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.
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 :)
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:
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".
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.
This is the final episode of my eight week videoblog project about Philip who we have trained to compete in MMA for the first time. It has been a crazy period of training and a really cool experience. Parts of the video is in danish, but I hope you will enjoy it anyways :)
I am sorry I have not been posting anything here for a while. I have had some problems with my shoulder for the last four months, but I am slowly getting back on track. Slowly because I keep sparring and training with it, even though I could not lift it over my head for a period :D
We have also been really, really busy with moving our gym to a new location, so I have been working all day every day to get it done. On top of that, training has been crazy, with more classes a week and lots of hours of sparring. I have stepped up the MMA training, so I am bruised, cut and hurting all over my body most of the time. Great feeling :)
Currently, we are working hard on preparing Philip Fortuna, one of our athletes, to get in his first MMA fight. He has been training for six months and here up to the fight, we are doing an 8-week period of really concentrated training and preparation for the fight. We keep a videoblog that we publish every sunday for the eight weeks. Philip is originally from South Africa so he is speaking english in the blog. Almost everybody else is speaking danish, but since the main part is in english, I think most of you should be able to understand it anyways. Don't have good software for subtitles at this moment unfortunately :(
I will post all the videoblogs here, hope you like them!
For anyone of you out there who might understand danish, here is a short video on my BJJ kids class that was made last week. It is about martial arts training and violent behavior in kids:
Here is one of my A-game guardpassing moves, that I use whenever I end up in butterfly- og scissorguard. The idea is to clear the opponents hooks by kicking out while jumping over the guard.
Another way I get into the scissorguard position, which I forgot to tell on the video, is if I try to kneeslide pass and my opponent blocks my hip with his top shin. From there, I adjust my weight a bit go straight into the scissor pass. Hope it makes sense so you can try that out too.
This video was shot in Tiger Muay Thai and MMA gym in Phuket, Thailand. Thanks to Carlos and Andreas for the help :)
After Samui, I flew on to the larger and more developed island Phuket on the west side of Thailand. The hotel I stayed in had tree Muay Thai camps within a few hundred meters, so there was a tough competition on that market there :)
The biggest one was by far the Tiger Muay Thai & MMA camp. It is basically a tourist gym, as I didn't really see any thai people train there other than the coaches. The place itself is HUGE, probably the biggest gym I have ever been in. In a jungle-style area complete with palmtrees and probably lots of animals that could kill you by a blink of an eye, the enourmous camp is placed outdoors with a simple tin roof build over it. About four or five boxing rings, weigh lifting area, matted areas, full size cage, heavybag areas and more are sorrounded by little bungalows, where you can stay at a resonable price (though still a little more expensive than some of the places just down the road). Even tough the facilites were a little worn down, they are absolutely amazing, and it seems like a really good place to train if you want to do nothing but that.
I would estimate that about 100-200 people were training at the same time, every time I was there. Pretty impressive. Lots of thai trainers working pads with people and I spotted quite a few very very skilled athletes there, so I guess there is good sparring as well.
Besides the Muay Thai (which is obviously the main business of the place), they seen pretty serious about building up MMA and BJJ there as well. Ray Elbe is the inhouse instructor, and they are continously improving the facilities for MMA and grappling training there. About 20-30 people were on the mat for each class that was running every morning at 9am and evening at 6pm.
Since they unfortunately were in between instructors for the period I was there (Ray Elbe was back in the states and they were waiting for the Avalan brothers to arrive next week), I was invited to teach some morning grappling classes. I thought that would be a good reason for me to push myself to not sleep too late on my vacation, so I taught the 9-11am classes three days in a row. All the classes were well attended (about 20-25 people) and it was a good mix of mostly beginners with some good blue- and purple belts in between. Over the three classes, I went over some holding topgame, topgame attacks and basic ankle sweeps from bottom guard. It was really cool to train outdoors in the exotic setting, and the heat was not too bad in the morning.
As always, when I walk into a gym anywhere in the world, I meet some cool people that I get along with really well. I would like to thank Andreas Hesselbäck (who has been living in Thailand and training in Tiger for a year and a half now and writing a really cool blog about it) for inviting me to the gym and also to Carlos for helping me out with an instructional video I shot there (will be online shortly).
I was supposed to come back to the gym and train again later during my trip, but I ended up traveling around too much and never made it in time. I really wanted to have had the chance to train with the new instructors coming in, but i guess it will be another time. Tiger was a really cool place and I would definitely recommend anyone interested in Muay Thai and/or MMA to go there. MMA and grappling seems to be gaining territory in Thailand and I can only imagine it will be pretty big there within the next 5-10 years. Perhaps I should move there to open a gym? :D
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