398 flighthours sparring video

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.

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.

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

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!

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.

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

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.

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)

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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 :)