Chris Rees Academy 3-20-14

Chris Rees Academy 3-21-14

I find that at times the best way for me to learn something is to have a negative outcome attached to it the first time. Todays lesson was on taxis in the U.K., or specifically Wales. I was headed to the Academy and decided instead of calling a cab on the phone (that I don’t have) I would just go outside and wave one down. When I stepped outside I noticed a cab across the street, they are “Yellow Cabs” by name, but white in color. I approached the cabbie and asked if he had a fare or if he could take me. He told me he was waiting on someone and that I should wave down “black cab”. OK, no problem. I only had to wait for another minute before a black cab came by and I was on my way. 

I have learned that the cabbies have no no idea where the academy is at here in Swansea, even with the address. Or at least they play that way. This guy had no idea, even with the directions from the Academy website, and the bill ended up being double what it normally was to get out to the academy (about 8GBP to about 15-16GBP). Now raising a stink about it would accomplish nothing, so I just paid the man and got into the academy. I would find out later on that the yellow cabs are always have the price and a better service than the black cabs, and that I should only ever take yellow cabs. Well, now I know. 

As I was walking up to the academy from my drop point in the street, I noticed a lot of vehicles around and a lot of children filing out of the academy. By a lot, I mean there had to be about 30-40 kids coming out. I stood at the door for a solid minute as more children and their parents filed out of the building. When I finally reached the inside of the academy I looked out onto the mats to find that there was a sizable amount of students for the adult class tonight also. Chris must have noticed me come into the academy because as I was changing out he came by to welcome me back. I finished putting on my gi and headed out to the mats. 

There was a purple belt leading the warmups this evening. There isn’t much to report on this front, as the warmups were pretty much all movements I’ve done at some point. The last part of the warmup Chris had us pick a partner of about the same size and go through a movement from butterfly guard, and I will do my best to explain it briefly, but the details are important. 

So one partner would sit in butterfly guard, but with the legs hooking one leg. So if I wanted to attack from my right, I would focus on putting my right leg across and under my left leg and hook the knee of my partner. My left leg would be between my training partners knees and tight against his right leg. From here I want to grab either the belt or a sizable amount of the gi on the back with my left arm. I want my head nice and tight to my partners body, kind of on the left side of his torso and closer down along the hip. Next, I want to shoot my right arm through ukes (for those not familiar with uke, it’s a judo term that I use interchangeably from time to time with “training partner”) left leg between the calve and the hamstring. My training partner asked Chris is it mattered if you shoot your arm through this area or if you could go underneath the calve. Chris said ideally you wanted it the first way, but if you could only get the second way you should be fine too, 

Once we were set in that position, we would rock from one side to the other side, in a bit of a U motion. That’s probably a pretty more description, but the motion reminds me of a turtle on its back. You don’t want to go from right to left and end up flat because you’re going to have a bad time, rather you want to arch your back and rock to the left side. For this exercise Chris wanted the uke to “base out” with their arms to help the person executing the movement “feel” is correctly. Initially I felt like a fish out of water, as I don’t play much butterfly guard, but after a few repetitions of the movement I started to get the feel for things. 

The next evolution of the movement was a rather interesting transition into x-guard. After you move from side to side in the rocking/crunching motion, you want to extend your legs out and stretch the person out, this should cause them to lose their balance. It’s also important that you are gripping the persons knee on the side that your head is on. You want a nice tight grip over the knee cap to keep them from dropping their knee onto you and effectively stopping your progress. One thing that Chris pointed out is that you want to move with a sense of purpose, because if you move too slow the opponent could potentially escape (long legs). Once you have them stretched, and have broken their balance you want to use your hand that is on their knee to help break them down even further. From here you use the foot that hooked behind the knee to help pull them in closer to you, while taking the front foot/leg (on the front side of their leg) and “stomp” their calve to hold them in place while you make the transition into side control. Seems pretty confusing, yeah? It seemed a hell of a lot simpler when we were drilling it. Hopefully if I am missing something one of the folks from the academy will chime in. 

Sparring that night was pretty rough. I ended up against a lot of tough blues and purples. One of the purples was the guy who was leading the warmups when I came out onto the mats, and had been just drilling with. He was a tall (a bit taller than me) lanky guy with a few stripes on his purple belt. I started probing for weakness, playing conservative like I have been the past few months. I need to work on being more aggressive rather than just being a reactionary BJJ player. I can’t recall what he ended up catching me with, but I do know it was a constant battle of him pushing the pace and me racing to defend everything he was throwing at me and looking for escapes in the process. I do recall getting caught in a weird body triangle from him after we reset, it was TIGHT, but didn’t bother me too much. I do remember thinking that it was the tightest body triangle I had ever been in before. It wasn’t until a day or two later that I felt the after effects of it, and the bruises that accompanied the position. 

I ended up going against Bryn, the purple belt who’s name I forgot from the first night, and ended up catching a bit of crap about on Facebook from the guys in the academy. In any case, Bryn has been training slightly longer than me but has been training full-time for awhile now. His dedication and handwork show when he rolls. Not once did I feel Bryn get overly aggressive. He was very slow and methodical throughout the whole match. If I remember correctly, towards I end I ended up in a scrabble with him and started to take the back, latching on like a fly on shit. There was a BJJ related photo that was pretty funny that I found on reddit.com the other day, but didn’t download. It said something to the effect of “When I catch the smaller and faster opponent, he’s not going anywhere”. That’s how I felt, I wasn’t going to let go or give up the position unless I absolutely had to. 

At the end of the night I ended up with a fellow blue belt by the name of Ricardo from Portugal, that was now living in Wales. I talked to him briefly before the match and a bit afterwards to find out what his story was. Initially hearing his accent I knew it was Portuguese, but wasn’t sure if it was Brazilian because I had never heard one like his, so I asked him. In any case, Ricardo and I had an all out war for the round. Back and forth, neither of us really coming out on top. He was a very strong and technical opponent who had been training, if I remember correctly, a bit longer than me. 

At the end of class I asked Chris if I could get a photo with everyone, and then one of he and I. He said no problem. Before we took the photo he took a minute to tell everyone in the gym about my little journey and what I had going on. I thought that was pretty cool of him to do. A lot of the folks were genuinely interested in what I had going on and wanted to follow the blog. Hopefully it lives up to their expectations. 

                                        Last night of training in Wales

                                                       Chris and I

                                The mat space at the Swansea Academy

                              The entrance area, they are stiller renovating it

Chris Rees Academy - Swansea 3-19-14

I was originally slated to head out to Bristol to go train with Con (Slideyfoot). For those that don’t know him, or know of him, he’s very active in the BJJ community and helps run an academy, has his own blog (www.slideyfoot.com), and is very active on Reddit.com/r/bjj. Sadly I wasn’t feeling very well when I woke up, and proceeded to go back to sleep through breakfast and into lunch. When I finally did wake up and shower, my head and sinuses felt like they were going to explode. I also had a bit of a weird stomach issue going on also, but that could possibly be attributed to the water and/or traveling. I opened up my laptop to see how long it would take to get out to Bristol by train, it didn’t look like I was going to make it. I really didn’t want to take a chance of traveling in the state that I was in either, only to get out there and have to sit on the sidelines and just watch. 

My backup plan was to head to Chris Rees’ academy if I got to feeling better. I started to feel slightly better and figured that if I wasn’t up to training that I could always call a taxi and just head back to my room relatively easy. I asked the owner of the guesthouse I’m staying in (The Alexander) if he could call me a taxi, which he did, and which showed up about 4-5 minutes later and headed out to Rees’ place. A warning, the academy address on the website and on Google Maps doesn’t seem to ring any bells with the locals. I had to get the detailed instructions from the website in order to get the taxi to the right spot. 

The academy is housed in a very unassuming building in an Industrial part of town. There are no nearby hotels or hostels, and the walk can be a bit tedious if you decide to go that route, as there are pretty large sized hills in both directions. As I walked into the academy I feel a bit of a chill in the air, noticing there was no heating on in the building. I would later come to find out that the Academy is in the middle of renovations, big renovations, and they are changing a bunch of stuff up. 

The class that was going on when I came in was a beginners class, for 2 stripe white belts and below. The instructor leading the class, who’s name eludes me at the moment, was a younger fellow that was a four stripe purple belt under Rees. He noticed me walk in and immediately got up off the mats to come and welcome me and ask me what I was there for. I told him about my trip, where i had been, where I was going, and that I had been talking to one of the black belts Rob (http://thetattooedchimp.blogspot.co.uk/) about coming out to train. He seemed generally interested in my trip and the like. He then sent me a few doors down to the MMA academy (also owned by Rees) where Chris was teaching. 

As I walked in the door of the MMA academy I could hear someone yelling out instructions. As I got a little closer I could see a bunch of people doing shuttle runs. I just stood there for a bit, quietly, waiting for someone to come over and chat with me. A rather large man came over to inquire as to what I was there for, I asked if he was Chris and was told that no, Chris was the one running class. I told the gentleman what I was there for and that I would meander back over to the BJJ side and wait for Chris to finish up. 

When I got back over to the BJJ side, I took a seat inside the reception area in front of a large window that looks out into the training area. I watched the young purple conduct the rest of the beginners class. They seemed to be going over arm bars from guard in a slightly different way that I had seen them done before, and I was mentally taking notes of the subtile differences between the way they were doing the technique compared to the way I do mine (see: Drunken Bear). The biggest difference that I was seeing over and over again was after grabbing the elbow of the arm that you are going to attack, they put a lot of emphasis on using the same side thigh/knee to trap the arm in place while hitting the angle transition and trapping the back with the other leg. The movements seem basic, but very on point. 

After a bit the instructor came up to me and asked if I wanted to roll for a bit with one of the four stripe white belts that had just come in. I said absolutely. The prospective opponent was about my same height and weight, although a bit younger, and he was wearing the same gi that I had brought in with me. By the time I dressed out, they were getting ready for the next class, which was a take-downs class. 

The instructor of the takedowns class is none other than Brett Jones from Cage Warriors fame. Brett is the current, and undefeated bantamweight champion for the Cage Warriors promotion. He was introduced to me, and asked me a bit about my training, if I had any wrestling experience and the like. 

For the duration of the class, all we did was go through mostly wrestling style takedowns, ranging from a double leg, suplex, an ankle pick, and finally an attack from the back where you force the opponent to a knee and doing a rolling dive with your outside arm through their legs and coming up into side control. It’s been awhile since I’ve “wrestled” back in the states outside of BJJ and Judo, but it’s really not the same. Brett was nice enough to give me some of his time and cleanup some of my horrible habits on my double leg takedown and my suplex. Watching Brett execute the moves he was teaching led me to believe he had been wrestling for most of his young life. As it turns out, talking with Rees later, wrestling was a new edition for Brett. Chris had brought in a well respected Middle Eastern wrestler to teach for a time and Brett just soaked it up like a natural. I wouldn’t doubt it if we see Brett soon in the UFC at his current rate. 

The next class was going to be lead by Chris Rees himself, and was more of a open mat/Q&A session according to Brett and the other instructor. Fantastic, I get to finally see the guy I’ve been hearing about so much in action. Half of the class was in no-gi gear and the rest of us were in the gi. Chris had every sit in a circle around him while he demonstrated what he wanted us to work on for the time. It was going to be a half guard sweep, which I had see before, but personally have never “learned” at this point in my journey. 

Starting in half guard, you want to take your bottom arm and loop it under the shin of your opponent with enough room to bring your forearm up the thigh and be able to hold it in place. From there you want to start to stretch the opponent out with your legs and upper body, causing them to try to base on you. While doing the stretching you’re going slightly toward your back, but Chris put a huge emphasis on not being flat on the back because this would put you in danger of possibly not being able to move about. Once you feel the opponent base out you move quickly to a “crunch” motion back to your side, coming up on your bottom elbow to help support you to bring the uke over. It gets slight fuzzy for me here, but I believe he used what I know of as the “old school” sweep where you latch on to the ankle and push them over. I could be mistaken about that part, but I’m pretty confidant you could add it and it would still work pretty well. The goal there after is to clear through the legs and get into side control. Every so often Chris would pull us back in to watch him go over a specific point of the movement that the majority of us were not executing correctly. Chris would also be walking around while we were practicing the movement critiquing us and offering person specific advice to everyone, including me. 

A mother very important thing that I noticed that Chris does is have his student “pressure test” a new movement. Where one students responsibility was the execute the move, the other was to only provide resistance if the executor gave too much space or missed an important movement. When I had the chance to be on top, I tried my best not to be a pressuring asshole like I normally would when stuck in half guard where I would use my “shoulder of justice” and weight to punish whoever was below me. The whole process is a step above the normal practicing of a move, but a step below full on sparring. I think it’s a great idea that I can hopefully have implemented back at my home academy. 

About 2/3 of the way through the class Chris wanted us to roll from the position. I was able to go with a few people, going slowly and trying out the new movement myself to get a feel for it. At the end of whatever numbered round we were on Chris looks over at me and asks if I’d like to roll. Hell yes I’d like to roll, but what I actually said was “Absolutely, although I don’t know how much of a fight I’m going to be able to put up to you”, and Chris chuckled. 

As we started, I was ticking with the basics. Isolate the ankles, knees, attempt to isolate the hips. Unfortunately for me Chris knew where I was headed every time and managed to turn the tabled after a few seconds and get me firmly planted on my back. There were a whirlwind of taps on my end as I was probing for any possible way for my lowly blue belt self to at least try to get a dominant position on him, sadly that wasn’t going to happen unless he allowed it to happen. At one point I ended up in Chris’s open guard and felt that this was my point to blast through his guard. I was thinking of moving one specific way and got it mixed up in my head and ended up getting triangles by him, he let out a little chuckle and inquired as to what I was thinking. I told him I meant to go the other way and he allowed me to reset and execute the moment I had originally hoped for and complimented me on solving that specific problem. From there he someone got to my back where I spent the remainder of the match fending off submission after submission, but if I recall correctly he ended up getting one of the many submissions he was looking for. 

After we were done rolling, I had some questions for him concerning the weird lapel guard that I liked to play. I told him about rolling against Darragh in ECBJJ and hot Darragh could pull off a slick arm bar submission while I was controlling his lapel with my leg and arm. Funnily enough Chris said it was all in the placement of my thumb and hand. So easy, but yet easily overlooked. Chris complimented me on my “game” execution, and I feel he was being pretty sincere about it and not just being polite. I laughed and told him that I appreciated the compliment, but that I had a long ways to go. 

After class Chris was kind enough to offer me a ride back to the guest house and let me know I was welcome to come out and train with their team anytime. 

I didn’t snap any photos this time around, but I will be headed out there over the next couple of days before I leave. 

East Coast BJJ - Dublin 3-18-14

Chris contacted me about a week ago on Reddit, sending me an invitation to the academy that he works at, East Coast Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. I wasn’t initially sure if I would make it out there, considering that I only had about 1.5 days in Dublin due to coming in late and having a evening flight out but needing to be to the airport in time. I decided I would go out there anyway, make it part of my return to the airport. 

Getting there from the western part of Dublin wasn’t too terrible. However, navigating Dublin's transportation system is a bit nerve racking when I don’t have reliable wifi. The busses seem to be either early or late. So I spent a lot of time just hanging out at certain bus stops in the hopes that something would eventually come along. The roads seem a bit small at times, specifically the highways. There is zero semblance of an “Interstate” like we have back in the US. I personally feel that traffic in Dublin would flow a lot better with some additional lanes and overpasses. But that’s just me. The folks that live there don’t seem to mind, so why should I?

In any case, I was standing by at the bus stop at around 1005 this morning near my hotel. The bus, when it arrived, would be taking me to the City Center where I would need to transfer onto another bus which would drop me about a block or so away from ECBJJ. According to Google Maps (thankfully I routed the trip before I left my room) each segment would take around 45 minutes and I should in theory be there before class started. Unfortunately I didn’t get to my stop, or actually around two stops up until a minute or two before 12pm. As soon as I got off the bus I started towards where I thought the academy should be, as I didn’t see it in passing. As I got closer I noticed the Ribeiro sign on a fence pointing me in the right direction down an alley of sorts.

I made my way inside of the academy looking for someone at the front desk, but nobody was there. So I walked a few steps and peeked my head around the corner to see three people on the mats. The brown belt of the bunch, Darragh, looked up and greeted me. He looks in appearance a bit like Kit Dale, but with a more serious demeanor. And, as I would find out, a more serious take on training. 

Right about then Chris, who had originally invited me out to the academy, got up and came over to greet me. Chris has previously offered me the use of a loaner academy gi. He knew I was headed to the airport after training and out of kindness didn’t want me soiling my clean clothes with a nasty worn gi. And he did this free of charge. There are not too many academies out there that will do the same. Mater Caique’s school and the Gracie Academy HQ (which normally charge) are the only other places that have offered me the use of a loaner gi before. I grabbed the loaner and went over into the locker room to change out. 

As I made it out to the mats, I looked around, we had about 6 people total including myself. Darragh the brown belt, Chris the purple belt, I believe two other blue belts, a white belt, and myself. I was also the tallest and the heaviest in there. With this not being my first rodeo, I knew not to let the size factor get into my head. These were Ribeiro’s guys, Saulo and Xande, much like my instructor Rodrigo are all as tough at adamantium. I thought the class would run an hour or so but was informed the day class usually runs for about 2 hours.

We started off with a light warmup consisting of some normal stuff we do at home. Running around, shuffle facing the middle, the outside, high knees, heels to butt, and some other upright movements. For the ground movements we did shrimping, on the way back we we did a sort of forward shuffle base where your same side elbow and knee connect while basing behind you (kind of like how you would sit before rising into combat base). From there we started in a kind of bear crawl position, walking our hands out, doing a push up, frog jumping our knees back to our elbows, and repeating down the mat. On the way back from this we did front shrimps. 

Next Darragh set the timer, we would be doing open guard drills, kind of like the “pass, sweep, submit” that I’m used to at home, and like the ones I’ve seen at SBG. We divided up into two groups, those holding guard, and those attempting to pass. I felt pretty confident with my guard overall, that is until Darragh got ahold of me and pretty much passed me at will. The whole time I kept trying to find his weakness, but I could not figure his game out. The reverse was true for attempting to pass him, I didn’t have a lot of luck against him. 

Unfortunately I can’t recall the rest of the details thereafter, but I do recall the training being great. It’s my fault for not starting this post until a couple of days after attending the training with the ECBJJ guys and traveling directly after training. Yesterday I was a bit under the weather with my stomach and sinuses acting up on me, and I ended up laying about most of the day.

I will say the guys at ECBJJ are great and Darragh is a beast on the mat. I believe he’s going to be in Rome competing when I am, and I can’t wait to see him run through his division. 

If you’re from Dublin, or just passing through, I’d encourage you to check these folks out. You won’t be disappointed. 

3-17-14 Straight Blast Gym HQ Ireland

Due to last nights escapades, I wasn’t able to make it out to the afternoon class at SBG HQ. And by not make it, I mean that I was still sleeping at 1400 when the class started. I was in pretty bad shape when I woke up. I downed about 1L of water in about 5 minutes. Ate, not swallowed, some aspirin, and kind of milled about for a bit. I didn’t feel like eating, but I went downstairs anyways to get some nutrition and much needed salts into my body. I was pretty let down, but I’m a big boy and should have removed myself to go to bed much earlier. In any case, I didn’t want to go train this evening. I knew I was going to have to man the hell up and go anyways.

I asked the front desk of the hotel about the buses and times out to SBG. I went and packed up my gi, rash guard, and belt. Grabbed some extra water, and headed a block down to the bus stop. I waited around for about 30 minutes before the bus showed up, I needed to move around and be in the fresh air. The bus showed up, and thankfully the busses here have FREE wi-fi on them (take note, America) so that I could track my realtime movements and make sure I got off on the right stop. 

The bus dropped me off about a block away from SBG, and I headed that direction. On walking on I was greeted by a nice young lady who told me that this evenings class was nogi, and that the format wasn’t going to be the same as it usually is. John Kavanagh, the owner and head instructor of the gym happened to be in the vicinity and the young lady told him I was visiting. He asked my name, showed me the locker room, and took off for a piss. I changed out, sans belt and gi top, and thankfully had packed my rash guard. I headed out into the mat area a bit late, as the warmup had already started. 

John was on the opposite side of the mats from me leading the warmup, everyone else was in a circle around the mat. The warm up was pretty simple and direct. Stretch out the hips, ankles, feet, some more hip exercises (crucifix), some sit ups, and head raises. The last part of the warmup was with a partner, one person would go a round doing sweeps from open guard and the other person would only try to maintain their balance and then you would switch. My hangover was still in effect, I was sweeting horribly, I could feel the lack of energy all over, every time I hit the ground it felt like i was hitting concrete. “Suck it up princess” is all I could think. 

After the warmup we started on the technique for the night. It consisted of pulling the opponent in for a leading single-leg takedown, blocking the back of his leg with your free hand, circling him down, stepping back over his close side leg and establishing “knee on belly” from there. My partner and I went back and forth until John called everyone back to show the succession of the movement into submission. Once establishing knee on belly some people will shrimp onto their side and attempt to single leg you from below in order to get to their knees and try to escape, or get the takedown. So as the opponent is going for the leg, you reach around the persons head with your left arm (left if you’re riding their right side, right if you’re riding their left side), and by reach around I mean that you should be coming around the front towards the left side and looping back around. That is, unless they have already turned to their knees. You want to catch them before they hit the transition. This culminates with you either “grabbing your watch” with your free hand and angling your right side arm and elbow against the opponents shoulder in order to block them from passing, and to choke the hell out of them. The movement was a bit weird to me, I kept wanting to “gable grip” my hands to finish the move. It wasn’t until after the practice portion for the move that John brought up that some people may not have the flexibility for this and they should use a gable grip to finish things out. 

Next John lined us up against the wall and assigned everyone a number, 1-2-3. I had a feeling I knew what was coming, after having been at Mjolnir, which was at one time an SBG affiliate from my understanding. I ended up being a 1, and thus ended up being on the mat first. This portion of things would consist of “pass, sweep, submit” and once one of the previous things happened, my opponent would go back into line and I would get a fresh opponent. This is a very brutal game, but personally…I love the punishment. It only makes me a stronger and tougher grappler. I had some pretty decent control with my unorthodox guard playing, which usually consists keeping them at a distance until they get too close and then I fish them in with my legs. With the gi on, I would use their lapels and play a modified version of Braulo Estima’s “guard of the galaxies”. There was one guy who was a bit larger than me, and stronger, that I had some issues with. Over and over he kept getting me. Challenge accepted. 

The timer went off, and we changed out to the number 2’s being down, and I was in the line now. There were some younger kids, between the ages of 9-14 or so there. I ended up going with all of them at some point. I’m not going to smash the hell out of children, but I’m also not going to make it easy either. If they go into a position that if they were my size and a bit older that I knew would work, I would allow them to get the sweep or submission. I didn’t really look around to see if anyone else did the same, but as nice as the people there were I’d imagine they did. A child isn’t going to learn from beating them up, they know we can beat them, I prefer to make it fun and a learning experience for them. Again I ran into the same big guy a couple of times, it was a bit of the same as before, but with the positions switched. Initially I was playing cautious to feel him out and see what his go to thing were. He didn’t do anything out of the ordinary, but I just couldn’t get past him. I tried using my speed and athleticism to my advantage, which managed to get me a bit closer to my goal of passing, but not close enough that he would have felt threatened in my opinion. 

After all three groups of people had been on the ground John said that we would pick a random partner and roll from the knees. John looked over at me and asked if I would like to roll. I said sure, and laughed that it wasn’t going to be very spectacular on my end of things. John brought it down a few notches to my level, but still took advantage of every mistake that I made. If my head was a bit too low in my pass attempt he had a present of a guillotine for me. If I off balanced myself in even the smallest way, swept. With about a minute left, he decided to put himself in some disadvantageous positions to see how I would react. I recall pulling my normal wrestling/judo side control of “hip-to-hip” connection, which wasn’t a problem for him to get away from. I also recall him allowing me to start to take the back before the bell rang. I thanked him for allowing me the privilege of rolling with him. 

John looked over at me after the round and said “So Michael, what’s your story?”. I so went on to tell him about what I was doing, traveling around from place to place and training, writing about it and the like. John thought that was pretty cool and said I was welcome to come back. I told John I was headed out the next day and probably wouldn’t make another class, but if I was ever back in Dublin I would for sure come back to his gym and train again. 

I ended up meeting the larger guy who was causing me issues all evening after he requested a roll with me. Again, a lot of the same stuff. I feel like I made some small incremental gains on him, but nothing that would ever win a match against him. After the round I asked him how long he had been training, “eight years or so” he replied. That made a lot of sense. That would put him in the purple/brown category, and possibly even black. I wouldn’t say he felt like a black belt though, he was good and knew his stuff, but I felt like he had to put some work into his game to capture me the way he did. He asked if he could give me some advice, and I told him I always welcome tips and the like. He said it was very easy for him to thwart my pass attempts because I keep myself at too far of a distance when passing and that anyone with a decent level of jiu jitsu could see what I was going to do and could position to resist or defend it. He did complement my athletic ability and speed, but told me that I should be a bit closer. I thanked him and we moved on to different partners. 

The next person I ended up rolling with was someone I was slated to face at the IBJJF European No-Gi Championships in Rome. When I first signed up, I wasn’t sure if I was going to make the weight cutoff of 201, so I moved up into the Super Heavyweight division, which is were he was. Once I heard him name and accept I knew exactly who I was talking to. I told him that we were originally in the same division but that I had moved down a division because I was losing the weight I needed to. We talked for a bit between rounds and I learned that he was a Judo guy from back in Poland, he asked about my history and how long I had trained for, etc. We seemed to be pretty well matched skill wise. He kept going for ankle locks, and sometimes landing them with me fighting back and regaining posture and holding his neck so that he couldn’t crank the lock with any leverage. I wasn’t really shooting for any submissions, more just trying to maintain control, escapes, and positional dominance. He enjoyed the match enough to ask me to roll another round with him. I obliged. 

At the end of class John had us all line up to take a picture, which perfect. After that I asked John if he would mind taking a picture with me, which he did. 

As I was leaving, I asked a couple of ladies at the desk if the specific bus I had rode to their location runs the opposite way as well. They said they thought it did and that the stop was probably just up the road a bit. Sure enough, it was only about 50 meters from the front of the gym. I’m looking at the schedule and it seems that the next bus won’t be around for about another 40-50 minutes. I was either going to wait or take a cab. I knew a cab would end up being around 15-20 euro, and I really didn’t want to spend the money on that, things are already starting to get a bit tight. So I’m pacing around the bus stop, trying to kill the time and keep a bit warm when a car pulls up. It was one of the youngest students at the academy and his mother. She asked if I would like a ride to the hotel as she had to go that way also. 

On the ride to the hotel we talked about my trip, and where I was going. It was interesting to learn that her son had been doing very well in BJJ and that he had also just won a title in kickboxing for his age group a couple of weeks ago. I told him to make sure he was careful and to not take too many shots to the head, because he was going to need his brain later in life. We arrived at the hotel and I thanked them graciously for the ride and asked if I could give them some euros for the gasoline, she declined the offer and insisted that she had to go that way anyhow. 

On the way to the airport tomorrow I’m going to stop by East Coast Jiu Jitsu Academy in Dublin. I fellow jiujitsuleiro from Reddit send me an invite to come out and train with them. Hopefully he’s there when I come out, as I have not outright met any of my initial contacts between the first two gyms, although one did say that we ended up rolling together out at Mjolnir but didn’t recognize me until after the fact. Tomorrow evening I will be on my way to Swansea, Wales. 

On a side note, it still hasn’t really hit me that I’m overseas, training Brazilian Jiu Jitsu at different places, and how incredibly lucky I am to be able to do this. People say all the time that I’m living the dream, and that they wish that they could do the same. So, I guess it did just hit me. I’m sure the experience as a whole probably won’t hit me emotionally until the whole thing is done and I think back to all the great people I’ve meet and had an opportunity to train with. 

3-16-14 Ireland

3/16/14 Ireland

I didn’t get into Dublin until late. I wasn’t entirely sure how I was going to get where I needed to go, on the other side of the city. There were not any trains that I could see around the airport, but there were buses. First thing first, I needed to get some Euros. The first set of ATMS I went to were out of Euros, so I had to keep looking. I also needed to get a bus pass, and directions on which bus to take. After talking to the tourism information lady, a random store lady, the currency exchange (traded in my ISK for Euros), and finally the Dublin Bus attendants I figured out that I should probably just connect to wifi and google map this out. 

During the above, I also ran into two younger Americans who were out here on holiday from West Point Military Academy. They heard my American accent, noticed my LSU hat and asked where I was from. Turns out they were a couple of Southern Boys from I believe Mississippi and Georgia. They were also headed about the same way I was, down to Dublin city center, but I would be catching another bus out of there. We talked a bit, I asked if they had ever been out of the U.S. and they said no. I offered some advice as an old vet to them. I told them to keep their valuables in their front pockets, to not get black out drunk, and regardless of the situation do not get into a fight with the locals because they were going to get the bad end of the deal. They appreciated the advice and kept calling me Sir. Academy kids calling an old enlisted sailor Sir. Whatever, I’ll take it. 

On the bus ride to Dublin City Center they asked what I was doing out here. I told them, the taller of the two was pretty amazed at the whole thing and inquired about the gym I would be going to because he trained Army Combatives and wanted to check out Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. I gave him the website and told him the times that I would be there. 

The buses here have free wifi, so I had my maps application open and actively tracking the route when I noticed that we passed my stop. I told the guys it was nice to meet them and to keep in touch while they were here but that I had to run. I got down to the front of the bus and told the driver that he missed my stop, he seemed surprised and I had him let me out where we were at. I hailed a cabbie and asked how much it would be to my hotel, the price seemed pretty cheap considering. I took him up on the offer and away we went. 

He inquired about what I was doing and seemed generally interested. He started talking about how if I was fighting that I should go train with some well known boxing coach down in Spain. I just rolled with the conversation, instead of telling him I didn’t do that kind of fighting. It’s pretty common for people to assume Brazilian Jiu Jitsu equals MMA fighting, my own mother was convinced for a couple of years that I “fought ufc” and refused to come see any of my tournaments until recently when she came across some photos of me training. The driver talked about the company that he made where he pulled in a bunch of cabbies to create “Dublin City Cab Tours” (not exact on the name) because he was tired of the union politics and the like. So he put his idea in motion and the rest is history. The rates that he charges to and from the airport to anywhere in Dublin seem to be pretty damn aggressive and cheap. He told me I should call him when I was ready to go to the airport from the hotel when I leave in a few days. Since I had already purchased a 3 day bus pass, I probably won’t be spending any more Euros on a cab. The only reason that I did this time was because I was tired, hungry, and just wanted to get to the hotel as soon as possible. 

We got to the hotel, I checked in, and headed up to the room to get my stuff sorted out. I asked if the restaurant was still selling food, and was told they were closing soon and that I should get over there to order as soon as possible. So I ran over there and made a quick order before heading to the hotel pub. 

I was enjoying my pint of Smithwicks when I was interrupted by an older woman (around 50ish) who asked what I was doing and that I didn’t look to be from around here. It was casual and inquisitive and I felt as though she was making conversation, albeit a bit drunk. So I told her what I was up to and she thought it was pretty interesting, eventually bringing her boyfriend over to talk too. They invited me over to come hangout with them and their friends, I told them I needed to drop my laptop off in my room. I quickly made my way back down after doing so and joined them. It was an older group of people who were curious about me and what I had going on. I said to myself I would only have a couple of pints, but next thing I knew it was after 2am and I was a bit tipsy. 

Needless to say, I didn’t make it to the 2pm training the next day. 

Iceland 3-15-14

Iceland 3/15/14

Today was my last training day at Mjolnir, and Iceland. The schedule (only in Icelandic) showed a BJJ class at 1200 and open mat following. The plan was to attend the class, take notes of what was going on, and roll in the open mat portion of things if anyone was willing. 

I showed up about 30-40 minutes early and changed into my go. I walked out of the locker room and up the stairs to the training area for BJJ. There are three training areas. I’m not sure entirely what the other two contain, but I know the BJJ area has a decent amount of mat space, some seating, and a MMA cage. It’s a pretty nice and spacious setup in my opinion. 

I spent the extra time in the training area going over notes from prior classes at my home school, notes from seminars (mainly Robert Drysdale), and stretching. I was a bit sore from sparring the day before. Partially my problem for not training like I normally do before heading out to Europe, but more on that later. 

As I said yesterday, the Mjolnir folks are pretty intense. I was one of the oldest people there, if not the oldest. Talking to the receptionist/trainer at the front desk, I was told that the majority of people at Mjolnir who train are below 30, and none really above 35. That’s a bit of a contrast compared to my home gym, were it seems the bulk of the regular students are in their 30’s or higher, and very few below 25. And now that I think of it, it seems like a lot of gyms I’m been to in the U.S. have been pretty heavily populated by a 30+ crowd. It will be interesting to see if the rest of Europe is similar to Iceland or the US. 

Slowly people started to trickle in. At first I thought that maybe nobody would show up on a Saturday. The classes back home are usually pretty small on Saturdays, although they are in the morning and Mjolnirs are in the afternoon. I keep stretching. 

After a few more minutes, a tall athletic guy with a shaved head walks onto the mat. He’s wearing board shorts and a rash guard. I know I didn’t misunderstand the uniform for the class, because all the folks around me have their go uniforms on also. The instructor/nogi guy says something I don’t understand and everyone gets up and assembles in a kind of semi-circle around him. Warm up drills. Some of which I had not seen before, but nothing exotic. All functional movements to stretch and warmup. Hip and ankle rolling, squats, jumping jacks, etc. Some other things are said, and younger blue belt looks at me and says something, I apologize and tell him I don’t understand. “Slow roll, yes?” Oh, yeah sure man!

We start the slow rolling, going back and forth. my definition of slow roll and his seem to be a bit different. A lot of the flow rolls I’ve seen in the U.S. are “you go, I go”. This was more like I went a step, he went three steps. I was constantly on my back in side control or knee on belly. No worries, it’s just a flow roll anyways. This went on for about 6-7 minutes. I noticed yesterday that their rounds are 7 minutes long, which makes for a tiring class, and an intense roll also. 

After the round of flow rolling, we begin the actual sparing. I end up rolling with more of their blue belts, and a couple of their four stripe white belts. Overall I felt like i maintained a lot of positional dominance through the rolls. I had one pretty difficult roll with one of the striped up blues. I couldn’t keep the guy off me. I would pull guard, he would break and start to pass, I would hold him off and sit up only to have him attacking me from the other side and pushing me into side control. Then went on and on, with him finally taking my back. The hooks he was using and the angle he had me at made it very difficult for me to use my go to back escape, the Saulo Ribiero version from his book. I would go to move out and isolate a leg of his only to have him not only threatening a choke, but also moving into mount. I ended up fending the attacks off until the buzzer sounded. Had this been a points match, I would have lost. As we got up and shook hands, he tells me “you’re a very tough man”. I nod at him and tell him “You folks here at Mjolnir are all tough, and have been very good training partners”. He smiles and we move on. 

I had a few more matches, nothing that really stands out until I ran into a tall lanky guy who wasn’t wearing a belt. As we start I ask him was color belt he is, and he tells me that he is a blue belt. I say “OK, just wanted to make sure that I was going to be mean to any white belts”. He laughs, we start. He’s pretty spastic and is technique wasn’t very quality due to him attempting to use his youth, speed, and perceived strength against me. After about 30 seconds I have him on his back into side control. I’m waiting, I shoot for mount, miss it and end up in his half guard. But not any half guard. I feel the vise tightening around my ankles, this guy is using the “lockdown”, a move I use against a lot of my heavier teammates back home. So I shoulder locked him. We reset, I butt sit and start experimenting, end up getting passed and thrown into side control but not to far away is my turn for the lockdown. I lock him down, tight. Stretching him with the lock and my undercooks on his upper body. He isn’t going anywhere, he hasn’t worked any of the escapes, I know this because he isn’t making any of the movements towards them. After a little while he is a bit tired from struggling, I whip him up and over, still maintaining the lockdown in top position. Eventually I let it go and move into side control. Then I move into knee on belly, not too much pressure, but enough to let him know he needs to stop playing around. He attempts to escape and I keep changing position, knee on belly, opposite knee on chest, then the buzzer rings. 

All in all I was pretty damn tired by the end of class. Sucking down an entire liter of water. In the two days I’ve been in these classes it feels like the room, which is HUGE, gets ridiculously hot. I’m covered in sweat like I would be back home in the middle of summer. I feel a little sick to my stomach and decide I’d better go get something to eat rather than roll more. I also forgot to mention that the class was supposed to be a technique class, but instead we rolled. This was OK by me. I need to get into better shape before the IBJJF tournaments in Rome at the beginning of April. I’m probably not going to learn any new technique by then, but it would be nice to polish some technique up. I’m still weighing around 205# naked and about 208# with my gi on, which is fine for my go matches. I need to be below 201 for my nogi matches or I risk a DQ. $100 is a lot of money to risk to not get a chance at a medal for my division. I may end up having to shave my head and beard for a pound or two of weight savings. 

I ended up running back to my accommodations and taking a shower and throwing some clothes in the washing machine. I needed to wash my dirty uniforms and the like before I leave in the morning. I get the first load out of the wash and into the dryer and start the second load before taking off for the night. I ended up leaving somewhere around 4pm to go checkout the rest of the town. 

I walked and walked and walked throughout Reykjavik. I went to the well known Music Hall. Walked through that, got some pictures here and there of some artsy stuff. Took some pictures out into the harbor, and then decided to go into the “downtown” shopping district to see what was going on. It wasn’t too terrible, but it was reminiscent of what we would call a “tourist trap” back in the U.S. There were bars and places to eat. By the way, did I mention the Icelanders seem to have a hard-on for hamburgers and pizza? Restaurants like that were all over. I wanted to get some “real” Icelandic food, but wasn’t sure where to go. So I kept walking. I ended finding a couple of viking statues and nabbed some pictures of them. I found Iceland’s huge chapel thing on the hill, which was pretty neat from the outside. Sadly it was closed by the time I got there though, so I couldn’t check out the inside. 

I was trying to hunt down a place that served “Lobster Soup” that had rave reviews on Yelp and on Google. I remember walking pasted it the day before, but couldn’t remember where in the hell it was. I finally stopped into a store for trinkets and asked the women where the place was. Turns out I was only a couple of blocks away. I find the place, I don’t recall the name but it has a sign that states it’s known for it’s lobster soup. I go inside and it’s packed. There isn’t anywhere to sit, and there is a group of older Germans in the middle who seem to think it’s OK to sit around being loud and obnoxious (and well done with their meals) while others are waiting to sit. I finally get to the counter and order a lobster soup, a potato kabob (Liene, I’m saving it for your sister!), and a beer. The girl behind the counter is looking for a place for me to sit, I tell her not to worry about it, I will go sit outside until something opens up. I grab my beer and go sit in the cold. I finish my beer (it was a tall one), and still don’t have my food. I look inside, there is a single seat! I go grab it and sit down. I have the waitress bring me another beer while I wait. Pretty soon the soup comes out with bread, but no kabob. No worries, I give it a few minutes before inquiring to its location when the server tells me that I “did not order one”. I chuckle, give her the price I paid for beer, soup, and kabob and she checks it out with the counter girl. After a bit I get my kabob. As I’m eating my soup, I notice there is ZERO lobster in it. I inquire to the folks around me if they had lobster, they all fish out multiple large chunks and ask why I don’t have any. I say I don’t know. I should have said something, but I wasn’t really in the mood. I finished up and head by to my accommodations. 

I think I walked around for somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 hours. Being from the middle of the middle of the U.S.,  walking around for that much time isn’t normal unless your car has broken down. Mass transit doesn’t really exist outside of slow and unreliable buses, and everything you go to almost always has parking within 6-7 street blocks. Needless to say my shins and ankles were feeling some pain in the morning when I woke up. But, all in all it wasn’t too terrible. 

3-14-14 - Iceland - Mjolnir

The trip over to Iceland wasn’t very bad. I’ve done a lot of traveling through my life, including outside of the U.S., so layovers and the like don’t bother me. I left Nebraska in the early afternoon yesterday, flew to Charlotte, flew to D.C., and then was on my way to what I thought was Reykjavik. Turns out, you fly into Keflavik, then have to take a bus up to Reykjavik. The bus wouldn’t have been so bad, but I think we maxed out at like 45 mph through the whole thing. I was able to see a lot of the scenery between both cities, which was pretty nice. 

On my arrival to the Reykjavik bus station, I wandered around for a bit look for the taxis. Turns out they were on the other side of the building. No worries, I walk up to the taxi, tell him the name of the guest house I’m staying in, and he has no clue what I’m talking about. As it turns out, my hostel wasn’t a hostel, it was literally a guest house. I find the address and we set off. We get to the house, I walk up and ring the doorbell and nothing. I have no cell service and I can’t get any wifi around me. I ring the bell one more time and a groggy Austrian guy comes wandering down and lets me in. He is also a guest and says I should call the owner. I laugh and tell him I have no cell phone coverage and he gives me the wifi password and I email the owner. She shows up 10 minutes later and gives me a tour. The accommodations were a lot better than I thought they would be, considering it was the same price as a lot of hostels in the area where I would have to share a room. 

                                                     (My new cat friend checking me out)

Its about 0900 local time at this point, and about 0400 back home. I’m tired. I quickly check the schedule for Mjolnir, they have class around 1200. Great! I set the alarm on my dying phone (but charging on my computer) for 1100, and lay down for some quick shuteye. I wake up, it seems odd that my alarm didn’t wake me. I check my computer, it’s like 2pm. Crap. I check the schedule again and the next class isn’t until around 6pm. OK, no problem. I get up and move around. I’m hungry. I freshen up a bit, throw on some clothes, pack my gi into my daypack and head out. 

Reykjavik isn’t very big. I’m pretty sure I could walk the whole thing no problem. Iceland as a whole only has around 350,000 people on the entire island. Which is crazy, because it’s a big island. I’m looking around for somewhere to eat, and I can’t seem to find anything except a random Subway. I walk in, the entire menu is in Icelandic, the girl behind the counter greats me in Icelandic and starts talking to me in the same. I tell her I have no idea what she is saying, she switches to a very heavily accented English. This will be a recurring theme here, I feel. Must be the giant beard I grew before I left. Anyways, I get some kind of a sandwich wight the local special “fish sauce” on it. It was pretty good, especially for a Subway sandwich. 

I do a bit of walking around before I decide it’s time to go to Mjolnir. I walked right by the building the first time, and I’m not entirely sure how. It’s a pretty decent sized building, especially for Iceland. I walk up to the second floor and immediately I see viking looking things all over. I walk into the main area, and there is even more, including a shrine to “Mjolnir”. I smile to myself and walk over to the desk woman, who again greets me in her mother tongue and I say “I have no idea what you just said” which elicits a chuckle from her. I tell here I’m here to train BJJ and ask if they have a schedule in English, I’m told they do not, but she was nice enough to go through the schedule for the next two days with me. It turns out that the BJJ classes, while with Icelandic words, have BJJ in them. I’m also informed that this evenings class isn’t the usual, it’s “grading” night and there will be a lot of sparring. I tell her that I’m OK with this if they are OK with me training with them. She says it will be fine, but that I need to know that I “probably won’t get ranked up” because the instructors don’t know me. I laugh and tell her that’s fine, I came to train not to get stripes or belts from other instructors. 

                    (various viking related stuff with the Mjolnir shrine at the bottom)

So I suit up into my go and head into the training area. It’s pretty big and I get the impression that the area might have been a movie theater or a theater for plays and the like because of the large amount of stadium like seating in the back of the training area where parents, friends, visitors or whatever can watch classes. There was a kids class going on, it looked like a lot of fun for the kids. Very slowly people started showing up. 

Around 1805 or so, the instructors (two brown belts) start giving instructions on how to tie the belt. I only know this because everyone took off their belts (except me) and were retying them. There was a bit more talk, I look over at a guy next to me and say "whats are we doing?", he tells me we are "easy rolling". Ah, ok..a flow roll. I end up with one of the purple belts for a couple of rounds. The third round was, I shit you not, a round that you actively TRY to lose. My purple belt partner was gracious enough to let me know that I was really good at trying to lose. Not entirely sure how to take that one, but we all have to be good at something, right?

After that there was more that I didn't understand, so again I ask for direction from the purple belt. He says they are splitting us into weight groups, kg wise, and I should find the appropriate group. I did some quick math in my head, 205# should be around 90kg, guess I'm with the big guys. So they put us into subgroups from there, 1/2/3. I get a number, that makes no sense to me, and randomly assign myself the number two with the help of some other people.

What comes next is a "pass, sweep, submit" kind of game. Their guys are pretty tough, and the women too from what I was able to see from a distance. I had some back and forth matches, some victories, and some defeats. I felt pretty good overall considering the being worn out from traveling.

The next round of things was Gunnar going around the room and picking the people who were up for promotion. I was sufficiently tired from our previous set of sparring, and looking around I could tell that I was not the only one. There also was not a set time limit to this according to one of the guys I asked. It stopped when they said it stopped. 

So we lined up in a big snake around the room. There had to be 100 people there. It started with the biggest folks first (my group), followed by the medium, and then the small. I had a few rounds against some of the folks who were up for promo, and they all felt solid. This wasn't just white belts looking for blue, it was also seasoned blue belts looking to be purple. After a few rounds of this I was sweating pretty bad and decided to go grab some water, which is when the promotions started. Someone would get turned on their side or inverted and Gunnar would run up behind them, belt in hand, swinging for the fences (or their asses rather). With a loud CLACK on their rears, they were not a new blue or purple belt. 

I'll be at the technique class tomorrow, and will write more then. It's after midnight here now, and I need to get some sleep!