up in my gym and it has many good pointers for the beginners.

What I really like about this video is, that its focus is on FUNDAMENTALS. I have watched tons of instructionals, and 90% of them seem to try and "teach you some new move". My personal approach to getting better in Jiu Jitsu is to understand the fundamentals better and better. Not to learn more and more new moves. That's why the instructionals I get the very most out of are those, that can teach me details about stuff I already know. Like another approach on how to set up armbar from mount, scissor sweep or escape sidecontrol.

I think it is a great video for beginners because it really outlines the strategies and possibilities in every position. Also I would recommend it up to high level blue belts, to get some more details / other approaches to your game.

Check it out on www.beginningbjj.com

Zhoozhitzu do Graugardo

Behind the scenes of BJJ European Open 2012

Sun, surfing, segways and silver medal in Portugal

Off to Portugal tomorrow

Interview on Fightmap about quitting my job to start a gym as a blue belt

Competing at the Europeans next week, shoulder not feeling good.

BJJ Globetrotter wins "Best BJJ blog of 2011" award... twice.

Documentary from my trip to Moldova

Sparring videos from Colombia

Off to teach in Moldova

385 flighthours

Training with Robson again

Season 2011 recap

398 flighthours sparring video

About listening to my body and respecting, what it says.

Ten quick tips for you, who is practicing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

Back injury rehab exercises

Quick update: Back on the mats!

Rehabbing like a boss, will roll tomorrow.

Belt promotions and video from class

413 flighthours video, back getting better.

It's official: I am getting old(er)

Video from my kids team training today

Rolling with Marcelo Garcia, Drive In and Quico

417 flighthours - short rolling footage video

Highlight video from NAGA in Paris

67 medals in two months - last competition of the year is in the books.

Big win at NAGA in Paris this weekend

Good match at Scandinavian Open today

Free shipping on Roll Eat Sleep Repeat products this weekend :)

Semi-successful training today

One of those periods where everything hurts

Five days, three cities, three seminars and two gold medals in Scotland

Off to Scotland tomorrow

Six years since I quit my desk job - never looked back.

One match at IBJJF London Open

Highlight video from Swiss Open

Three matches at Swiss Open in Geneva, Switzerland.

Visit from Robson Barbosa today

Good and bad start of the competition season

And so it begins...

ShogunHQ version 2.0

Secret BJJ move that cannot be defended

Training with Martin Aedma and putting weight back on

Back from around-the-world BJJ trip :)

Leaving for around-the-world BJJ trip tomorrow

"Team Sandbaggers" and the 2011 Europeans

The Icelandic Guillotine

Loop choke instructional

European Open 2011 in Lisbon, Portugal

The art of learning the art of slowrolling

Competing at the Europeans in Portugal next week

Wrestling sweeps from guard

The Fireman's Carry instructional

Deep Butterfly Halfguard instructional

Old competition footage

Happy new year :)

Recommended reading: Martin Aedma's blog

2010 season recap

Swedish Open highlight video

600 flighthours sparring video

Swedish Open champion!

Big win for kids team

More videos of my matches this weekend

Went 3-1-1 in competition today.

Gi chokes reference video

Around the world BJJ training trip

Congratulations, Martin!

Training camp in Estonia

My match at Gracie Invitational

Going to London

Swissball drills for BJJ

You're the best around!

Teenage Dirtbags

Competed again: Two submissions & one popped knee.

Back to competition again (again)

My Castaway gym

In Australia next three weeks :)

Crossface alternative when opponent gets on his side

Bodymechanics drills - Rickson style!!