Friday, July 31, 2009

Martin Aedma's Estonian Guardpasses From Hell

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

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.



Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Home from Estonia - off to London

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 :)

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Status & going to Estonia

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".

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