First 50 flighthours done, 950 to go! :)

I have today reached the first 50 flighthour mark of my 1000 flighthour project. It has taken me five months to get here, which means that I get about 10 full hours of rolling time a month. I want that number to be a significantly higher in the future, but it is difficult to have time for it all :) With this pace I will be done with the project in in 100 months, which is equivalent to 8,33 years. I was hoping that it could be a little faster than that! LOL

Training is going really really great. I feel I am improving for every hour of training and I can definately see that I have improved in every area of my game over the last 50 flighthours. I have especially been working on my wrestling game of clinch and takedowns.

Lately I have gotten a big interest in the takedowns and setups from Freestyle Wrestling. Ken's classes started the interest and now I am reading books and watching instructionals to learn more. Wrestling is a complex game when you start to understand it, just as Jiu Jitsu is. That, combined with that we have no real tradition for Wrestling here in Scandinavia (Greco is a very small sport here and Freestyle virtually does not exist), makes it feel like I am exploring all new territory, which is super cool.

You often hear that a persons ability to fight on his feet are only as good as his ability to keep the fight on his feet. The same must be true the other way around. My ability to fight on the ground is only as good as my ability to take the fight to the ground.

I find that the big difference between Wrestling and Jiu Jitsu, is that you can never really rest when clinching. There are no positions, where you can just hold your opponent for a moment, whilst you take your time to breathe and relax. It is all about attacking and exploding all the time, which transcents really well with my little project of developing a more agressive game.

Today and yesterday, I have done around 2 hours of clinch and takedown sparring only and I am really starting to hit those moves again and again under full resistance. Awesome!

Here is a video that Ken have put together with some wrestling for zhoozhitzu (yes I know, I need to make my own LOL):


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On another (BJJ-)note, I have a ton of material that I want to share on this blog, but my videocamera is no longer with me, which makes it a little difficult. I can use Ken's though, but that takes planning ;) But anyway, you can expect some new material from me here real soon, so keep checking back :)

Ken at Danish Open Submission Wrestling

Here is a video clip of my friend and employee Ken Allen fighting at the Danish Open Submission Wrestling tournament a few weeks ago. I met Ken in Portland, OR back in 2003 when I was there to train, and about a year ago, we invited him to come to Denmark and teach in our gym. He has taught me and everyone else in the gym tons of stuff and the level of the entire team has been raised significantly with his inputs and teachings here. We are very happy to have him as a part of CSA.

Leaving the SBG

I tried to post this on the SBG members and MMA.tv forum, but it got deleted, so i'll post it here instead in hope of reaching out to as many of my friends in the organization as possible :)

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Dear friends

As some of you may have heard, I have been asked by Matt to leave the SBG. It would not make sense to start a discussion about why here, nor beginning to list or explain reasons. To make a long story short, me and Matt have had some cooporational and financial issues to deal with over the last approx. 6 months and still going.

Throughout the years, I have met so many cool and fantastic people through the SBG. A lot of them have become very good and close friends of mine, and I wouldn't leave them for the world. The fact that I no longer have an SBG logo on the door to my gym won't change a thing. I will still travel, meet, train, share and hang out with as many of you as I can. I will keep training, teaching and exploring the beautiful sports of BJJ and MMA together with my training partners, students and friends in my own gym, city and around the world. I have many projects going on with grappling tournaments, mma tournaments, teaching, seminars and other events, so don't worry that I am gonna be bored ;)

I am planning to keep my acceptance of my invitation to come to the SBG Euro camp in Sweden together with my friend Ken Allen to teach and train, so if you are coming, I will see you there.

Needless to say, anyone who would ever want to come and train in our gym in beautiful Copenhagen are ofcourse always welcome, regardless. Come see my country any day, there is always room on my couch and in my gym for anyone who feels like stopping by.

If anyone should have an interest in hearing my side of this story in more specific details, you are always welcome to email/call/msn/travel to me and hear all of it. I have nothing to hide, but it would be pointless to write it all here :)

Best regards and with all the best wishes for the future to all of you,

Christian "Using No Way As Way" Graugart
CSA Copenhagen
www.csa.dk -o- www.shogunhq.com

Rolling, rolling, rolling... now with video! :)

I just read Aesopian's latest post on his blog, How much do you really need, and found that I have come to the same point in my training at the moment.

I have really not been working on a lot of new stuff the last two months or so, but instead my focus has been on getting to roll as much as possible and refining / getting a deeper understanding of what I already know and do.

That is the main reason, why I have not posted much in here lately. I simply have not been working on coming up with a lot of new stuff to "show", but just putting my focus in getting as many flighthours as possible. And I have gotten quite a few.

Funny enough, all this rolling and investegating what I already know have led me to some pretty cool stuff, that I want to share here when I get the time to shoot some video of it. Here is what have been my focus lately when rolling:

• Baseball choke, setups and variations
  
• Front flip for guardpass and takedowns
  
• Upper body weightplacement for faster and smoother leg movement
  
• D'arce choke from sidecontrol bottom
  
• Finishing the single / low single
  
• Headtriangle setup for stiffarm escape
  
• Flying triangle guardpass

I hope to cover all of these subjects here in the blog in the near future, but for now I really just want to roll, roll, roll and roll some more :)

So instead of posting some new fancy tutorial here, I have shot a little video of myself doing some light sparring in the gym. My training partners vary from white through purple belts and MMA fighters to kids, beginners and weightlifters. My MMA is getting pretty sloppy and I don't train it very often, but I did some sparring lately as some of the guys were fighting so I threw it in there on the video as well. It is pretty long (30+ minutes) and I don't expect you to watch it all, I really mostly put it up here so I can track my own progression in my game along the way :)



I will try to make many more of these videos as I slowly progress through project 1000 flighthours. 969 hours left!!

First post in a month

Man, the last month has been crazy. I have had so much work because I have been promoting my first big event, which was held here in Copenhagen May 5th. I am sorry for not posting here, but I simply haven't had the time. I even had to skip training in the weeks up to the event (and then you know I am not lying about being busy :-D). You can check out the event on www.adrenalinesports.dk.

The show went great, there was 31 awesome fights in many different styles. I think it was very exciting and I was very pleased with the final result. We are going to make a new show some time im the fall, but first I have to relax a bit and focus on all the stuff that have piled up during the last month, this blog included :)


I have been rolling a little the last month and the project 1000 flighthours is halfway to the first 50 hours. I can see that I have improved immensely since I started the project, but I will wait with the evaluation untill I have reached 50 hours of rolltime.

Awesome weekend

So, Rigan was here this weekend and did a seminar in my gym. It was really good, I caught some good details and I really liked his approach to Jiu Jitsu. I took a private with him today to steal some of his topgame secrets and he also showed me some good tips on escaping from bottom. I got a chance to roll with him a little and as expected, he completely CRUSHED me, I couldn't move an inch. Pretty cool experience, kind of brings back the "magic"... the feeling that some people are just so good at this stuff and that there is still sooo much to learn. Great inspiration.

We trained almost five hours both saturday and sunday so I am really tired now, but I still have a long day of training in front of me tonight... another five hours to be exact :)

Rigan just left for a few days for Amsterdam and then he will go to Sweden for a seminar there, before going home to California.

Training with Rigan Machado this weekend

This weekend, Rigan Machado is coming to my gym to teach a seminar. I am really looking forward to train with him and hopefully get some inspiration for my game. Maybe I'll even invest a little money in an hour of private lesson with him, I'll be sure to post all about it here :)

Attacking, energetic game - Leozinho vs. Shaolin

Man these two guys have so much energy, it is really inspiring to see them roll. This is the game I am trying to develop at the moment:

Leo Vieira vs Shaolin
Uploaded by z3nm0nkey

Training is going great, I am getting a lot of rolltime and working hard on being more aggressive. Damn it is hard on my body, I wake up every morning and is sore all over. Hopefully I will get used to it soon. I will film some of my rolls soon and put them up here, then I can look back later in the 1000 flighthours project and see how it looked earlier :)

A change of style

I have taken a decision to change my style of grappling. For many years, I have played a really lazy game that was mostly build on waiting, relaxing and waiting for my opponent to make mistakes that I could take advantage of. Great style for me, because it is highly technical and doesn't demand too much of endurance or strength to be effective. However, now when many of my training partners get really good and start to match me technically plus get to know my game, they rarely make mistakes for me to exploit anymore. So if I have a day where I relax a little too much, I can get completely run over by some of these guys. And that is a beautiful thing, because it has led me to the decision, that I will try to change my style for a while.

Instead of the lazy game, I will try to be more aggresive in attacking and setting up my opponent to my advantage. I don't want to lay still and wait, but instead I will try to attack again and again, constantly putting pressure on my training partners.

I have been playing this game for about a week and a half now and it is doing a big difference. Ofcourse, I do it mostly with people who challenge me technically or athletically - beginners I still go nice and slow with, no idea in just smashing them :D

One thing I have realized though, is how much tougher this game is for my body. I am SO sore after training now. Probably also because I have had a month off training, but training with this intensity really burns me out. I need more sleep and more+better food to play this game. It is hard, but also a lot of fun. For instance, this attacking game has led me to experiment with the flying triangle guard pass. Really takes some commitment to do it, but it is awesome when it works. Caught it five times in sparring last week, VERY NIAAAICE!!

Project 1000 flighthours down by two hours this week :)

One month break + 5 hours training = FUCK!

Ok, so I ended up training for five hours yesterday and when I woke up this morning I felt like I would never be able to get out of the bed. Every muscle in my body hurts, I feel sooo busted right now. Had to skip all weightlifting today, but I'll get back to that later in the week :)

Here are two very inspiring clips I found, awesome flow... enjoy:

Rolling again!!

YES! Finally I can roll again! I started out doing just a little guard work and standup some days ago, and today I turned up the intensity and rolled almost 100%. For some strange reason, after training today, my knee felt completely drained for liquid. Like it just disappeared during training. AWESOME!!!

During the last few weeks, I have just been lifting a lot of weights, which has been really boring. Last saturday, we had two guys from the gym fighting amateur MMA for the first time. It went great, one win and one loss. Here is one of the fights with Nicolas from the gym:



Most people think of our gym as a grappling school, so it is pretty cool to show up at MMA tournaments and hit people in the face instead... just as a surprise :D

I am so excited over the rolling today, it was such a relief to be able to work on the mat again. I was wearing a big smile for the entire evening of training.

I have now added the first mileage to my 1000 flighthours project. Total of five hours of sparring over the last few days. 995 hours to go!! :)

Project 1000 flighthours

I am getting really desperate to train now, I can do absolutely nothing with this stupid knee :( All I do is hang out in the gym and lift weights, which bores me like hell.

So I have been thinking about a little project for myself I want to launch, when my knee is good again... "Project 1000 flighthours". I want to roll for 1000 hours and see what happens. I have no idea how long it is gonna take, but I am willing to give it a try. A year? Two years? Ten years? I am in the gym every day anyway, so I can always ask my friends if they wanna come by and roll a little. I think it is gonna be an exciting project and a lot of hard work.

I will use this blog to keep track of the hours and then evaluate when I one day finish it. I am eager to see how far I can go in 1000 hours of rolling.

Swollen knee :(

I have wanted to shoot some tutorials lately, but unfortunately I have spent a lot of my time in hospitals lately to have my knee checked. About a week ago it started to swell up and get really big. First, the doctors thought it might be an infection, then later when my leg started to swell, they thought I might have a blood clot in it. So I have been checked in every possible way and fortunately, it was only an irritation due to too many bumps on the mat. It's the penetration steps fault I guess :)

So I am out of the game for 4-6 weeks, which SUCKS. I can only do some weight training and I will still teach some classes in the gym. But I can't really show any techniques or roll :(

And if that wasn't enough, it has started to snow a lot here, it is difficult to get anywhere. So I am just lying in doors with a bad knee and can't do much really. I can only dream myself back to my wonderful vacation in the Philippines back in December....



I promise to post some cool stuff here again as soon as I can use my knee just a little :)

Old Vale Tudo clip

This clip is about four years old. It is from my old gym, where we held a small gym turnament in Vale Tudo. Back then, we trained a little more for self defense, so we figured we would allow knees, elbows and headbutts to the opponents head (not full force though) while wearing helmets. We had a fun day with some good matches, although I probably would not do this again today - our training has evolved into a more intelligent MMA sparring instead of just kicking eachothers ass like we did back then. I am the one wearing white kneepads, kicking people in the head :)

BJJ as a tool to handle emotions and pressures

BJJ is much more than the sport you see on the outside. It is much more than just the techniques, the history or the system.


One of the biggest values of BJJ training lies in the way it works as a tool to learn how to handle different emotions and pressures, that we don't normally experience in our daily life. Think about all the things you may feel, when you roll in class or competition:

• Pain
• Fear
• Nervousness
• Adrenaline
• Claustrophobia
• Limited breathing
• Exhaustion
• Panic
• Frustration
• Failure
  
• Etc.

Sometimes you have an easy roll and don't experience any of this and other times you go hard or you roll with someone who puts a lot of pressure on you. The most important thing to think of is, that no matter how many emotions and pressures you must go through in that roll, you always come out on the other side.

So if you roll and feel really uncomfortable because of some of these things, remember that it is exactly this experience that makes you stronger. It will end and when it does, you come out stronger on the other side. Next time it happens, you handle the pressure a little better and next time again a little more, untill in the end none of these things bother you at all. Nothing can make you panic, no matter under how much pressure you are.

And that is a super valuable real-life skill you develop from training in BJJ.