Going to New York and Mexico today

Today, I am leaving for a trip to New York and Mexico. I will - as always - visit my friends at Ronin Athletics for some good training. I will update this blog with some photos and descriptions about the training, so make sure you check it out the next few weeks :)

TV star! :)

Yesterday, a danish TV channel was doing a small feature on Mixed Martial Arts with a profile of one of the most active fighters here in the country, Kenneth Rosfort. I travelled to USA on a training trip with Kenneth in 2003, where we were talking about starting MMA careers. He has come a long way since then and is currently holding a 10-3 record. Very good athlete.

In addition to the interview, they needed someone to demo some MMA in the background, and me and three other guys from the gym jumped in. It was freezing cold and there was dew on the mats so they were EXTREMELY slippery, but other than that, I think that it went pretty well.

You might not understand danish, but you can see the clip here:

http://www.dr.dk/DR1/Aftenshowet/Klip+fra+Aftenshowet/20070129142128.htm

Thursday workout: Takedowns and Tractor tires

Had a great workout this afternoon with some takedowns and after that an outdoor session with our new tractor tires.

Since the competition and A-game training is over, I am now going back to focusing on learning new techniques for my game. John, a wrestler from Oregon, is visiting Denmark for four months and dropped by my gym for some BJJ training. We don't have any wrestling in Denmark besides very few people doing Greco-Roman, so it is cool to get a lot of new inputs from him, and I am trying to learn as much as possible these months. Currently I am working on incorporating a fireman's carry, low single spin and a duckunder in my wrestling game. Those are all something I have never really worked on before, so I still have lots to learn, but I feel like I am making progress.

As promised, I recorded some video from the training. The first one of the wrestling is just a raw edit and is mostly for my own reference to remember and review my training and technique. If any of you out there feel like watching it and maybe get a few good things out of it, then that's great. The other video I did a quick edit on, perhaps I'll use it as a little promotion video for our gym's new training toys :)

Enjoy!

Training with the gi again

For four months, I have trained no-gi only. Both because of the summer heat, but also because we have had some MMA and Submission Wrestling tournaments coming up, so we have planned the training for those of our athletes that has been competing there.


This week we started training with the gi again. I almost forgot how HOT it is to train with, but I know it is only a matter of getting used to it. Other than that, I have had some really cool experiences with it. It has been awesome to rediscover all the little details of the gi-game and I have tried to focus on really using the cloth when rolling. My competition A-game is still in my reflexes, but I have managed to pull off quite a few gi sweeps and submissions. I also met another old friend of gi-training... finger injuries, yaaay! :) Friday, saturday and sunday classes will still be no-gi, and I am looking forward to do both.



We just got three big tractor tires for the gym, and I was using them for my tuesday workout yesterday. Awesome training. Workout of tomorrow is me and a few of the guys from the gym are meeting up for a Sean Sherk-style session at noon (without the roids though ;)). One hour takedowns and one hour tire-workout. It will probably be raining, so it will be Rocky style training!! My videocam is in the gym since I am working on some new tutorial clips for this blog, so maybe I'll film some of the training tomorrow and put it up here.


Other than that training is going really well and the gym is packed with people. We are signing new members up daily and are definitely in need of more space as soon as possible, although it is not easy to find here. My beginners classes in BJJ and MMA are overcrowded with new talent and enthusiasm. A LOT of these guys are gonna be monsters in a year of two, so I am gonna be busy as coach and also I need to work hard so I am not gonna get my ass kicked in sparring :D

Oh yeah, in 16 days I am going to New York for the fifth year in a row to visit my good friends at the Ronin Athletics gym. Can't wait to hang out and train with all those guys again!