So, first report from my Thailand trip :) Internet access has been pretty limited up until now, so not been able to post much here.
I just spend a week in amazing Koh Samui, Thailand, and had the pleasure of stopping by the SuperPro Samui gym on the island for some training.
The gym is (naturally) mainly a Muay Thai gym, but they have adapted MMA and Submission Wrestling into their program for those interested. Most people coming here, are obviously there to learn Muay Thai, so the MMA classes are quite small.
The gym is located aruond five minutes on motorbike from the biggest tourist beach on the island (Chaweng). Walking to the beach would probably be pretty long from there, but there is a pool if you really want to swim. The place is one big building with rooms for rent at typical thai prices (=rediculous cheap) and includes free training every day.
The facilities were pretty nice although I found the gym itself pretty small and cramped. It is basically a small weight lifting area, two rings and a cage. Then there is a very small matted area with about 6-8 heavybags. Much smaller than I am used to in my own (luxury ;)) gym back home.
The MMA/grappling class is done in the cage, so there is limited space. But it is ok for 3-4 couples max to spar at the same time.
The trainer when I was there, was a big guy from Armenia. Seriously, this guy was BIG. With an obvious judo background, biceps the size of my thighs and a passionate love for 100% muscle-style headlocks of all types, it was quite a bitch to roll with him :D Being in complete vacation shape, I was not really in the mood for power vs. power rolls, but we had some good rolls and I was more sore than ever before in my life the day after the training from being folded, cranked and crushed in every imaginable way for two hours.
The training itself was mostly sparring. About 10-15 minutes of technical (=headlock) training and then some rolls. The guys training there (about 5 that day) was really, really nice and I had some great chats with them about training and traveling.
Technical level was quite low, but ofcourse, I guess only few people come to Thailand to learn anything but Muay Thai, so I was not surprised. I had some good, nice rolls with the guys and it was great to do some physical training on my vacation.
I also ran into a really cool guy from Germany, David Marcina, who fought my friend Thomas La Cour a few years back, when I was in the corner. At first I didn't recognized him but suddently it came to me. He told me he has had more than 30 fights now so that was very impressive. Great sparring with him, he had a solid base in the grappling and had improved lots since I saw him fight in Denmark.
All in all it was cool to visit the gym, even if it was only for one day. Samui is a fantastic place and I would recommend anyone thinking of going to do it. Muay Thai training looked really good, there were some very good guys there. Unfortunately, my hip injuty prevents me from joining in (plus the fact that I am too lazy for that crazy training LOL).
Today, I just flew on to Phuket, and in five minutes I will walk to Tiger Muay Thai gym. They asked if I can teach some of their grappling classes and I will gladly do that. Looking forward to meet the guys there and get some good training out of it :)
Sunday, I am going to Thailand for about three weeks. I have found some MMA gyms down there, where I will try and do some training, so expect some travel reports here in the blog.
So I finally got past the first 200 hours of sparring for my flighthours project. I have been having a little problems with my right shoulder for the last month and a half or so, so I have not been able to lift any weights or do full intensity sparring. It is getting better now though, and I am slowly starting to pick up the pace in sparring again. I have shot some sparring video for the flighthours archive.
As always, I have a very specific list on what I am working on improving in sparring at the moment. I had a great period before the last competition, where I worked on my A-game, and after that I have felt more like playing around with a little more "advanced" techniques, which my sparring shows very clearly.
My focus have been on implementing technically difficult moves, just to challenge myself to raise the bar for what I can execute in full resistance sparring. Several of the moves have been inspired by Ryan Hall's game. The current list looks like this:
- Rolling backtake from sidecontrol - Inverted guard as defense and offense - "Double-jump" guardpasses (I will make a video on this shortly) - Setting up x-guard and sweeping - Fireman's carry takedown - Basic mount attacks from Saulo's videos (gi)
I will have to wait a little longer to work on the fireman's carry since I can not yet do any wrestling due to my shoulder injury :,(
Other updates:
- I have just gotten off the phone with Caleb from the Fightworks Podcast for an interview for the podcast. I hope it turns out well :)
- We are working our asses off these days to get the new gym ready. I hope we can start training in the beginning of next week!
- Sunday, I am launching a new grappling tournament held in our gym with the exotic name "Shogun Invitational" :D The concept is to make a tournament that is easy to arrange and easy to participate in. The big tournaments are awesome, but for many people it can feel like too much work to prepare and participate in them. This is a once-a-month submission wrestling tournament where people only get one fight. They know their opponent on beforehand, so they can prepare for that one fight, and they don't have to wait around all day. Hope it will be a succes, even my BJJ kids are competing there so really looking forward to it!
- Next sunday, I am off to Thailand for 19 days with my girlfriend. I have looked at some different MMA camps down there, where we will definitely stop by for some grappling training. I will be sure to write some posts about my experiences there :)
Yesterday was the best day of 2009. Not that that should be something spectacular, since only six days of the year had passed by, but it was really a good day.
First of all, I won the Best Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Blog of the Year 2008 contest from Fightworks Podcast!! I actually didn't expect that at all, since I "only" placed 5th last year, so it was really cool to get an email with the result. A big thanks to all you out there who voted for me, I am really honored that people apparently like my little blog and actually are reading it. I mostly do it for my own sake anyways :) Big thanks to the guys from the Fightworks Podcast for doing an awesome show and I can't wait to receive the prizes that look really sweet. I will definitely do a review on the video and book I have won and post it here.
Secondly, later in the day, we finally closed the deal for expansion of our gym! We have been working really hard over the last 3 years to expand our gym since we have really outgrown our current facilities, and finally it happened so it was a HUGE relief. We have started moving today and the new place is gonna be killer. Only 50 meters from our current, and we are gonna have 3 matspaces, a cage, a boxing ring and everything else we have dreamed about for so long.
Third, after two weeks of almost nonstop programming, I launched the new version of my danish martialarts website Martialarts.dk. I have been running the site for seven years now and it is really cool to see it still thrive with 3500-4000 unique visitors a day (that's a lot for a country with 6 million people total).
So all in all, January 6th is a pretty serious candidate for the best day of the year 2009! :D
Thanks to everyone who voted on the poll for what videos you think I should do next. There was an overwhelming interest in guard defense, so I have started to plan out a handful of tutorials on this subject.
First one is my take on how to defend the double under pass, which is a very common and basic guardpass. Basically, I have three plans of defense when people try to use this pass, which I explain about in the video. I hope you don't mind I mumble a bit in the video and also is quite pale - I had a TERRIBLE hangover when shooting it LOL
Next video is already shot (universal guard defense tactics - or some other name like that haha) but I need some more sparring footage with it before I release it. Will make some next week!
So I finally made it to the first 200 flighthours out of the planned 1000. Damn it is gonna take a long time to get there! :D However, when I think about it, 200 full hours of sparring is quite a lot, and when I look back on the sparring videos I have uploaded here along the way, I see a very big improvement in my game during the period. Technique-wise, I haven't changed a lot. 80% of the moves I use are still the same, but what has really improved is my timing, setups and ability to "read" the game when I roll.
This is really one of the most fantastic things about Jiu Jitsu. I often talk to beginners who are frustrated about rolling because they feel "blind" to what is going on. They can't recognize positions, see the holes or predict what is going to happen. This is one thing, that I really feel has been my biggest improvement over the last year or so. The amount of information that is being processed in my head during sparring is growing bigger and bigger, and I can't stop being amazed about how the brain can analyze more and more details in such a complex thing as live wrestling. I enjoy every single minute of training Jiu Jitsu more than ever, and I am glad I have this beautiful sport in my life.
This year has been amazing trainingwise. I have improved a lot myself, but even more important is, that the team has really grown to a whole new level. I have so many skilled guys available to spar and train with, no matter if I wanna do BJJ, wrestling, MMA or Muay Thai. All the time, new talents are joining in, and I can't wait to guide them to many great experiences through combat sports.
I have high hopes for 2009. We are going to expand the gym with double matspace, boxing ring, cage and everything else we have been dreaming about. A lot of our guys are looking at competing. Some guys are going to fight for the first time, and some guys are planning on moving up to professional MMA, so I will be very busy coaching all of them together with the rest of the instructors. My BJJ kids are looking really promising as we have a lot of talent and enthusiasm on the team at the moment. I expect them to demolish any competition they might face by the end of this year. I better hurry up tapping them out before they grow to my own size in a few years! :)
As far as the blog goes, I have a lot of new videos coming up, both instructionals and sparring. I have had a minor shoulder injury for the last few weeks, so I have not been able to finish them, but they are on the drawing board and will be online soon, so check back often :)
Oh yes, and dont forget to vote for me in the Best BJJ Blog of 2008 competition!!
I think most people who train in sports like BJJ find certain training partners along the way, who they "click" really well with both in training and socially. One of mine is Christian Montes, whom I met in his New York gym, Ronin Athletics, back in 2004 when it was very small with less than five guys on the mat. It was immediately obvious, that we had a very similar approach to BJJ training, and whenever I train with him, I always get a ton of little details to take home and implement in my own game. Although I only go visit for few days every year, I consider Christian one of my very best friends and I feel that our almost parallel careers and development of technical level within BJJ, provides us with some unique sparring that is really worth a lot to me, both on the mat and business wise.
Since my first visit to New York, I have been coming back every year to train and hang out with my friends in the small gym, that has now grown to a full size, full time place in the center of Manhattan. I know there are many world class instructors just around the corner, and I always plan on going there for training as well, but every time I end up just hanging out with all the guys at Ronin. Training there reminds me so much of training at home in my own gym. The vibe and people are very similar and I really enjoy it, which is always the number one reason for me to train. NEXT time though, I will go visit Renzo and the other gyms... maybe ;-)
What that said, here is a short clip I had Christian Montes do for this blog. His offensive game from cross sides top is pretty similar to mine, but I think he has quite a few cool details that are worth checking out. Enjoy the video and stop by Ronin if you are in NYC! :)
Ok so here is a short video on my primary offensive game from the sidecontrol position. It is very simple, and there is not really anything revolutionizing in it. Just thought it would be good to outline it in a video and flowchart, mostly for my own sake, but if anyone out there can get anything out of it, then that would be cool too :)
Hope you enjoy it! As always, comments, ideas, questions, suggestions etc. are more than welcome :)
Ok so here is one of the tutorial videos I shot while I was in New York. The armdrag single is my number one takedown and one I have been working a lot on for a long time. I have pulled it off countless times and many people have asked me to do a tutorial on it, so here we go.
Really it is a pretty simple move, the key is all in the little details, which I have tried to explain as good as possible in the video. I also added some - more or less successful - examples from sparring and competition in the end. Speed and explosiveness is needed for this move, just like most other wrestling, but with some practice I think anyone can pull it off.
I hope you like the video, feel free to leave a comment so I know that someone is actually watching it :) Thanks to Gunni Nelson for the help as dummy!
So, originally it was my plan to go to New York for nine days and spend all my time on training. When I was in Mexico and only had a few days left, I checked the weather report for New York and made a quick decision to go to Cuba and Jamaica instead. Missed the president election in NY and lot of the training, but the experiences of the extended travel was definitely worth it.
When I got to New York, I really wanted to do some training, since I hadn't done anything but drink and relax for three weeks. Unfortunately, most of the guys were at the NAGA tournament that weekend, so it only ended up being a little training thursday evening and a very good session on sunday.
I heard that brown belt Gunnar Nelson from Iceland - who just fought and won in my last Adrenaline show - was in town for the NAGA tournament (in which he won gold no-gi and silver gi btw), so I called him up and invited him for some training. Despite I - as the only one - had a TERRIBLE hangover, and was seriously out of shape from following the Cancun Conditioning program for a long time, we had a really cool training with lots of nice details shared between us.
As always, training in Ronin feels like coming home, and this time was no exception. I wish I can have some more time there next time I am in town, which - statistically - will happen inevitably around fall next year :)
I shot some video of the training, which you can find here underneath in an uncut version. Also, we shot some tutorial videos, that I will put only within the next week or so. Good stuff worth waiting for!
Hope you enjoy the videos and maybe catch a detail or two from them :)
Today, I am leaving for a trip to New York and Mexico. I will - as always - visit my friends at Ronin Athletics for some good training. I will update this blog with some photos and descriptions about the training, so make sure you check it out the next few weeks :)
Yesterday, a danish TV channel was doing a small feature on Mixed Martial Arts with a profile of one of the most active fighters here in the country, Kenneth Rosfort. I travelled to USA on a training trip with Kenneth in 2003, where we were talking about starting MMA careers. He has come a long way since then and is currently holding a 10-3 record. Very good athlete.
In addition to the interview, they needed someone to demo some MMA in the background, and me and three other guys from the gym jumped in. It was freezing cold and there was dew on the mats so they were EXTREMELY slippery, but other than that, I think that it went pretty well.
You might not understand danish, but you can see the clip here:
Had a great workout this afternoon with some takedowns and after that an outdoor session with our new tractor tires.
Since the competition and A-game training is over, I am now going back to focusing on learning new techniques for my game. John, a wrestler from Oregon, is visiting Denmark for four months and dropped by my gym for some BJJ training. We don't have any wrestling in Denmark besides very few people doing Greco-Roman, so it is cool to get a lot of new inputs from him, and I am trying to learn as much as possible these months. Currently I am working on incorporating a fireman's carry, low single spin and a duckunder in my wrestling game. Those are all something I have never really worked on before, so I still have lots to learn, but I feel like I am making progress.
As promised, I recorded some video from the training. The first one of the wrestling is just a raw edit and is mostly for my own reference to remember and review my training and technique. If any of you out there feel like watching it and maybe get a few good things out of it, then that's great. The other video I did a quick edit on, perhaps I'll use it as a little promotion video for our gym's new training toys :)
For four months, I have trained no-gi only. Both because of the summer heat, but also because we have had some MMA and Submission Wrestling tournaments coming up, so we have planned the training for those of our athletes that has been competing there.
This week we started training with the gi again. I almost forgot how HOT it is to train with, but I know it is only a matter of getting used to it. Other than that, I have had some really cool experiences with it. It has been awesome to rediscover all the little details of the gi-game and I have tried to focus on really using the cloth when rolling. My competition A-game is still in my reflexes, but I have managed to pull off quite a few gi sweeps and submissions. I also met another old friend of gi-training... finger injuries, yaaay! :) Friday, saturday and sunday classes will still be no-gi, and I am looking forward to do both.
We just got three big tractor tires for the gym, and I was using them for my tuesday workout yesterday. Awesome training. Workout of tomorrow is me and a few of the guys from the gym are meeting up for a Sean Sherk-style session at noon (without the roids though ;)). One hour takedowns and one hour tire-workout. It will probably be raining, so it will be Rocky style training!! My videocam is in the gym since I am working on some new tutorial clips for this blog, so maybe I'll film some of the training tomorrow and put it up here.
Other than that training is going really well and the gym is packed with people. We are signing new members up daily and are definitely in need of more space as soon as possible, although it is not easy to find here. My beginners classes in BJJ and MMA are overcrowded with new talent and enthusiasm. A LOT of these guys are gonna be monsters in a year of two, so I am gonna be busy as coach and also I need to work hard so I am not gonna get my ass kicked in sparring :D
Oh yeah, in 16 days I am going to New York for the fifth year in a row to visit my good friends at the Ronin Athletics gym. Can't wait to hang out and train with all those guys again!
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