Long time no post

Long time since I posted something once again. I had 5 weeks off from work during this summer, which was great. I spent 4 weeks in southern Finland living at my parents house and training in Hanko, where I originally started training jiu-jitsu. I visited a BJJ gym in Lohja 3 times also as there were no BJJ practice on Tuesday in Hanko. It was great to get to roll with new guys with different styles, I feel that I picked up many new things and also evolved a little in some stuff I've done before. The only bad thing was that even that I was training a lot, I lost all normal eating habits and gained like 15lbs/7kg in a little over a month. Not very good, I guess my beer consumption also added to the weight gain.

On the 17th of July the 7th annual BJJ Summer Fight in Hanko was organized and I fought in the colored belt -82,3kg division. There is always a nice and special feeling to the Summer Fight, was 5 years ago I fought my first BJJ fight in the same tournament. It haunted me for a long time as I lost my 2 first BJJ fights there, but it also was the first tournament I won a fight in as well :)

I had to cut weight for the first time ever to get down to 82,3kg... that was kind of scary, I gotta keep a steady diet in the future, it's not fun the be soft around the belly. I got my weight down without any problems and refereed about 25 fight before it was my turn to fight. I felt really weak during the warm up because of the sun and the heat combined with dehydrating my body I guess.

The first fight was good, I fought against a young blue belt from Espoo. He pulled guard and I started working for a pass which I got after awhile. I went for a kimura from side control but he defended and we got into a scramble, I ended up on top. Started passing again and managed to pull it off after a struggle. I had to catch my breath for awhile and he knew there was maybe 1½minute left in the fight, so he started to work his escape a little over eagerly and I tried to exploit it and work in inverse armbar in from knee on belly which I changed to a normal armbar and got the tap.

The second fight was against a purple belt Hilti brother from Jyväskylä. He tried a sacrifice throw which I managed to block and came on top. He started to go for something weird that I wasn't sure of what he was going for, after some time he tried to go for a loop choke and I got my posture up and started working a pass, I pulled it off. I started to go for an armbar after a while and committed and he rolled out of it and ended up in my guard. I started going for a baseball bat choke and managed to secure the tap with it. Only two fights as there were only 5 guys in my division. So gold for me :)

On Monday I went to Hilti Stockholm for a training session, great training with great guys and girls. After that I relaxed 2 days and prepared for the Hilti Summer Camp in Åland. I got there on Thursday and we training no-gi on Thursday evening and Friday morning. On Friday afternoon we trained with the gi. On Saturday there were a "practice" competition for white belts, 3 of my club mates fought in the no-gi competition and 2 guys in the gi competition. Both guys fighting with the gi won their divisions and in the no-gi competition 2 of our guys met in the final and the third placed second. So 3 gold and 2 silver, I was very proud. I rolled with the gi on a little between fights. In the afternoon Pedro Duarte awarded one of my club mates his blue belt on my request (the one who won both his gi and no-gi division). And then we rolled some after the promotions, Pedro gave me some really good pointers afterwards. After that we had a barbeque and had some beers.

Now I'm back from my summer vacation in Vaasa and I'm looking forward to getting back to some normal daily routines. It's been a great summer so far, in 3 weeks we will get Gabriel Willcox to hold a week long seminar at our academy, it's gonna be great :)