Swedish Open 2011

Group photo at the Swedish Open BJJ

Last weekend the biggest BJJ competition in scandinavia was held in Stenungsund, Sweden. Usually we go there as a big team, but this year we only had 9 fighters competing. I think that it was because there has been a lot of competitions right next to each other. For this competition we worked on fixing some of the tactical mistakes that people did at the SOBJJ and the Danish Team & Beginners Competition, people were giving to many points away in the fights and sometimes loosing fights that they could have won. So we did some simple ajustments, that made a big difference. We got a total of 6 gold and one bronze medal. This is the first time in the competitions history that we did not place in the top 3 academies. I don’t see that as a problem, it was just because we did not have that many people competing this time, next year we will go in full force again. I was working as a referee so did not have the chance to coach our fighters, but I have seen all the fights afterwards on video. There are still a lot to work on. The next big challenge is the Europeans in Portugal. I think that these last competitions have shown me many things that we need to work on for the European Open, not just the students but also for myself and my training partners.

This week have been a little slow with the training, I caught cold at the competition, it always the same thing. I always get a little sick when we stay a whole weekend in a gymnasium in the winter. Training saturday was really good, only sparring for 1.5 hours. Hurt my wrist when slow rolling with one of the guys. He turned his hip and landed on my bend wrist. It hurt like hell, but today it seems a lot better. I give it a test tomorrow.

I filmed almost all my sparring sessions on saturday, you can see them all in the playlist below. When I roll now I try to stay active on the buttom and really tight on the top. I will use video to improve my game for the eurpeans.

And I just saw that I put ThatsHowIRoll.com and not dot biz 🙂

Second Danish Team and beginners competition 2011

My team in Denmark, CheckMat all the way

Last weekend we hosted the second danish team and beginners competition in a city close to Copenhagen, called Hillerød. It is a really nice event, I like the team event especially, because it builds a great feelling of team sprite, it is almost like a football match. CheckMat did great, we won the team cometition. The only problem was, that this year the danish BJJ community did not support the event, so in the end it was only two teams in +76.0 kg white belts. CheckMat won 5 out of 7 posible fights. But I talked with some of the team leaders and they told me that next year, they will.

For the competition I made a new site with a new way to sign up for the competition, you have to make a profile and then sign up, this in it self is not something new, but for every competition, you have to log in, with the same profile. This way you can see all your fight history, all the brackets that you fought in and how far you got in them. This was the first competition where we filmed all the fights and uploade them to youtube and updated the brackets with the videos. So if you go to the Danish Open BJJ site at http://danishopenbjj.dk/ you will be able to see all the brackets and videos of the fights, a really nice feature. You can also see the estimated fight time of the backet and so on. I think that it is cool, and in the future it will have much more information in the site.

I was making a little highlight from the competition and when I was editing the video I was looking at the fights of our students and I really happy to see that many of the techniques that we have been teaching the for the last few months, being applied in the fights. Sweeps, passing the guard, submissions and so on. Fantastic, this makes me really happy as a coach.

The CheckMat +76.0 kg Team

CheckMat warriors

My own training has not been that steady these last two weeks, just one time a day. The video from the competition took a lot longer to make and upload then I thought, but I think it was worth it. But from next week I will start to train again. The europeans are coming up, really looking forward to it, the training, the trip with all the guys and the fighting. Just not the dieting.

So in the next bloggs I will be telling you about my preparations for the europeans, so keep coming back 🙂

A highlight of the SOBJJ 2011

Mokahardware.Com

MokaHardware.com sponsored the Danish Team and Beginners competition

Scandinavian Open BJJ 2011

Arte Suave at the SOBJJ 2011

This weekend I fought in SOBJJ 2011 and for some reason I was very unmotivated, I think that the problem was the small number of sign ups and the lack of food. I had to cut down from 85 kg to 80 kg in 1.5 week. The good thing was that I did not have any nerves before the competition. But the problem with that, for me was that I did not have the same drive and concentration in the fight, and that also shows in the result. Two fights and two losses.

Shimon Mochizuki & Bruno Mathias

The first fight I lost with one advantage, to one of my first teachers from Sweden, Leo Neves. I could feel that the cut was a little hard on my body so I did not feel very strong and could not make any offensive moves, that worked.

In my second fight I made a stupid move and left my arm out in the air and got caught in a armbar. As soon as I made the pull for the deep half guard, I knew that it was wrong.

But on the bright side, I got some really good advice from my teacher Leo Vieira, so now I have already started to work on that. So now I need to changing game plan for the europeans.That is why it is important to have a great teacher that can tell you where you went wrong. I dont think that I will compete again before the europeans, so now it is just hard work in the academy untill january.

For my club it was a fantastic weekend. On friday there was a promotion at the academy and we got 3 new black belts, this was a very special thing, because this is only the second time that some one from Denmark get the black belt. And on saturday and sunday we won 11 golds, 8 silver and 4 bronze total. It was very nice to see that the things that we work on in the club works at the competition.