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 :)

New post again after a pause

I've forgotten to post here again, problably because there has been so much other stuff going on.

But in short, in April my coach Joacim Bergman (Hilti BJJ brown belt) held a seminar at our academy for 3 days. It was a very good seminar and people liked it, first day we did some takedowns, pulled guard and worked for immediate sweeps from there. The second day we worked on butterfly guard and on sunday we trained deep half-guard on my request. Great seminar.

I also attended the second Hilti training camp in Turku in April, great day. Hilti BJJ black belts Sauli Heilimö and Åke Zaar showed us some techniques mainly, good stuff, some stuff I actually implemented into my game, so I'm happy! Plenty of sparring, I think I did maybe 12 3 minute rounds with other purple belt, 2 3 minute rounds with brown belts and one round with a blue belt. So I was exhausted. The there were some new belts awareded, 2 brown and a few purple belt, Tuomo got his purple finally. And then some no-gi rolling, I rolled maybe 7 or 8 rounds as I was so exhausted. Good day, learned a lot of got to roll with a lot of new cool people. We were around 100 people attending that camp.

In early May I got injured, popped something in my ribcage when I was choking Ville from the turtle. So I was out for 2 weeks, held one class but didn't roll myself. 3-4 days before the finnish bjj nationals I got back to training. My ribs were still sore, but it was ok. No weight cutting as I was in 82,3kg this time (because of the ribs I couldn't bother cutting). The result wasn't very good... but it was my first time fighting in the elite (purple, brown & black belts) division.

On saturday we fought in the absolute division, I won my first fight (the picture) by bow n arrow. We were problably 3-4 minutes fighting stand-up, or we were pretty much very cautios both, I threw him with my #1 throw and landed in half-guard. I managed to pass pretty fast and he tried to turtle up and I took his back and worked the choke.

Then I lost to Janne Autio in the second match by armbar. On sunday I lost my first fight to Jukka Korpelainen by bow n arrow.

Our club won 1 gold in the white belt males -70kg and silver in the white belt females -64kg. The other guys fought well and won several matches, but didn't place on the podium unfortunatley.

As a Hilti BJJ purple belt I have permission to grant blue belts with permission from a black belt, so I awarded my first and only blue belt so far to Jussi, who won gold (he also won gold in the finnish opens 2009 in -64kg).

I've been to a physiotherapeut 3 times now due to constant back problems and he has managed to get it pretty good now, feels great tbh.

Last week was a great week for training, lots of rolling and hard rolling. Felt like I had some real flow, maybe because my back works properly again :)? This week was just studies for exams, but now I'm done with them and this morning I started with a nice no-gi roll of about 30 minutes with Tuomo.

I got a good feeling about this summer, lots of hard training :)

A slight neck injury and ADCC beginners tournament

Okay, we did a lot of no-gi two weeks ago and the past week was just no-gi all the way, it was very refreshing to roll without the gi to be honest. I actually think I figured out a couple of details to some techniques because of the lack of control you have when rolling without the gi. The gi have forgiven me alittle, but rolling no-gi got me thinking about how to improve my control. I also started thinking that I need more submissions when rolling without the gi, because I use A LOT of collar chokes and also the lack of control in my submission made it much harder to finish them. So I worked on my brabo choke and guillotine a lot. Got a good vibe from them, I use the guillotine much more from mount then from guard or standing (as I'm rather short). But it made rolling even more fun that it normally is.

Most of you don't know the story behind our gym, but we used to train a little under 2 years ago at this other gym, but we split due to some differences in opinions and priorities (not gonna get into that). So the guys that were interesting in grappling followed us and the kickboxing, traditions jiu-jitsu and some MMA guys stayed there. Now during the past 2 weeks we've had some of the MMA guys visit our gym once or twice a week for no-gi training. It was very nice to get some new rolling partners, and I try to teach them a little extra every time I roll with one of them. Hopefully they will keep training with out too.

Last wednesday I was rolling with this huge guy, approx 230lbs and I was working on a Monson on him from north-south and then changed it to a guillotine from mount and managed to sprain my neck somehow. I really don't know how, as he wasn't even touching my head. I tried to strech my neck etc, but I wasn't able to turn my head to the left the next morning. So I didn't train very much for the rest of the week. I just prepped our guys that were going to this ADCC beginners tournament, I did some light rolling on saturday with one of the guys that I had worked with on a guard pass.

On sunday morning we started our trip to Tampere for the tournament. There were 6 guys representing our club, 5 guys that have trained under 8 months and 1 guys that has trained for maybe 18 months. The guys that was least experienced jiu-jitsuwise has been doing greco-roman for maybe 15 years, so he is top notch in his pedigree :) But he had only trained jiu-jitsu for maybe 10 sessions or so, hehehee...

Well two guys lost their first fight on points. Then two guys won their first fights, one by kimura and the other 8-3 on points. The kimura guy lost his second fight very fast and the other guy lost due to toe-hold, he was our most experienced guy, but they paired him up against two very tough guys. The guy he lost to won the tournament. One guy won his first fight on armbar and suddenly his second opponent didn't show up. His "third" fight stared well, he blocked a takedown and was standing in open guard and worked on a pass that we drilled alot, he was very close to passing but suddenly was caught in a calf-lock... and tapped... Our greco-roman guy did really great! We made our gameplan according to his strengths, wrestling! There are no points awarded during the first 2 mintues of the fights, she we wanted to keep the fights standing for that time. I kept informing him about the time all the time, and it was very nice to see how dominating his wrestling was. Immediatley as the points started, he suplexed his opponents. AUCH! The first fight he suplex his opponent, managed to pass half-guard and get to mount, he worked on a americana but I think the bell saved his opponent, but a clear victory anyhow. The second match was the coolest, his opponent was so stubborn about wanting to wrestle him. When the points started, he suplex the guy -2points. He was in open guard and I told him to stand up, and the opponent followed. It didn't take long for the suplex to come again, BAM! - 2 points. The opponent worked on a sweep that led to a scrable and they got up. Well, you can guess what was next, yeah, another suplex! BAM - 2 points! At this point the poor guy was pretty mentally broken after those slams, our guy passed guard, secured a sidechoke and jumped to the otherside to choke him out. Victory via sidechoke.

The last fight was very good, this opponent was a good guard player. He tried to work a flying armbar 4 times within the first 2 mintues without success. The time started and, you know what was coming, a suplex! They were on the ground for a while, but he got back up and the opponent pulled guard and got penalized with 1 minus point. It didn't take long and they were on their feet again, and you know what was coming again, yeah - a suplex! So our guy was up by 5 points and there wasn't much time, I was certain that he'd win by this point as there was just like 30 second left and it was looking good. But his ground inexperience showed and he got into a tight armbar. He was fighting it hard, but with 4-5 second left on the clock he was forced to tap out. It was a shame, I'd have loved to see some more greco-roman exhibitions :)

No medals to our guys as there were 51 people in the -76kg category (3 of our guys fought in that division, the greco-roman dude aswell). But I was very happy, we train very little no-gi, and our guys displayed very nice techniques and spirit! Better luck next time :)

Today I was back to training 100% again, it was nice! Only one blue belt at practise today and he had to leave early, so I didn't get to roll with him. But none the less, it was a good day of training once again. Tried to work on my closed guard alittle, as I do it so little nowadays. Always working my open and half-guard.

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.

Week 25 and 26

Week 25 was a bad week for training, the finnish traditional midsummer came and I also injured my back alittle. So I only trained on monday and tuesday. Wednesday was sidelined and on thursday I whent to this music festival to enjoy the midsummer with some friends, I problably don't need to tell you there was plenty of alcohol involved... sigh!

Week 26 started great, a friend of mine who is a no-gi specialist ;) Came to our school to hold a seminar, it's still on going. This week I've trained so far:

Monday morning: no-gi 90min, evening BJJ 90min
Tuesday: MMA 90min
Wednesday morning no-gi 90min

I will have to work tonight, so I won't be able to train this evening. Too bad :( I've really enjoyed rolling with him, esspecially no-gi in which he is very very good.

Tomorrow and on friday we will train again and on friday we will hold a tournament within our own gym :)

BJJ class monday 15th June 2009

I felt some back pain in my lower back for some reason, maybe I slept in a weird position or something. Oh well.

We started running around, doing all kinds of stuff, jumping etc. Then we did somersaults on the ground, forward and backward. Piggyback carrying, squats with a partner, push-ups etc. Just a few reps, didn't want to exhaust people. Then we did the standing monkey climb a few laps, you know the one with one guys standing and the partner starting in back mount and climbing around the guy standing as if he was a tree or something.

We then drilled a comination of armbar, omoplata and finally the triangle. You started with the armbar, the other guy postured up so we changed to the omoplata pulling the guy down and he postured up again and we got the triangle finally.

Techniques included a collarchoke from guard and an armbar when the guy defended the choke. When also looked at a sweep from guard from which it's nice to move to a side choke.

We rolled maybe 6 or 7, 5min rounds in the end. Nice rounds, I got a sweep to work that I've been working on lately on another blue belt. I've been doing it to white belts earlier, so I wasn't sure if a blue belt would fall for it, but he did :) That kinds made my day, hehe!