Pecs to Warsaw 4-10-14

I decided to take the train out of Pecs to Budapest, and then onto Warsaw. It was going to be a decently long trip, although most of it was going to be overnight in a “bunk” car. I was pretty excited about it, as I had never has a long train ride before. The longest was from Strasbourg to Zurich. I missed out on the previous evenings training because I decided to eat some McDonalds, which was a stupid idea. I don’t even eat that stuff at home, but I was tired and not in the mood to try to figure out the Hungarian menus nor did I was to assume anyone spoke English. Sometimes you gamble and win, this one was a loss. I ended up sticking in the hostel all evening until the next morning before it was time to head to the train station.

The ride out of Pecs wasn’t too bad. I picked up a snack and some drinks before heading out, not knowing if there would be a snack car on the train to Budapest. There ended up not being one, but it didn’t matter. The woman who ended up sitting across from me laid down a couple of Hungarian to English books before she sat down. She was attractive for her age, well maintained. However, she had to be my mother age at a minimum. I decided to stay in my own little realm in my head, reading Fight Club on my tablet. 

I always enjoyed Fight Club the movie, but never got into reading the book. I figured since I had the extra time, I would go ahead and check it out. Thankfully the book and the movie seemed to be pretty much the same, there was very little deviation between the two. I really liked how they both started, the peeling away from consumerism, the cries for minimalism, the echoes of anarchy, the use of fighting for meditation. But then things take a deeper and darker turn down the road of insanity, and that I couldn’t really get into. It almost felt as though the author needed to tie everything back together in a hurry or risk having to write another book. I think he should have went the route of writing another book or two. 

The fighting for mediation part really hits home for me. I enjoy some “zazen”, or “sitting down, shutting up” as Soto Zen Master Brad Werner would say. But I also enjoy combat. While our training combat is “safe”, there is that risk of death or injury in the back of your mind. An analogy that I use for explaining why I do what I do to people who don’t train is this: My dog is a German Shepherd Dog, she’s great. Although a bit high energy. If I don’t play with her, run her around, take her to the dog park, or anything stimulating to help her burn off energy then she acts up. Her discipline goes out the door (although by American standards people still believe her to be very well trained) and she messes with me. Commands she would normally follow with only being told once will start to take 3-4 times with a stern voice from me if she doesn’t get that exercise. I’m a lot like my dog. If I don’t train, I start to get irritable or want to “fight the man”, whoever “the man” might be. 

There have been some rough times in my life while training Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. The loss of my career, having troubles getting back into the workforce due to having a very specific set of skills, the threat of losing all my valuable “stuff” to pay bills, wrecking my credit because I couldn’t find a new job, losing a girlfriend who I thought was the one I would end up spending a lot of my life with, etc. The moment I step on the mats and have that first roll of the night, that all goes away. The person across from me doesn’t care what I have going on in my life at that moment, they only know that I want to hurt them. And all I know is that they want to hurt me. The little “zen” state I hit of not thinking, only reacting, is great for my mental health. It may not be great for my BJJ game, but it’s done me good so far in life. There hasn’t been a night of sparring where I get off the mat and immediately start thinking of my problems. They just don’t exist anymore at that point. I’m sure just about everyone who trains that reads this can relate in some way, and those who don’t train are probably struggling to figure out how in the hell it works this way. It just does. 

So anyway, back to the ride on the train. It was pretty uneventful overall. Just the older cougar reading her books, and glancing up at me from time to time. I had the feeling that she thought I may be American, but because I never spoke she couldn’t tell for sure. I figured maybe she wanted to practice her English skills with me, but I was too entrenched in my digital novel. After about a three hour ride we arrived at the Budapest station.

I had about 2 hours to kill, so I walked around for a bit. I found a money changer and changed some of my Euros and Swiss Francs out for some Hungarian Fornits. I grabbed a bottle of water, a beer, and went outside the station to take a couple of quick pictures. There was a restaurant next to the tracks, so I headed over there to grab a quick bite to eat before catching my ride to Warsaw. 

The night train from Budapest to Warsaw wasn’t horrible. My cabin mates were a young Polish couple who spoke pretty good English. I left the cabin early on to go try and get some writing done for the blog, but ended up playing portal for a couple of hours instead. Around 2300 I decided I would go back to the bunk car and try to get some sleep.

The best that I can describe the “sleep” that I got was that of just having my eyes shut, and being aware of every single damn bump that the train hit. I knew my cabin mates were getting up around 0400 because there stop was coming around that time. When the train finally made the stop, the guy of the couple was nice enough to “wake” me up and give me some advice about being in Poland. Watch out for pickpockets, lock the cabin door when they left, etc. I thanked him and tried to fall asleep, but had no luck.

Somewhere in Slovakia

                                                             The station at Budapest

Rickson Gracie Pecs 04/07/14 - 04/09/14

I contacted Remy from Rickson Gracie Hungary back in January about visiting his gym. Remy had been one of the more helpful people during this whole trip in terms of helping me with logistics and maintaining contact with me throughout the planning process. A lot of the techniques that I discuss in the post will be generally glossed over due to them coming from Rickson himself and maintaining the small things we have within the association. So, more or less this will be more about the country and people, and less about the training itself. But there will be Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in the post, so don’t fret!

I took a flight out of Rome on Monday, a bit later than the Zurich guys. This meant I wouldn’t being saying farewell to them in person. Most of the goodbyes were said the night before after dinner. I owe them a lot for their support and taking me in and treating me like family. This leg of the journey would prove be the start of travel difficulties for me. Language barriers, much different cultural norms, and a host of other things.

I knew when I flew into Budapest that I would need to catch a train to Pecs, the city I would be staying in over the next few days. I wasn’t entirely sure where the train station was, or how I was going to get there. Thankfully, the young lady at the information desk of the airport spoke enough english for her and I to communicate what I wanted and how I was going to get there. I was to take a bus to a metro stop, a metro through 5-6 stops, get off and jump on another metro to the main train station. From the main train station, I would need to navigate through the self service ticketing machines to purchase the ticket for the 3 hour train ride into Pecs. 

I ended up being able to get the tickets I needed, and getting on the trains that I needed to be on. The final long train, I opted to spend an extra $8 to ride in “first class”, not knowing what it would entail. The first class car wasn’t much different from the second class car. The biggest different was there being less people and slightly more leg room. There was no drink or food service, but there was a toilet! I ended up using the time to finish up the blog entries for the Rome competition. 

Passing through most on Hungary was an eye opening experience. The land looked beautiful and serene for the most part. Random small villages dotted the landscape, some of which we stopped at to let passengers on and off at. Outside of Budapest, the villages looked familiar to the old USSR photos we used to see as a child. A lot of the villages looked to still be in the 1960’s or the 1970’s. Small cars, people hanging out at the small train stations, looks of poverty all around. I was not in Western Europe anymore. I would’t call the landscape depressing, but it was depressed for sure. 

I made it into Pecs without any incident. The first thing I though of was how in the hell am I getting to my hostel? I looked really quick to see if there was any wifi in the area, sure enough there was. I loaded up my Google Maps and started mapping out routes before I realized that class was starting at the dojo, which was on the opposite side of town. I quickly rerouted to the dojo, which was only about 15-20 minutes away from the station, by foot, with a large cumbersome backpack. I initially walked right by the location of the dojo, not realizing it was in a location behind the main street and it’s buildings. Thankfully I had the website up for the gym location on my phone from earlier and noticed a little snippet stating that it was behind a specific business, so I followed the directions and was there about a minute or two later. 

When I walked in, I was greeted with Hungarian. I just smiled and nodded, looking around for Remy. He was in the middle of teaching class, but looked up and recognized me right away and welcomed me in. I dropped my bag to the side and waited for a stopping period for him to come over and chat with me. I explained that I thought I would be in Pecs earlier but had misread the actual travel time for the train. He didn’t mind and directed me to the area that I could change into my uniform in. 

When I came back out, the team was drilling a “smash pass” from open guard. I’m familiar with the pass, but can never seem to get it to work on opponents that are my size or larger. One of the keys, Remy told me, was to use the grips at the knees like a steering wheel to turn your opponent in the direction that you wanted to pass him in. 

Next up was positional sparing from guard. Remy lined people up down the mats. After every 2 minute round, the top person would move on to the next person, with the bottom person staying in place until all the top people had worked their way through the line, then we would switch and repeat. I played it pretty safe during the whole ordeal, as there were many white belts in the academy, and I’m not one to beat up white belts unless their name starts with “Nate”. 

The last portion of the sparring was normal sparring. I was able to train with a handful of people during this period, including Remy. Everyone was pretty strong, even the young lady that I ended up with about halfway through. She seemed pretty frustrated that she couldn’t get her sweeps to work on me, but that’s the benefit of having a decent base and being about 40 kilos heavier. When I sparred with Remy, I thought something was amiss. I was able to sweep him and control him very easily during the round. I didn’t let it pump up my ego, but rather assumed he was seeing what all I was about. 

The last round of the night ended up being with a blue belt and we had a pretty good session. I don’t recall the guys name, but I do recall his generosity. When I asked Remy about is there was a laundry nearby, the blue belt offered to wash my laundry for me. I told him, through Remy, that I appreciated the offer but that I didn’t want to have someone I just met having the responsibility of doing a weeks worth of my dirty laundry for me. He wouldn’t take no for an answer, so I thanked him graciously and handed over the laundry to him. Remy ended up explaining that stuff like this was the norm in Hungary, that people will treat you like family without hardly knowing you. I thought it was pretty cool. 

Remy was kind enough to give me a ride to my hostel, as I had no idea where it was from the academy. In the following days I would find it to be a relatively easy 30 minute walk to and from the hostel. When we arrived in the area of the hostel it was dark out. It was pretty sinister looking in the fact that it didn’t look to be in the best part of town and the entrance was in a dark alleyway. It looked bad enough to Remy that he wanted to walk me up to the door to make sure I wasn’t mugged. I started to have second thoughts about having chooses the place. All in all, the hostel had about 95% positive reviews from both men and women, so it couldn’t have been that bad. 

I rang the bell to be allowed in and was greeted by a french woman around my age who explained that the owner of the hostel was taking a shower and would be with me in a little while. The owner was also around my age, and also French. He and his wife were very nice people. They had the most fun little 7 month of baby that seemed to always bee in a great mood and willing to smile at everyone at the drop of a dime. Csaba, the owner, was going to head down to the local store and asked if I would like to tag along. I said sure, so he and I headed down the street to pick up some goods. I picked up some juice and water, and a Hungarian beer that I had never seen before. A few bottles of water, juice, and the beer ended up running me somewhere in the neighborhood of about $2 USD. This was going to help my budget out a ton!

We got back to the hostel, I had my beer, updated the blog for the IBJJF tournament and headed to bed. I was planning on training the next morning with Remy’s academy.

I woke up around 0830 in the morning and realized that I had forgot to set my alarm for the morning training session which started at 0800. If I were to leave right then, I would get to the academy with about 30 minutes to train. I decided against it and planned on hitting the evening class. The rest of the day I wandered around Pecs, taking in the sights, doing some photography, and going to the local mall to buy some hygiene products from the supermarket inside. The time flew by, and before too long it was time to head to the academy. 

Because I waited entirely too long to catch up on the blog, I don’t remember a whole lot from training that day. I do recall a lot of tough white belts that I had to spar who were coming after me like it was the Mundials. The friendly blue belt from the day before brought my laundry back to the academy after class, and I found out that he cut hair for a living. I told Remy I was in need of a haircut and asked if the blue belt would mind if I made an appointment. I thought it would be a great way to get my hair cut and to pay him back for his previous generosity. He didn’t have his appointment book with him, so said that he would send Remy a text with what time I could come by the next day. Remy asked if I wanted to come in and roll with him the next morning, I said absolutely. He told me that he would pick me up from the hostel around 0815 in the morning. 

Remy was right on time the next morning. During the ride we talked a bit about why he moved from the Netherlands to Hungary. He explained that his wife was half Hungarian and always wanted to move back to Hungary. Things kind of worked out for him and his family at some point financially and so they decided to move to Hungary. We discussed the location BJJ scene in Hungary, and it was apparent that he was really the only knowledgeable person around Pecs. He said there were some other schools there previously, but that they were run by people with no experience. So when Remy came to town, people from the other gyms would stop by his academy or see his team compete and would be impressed. This inadvertently shut the other hobby academies down. And rightfully so. 

We rolled for a bit when we got to the academy, and as I expected, our previous session was just him feeling me out. Remy’s game and pressure were a work of art. For only being a purple belt, he felt like a pretty seasoned brown belt. There wasn’t much I was able to do to him. After awhile, he gave me some advice about certain aspects of my game. One of the main things that stood out was that he “expected more and better pressure from someone who came from a Rickson Gracie affiliate”. I took that a little hard, but I understood what he was saying. My side control was a bit lacking in pressure, but more of a locked in controlling side control. He showed me some different drills that he uses to refine his pressure from side control, but asked that I not let the details out of the affiliation. 

There was another aspect of Remy’s game that kind of shook my world up. When I stood up in his guard to a standing pass it was like I had to squat the weight of a 500 pound man. I was amazed by this because I had never felt such weight from someone lighter than myself. It was a struggle to stand straight up, if I could at all. This was another little tidbit I picked up from him, and another that I can’t discuss the details of publicly. 

The last thing I picked his brain about was my lack of being able to land a successful armbar. I felt I telegraphed a bit too much which leads to people escaping pretty easily. The advice was pretty simple, and pretty obvious after we went through it. I need to stop grabbing the arms before trapping the shoulders, using the opposite arm of the arm I’m attacking to help breakdown my opponents posture. It’s only after this that I can grab the arm that I want, while maintaining a tight capture. 

I planned on going to class later that evening, but for some stupid reason went to McDonalds to eat before class. I figured it might be better quality than in the US, with a lack of a lot of the chemicals and preservatives they put into the food back home. While the food was tastier, and the portions smaller, my stomach didn’t agree with it whatsoever. After a month of not eating fast food I had a pretty uncomfortable and a bit violent reaction to it. So rather than training Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, I ended up reading about technique on my tablet instead. 

European Nogi Championships 4/5/14 - 4/6/14

I spent Saturday exploring Rome. I was a bit concerned that I wasn’t going to make weight on Sunday, so I wanted to get out and walk around for a good portion of the day in the hopes of burning down some calories and to also get a chance to see the city. What I didn’t expect was to be walking around for 9-10 hours. 

I started off at a Piazza del Popolo, where the tram dead ends. I walked around that area snapping some photos, and eventually finding a little Italian cafe to grab a small sandwich at. I somehow found the Spanish Steps, and waited around there for 10 minutes just people watching. It seemed like every tourist place had street urchins out trying to pawn their cheap goods to people. They had sunglasses, toys, and imitation purses for sale. While I was at the Steps, a policeman came by, which sent the urchins running with their goods. 

There is a main street, which connected the Piazza to the old city and eventually the Coliseum. That’s where I wanted to go. You see it on television, photos, in magazines, and online. This was my chance to finally get to see it in person. I like old history, especially from the old Roman days. It’s cool to look at and try to imagine what might have been going on some random day in the past. I took a bunch more pictures and then headed off across the street to various old houses and temples, but it looked like a garden. The gardens area was pretty big, a lot more walking than I imagined it would be. I ended up spending a good couple of hours there alone, just taking pictures and meandering about.

When I decided it was time to head back, I thought it would be cool to go and see the Vatican. The walk was probably going to be an hour or so there, but I was up for it. When I finally made it, they were closing things up. Just the square portion was still open. Was standing about, I had a couple of Chinese woman come up and ask if I would take their picture, I smiled and agree to but only if they would do the same for me in return. They giggled and agreed. We did the pictures and then one of them said that her friend wanted a picture with me, I laughed and said OK. After that was done, I told the picture taker that it was now her turn to take a picture with me. She turned a bit read in the face, giggled, and ran over next to me for the picture. 

My legs were starting to go a bit numb. I don’t think I had walked this much since I was in the military. Being in the Mid-West of the United States, I really don’t have to walk much. In fact, the cities are pretty much built for driving a car around all the time. I ended up getting lost, thinking I was at a different area then I though I was. Thankfully I found a shop that had someone who spoke decent English to get me back on track and back to my hotel. When I made it back, it was dinner time. 

The next morning it was time to get up and go back to the venue. I wasn’t slated to fight until around 12pm again. I spent most of the day running into different people that I had trained with earlier in my Trip. Wim, the black belt from Brasa in Belgium and I chatted for a bit. I ran into Darrough, the brown belt from East Coast BJJ in Dublin, some random French guy who didn’t speak English but wanted to say hello, and I saw Olga the brown belt from the Carlson Gracie Amsterdam academy. It was pretty cool to look back and think that I’ve trained with all these cool people in all these great countries over the past few weeks. 

It wasn’t too much lounger and my division was being called. I ran into my Greek friend again while waiting in the pit, it appeared that I would be fighting one of his countrymen in my first round of nogi. He didn’t know the guy, but they chatted like old friends anyways. I weighed in around 90.7 or so. About .8 kilos below what I needed to be. The night before I was joking that drinking a beer would shed .1 kilograms, and I had a couple of them, so I guess it worked! I wouldn’t recommend it, as I was pretty dehydrated that whole morning. 

We were called out onto the mat, only to have the referee tell me that my ankle supports were not allowed for competition. I sighed, I said they were, and he ran off to check with the tournament director. The tournament director said they were fine, now we were back in action. I felt like i set the pace of the round, looking for entries into hip throws, but never finding one. My opponent kept shooting single leg takedowns, only to have me sprawl on him but not be quick enough to take advantage of being in the better position. We both were eventually hit with penalties for “stalling” because neither of us could hit a takedown. With a little more than a minute left, I let my guard down and my opponent managed to get the single leg he was looking for. I immediately rolled into my goto half guard, the lockdown. My thoughts were simple, I have a good lockdown, and I don’t think many Europeans are familiar with the sweeps and the electric chair submission from here. It should be cake to get the tap and move on. 

Sadly, things didn’t work out that way. My opponent pretty much realizing he wasn’t getting out of my lockdown just laid on top of me like a dead fish. I wasn’t able to move him around very well, and thus screwed my attempts from the position. At some point I lost my cool and looked up at the referee, giving him some hand gestures to the effect of “are you going to doing something about this guy stalling?” He called one penalty to my opponent, but that wasn’t going to be enough. Time was running out, I was going to lose due to a takedown. Samir was yelling at me from the sideline that I needed to move my ass. One last hurrah. I disengaged my half guard and came up on an elbow, looking to cause a scramble and possibly come out ahead in the final few seconds. I wasn’t quick enough, the buzzer sounded, but the referee nor my opponent heard it. I ended up having to fend off a choke for about 20 seconds before Samir finally got the referees attention to stop the round. 

That was it. I was done. No chance at the Open division, no more matches. I had failed. The biggest thing was that I failed myself. I don’t feel that any of my opponents that had beaten me were any better than me. They were all good, but I felt like I was the better grappler. I had failed to show it. But, there were lessons to take away from the whole ordeal, and Samir was cool enough to offer me much needed advice.

I talked to Samir about it for a bit, and the resounding thing I’ve been hearing lately is that I need to be more aggressive. I tried to get some more from him on how to become more aggressive, what did I need to do? But he had trouble putting it into words other than I need to stop waiting for other people to make a move. He also said you compete the same way that you train. I feel like I train pretty hard back home, but maybe it’s not hard enough. Samir also said that becoming more aggressive can be a difficult thing to achieve, that a person really needs to dedicate themselves to it. 

I need to get rid of grips right away. Don’t allow the opponent to get grips before I get mine. This makes a lot of sense, especially with having some Judo experience. All the high level Judoka will grip fight until they get what they want and then execute their throw of choice. I need to be doing the same. The small thing that I was overlooking was that when I remove grips, I need to keep them for myself, don’t just throw their arms away and disengage. 

I also need to stay low when the match starts, like wrestler low. I like to keep my elbows and knees separated too much, which leads to people pulling guard. With your knees and elbows connected, it becomes much easier for you to defend against the guard pull because the opponent won’t be able to get their legs around your torso

Some other solid advice Samir gave me was that I need to posture up in guard more. I know I have a tendency to lay in peoples guard, one of the passes I’ve been working on for like a year is the “sao paulo” guard pass. So I hit Samir up for some advice on that too. When going for the cross face, I need to make sure it’s an undertook cross face and not an over hooked one. Another key point I was overlooking is that I need to switch my hips, making them perpendicular to the ground, then passing on the opposite side of where my cross face is. 

After everyone was done competing, we headed back to the hotel so that everyone could shower up before dinner. We headed back to the Pizzeria for our meal, and had a huge feast. We were probably a bit too loud from time to time, judging by some of the looks the other patrons were giving us. We didn’t care, and honestly it wasn’t that bad. We were having a good time. Luciano decided that we would be playing a drinking game, only to tap out about 3/4 of the way through because he was starting to feel the effects. Igor, who was capable of speaking English, ended up only being able to speak Swiss German and Croatian at the end of the night. He was nice enough to start giving me lessons in Croatian, but I think that was mostly the alcohol talking. Dario and I ended up staying for another beer, before buying one to go and chatting at the hotel before heading to bead. The guys were getting up early to make it out to the Airport to fly back to Zurich. I, on the other hand, would be flying to Hungary in the morning and taking a train to Pecs. 

IBJJF Rome Open 4/4/14 - 4/5/14

When I asked Samir about hosting me while in Zurich, he said he could but that he would be leaving for Rome on April 3rd to compete. I asked how long he planned n staying out in Rome and he said that he was leaving on April 7th. This worked out great for me because I had already planned on going to Rome from Zurich on the same dates. I asked him where he and his team were staying and Samir said they had accommodations near the venue and if I wanted I could chip in on a room that had a spare bed in it. I didn’t hesitate to tell him yes. I had already been checking around for Hostels in Rome, and a lot of them were not as cheap as I would have liked, and they were far away from the venue also. 

We had to be up early on Thursday morning to met with a couple of Samir’s guys on the team, drop his car off, and hit to tram going to the airport. Their flights left pretty early, around 0730 if I recall. My flight wasn’t leaving until 0900. That was fine by me, I could get some sleep at the airport and catch up on some reading and social media stuff. I had a layover in Austria, another country I can say I visited, even if I didn’t leave the airport. Even though I was concerned about making weight for the nogi portion, I decided to eat some bratwursts, potatoes, and sauerkraut while in Vienna. Samir and the guys had already arrived in Rome and already checked into the hotel. He was sending me updates via “whatsapp”, and throwing me the tram and train info so that I wouldn’t get lost on my way to the hotel. 

It was a pretty straightforward trip from Rome’s airport to the hotel. I thankfully didn’t get lost, nor did I need to ask directions from anyone. It was all of jumping onto a “fast” train from the airport to “Termini” (and by the way, the train was slow), then hopping a tram from Termini to a stop near the venue and walking a few hundred meters. One of the guys from Samir’s team was in the lobby when I got in and ran up to grab Samir to help me get checked in. The hotel wanted copies of everyones passports, which I though was a bit odd. 

The guys had been out exploring Rome all day, and got back to the hotel maybe an hour or so before I arrived. They were beat from all the walking, which I would endure in a couple of days in order to help lose some weight for the nogi portion of the competition. Samir said we would all go eat in about an hour. I went to my room, which I was sharing with Adriano and Dario, two blue belts from the academy. Samir was sharing a room with Luciano, a cartoonishly built man who was originally from Italy, and Igor who was tattooed up and originally from Croatia. These guys had been my adopted team the past week, and would turn into a bit of an adopted family over the next couple of days. 

We decided to go to a Pizzeria just across the street from the hotel for dinner that evening. This would be my first real Italian meal. Sure, we have Italian food back in the US, but I view it much like Chinese food in the US. We started off with pizza as antipasti, which has pretty much zero in common with American pizza. The crust was nice and light, like a very slim flaky flatbread, lots of cheese, and the toppings were not abundant like they are in the US. I also noticed there wasn’t a lot, if any, tomato sauce on the pizza. I could have probably ate about 5 of these pizzas on my own. When it can time to order the main course, I resorted to ordering just a steak and a salad. You can’t go wrong with protein and greens. The steak was OK, it wasn’t worth the 20 Euros I paid for it, but meat it more expensive in Europe. Back in the US, the same steak with side dishes would have run me maybe $14-15. 

Thankfully we had Luciano with us to help with the ordering of everything. He spoke to the waiters and who I presume to be the owner, and they took a pretty big liking to us. I noticed we got quicker service than a lot of the other patrons in the restaurant. It felt like something out of a new age mob movie. At some point one of the waiters asked Luciano what band we were in, I’m guessing due to the tattoos, mohawks, and other stereotypical things we had going on about us. Luciano chuckled and told the guy we were in town for the IBJJF tournament, and from there had to explain was jiujitsu was all about. I’m not positive, but I think there was some explaining of “sweaty man love” thrown in there for good measure. 

After the meal, I decided I was going to go grab some bottled water if I could find a store open. Well, I didn’t find a store open, but I did find a German Pub that was run by an Italian guy who spoke very little English. The beer on tap was nothing I had ever seen before, and I stupidly didn’t take a picture or write the names down. I will however say, the couple of pints that I had were pretty good and VERY strong. Strong enough that I had to put an end to the fun and go back to the room in the hopes of not hanging a small hangover in the morning. 

Friday morning was competition time. My division wasn’t slated to start until the afternoon. I met my opponent for the semi-final match in “the pit”. He was about my height, but a bit lighter than myself. He was from Crete, and was a bit surprised that I knew where Crete was. We chatted for a bit, and then were called out to out mat to wage war. 

My goal was to take things to the ground on my terms, via Judo. I’m not as confident in my Judo as I would like to be. Much like my BJJ I’m a very reactive Judo player, waiting for the person to make a mistake to capitalize on. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is when there is a time limit. My opponent figured out that what I was up to and jumped guard after about a minute. No problem, I thought. I’ll just pass. At some point he broke my posture, I left my right hand on the mat too long to help me base, and the next thing I knew I was getting swept and he was going right into mount. Shit! It’s OK, I’ve been here before, and I have a trick up my sleeve for getting back to my original position. A lot of the people from the academy I train at are familiar with my “lapel guard”, and how effective it can be from certain situations. Mount is one of these positions.

I quickly pulled my opponents right gi fabric from out of his belt and looped it around his back, grabbing it with my left hand. I then threw one of my feet into the fabric, then the other, walking them higher and higher into the lapel to give me the leverage I needed to explode my hips up and towards my feet. Then I feel a hand removing one of my feet, I look up and see the ref standing there, so I put the foot back in the lapel. He again removes the foot, awards me a penalty, and tells me I can’t have both feet in the lapel. I can say nothing, or I will be disqualified. This is one of the rules of IBJJF competitions, you don’t talk to the ref or the opponent during the match. With timing running out, I had to move quickly. I exploded up onto my side in an attempt to escape only to have my foe take my back and score more points. He was sinking in a choke, one of my chokes, the “bow and arrow”. I could feel the blood row decreasing from my brain, my eyes starting to get tunnel vision, I was going to pass out. I turned into the arm holding the lapel that was choking me to relieve the pressure and allow the blood to go back to my head. It was just enough to keep me from being submitted or worse…choked out.

The round timer rang, I had lost. We got up, my opponent was very humble in his win. He told me not to worry, we could fight again in the Open weight division since I had secured 3rd place during out fight. I walked over to Samir and relayed my anger and frustration at the referee. I was going to contact the head referee and make my complaint over the lapel guard incident. I knew that the match wouldn’t be reversed, and I wasn’t looking for that. My opponent had bested me, I was not out to take that from him. I was however out to make sure the referees know the rules. 

After finding the head referee, I stated the situation to him and told him that I had read through the rules a few times and found no mention of two feet in the lapel. I told him that I was aware that you could not have your feet on the inside of the lapel, but the outside was fine. I stated that I know I had them on the outside, because I use the move fairly frequently and do it the same every time. I also said that I knew it was on the outside because the referee only took one foot out. The head referee asked me to wait a minute, whir he ran over and grabbed a rule book. Sure enough he couldn’t find anything against my claim, telling me that I was correct, but that he couldn’t change the match results. I told him that I wasn’t looking for a result change, but rather just concerned that the referee know his job correctly. He told me he would talk to the referee and apologized for the incident. I thanked him, and went to sign up for the open weight division. 

The quarter finals of the open division had me slated against the Ultra-Heavyweight gold medal winner. The man was a beast, big and hairy. I know from the couple of guys at my gym that you don’t want a man this size on top of you. Rather, you get them on their back and you should have a pretty easy match. Every foot sweep or leg technique I attempted on the guy was met with resistance and strong arming on his part. He tried a few single leg takedowns and then resorted to just trying to throw me like a rag doll. I have a very deceptive build and weight, I don’t look nearly as heavy as I am (about 94 kilos or 204#). He seemed a bit surprised that he couldn’t throw me around like the incredible hulk. He was warned by the referee for stalling on his part. Towards the end of the match I lucked out as he attempted a takedown I threw him to the side, thus scoring the takedown points myself. I immediately went knee on belly, but the time ran out. It didn’t matter, I won. 

As I was waiting in the pit for the semi-finals, my knew Greek friend came up and said that he thought his opponent wasn’t showing up and that we would probably end up fighting again. I laughed and said that would be just my luck. He told me not to worry, that I would probably do better this time, that I was a good opponent and now knew his game. Sure enough, we were meeting back on the mat again to wage battle. This time, things would go a little differently. 

We spent a minute or two on our feet, with both of us trying to secure the takedown. Neither of us could best the other, so my opponent decided to pull guard. I knew better than to let him trap my arm again if he broke my posture down, which he did try a few times. I tried every guard pass I knew, knee to butt, standing, the “sao paulo” pass, and none of them worked. I could not break this guys guard. Next I tried going for a choke I like to use on white belts, and yes it’s from top guard. Newer people don’t realize that this choke leave me open to an armbar, but my opponent knew it and as soon as I felt his hips move I postured back and quickly removed my arm from danger. Time finally ran out. The match was dead even, no points, no penalties, no advantages. It was going to come down to the referees decision. The referee awarded the win to my opponent. I was now 0-2 again the same guy. On a positive note, I was able to shut his game down. 

That was it for the gi. Two 3rd place medals. Now I would have to wait for nogi in order to bring back a gold for my academy back home. I also forgot to mention a huge thanks to Samir for coaching me from the sidelines for all my matches. 

                                   A bronze in the open weight division

                                       Another bronze in the heavyweight division

Ruckus Clan Zurich 4-2-14

Morning:

I opted not to train last night. I needed to catch up on my writing and I wanted to give my body some needed rest. It was no-gi night, and the Universe knows I could have used the practice. But I said screw it. If I’m not ready for the European No-Gi Championships now, I wouldn’t be ready for it with one more class. Besides, I had my trusty lockdown and electric chair to carry me through, right?

Samir has an early morning class on Wednesdays that starts at 7am. I woke up around 6, and got my stuff together for the day. After class he was going to drop me off at the nearest tram station so that I could get to my companies office. I’ve only been taking the tram to the main Zurich station and then walking the rest of the way (around 4-5km or so I think). The walking will help me make weight this weekend for no-gi. I weighed in this morning at around 91.3kg, a little too close for comfort. 

We arrived at the training location to find that we were the first ones there. Not a big deal, I’ve noticed that Samir and I have been the first ones there other than on the first day that I arrived. We dressed out and headed up to the mats. Before too long the purple belt who’s flat we went to the first night I was in town showed up. It was just going to be the three of us. I had received some advice from Samir the night before (I’ll go into that at the end) about passing the spider guard and wanted to try it out on him. Now, I’m fully aware that the technique wouldn’t be close to even 10% to working on him, but I wanted the experience anyways. 

The setup for the morning was going to be 6 minute rounds, with one person in the full six minutes, and the other two people switching out at the 3 minute mark. At the end of the round, the last person in would stay in, and so on. Makes sense, right? Well, that just meant a lot of pain and suffering for me at the hands of Samir. The purple belt I wasn’t sure about, but I figured that the worst case scenario would be us fighting to a submission on me here and there. 

And that’s pretty much how it went. With the purple belt more suited towards my skill level, and me being lucky enough to pull a submission off on him randomly. It was a pretty decent matchup in my opinion, and it kept my motivation in place. Get beat up by Samir for three minutes, have a good three minutes with the purple belt. I tried my damnedest to work my spider guard passing on Samir, but I just couldn’t get even remotely close to a somewhat decent position on him. It was a great workout, and I was really only in it to help me make weight for the weekend. 

Samir drive me out to the tram stop and gave me directions on how to get to the main station, since I wasn’t familiar with this stop. I made it to the main station and then started my walk out to my companies office. When I arrived, I noticed they were still serving breakfast. I hurried up and showered, threw my dirty clothes in the wash (they even had a laundry mat on site!), and headed for some quick light breakfast. After I was done, I headed up a couple of floors to a relaxing lounge area to chill out and plan some of the rest of my trip and do some writing. We had training again at 1900, so I needed to make sure I hit the trains early before the rush. 

Evening:

I made it out to the training area a bit too early, I was there by around 1800. But that was OK. I took the opportunity to get some more notes and writing in. Not any great writing, but some writing none the less. Before I knew it Samir had arrived and we headed in to change out. Again we were the first ones there, but I knew people would be showing up because it was a night class. Before too long there were more than a handful of guys, all blue belt and above, on the mats. 

It was a pretty painful night for me. My head just wasn’t in the sparring at all. I had been reading some grappling book while on the trains, and the advice I had gleaned from what I read was pretty much “instill your game on your opponent, and this will allow you to control the match. Do not be a reactive player, because eventually you will miss something and get caught.” I was trying to be offensive and control the flow of the match. However, my brain wasn’t cooperating with my body. It was a mess. My motivation just kept going lower and lower with every tap, and there was a lot of tapping. I remarked to Samir after class that it was a rough night, he just kind of laughed and shrugged. He didn’t mean anything bad with his actions, it was just more of a “well, that’s jiu jitsu”. 

Afterwards we talked philosophy for a bit. He echoed what I had read earlier about controlling the matches. I needed to be less reactionary, and more offensive. Play my game, not my opponents game. If you spend all day worrying about “what-if” scenarios, you’re just going to psych yourself out and mess your game up. That made a lot of sense to me, one of the brown belts back home that I take private lessons from had essentially said the same thing. Go in with a game plan, don’t deviate from that plan. When I took the gold at IBJFF Dallas early last year, I did exactly that. Wait for them to pull guard and just smash through for the kill. The gold match lasted roughly 20-30 seconds due to that advice. I need to get back in that frame of mind and stop doubting myself and my abilities. I think I also need to stop messing around and experimenting so much, it may be creating some bad habits on my end. 

Samir and I also discussed my back escape, which seems to work a lot, just not on him. If you’ve read Saulo Ribeiro’s “Jiu Jitsu University” book, then you might bee familiar with the escape in question. You have your back taken, and the opponent has their hooks in. You “load” a leg and fire it with a kicking motion (while having the same side elbow wedged somewhat in or on their thigh. One you break the hook, said elbow shoots down between their thigh and your hip to block the hook from coming back in. From here you want to take the arm that isn’t blocking the hook and press it into the same side knee to help you either posture up and through into their guard or to do a single leg attack from the escape. I was using the former, trying to come up in Samir’s guard. It didn’t seem to be working. Samir suggested that I angle myself a bit more away from my opponents bodies, before attempting to come up. Otherwise, the opponent is going to get the mount. 

We chatted about some other things, some BJJ related, some life related. We are headed out to Rome early in the morning for the competition. I believe he has about 5-6 guys going out to Rome to compete, and thankfully none of them are in my division. That would really suck to have trained with them all week to only face one of them in competition. I think it would be even worse to beat them. Either way, it wouldn’t be a fun situation. 

                                                  The  team

                                                         Samir and I

                                                    Ivan on the bottom

Ruckus Clan Zurich 3-31-14

I spent most of the day at my companies local office in Zurich. I did this for a couple of reasons. The main one being that I knew I would have an internet connection. Having internet meant that I could get some of the back half of my travel plans set in stone, that being one less thing I would have to worry about. Secondly, I would have somewhere to eat, for free. With the expensive prices in Zurich, this would be a budget saver and a half during my time here. It took be about 19 Swiss Francs to travel out to the office, but I would have spent more than that one breakfast and lunch alone, and that’s not counting paying for internet access on top of it. When it was time to go train, I took the public transportation out to the athletic center that the gym was situated in.

After arriving and getting into my gi, I headed up to the training area. Igor, who was one of the senior purple belts, and the guy who runs the no-gi classes, was also taking charge of the warmup. Initially the warmup seemed pretty tame and what I would normally have to do back home. It stated off consisting of running, moving inside and outside, doing ankle slaps, and running knee raises. Then things switched up into a different rhythm. Now, keep in mind that Igor was running everything in German, no English at all. I had to watch everyone else to see what it was that I was supposed to be doing exactly. We kicked off into a large amount of jumping jacks, then a front jumping jack kind of motion. This went on for a couple of rounds, and my legs were starting to burn from the warmup combined with all the walking and stair climbing I had been doing. Next we started doing body weight squats, well shit…here we go! We did a couple of rounds of these and at the end we stood in a lunge position for a 30 count for each leg. Funnily enough, I almost ate shit during each lunge hold from quadriceps failure. The exercises seemed to be never ending, sit-ups (or crunches for me), leg lifts, leg extensions, leg holds, and then finally it was all over with 5 minutes of stretching. 

Next we started the drills for the evening. The first drill consisted of standing with uke in open guard in front of you. You want to grab the gi pants and base out with Saulo’s “headquarters” position. The headquarters position looks like a wide legged squat of sorts, which I probably looked drunk doing due to my quads being shredded already. Next you want to hip forward, effectively stacking your opponent, but with one knee in-between ukes legs, and the other bracing the leg of the side that you’re going to pass on. The hand opposite of the passing side will reach out and grab onto ukes ankle to help pull his legs away from the passing side. 

The second drill added to the first, but included bit more towards the passing portion of of the drill. Again, grab the lapel opposite of the side that you’re passing on. Keeping your elbows in as tight as your can to help block against the knee shield. When doing this, you will want to have your posture down low with your ahead approaching ukes chest. If you’re afraid of getting choked, like me, you shouldn’t be. When executed fast enough, you won’t be in a position to get choked anymore. The next thing you want to do is it hip in and pressure, like we did above. Bring your knee into ukes thigh, close to the groin (in compeition, you should probably just put it in the groin for added effect) and pointing forward. You want your free leg bracing for base but never fully extended. 

During the second drill I was having issues with keeping my based due to my overused thigh muscles. I kept messing up the positioning and putting myself where I felt more comfortable as opposed to where I would have been more effective. The partner I was working with, an older blue belt, was trying to help me out with pointers here and there. Keep your feet forward, don’t overextend the leg, get lower, and come further in when stacking. 

The final part of the drill was finally shooting for the pass. I have a very bad habit of hipping into my passes entirely too much, leaving myself open for a knee shield (which always comes). I’ve been trying to correct this over the past few months, but in the heat of a roll the bad habit always rears its head and I end up getting a knee shield up in my face and chest. 

After the drilling portion of things we moved onto sparring. Finally getting some good sleep paid off overall with a lot of the matches I was in. Surprisingly I kept finding myself in my go to half guard, the lockdown, that I had learned from the 10th Planet academy in town that I originally started my BJJ journey at. Maybe it was from watching Metamoris 3 that I was subconsciously trying to channel my inner Eddie Bravo, sans the “heefer” as Master Renato Laranja would say. I have trouble from the lockdown, I can hold it pretty damn well against most people. However getting into position for the sweeps is usually a difficult task that takes a lot of patience on my part, waiting for that exact moment to strike. I was able to get a couple of sweeps out of it in class, and one full fledged “electric chair” submission with a tap. All in all it was a pretty good night. 

Ruckus Clan Zurich 3-30-14

Samir had contacted me on a thread that I posted on Sherdog about my wanting to find places to train at in Europe. He hit me up and told me he trained out in Zurich Switzerland and that I was more than welcome to come out and train with the team. I was told about how expensive Switzerland was, but didn’t realize it until I started searching for hostels around the area, and even more so when I got into country. 

We had been communicating back and forth over the course of a couple of weeks. It finally became evident to me that in order to keep the trip going I was going to have to reach out to people for a place to stay. I hit Samir up for accommodations and he thankfully said it was no problem. He also offered to pick me up from the train station when I got into town, I just needed to give him the train info in advance. 

Per the previous day…errr this mornings Metamoris escapades, I was again dead tired when I hit the train station in Strasbourg. Thankfully I didn’t miss any trains, and was able to hope on down to Zurich with ease. When I got into Zurich, I wasn’t sure where exactly to meet up with Samir, as we had not discussed that portion of things. I searched high and low for free wifi, only to find wifi that wanted my mobile number to SMS me an access code. That would be great and all, but I didn’t have any cell service in Europe at all. I finally found some pay phones in the basement and struggled to figure out how to exactly use them. I noticed there was an SMS option on the phones (I know, right?) so I texted Samir a message giving him a description of myself and what street I would be on. 

I didn’t have to wait very long for Samir to find me. He came strolling up with his flat billed cap and his Shoyoroll jacket. I would later find out that Samir was fond of collecting two things presently, Jordan shoes and Shoyoroll gis. We hopped into his car to head out to go train for the afternoon.

Samir wanted to grab a quick coffee, and I agreed that caffeine was needed badly. We chatted on the drive out to a local Starbucks about my trip and the like. When we walked into Starbucks to order coffee Samir must have seen my eyes building out of my skull. I was looking at the prices and noticed that a SMALL coffee was a bit over $7 USD. He kind of chuckled and offered to grab the coffee on him, I thanked him graciously. I don’t think I had any Swiss Francs on me at the time anyhow. We made our way outside to chat a bit more before heading off to the training center. 

The training location was in Schlieren, a bit of a drive outside of Zurich proper. The scenery on the drive out to the location was beautiful. I was finally away from the cold and dreariness of the countries that I had previously been to. The landscape was covered with buildings, but every view beyond them offered lush green mountains to look at. Samir explained that the Sunday training was a relatively new thing for the team. He felt that in order to fight well, you needed to be in shape. At first I thought it was going to be a conditioning class, my attitude sunk a bit. Personally I don’t like going to a BJJ class for conditioning, it’s not what I’m there for. I’m there to either drill, learn a new skill to drill, or fight. I can do my own conditioning outside of class. Fortunately, it was a full hour of rolling. 

We were running slightly late when we arrived at the training center. Samir was renting space in it, much like Wim was doing up in Leuven. We headed to the locker room to change out, and then up to the training area. It was a small area, but large enough to train in. In fact, it was about average size compared to the rest of the gyms on my trip. I started my normal warmup of stretching, with mostly loosening the knees and hips up as I use them the most when grappling. 

A lot of the rolls and specifics are really eluding me at the present moment. I do recall having some good rolls, and some not so good rolls. One of the rolls that does come to memory was against a rather big, and seasoned, white belt. He didn’t say much, nor have much in terms of facial expressions. He was big, fast, strong, and young. And this wasn’t his first year of training. Samir would tell me later that this specific white belt had come from another school, one that was populated with a lot of smaller training partners. This white belt was the largest by far, and the strongest. His game developed into one of strength and speed, as he was doing only no-gi in the couple of years prior to joining the Werdum Ruckus Clan in Zurich. A lot of what Samir said made sense looking back on the match. The white belts sole intent seemed to be to out power me in every position. I would eventually get him onto his back, but keeping him there would prove to be a chore. 

At some point I ended up catching an elbow right to the top of the eye, putting me out for a few seconds or so I believe. I just remember feeling heat, seeing stars, my vision going black, and realizing I had whoever I was grappling in my half guard tight. I suppose thats a plus, unless someone is continuously raining blows down on my face from above. 

The time finally came for me to roll with Samir. Samir is a four stripe brown belt, on the verge of getting his black belt at any moment. I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect, but what ended up happening I wasn’t expecting at all. Normally I feel like I can roll for a bit with any skill level without feeling like it’s my first day again. Every once in a great while I will run into someone who’s skill level is just light years ahead of mine and they absolutely destroy me. Samir would be no different. 

We slapped hands and he immediately came after me. His grips were ridiculously strong, so strong that 90% of the time I couldn’t remove them.   Samir pulled me into his spider guard, I popped down into the “headquarters” position that we had learned from Saulo Ribeiro during a seminar last year. The next moment I was flat on my back, struggling to get back some semblance of guard. I succeeded in roping him into my half guard, only to have a powerful knee slide pass performed on me. Now I was in side control with a skilled behemoth on top of me. Without much effort Samir took the mount position, and then rolled me over into his full guard like I was a rag doll. Armbar, triangle, omoplata…the submissions and sweeps just kept coming and coming. Everything I tried he immediately found my weak point and capitalized on it. The bell rang, I was relieve to get away from Samir with what little pride I had left. 

Talking with one of the purple belts directly after the round with Samir, I exclaimed my surprise at Samir’s skills, speed, strength, and technique. The purple belt just laughed and said “I know, I know”. I’m glad I wasn’t the only one in the gym who struggled against Samir. I would be looking forward to watching his matches in Rome, I had a feeling that he would end up dominating his division pretty easily. Seeing him in the Open division would be even more impressive. 

Overall I thought the evening went pretty well. Like i said, I had some good matches and some not so good matches. The biggest thing to take out of this is that a lack of sleep will degrade your performance on the mats. I’m sure this isn’t a relegation to anyone (including myself) reading this. But actually living through it was a great reminder to be well rested and in good condition before even thinking about stepping out onto the mats for a competition.