Started to produce my own line of bjj kimonos with my business partner Klaus, and after a lot of productions problems and samples we finaly got our first batch of kimonos, and we are really satisfied with the finale product. This is the best kimono that I have ever had, the fit is perfect, it is not to heavy and it has a simple design. Looking forward to try it out in London Open.
Next batch is going to be in black and blue. For more information about Mokahardware click here
This weekend Joachim Christensen and Theo Ginman from our academy was fighting in a danish MMA event, Royal Arena 2. This was Theos first pro MMA fight, and everything went according to the game plan. Clinch him up against the cage and go for the takedown. GnP and take the submission if it is there.
It can be really nervreking before the fight, so it is big a relief, when things go as planed.
Here is Theos fight
Joachim had a great fight against a good fighter from Sweden. Joachim did a great job standing, in the clinch and on the ground. It was more or less the same plans as Theos.
Both of the guys did really good and I’m very proud of them.
My own training has been on and off lately, but now I have started to train for London Open and the European Open No-Gi in october, and I can feel that it has been a while since I have trained hard, my body hurts in the morning, but it is a good feeling, and it is easier to motivate myself to train hard, when I have a goal. I think that it is going to be a great trip, there something like 10 guys going from the gym going to compete.
I’m going to start filming my sparring sessions again. Starting from tomorrow, so check in soon for more updates.
This was by far the biggest summer camp we had. With 97 participants from different countries. Was always Leo Vieira did a great job teaching us new stuff, not just new things, but he is always building on top of things that he already taught us the last time he was here. He showed us some really good concepts from the top and the buttom. Now we have many things that we need to work on, it is really motivating for all of us, especially for myself. It was great for once just to show up and train. I didnt have to think about anything, but my own training.
Saturday was a really special day, three guys that have been in BJJ since the very start in Denmark, was awarded the black belt. I have known them for more then 15 years. It was great to be there with them, when they got their belts. For two of them it came as a big surprise, you could see it in their faces and that’s how it should be. Now we are 7 black belt in the academy.
It is nice to see the team is getting stronger and stronger.
It was fantastic to roll with Leo again, he has the ability to make you roll much better then you would normally do, he somehow puts you in the situations that he just taught you, but in a very suttle way, and you almost don’t notice that he just gave you the position. For me that takes great skill. He guide you though it, with out saying anything. This is true mastery. He can also do the opposite. Make you feel that you don’t know a thing 🙂 We are looking forward to his next vist.
See you next year at summer camp 2013
This is the week of the CheckMat Denmark summer camp 2012 with Leo Vieira. This is going to be the biggest camp so far with about 100 participants from Denmark, Swedan, Norway, Belgium and Brazil. I’m really looking forward to this, it is going to be great to spend time with friends that you have not seen in a while.
And I sure that Leo as always have some new stuff to show us. 4 days just training, eating and sleeping. Wait that sounds like a normal week.
Last week we had 4 guys in a try out for a Danish team to fight in MMA against England next month. All the guys did really great, but only one got picked for the team, but it was really nice to see the guys in action. It is much easier to see what we need to work on in the future.
Last night I was watching some old videos of myself sparring in Rio in 2010. It was good, I could see that I roll differently now then back then. Some of the things I need to go back to, from the guard, especially the x-guard. I can really recommend that you film your sparring
Here is a small video of me and Rico Vieira rolling in the academy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRzMT13cZrw
I was out from training for about a month or more, but now I’m back, just much heavier and my cardio is not that great, but that just how it is. It has been a while since I have been this heavy, right now I’m about 89 kg, and normally I’m about 84-85 kg. I can really feel it in training, one good thing is that I’m much harder to sweep, but I can feel it when I have move my own body, it takes much more energi to get it to where I want to be.
Last friday I did my first freestyle wrestling class in a long while and I was almost dead after the warm up. But it was one of the best trainings that I had, in a long time. It was a really good group of guys, everybody was trying to go for different take downs. Afterwards I had a great feeling in the body, I almost felt high. That is what I love about this sport, it makes me feel good and it and I always want to come back for more.
Last week we had a seminar with Michelle Nicolini. A great seminar with focus on the foot and leg locks. Learned a lot of new stuff and it always nice to be at the other end of the class and just focus on my own training.
Today Lucas Leite is come to Copenhagen and will be teaching classes and a seminar on friday. Looking forward to this, and it good for me, when I teach to get new inspiration. These seminars is a investment in myself and the academy.
I will try to be better at posting, but lately I had a lot of other stuff on my mind, but stay tuned for more stuff.
See you on the mats
Easier said then done. If you focus too much on the next color of you belt , then you risk losing sight of what is important, and that is to improve your game. It is important that you have a clear goal,for instance improving enough to become a blue belt, not getting the belt in it self.
I have been told that my requirements for giving out new belts are too high, but the way I look at it is, that when you get your belt, you should be able to train in any gym in the world and not get steamrolled by the people at the same belt level. Of course there are going to be guys better then you. But you should be able you hang with almost all the guys there. Bacause there is nothing worse then having something that you don’t deserve. Just keep on training and next belt will come one day.
One of the most important things when we train Jiu Jitsu is to remain openminded to new techniques and concepts. It doesent matter if it is not part of your game, you still need to know what to do if somebody puts you in that position, and you might even learn something new or see things in a different perspective.
What will obstruct you the most is the fear of failure, it keeps you from competition, trying new things in practice and so on. It is not that you should want to lose or fail at what you do, but that in order to get better you have to try something new, something you are not already good at or familiar with or you will stagnate, and it will take much longer to get proficient and succesfull in Jiu Jitsu.
There are no short cuts, so I will see you on the mats.
Have not been training that much lately. I host the biggest BJJ competition in Denmark, the Danish Open. This year is was the 7th time that we do that, and I think that we get better and better at it. There is so much work in having a competition that size. I fixed the homepage, so that the brackets, schedule and every thing is more automated. This will in the end save a lot of time.
This year the kids fought round robin, to make sure that they would get a lot of fights. From 16 years and up we did single elemination. Everything went after the plan, with only minor errors.
The nice thing is that all the brackets are online, completely updated. You will be able to see how fare you got in your bracket. This is a really nice feature, that I have not seen before.
Check out this bracket Purple Belt Adult (18 years and up) Male Leve -76.0 kg. If you click on one of the names, you can see that fighters profile, how many fights he had, what titles he won in DOBJJ.
The next competition is Dansk Grappling Liga, here I use a similar system for brackets and so on. http://grapplingliga.dk/ with all kinds of stats, like most popular submission, who won the most fights. What kind of submission that the fighter uses. ect.
Had and inflamation in my shoulder this week, so I only trained once so far, hopefully tomorrow will be better
I did not update my blog the last week of my training for the europeans, I was to tired, sick, injured and had other things to do. I still have some videos from the last days of training, I will have them ready as soon as I finish the fight videos from the competitions.
I twisted my knee two weeks before we had to leave for Portugal, not as bad as last year, but bad enough that I had to sit out the some days of training, but I think that I had trained hard and was in good shape for the competitions, the only thing is your head in that situation. You start to worry about the fights more them you would have, or at least I do. I also got a cold, I always do that this time of year, I’m not build for this kind of weather 🙂
The training every morning, was really good for my preperation and I felt in good shape. I was tired in between the fights, but I think that was because of the waiting and the sickness.
My first fight was good I think, almost got taken down once and he got me in a reverse armbar, but it I got out of it and passed his guard. My second fight was really bad, I got into his haft guard and he did a lock down on my leg and that was more or less the rest of the fight, could not move out of it, and I lost the fight.
Started monday with being as tired as it was the end of the week, I think that I did not get enough rest during the weekend. But what can you do, I’m in the last weeks of my training, so I just have to push though, I think that everybody was really tired from the last weeks training, but people are looking better and better and I think that we are going to have a good eurpeans. The guys that have an game plan in their Jiu Jitsu is so much harder to defend against, because they always know where they are going, instead if the guy who is just looking for openings. When you are fighting a guy with a game plan, a guy that is good at imposing his game on you, you have to try to get him out of his comfort zone and dont try to play into his game, because that is just what he wants. So if you know that he likes to play the deep half guard, dont go in there, only go there if he puts you there, I know that this is hard to do, but that is what you have to do.
This is what I have been trying to work on since I started my training for the championship and I worked on being more strategic, I just moved up into senior 1, so now I only have 5 min to get my points, so I dont have so much time so score my points, and if you fall behind you have to work hard to get back into the game. This changes the way you have to play your game.
This week I trained differently from the morning to the evening, in the evening classes I trained more defence, because I was tired, so not to risk getting injured, I did not go that hard in the evening and work on my defence work, allowing people to pass my guard, getting my back and so on. I used this a lot when I’m tired, then I can still train and get something out of it. You just have to get used to getting tapped, but that is all part of the training. Just remember that training is not about winning, it is about getting better. You cant always just train at what you’re good at, or you will have big holes in your game. So leave your ego at the door.
This week I got 11 training sessions done, two of them physical training the rest Jiu Jitsu, I took the weekend off, because I could feel that my arm was a little over worked, so I took the decision to sit out the competition training saturday. I think that it was a wise decision, because my arm feels a lot better them it did yesterday, so now I’m ready for a new week.
As always I tried to film as much of my sparring as posible