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.
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 :)
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!
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!
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:
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 :)
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!
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) ;)
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:
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:
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!!
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.
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.
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