First blog entry in ages...

So plenty of things have happened since my last entry the past summer, I will try to write short and in a chronological order.

I suffered from some injuries during late summer, so I didn't get to train that much. During the summer I attended a very good seminar, the Hilti summercamp. Pedor Duarte was in charge, some great training, but this is where my injuries started.

Then Sami Markkanen held a good weekend seminar at our school i October. The last weekend in October I attended the GB-gym BJJ tournament in the colored belt 82,3kg division. I got the first round on a free pass, the 1st fight I pulled half-guard, swept my opponent, ended up after a scramble into full guard. Passed his guard late in the fight and won 5-0. The 2 nd fight my opponent pulled half-guard and we were there for 5minutes and 45 second, in the last 15 seconds I managed to pass his guard but didn't get the point due to lack of control. But I won the fight by decision. In the final I met my friend who I lost against 1½ years earlier. This time I pulled half-guard, tried a collar choke - 1 advantage for me, he then tried to choke me with an ezekiel - 1 advantage for him. Then I managed to get a kimura on him, sweep him and submit him by armbar. Gold for me :)

November was very focused om me losing weight. Had the BJJ Finnish Opens coming up late in November. The weight was good, 75kg the night be fore the tournament and I dropped another 0,8kg during the night. I don't know why, but in the blue belt -76kg division there were only 5 guys fighting which was very sad. It turned out even worse as my first opponent didn't show up because he wasn't able to cut weight. So I advanced to the finals without even fighting, this was very depressing. I didn't even bother warming up properly, which was very stupid. My final opponent was very convincing, he defeated the first guy 15-0 and the second guy 10-0 on his way to the final. We pulled half-guard the same time and he came on top and got an advantage, I didn't understand this (it happened twice during the fight). I got some advantages for a choke and a sweep/takedown attempt. I think we were tied 2-2 with the advantages when he passed my guard and tried to go for the mount and I re-guarded. I was totally exhausted. So I lost the fight eventually 3-0. I got silver without winning a single fight, that didn't feel very good. Our club got 1 gold, 1 silver and 1 bronze medal.

December turned out as a terrible month, I trained maybe 2½ weeks and got sick. Got back to training in early January. Then Hilti BJJ black belt Sauli Heilimö held a weekend seminar at our academy. Good training and I picked many things from him, some I'm still working on to get to work, but very good thoughts formed during that seminar. He awarded 3 blue belts to our gym and I got my purple belt, this was the 17th of January.

February I focused on training hard and attended the first of seven Hilti BJJ seminars this year in Stockholm. Great training, very croweded :) The best experience was when I got to grapple with Hilti BJJ black belt and UFC veteran David Bielkheden and of course witnessed my first black belt grading, there were a total of 6 bb's awarded during that seminar, great experience. I fought in the colored belt 82,3kg division in Hämeenlinna on the last Saturday of February. I got the first round on a free pass, the second round my opponent pulled guard, tried to play some spider guard, I started passing and eventually flipped him over and he turtled up. I took his back from there and choked him from the back. The second fight I pulled half-guard, tried to go for a kimura which I tried to change to a wrist-lock in a scramble. Returned to half-guard, locked in a collar choke, my opponent stood up and he tapped standing to the choke. In the final pulled half-guard, swept my opponent and passed his guard. I tried to choke him for a while from north-south but tried to hard and he slipped back to guard. Then the disappointing stuff started. I kind of blacked out, I was trying to pass his guard and screwed up totally by doing a big newbie mistake and letting him slap on an easy triangle. But I know he is a very game opponent so there was no shame in losing to him. So silver for me. Our club got 3 silver medals and 3 bronze medal from that tournament. Not too bad.

After that tournament I got a terrible stomach flu, just throwing up and well... you know. We had SBGi bjj brown belt Martin Aedma from Estonia teach at our academy over a weekend, the 5th to 7th of March. We did mainly posture stuff and guard passing, very very good stuff! This seminar opened my eyes for many small details I've overlooked in the past. Good training. Last weekend I was training at my first gym back in Hanko. Friday was no-gi, got a few good round in and on Saturday I rolled bjj with my two instructors Tony and Jocke, they are both brown belts under Rikard Andersson. I got my ass kicked :) This week we are only training no-gi, as there is a beginners tournament in Tampere next Sunday and 7 of our guys are going there. Let's hope all goes well and we got more medals than last year (1 silver and 1 bronze).

Today was my 50th training for the year 2010, not as many I had hoped for, but sickness and life in general has gotten in the way of my training. Hopefully I'll be able to train more during the rest of the year. I'm trying to get in as much freestyle wrestling in as well to improve my takedowns, but my sore shoulders are getting in the way of my wrestling training.

Sorry for typos and unclear text, there was just too much to spellcheck and re-write. The future blog entries will be shorter, I promise.