my Arte Suave

Chicago Open results

I want to do a vlog of my experience in Chicago but this will have to do for now.

In my first match i lost 5pts 1advantage to 5pts 2advantages for the other guy. we each got a guard pass and a sweep. i got a near pass for an advantage, he got a near pass and a near knee on belly for his 2nd advantage. this is only the 1st tournament in a series of tournaments designed to help prepare…

Training for Chicago Open

Recently I have been writing a lot of my feelings towards the bjj scene at large and really haven’t touched on how my training has been going in regards to getting ready for ibjjf Chicago open. The last 5 or so weeks I have been training is hard as I think I could have. The focus is of course been on the gi. I’ll be honest and say that everything hasn’t gone 100% the way I have wanted it to while training. I have had injuries really limit me. It is like they come and go and it keeps going that way. Injuries are nothing new though, I cant ever remember being %100 when a competition nears, and I have come to the realization that I probably never will be. And this is common place in bjj and competition bjj, so I can’t complain with awesome examples like michael langhi at the worlds competing with a major injury and examples like stephen hall who seems to always be under the knife. So with that I will be going full steam next weekend no doubt.

In other news, I’ve been just been drilling as usual, locking down my strategy, and training to absolute exhaustion at least 2 times per week.I have been going to Next Level Fitness in Johnston, RI and being tortured by mike campbell and my boy Justin. It’s such a great facility! My whole strength and conditioning has changed. It’s been one strength session, dedicated to nothing but building strength and power. And the other session is dedicated to nothing but conditioning, circuits,circuits, crazy reps.

So it’s been going great, but conditioning and grips are in tremendous shape. Chicago is a week away and I’m feeling great. I am training hard all the way until Thursday!

Skills pays the bills.

Chicago Open coming up..

Its been a couple weeks since my promotion to purple, and with those weeks, I think i am about 90 percent over being prromoted. Occasionally i look down and see the gleam of the new belt around m,y waist, and for a split second I remember all it took to get there, I am always smiling big but now i am smiling even bigger. Bigger because of the challenge that is coming for me. The challene is in Chicago! I will be going to compete in my very first CBJJ purple event out there! I have already won a purple belt division at a NAGA, but honestly that gave me confidence in what I was doing but that is about as much as that title does for me. I know i must prove my worth to myself again. And thanks to Justin Erickson and www.4zero1.com I will be given this opportunity.

I have been training with the same kind of pace I usually train with before big events. I have been doing a ton of cardio, and lots of lifting. Recently I have adopted this sprinting routine. Warm up 1 mile run, sprint 100-200-300-400-300-200-100 meters at the track. Now i train with a heart rate monitor, so after every sprint, i walk the same distance, or until my Heart Rate gets back down to 120bpms! That is incredible tough job to do in under a minute! But that is my goal! At the end of the entire work, I rep out 5 50 meter sprints, 10 seconds of rest in between. This sprint routine is brutal! I am doing it twice a week, sometimes right before class.

As far as lifting goes, I am doing the bar complexes that I still have not posted the video to. Where I take 12 exercises, and do all of them for 6 reps, with the goal of finishing in under a minute! This is stupid hard when you begin to add weight to the bar.

Also I will begin to do farmer walks complexes. This one is brutally hard as well and a great finisher. Take X # farms walk, and alternate the way you hold the dumbells and walk for distance. So you can hold the bells in front of you then walk, above you, alternate above and at your side, in the clean position, staggered. Hopefully that all made sense.

And of course I am doing my guard passing drills =)

The will to win is nothing without the will to prepare!
Getting ready to go to war!