Arte Suave

Update regularly at

2011-09-04T03:58:00.003-04:00

My 2011 Pan Am quarter finals match..for your enjoyment..or not..

2011-03-31T00:23:00.002-04:00

I woule watch without sound..The guy "Chewy" is so passionate, I myself couldnt stand it to hear him root for a complete stranger, just made me feel bad i didnt come through for him, would love to train with that guy someday.

2011-03-31T00:22:00.000-04:00

Heres my first match! Overall I rate my performance a C+ for the Pan Ams.

Working towards a better performance at the World Pro.

1st absolute Abu Dhabi NJ 2011

2011-02-25T03:45:00.002-05:00

Abu Dhabi Trials New Jersey journal

2011-02-18T00:09:00.002-05:00

What great weekend it was for me. Not only because of my obvious results. But because I got hang out with and meet family I have never had spent so much time with.
The tournament organizers Emilio Novoa and Riccardo Ammendolia were on top of everything. I got lost in Jersey, called Emilio and he gave me great directions to get to weigh ins. It was a mess for me traveling to weigh in, and was actually the last person of the tournament to weigh in. I was also the first to register for the event according to Emilio, lol.
As far as fights, I had 6 total. 3 at weight and 3 in the absolute.
My weight matches were all pretty good fights. I was able to implement my game very well, was not once tired, a testament to my strength and conditioning. I was doing a bunch of hills and a lot of high rep bar complex stuff, I felt excellent! The first match pretty set the tone for the way the weight matches would go. I was able to pass, sweep, and just do my thing. I was up big on points, was looking for the finish in mount, I ended up losing the position, was on bottom, hit an awesome sweep, transitioned to the back, and finished with a bow n arrow choke.
The second match went pretty fast, I messed up on a takedown and instead got taken down myself, injured myself in the scrammble I later found out, I swept, got on top half guard, and I ended up finishing the fight there with a cross choke.
The third match, I still had the stupid injury after trying to ice it all day, i waited like 2 hours to fight, and the ice did nothing, and I could not find anyone who had ibuprofen. This match I kind of just ran up the score to 8-0. The guy had a pretty tight defense to one of my passes, and I am already on it drilling the counter, mind you I could not pass or put weight on my right leg because of the pain, it was weird, but the guy ended up DQ'n himself with a minute left for reaping my leg.
In the absolute, I had 3 fights.
Once again the story of all my absolute fights were that I really could not use my right leg because of the pain I had in it. The only thing I could do was sweep stay on top and act like I was trying to pass.
In my first fight, I fought a pretty big kid and the champion i think from +92kg division. I swept him and just scrapped with him. He ended up rippng my pants in one instance, then I had to find someone nice enough to let me use their gi, which I did find some, and in another instance this kid picked me up out of bounds and dropped me out of bound on the injured leg! I really thought I was not going to be able to continue. Doc taped my leg up and I continued to scrap with the kid. I won 4-0.
My second fight, I fought the other big kid and the runner up from the +92kg division. Same story, I swept the kid, and stayed on top until the end. I could not use my leg to push off of. It was ridiculous, I ended up squeezing out a 2-0 victory.
My final fight of the day, This kid really made me earn it man. The story was the same with the leg and passing. I got a sweep, stayed on top, caught the kids back in a scrammble but fell off. The rest of the match I defended his passes, left and right, he had a weird pass for deep half guard LOL, I kept telling myself "I WANT THIS MORE!", while he was passing I'd tell myself this among other things. I ended up pulling out a 2-0 victory. Got up and yelllled soo loud in that Gymnasium! Everything I worked for since June 2010, I let out that roar.
It was a good day in terms of results, but the performances could have been much better.
It felt really great to get my first OBJECTIVE of the year out of the way.

Next up in the Pan Ams in California, then World Pro in Dubai, then hopefully Brazilian Nationals, then WORLDS!

DOUBLE GOLD IN NJ: On my way to Dubai

2011-02-09T00:13:00.000-05:00

I Just double gold'd in NJ this past weekend, winning my weight class and then the absolute to win an all expense paid trip to Abu Dhabi to fight at the maine event!
Here is the final of my weight class...Its the only good video I have unfortunately.

Please follow me at www.juniorfamilia.com, this is where I have posted all this stuff already.

BJJ Sundays

2011-01-31T01:47:00.001-05:00

Remember I Post regularly and even more at www.juniorfamilia.com!

Been training with these guys on Sundays, and its been really great. Today I took this picture, and in this particular practice session, we did King of the Guard for 40 minutes straight. After that, I got pitted, all of these guys mounted me, and I had to escape back to guard or reverse the position. It was really tough, like reaaaallly tough. Actually, all these guys except the last 5 guys; the last 5 guys had my back and I had to escape. But the cardio felt fantastic. Oh yeah the room was 85 degrees, and very humid. The story this photo can't tell, is how hard it was for me to hold my hand up like that for the picture, I WAS SPENT! I love this game.

My recipe: Recovery/morning shake.

2011-01-31T01:45:00.000-05:00

Ary Farias on mistake free bjj

2011-01-28T02:42:00.002-05:00

What do you feel will be different at this rank as opposed to the other belts?
I feel the difference is in the professionalism at black belt. Everyone is a professional, there’s no one in there piddling around, they always have something up their sleeves. You can’t make mistakes at black belt, that would be costly. It’s not like the other belts, where you can make a mistake and still fix things. There’s a huge difference between the other belts and black belt. I’m just another rookie about to debut. Whether I’ll do well or not I’ll only know come competition time, it will all depend on me. -Ary Farias

Ary says some great things I try and focus on. I think its important to think about being mistake free early on, and be a professional in your approach to training.
The picture was from the 2009 Pan Ams!

Hurdles/plyometrics training for bjj

2011-01-20T03:07:00.000-05:00

BJJ conditioning adcc trials VLOG 1/14/2011

2011-01-18T12:26:00.000-05:00

Bjj conditioning video

2011-01-18T02:49:00.002-05:00

Re-up on supplements, picking the intensity

2011-01-03T01:55:00.001-05:00

And I am also trying some new things. First I got some BCAAs (branch chain amino acids) are super important, check here for more detailed information http://tinyurl.com/32by87f, Glutamin, and trying out creatine which is said to improve not only strength gains but also anaerobic capacity. I am looking to push myself into the ground this month getting ready for the ADCCs Feb 5th, and I am going to need all the help I can get as I bump up my S&C days from 2 to 3, and as always the BJJ sessions will be intense, I will be training mostly two a days, sometimes 3 with S&C, on Mon-Tue-Wed-Thur, Friday is off sometimes or really light drilling, Saturday is either light or hard, and Sunday is completely off. I will strength just a little bit in the form of the Olympic lifts I do during circuits. I will be working hard until 8 days before Feb. 5th.
For everything I spent under $100.
I am also taking the following:
Fish Oil
Vitamin A, B, C, D, and E...All complex
Glucosamine (Finally trying this ish out.)
Magnesium
Calcium and
Zinc
It would probably be cheaper to get a multivitamin like Multi Pro 32x. And You would be covering more bases..But who could pass up a deal son!?

Inside look at one of my Monday workout (VLOG)

2010-12-27T14:35:00.002-05:00

Gold at Grappler's Quest NJ (video)

2010-12-05T22:53:00.001-05:00

Junior vs Todd from radhames familia on Vimeo.

My game for eating right and earning it

2010-11-23T23:31:00.001-05:00

How are you sure that you deserve anything as far as competition is concerned? One way of thinking I totally agree with, is Tom Brands way of thinking, who is currently the head wrestling coach for Iowa Hawkeyes, one of the greatest teams ever, period. He goes to say, "You dont deserve anything, you only deserve what you earn!"
These words have had a profound effect in how I approach a lot of things, and truthfully I wish I had this kind of approach on my University studies, haha, but that is another post. So how do you know you deserve a victory or a gold medal at a tournament? Is there anyway to know?

www.juniorfamila.com
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Cael Sanderson on being nervous

2010-11-10T17:02:00.002-05:00

If you don't know who Cael Sanderson is, he is an Olympic Gold medalist, and the ONLY UNDEFEATED 4x NCAA CHAMPION. Thats pretty major in a sport as tough and rugged as wrestling.Cael wrestled for Iowa State University. Grappler's take notice.

Don’t be afraid to get nervous. You should be nervous. Being nervous is a gift. You will be sharper mentally, quicker, and stronger. The problem is when people try to fight being nervous because they think it is a bad thing. It’s not. The phenomenon is that the more you try to contain and suppress a thought, the worse it becomes and the more you think of it. So the trick is to just accept that you are nervous and be ok with it. Don’t try and change it. I used to tell myself when I was nervous, “I am ready.” I did that thousands of times. The more you say the more you believe it. You train your mind. As soon as you accept that you are nervous and don’t fight it, being nervous will be a good thing.
Practice, practice, practice.

For more on Cael, check out his website at www.CaelSanderson.com, where he talks about a lot, and answers a lot of really important questions as it relates to grapplers period.

Paying the price

2010-11-08T15:06:00.001-05:00

Everything has a price tag. What does being good, great, the best in the world mean to you? What price would you put on that? The following excerpts are the most most motivating reads. The bar is set so high. Check it out,
An excerpt from Wrestling Tough by Mike Chapman.

"I can pay the price" to be great, say millions of athletes. What they really mean to say is, "I can pay a certain price, but don't ask me to go beyond what I think I am capable of doing." Ninety-nine percent of athletes will come up toa line in the sand and halt. Once a person has entered into the pain threshold of severe training, he or she, naturally tends to shut down.
"OK, that's it," is what most of us tell ourselves. "I'm hurting, I've worked hard enough and put in enough hours. I've paid the price." At that point, however we are just knocking on the door of paying the price.

Its hard to even begin to quantify the words Paying the Price. But for me it means, I am not working as hard I can everyday. I am beaten up in sparring, beating myself up in the gym 4 times a week. Drilling almost everyday (or when I can). Is that enough? Is waking up at 8am to get to Next Level to do S&C then straight to BJJ right after, then another bjj session at night, is that enough? I don't feel it is enough at all. Keep reading.

"Coaches would always come to Iowa to try and figure out what Gable did differently, what his secret to success was. It was hard work," said Troy Steiner, NCAA champion and four-time All-American during his Hawkeye days. "But, like Gable always said, most people do not know what hard work is."

"Most people do not know what hard work is." To answer my own question. Do I really know what hard work is?

Click here to read rest of the post.
www.juniorfamilia.com

Training: ADCC Pro gi trials around the corner..

2010-11-04T23:56:00.002-04:00

It's been good times these past few weeks..Theres always room for better training but I feel fine with the ways things are progressing.

First, this past month (October) I spent all of it hammering out details of my guard, guard games, and retention. There has been much drilling going on, I've been tidying up my dumb sides..You know the side where its weaker for you to get sweeps off of. Well I have been making my weak side strong, and I am feeling more comfortable with the ways things are going. I will continue to do my guard project up until 2 weeks before the ADCC event which by then I will start doing competition prep.

Strength and Conditioning. Again there is always so much room for improvement here. I mean Dan Gable, man. That guy was a tremendous force with conditioning, I am trying to get just 2% of what his conditioning is all about. I am getting stronger, my resting heart rate and max heart rates are getting lower and lower. Cain Valasquez max heart rate is 167 BPMS! That is insane! Mine right now is at 187-190 bpms. That is great for me considering I was at the mid 90s. So obviously my conditioning is improving. As far as strength goes, I have been hitting up a lot of compound movements i.g. Dead Lifts, presses, benches, squats...I am actually dead lifting in the 400s easy, before this was a task and a mission! I have also been doing a lot of olympic lifting, more specifically the clean. It used to be that it was hard for me to do 145lbs even, now I am maxing it out at 205 no form lol! It feels good to see the numbers grow. As far as these numbers translating into jiu jitsu, some training partners have been telling me I feel stronger, especially my grips, which is another facet I have been training and improving!

Right now the ADCC pro gi trials are on December 4th. This is one of the ones I want to win for that ticket to Dubai! Time to make my dreams a reality!

I will try and update all the way up to the event.

WOD: strength...then conditioning

2010-10-20T22:40:00.002-04:00

warmup

Planks 90 seconds then for 60

weird squats where i have plates underneath my feet and i grab my toes and squat up and down while holding my toes on the plates elevate my feet at my heels. for 10 reps

Plyos/Hurdles to warm up 5 rounds of:

5 hurdle jumps (20 inches)

single leg hurdler jumps ( 8 inches)

5 Rounds of:

Cleans X 3

planks with arm raises X 5 each way

We did 145 LBS cleans

i am getting stronger! This used to be a bit of a challenge starting out.

3 rounds of:

Split leg squat X 10 each leg

Over head presses X 20

2 rounds of:

glute ham drops x 10

pistol squats X 5 each leg

shoulder band extentions x 10

band press (core) x 10 each side

After all that...SPRINTS!

I rested 3 minutes after I was done with the last circuit before I went into sprints.

400 yards

300 yards

200 yards

100 yards

50 yards x 4 with 15 seconds rest in-between

i feel fantastic. Could hardly open my eyes after the sprints.

I WILL BE A WORLD CHAMPION!

Dear readers of my blog...

2010-10-04T15:57:00.000-04:00

If you were wondering where I've been, I have been updating like crazy over at www.juniorfamilia.com.
I have been posting my workouts of the day, fitness for bjj stuff, and of course my thoughts and were I am going with regards to bjj.
I will keep updating this blog with snippets, but lately I have been forgetting to add stuff here.

Sorry again! I will try to do better, this blogspot account is not dead. But I am always at my tumblr www.juniorfamilia.com account. tumblr is just more fun then tumblr in my opinion.

facebook www.facebook.com/rfamilia.jr
twitter @radamez
I am always updating my facebook and twitter with updates of new stuff i post!
and uhmm email lol radhames.familia@gmail.com
I am always interested in talking with bjjers of the world no matter what!

-Junior

Amazing August!

2010-09-09T16:11:00.000-04:00

It has been such an amazing experience at my school the last month or two. Besides learning the awesome lessons in Chicago and in Boston recently in my competition tour my coach and mentor Tim Burrill has been promoting a lot of people. Honestly I see the blue being awarded more then anything.
But for the first time in my journey in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, I was on hand to see him award the black belt to my homie Chris Yonkers last month! Super tough guy, and one of Tims earliest students!

My freaking homies! I was so excited when Tim Promoted my toughest training partners and bjj nemesis' Dustin Rhodes and Jimmy Connor to brown belt! Another first for me! I was so excited for these guys especially because I train with these guys everyday! Everyday we kill each other and push each other to our limits, I think thats why it was so special for me to be there and witness their promotion! I was excited the next day waking up, like man my homies are brown belts!

I just love to see my friends do great and achieve their goals and dreams! It inspires me to do great!
My Training has been great! I have been trying extra hard to exhaust my self in training and pushing myself to become stronger at Next Level Fitness to ensure I do not repeat the ridiculous feelings I felt in Chicago and in Boston.
http://www.juniorfamilia.com/post/1092412987/amazing-august

GQ Boston results

2010-08-30T01:55:00.002-04:00

I just had my second tournament at purple belt at Grappler's Quest UFC Fan Expo Boston.

I had three matches, i won my first match on points, lost my second match to a big boy from Team Lloyd Irvin, and lost my third match on points.

Right now its all a learning a experience for me, getting used to the purple belt competition you could say. But its not the competition thats the trouble, its me, and my body not performing to what it can perform to, that is the most frustrating part right now for me, is my body not doing what its supposed to do. I don't feel any different from the other times I was competing, but I have been feeling this nervous energy when I am out there. There are other things that could hindering my ability to perform that are still outstanding from Chicago. Not too sure.

As far as technical stuff, I am making a lot of mistakes, there are things I have to tighten up no doubt. Side control stuff, closed guard stuff, and even my back taking ability. All positions in GQ I did not capitalize on.

I am not dissappointed at my placing at all, just upset at my body right now. I am going to kill myself in training these next few weeks and beyond.

Right now I am trying to get to Maryland to train on the 5th so we will see how that goes.

All I can do now is train train train, and learn from these recent results, I know they will be better for sure. I have alot of competing to do before the year is up! My pride isnt hurt at all, just my body! lol As of right now i will be doing conditioning 3 times a week at next level. It looks like 2 strength sessions and 1 blow out session. And I am going to start swimming as soon as the pool near my house opens up again.

For now here is a video of my first match.

Chicago Open results vlog

2010-08-24T17:15:00.001-04:00

Fushida Mantis gi review

2010-08-18T11:12:00.000-04:00

I have owned a total of 8 Gis, and this will be my first review of a gi, so be nice, lol? I have ouano's, Koral's, HCK double (first gi), a Vulkan. And I like pretty much all my gi's for different reasons with exception to the Vulkan honeycomb I have, but thats a different post. First Fushida are a Canadian based company.
The feeling of building something
It has to be the way a professional sports athlete feels when he is tacked by nike to have a custom piece of appearal or gear tailored to them. They bring you in, sit you down and measure everything about you, nothing left to chance. Well this is how Candian based company Fushida make you feel. At first you try to see about ordering a Gi and before you can do that you have to send in this list of different measurements of your body. It feels like these guys are custom built the gi just for you. They call this design, "Tru-Fit". Fushida seem to ensure that all their gi's fit to specific body types, large, lean, regular, long body types.
First a picture of how it looks on me.

Customer Service
You will be dealing with one of the most responsive, most attention to detail persons you will meet online especially when it comes to a vendor of brazilian jiu-jitsu apperal. It is I'm sure hard enough in our humble sport to make a buck but too me it seemed that Christo cared a great deal about his product and his customers and future gi wearers. He could of just sent me any old gi that was close to my meausrements that I had sent to him, but no! Soon after I received an email saying I needed to do better measurements. Now at the time it was 3 in the morning for me and I just wanted to send something out to see what it was all about only to be contacted by Christo saying that there were many flaws in my measurements, again lol. I will be honest and say I measured everything as best I could and guestimated how my Gi measured up. Now anyone could have just sent anything to me not care or lose a single ZzZz in their nights rest. But eventually I got a hold of someone and actually did the measurements, and sent them to Christo while at class at my University! I really wanted to see what this custom fit gi thing was all about. And after all the emails, and there were many, Christo had shipped the gi to me, with free fast shipping! What a guy! So the gi came super fast! maybe 2-3 days later it came to my bjj school right as I was about to teach class no less.
The Gi in my opinion
As I stated previously, the gi had just arrived right as I was about to teach class, and my students and training partners were all there, and I had already put on another gi, when i tore the package open and put it on right then and there! The first thing I noticed about the gi was how rough to the touch it was compared to my other gi's, but also how light it was. I was skeptical at first about the feel or the roughness. It fit me perfectly! I even spoke to my instructor about it, and he said that because it was so light feeling that I should weigh in no problems at CBJJ events, but also that since its rough to the touch to think about how hard I would be to be grabbed or be kept a hold of. And then i really bought into the gi, because The super easy feeling gis, I feel I can hold on to them for a long time, but rougher even double weave Gi's are a tough to hold on to after a while.
How it fit me
The Fushida fit me perfectly as I stated earlier. Before the wash and after the wash it was even better! I lost maybe a half an inch or an inch on the sleeves. I washed it cold and hung dry it. Everything else felt a little more tapered around my chest, arms. The important and scarey thing to me was IBJJF inspections rright before you fight at an event. If your familiar with these inspections at events you will know that you need slack on your sleeves. That is if you hold your arms straight out your sleeve needs to hang about 2-3 inches. If it doesnt you do not pass inspection, and you will not be allowed to compete. I emailed IBJJF and they send me the measurements back and everything was fine. So I felt great in this gi while wearing it seemed almost snug I had never felt a gi that fit me like this, the Koral's and Oauno's were favorites of mine. Actuallly the Ouano was my favorite but it weighed to much. The Ouano weighed about 5.5 lbs..The Fushida a shocking 4 lbs. That means I can eat more before competitions or just feel at ease about weight!
The pants shrunk a little too. At first they were at my ankles then they were a little above my ankles. And just a tad snugger. The Gi is ripstop material and to this point I am not sure if IBJJF allows ripstop gi pants because the pants become slippery when they are wet, I have still yet to confirm these rumors.
Now it was my intention to find the perfect competition gi and I believe I have found it.
Some official stats and information from www.Fushida.ca:

Pre-Shrunk 100% Lighter Weight Pearl Weave Cotton with RipStop Pant fabric
"Fushida F" embroidery on both upper arms and bottom left pant leg, with Fushida "Mantis" chest patch on left lapel
One-piece jacket construction
All reinforcement edges taped for extra strength and durability
Both jacket and pant side vents features full length oversized reinforcements with extra stitching for increased durability
Pre-Shrunk RipStop pant fabric features increase durability and reduce shrinkage (RipStop feature available for a limited time only)
Pant features 3/4 length double lined knee padding
Pant with full gusset design reducing movement restrictions
Four oversized tie loops increasing pant fit, strength and comfort

Fushida are like a breath of fresh air to the BJJ / Judo Gi market. I highly recommend everyone try a gi from them. Not only because of the great quality, or customer service but it is very easy on the pockets as well. The prices range for $100 to $150. You can't beat the lowest price, which is what I paid for my Mantis gi.
The photos don't do the pants justice, I will update this review with more pictures and all body shots, and also after I find out whether or not CBJJ allows ripstop pants.
Here are some more photos! I took them with the camera on my phone, but you guys should 'get the picture' =) I will explain a few things in the pictures. These pictures are of my gi that I have used for the past 3 or 4 weeks, twice sometimes 3 times during those weeks, so you might see some spots of hard training stains lol. (Pictures after the jump)

Training for Chicago Open

2010-08-17T14:05:00.002-04:00

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.

Please click here for the rest!

JT Torres video on the importance of everything!

2010-08-10T14:32:00.001-04:00

This is a video of one of my favorite bjj players right now talking about the importance of everything! LITERALLY! I think this is the video that puts everything into perspective. JT talks about what should be going on in your training and as far your perception on competition, he talks about “the process” and DRILLING! The only sad thing is, is that I still haven’t had the opportunity to train with this guy although im always chatting it up with JT at tournaments.

props to www.shoyoroll.com for the video and Team Lloyd Irvin and JT.

Getting better faster: The use of single techniques...

2010-08-06T20:31:00.000-04:00

You know when that guy in your school hits you with that amazing technique, and you either wonder for a while how or what that technique was or you just ask that person there what happend. This will occur a bunch in jiu-jitsu, where if your impressed by something you want to know what it is, to see if maybe it can be something you can add to your game. There arent too many things wrong with this phenomenon in BJJ, but it becomes a problem when you think of jiu-jitsu as a static thing, or something that relies on Square always going into square so to speak. Not to sound 'cliché' but Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is water and the ability to move in water never thinking that a single technique will always work for the same opponent.

Please go here for the rest! =)

Coming full circle? Better at bjj...

2010-08-02T02:14:00.001-04:00

In jiu-jitsu in my opinion to be great or one of the best in the world, and you can check out any past world champion and look at them and see that they are a well rounded Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu fighter. I am sure you can find one or two who exclusively played guard, one being Pe de Pano who he himself said all he did was pull guard and win championships like that, but thats another post. What I am getting at is, the more i train the more I realize that you have to come full circle as soon as possible. I dont mean in the sense that you have to be great fast but that you have to have an idea from everywhere I believe. Meaning that, if you are under 3 years of bjj experience, then you should try and be good on top, good on bottom, and just basically have a good understanding of everything. A lot of times people just want to be on top or on bottom.

For the rest please visit juniorfamilia.com for the rest of this. Thanks!

Becoming a giant killer!

2010-07-27T10:27:00.000-04:00

David vs Goliath. Overcoming in jiu-jitsu what seems impossible or just really hard to do. Beating the guys that weigh 230lbs and above, the extreme aboves! We have all probably seen one or several accounts of the the David vs Goliath match ups at local BJJ tournaments. And they're always a spectacle. Everyone wants to see David SLAY Goliath everytime. And why not? Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu was made for the smaller weaker people. I think this is partly why the Absolutes of tournaments are so compelling.

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My Progress: My Guard Spider/De La Riva

2010-07-23T13:21:00.000-04:00

I want to do installments of these kinds of posts about my game and really try to track my progress and also outline my thoughts as I was going through the evolution of the positions as they evolved. Anyway, here goes.

I started out being a bottom player mostly. I came to the school playing spider guard. My bug was smashed starting out. But what motivated me most was when these freaking guys and i use freaking very vehemently because these freaking guys always tell you oh dont do this or do that, YOUR TELLING ME NOT TO BE CREATIVE AND THESE FREAKING GUYS NEED TO LEARN THAT IMAGINATION IS MORE IMPORTANT THEN KNOWLEDGE.

Follow link to read the rest! CLICK HERE!

Confessions: Belt Promotion..

2010-07-14T13:00:00.000-04:00

I have a bunch of ideas of blogs I want to do, or topics I want to discuss besides just my personal grappling experience, but this "Confession's" part is something that I think would be helpful not only to readers of my blog and a lot of people will hopefully be able to relate but to myself to see how far I have come when im way down the line in my grappling career. Sort of like my 'memoirs' as my instructor Tim Burrill put it to me a while back. This are things on my mind, it might get a little hot.

Promotion is an easy one to write about. We all think about it all the time, right ? I at-least I was. From my time as a white belt I was really successful coming into my school, I had experience already with my years of Judo and Army Combatives. So certainly I wanted to be promoted, and always wanted to be the guy who got promoted fast, and I did, I got my blue in 6 months. From then on I competed and started out slow. I did not win an CBJJ title until the New York Open, but honestly felt that at the Pan-Ams 2010 that i was superior to my competition submitting all my opponents (submitted three, and winning 7-0 vs my last opponent) until I shot my self in the foot thinking footlocks were illegal vs my last opponent, so I tapped ruining my chances of winning my first CBJJ title. I didnt have to win the Pan-Ams to know I was ready for a purple. I knew I was, I knew that my training partners knew I was.

There comes a time when "you just know" that your ready. I probably would of been able to compete just fine vs purples at the pan ams, but i was only 97 % sure I could. Now I am 100% sure I can beat these guys.

My problem with people is, for one I am very hard on myself, as far as training, drilling, mat time, goes i am so hard on myself and I see guys not just at my school but other schools go around wanting these belts, and thats all well and fine to wanting to be recognized, BUT FOR WHAT? A lot of people can't even explain certain simple positions at all, escapes, simple armbars, a kimura, explain to me one sweep that you think you do well, people who have competed less then 5 times in the last few years, I want to compete at least 12 times a YEAR!

What are you saying when you walk around wanting to be promoted? What about your game has you in your mind serving to be promoted ?

What your saying is, I dont trust my instructor or believe in what he is doing as far as promotions guy.

Look at the person in the mirror, ask yourself the questions I asked earlier, and work on these things. At blue belt you should be able to teach a lot, armbars, kimuras, escapes, you should have something to offer. Believe in your instructor, if you dont then your at the wrong school, there are plenty of McDojo's out there where you can go and get your blue purple and brown or whatever fast and be blown out of the water by some who promotes how they should.

Personally Purple is going to be great for me, as a test. I am scared to death of me at brown belt, I will be AWESOME I know that for sure, but only because Tim thinks I am awesome enough to be there as a grappler. I am scared to even think about the great talent that is out in this world at brown and black to even think about it like that.

You should be scared of being promoted, because then you have to represent, you have to live up to that color around your waist

Yours Truly,

Radhames Familia, Jr.

Chicago Open coming up..

2010-07-10T23:18:00.000-04:00

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!

Faixa Roxa...Ossssss

2010-06-24T14:46:00.003-04:00

Here I am, 21 months later. Purple belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu under Tim Burrill! I earned it training 2 sometimes even 3 times a day and hard work, now its time for me to prove I deserve to be at the top of the heap at purple. I didn't realize it right then when I got promoted but after everyone had left, I thought: "wow there are some really tough guys at purple". Guys im not sure if they have received their promotion yet or not. I am looking forward to ripping it up this year!

On the top of my list is Nogi pan-ams, and nogi worlds! I didn't get a chance to compete at the Mundials, but I will still have a shot at being a world champion nogi. I havent written recently besides my highlight of NY Open, but I have switched up my classes that I teach during the day. instead of all of them being gi, now 2 of them are nogi and 1 is gi. I am having a ton of emphasis on wrestling, takedowns, and finishes right now. Making the switch from gi to nogi is a tough one for me. I know i am still effective without the gi, but to have the same kind of confidence I do outside the gi is lacking for sure. Recently My confidence has been raising up nogi. I have been watching a ton of instructional's for wrestling. I am learning how to drill wrestling stuff. Stuff i wished my wrestling buddies would have taught me instead of just techniques. Because I am realizing more and more that grappling isn't about single techniques when you get up in belt and up in experience. Its the tiny little details of positions, transitions. I am pretty good at the flower sweep, and you will still catch me drilling the crap out of it. So back to wrestling. I have been working on polishing up my wrestling posture when Im standing up. A dvd that has helped me a ton with drills is Ohio State head wrestling coach Tom Ryan. He talks about "shoulder, knee and toe alignment". Making the shoulder knee and toe aligned whenever your moving, when your shooting, and were just doing this over and over in my class. Ahhh there is so much! So much drilling and trying to be disciplined in our positions. I am also watching alot of Bobby Douglas, and some Dan Gable. Here are my goals:

Take down the wrestlers.

Thats it for now =) I am preparing, and I will be prepared.

Before I forget, i want to thank everyone whos ever trained with me, from California, to Maryland, to Massechusetts, New York, I wouldnt be who I am were it not for your rolls. More over I want to thank the guys who train with me every single day at Tim Burrill's BJJ in Providence, Rhode Island, and more important Dan "Micro" Faggell whos helped me so much with the thinking of jiu jitsu and just being one of the most dedicated grapplers I have ever met, Dustin Rhodes i hate you =), Paulo and Vinny for being the core group of guys in my class always helping me prepare for tournaments, my instructors Daymon Smith who continues to be a bar i keep reaching for in terms of giving abuse hahaha, Mat Santos always helping me whenever i asked and of course Tim Burrill for being a great mentor, coach and friend for trusting me to be the rank of purple belt. If this thank paragraph did not make sense, thank you too. I am very happy right now. =D Ossssss!!!!

"The will to win is nothing without the will to prepare" -the wall at Iowa State wrestling room.

Brand New Highlight video from me @ the New York Open

2010-06-11T19:34:00.005-04:00

Thanks to my training partner Vinny Canabarro for making this!
www.juniorfamilia.com

Competition fitness question answered..

2010-06-02T14:10:00.002-04:00

So I received an email from friend who checks out my blog from time to time, and this person had a question regarding fitness. Here's what he said/asked exactly.

So I joined [a tournament] last weekend and
I got my ass kicked. I figured I have to improve on my strength and
fitness. The guys i fight are usually bigger than me and I need to
match them on that aspect.

What do you suggest I start doing? I will be enrolling to a gym. I
agree with what you said about building fitness continously. I want to
do that as well because I want myself to be ready to compete all the
time. I know you are pretty knowledgeable on this field thats why I
sent you this email.

Thanks bro!

This was my reply, and i replied from my phone. Had no idea it was this much info:

**Disclaimer** I am by no means a master at this stuff. I have just been around, have competed. Have felt like complete crap, out of shape competing. Things have changed. I am now doing much better fitness wise. And i am improving daily. I am more then willing to share my experience and what has worked for me thus far.

Hey bro, all is great over here.
So guys your size are strong or bigger..hmm.
Personally what I always try to strive to improve are cardiovascular fitness coupled with strength movements, just like you feel in bjj... When your passing your being pushed away while trying to drive in around and such..then you might be playin guard and now your back stand up fighting. The othet thing try to improve is grip strength and endurance.

How do I improve these things. A good sprinting routine is a must to improve cardio the most (and it's free). You can max your cardio w/ this.

Also you'll want to add olympic lifts bro. Snatches, cleans, presses, deadlifts...this is where you make your money in fighting those bigs.

But you wanna go further and combine cardio with strength movements essentially mimicking a fight...so for example I looooove to do stuff like this for , I'll do 5-8 exercises... 2-3 of them will be olympic lifts..those are your strength movements..and I'll do those for 5 reps (weights will vary, keep it light but challenging, you should be able to do 7 reps if you wanted to..you always want to leave 1 or 2 in the tank when training strength in my opinion, and is something called 'greasing the groove' by one of me fitness heroes Pavel Tsatsouline)..the other exercises will be hard intense bodyweight exercises. Like sprawls, burpees (180 burpees are great), pullups, explosive pushups, sitthrus, or if you have a partner you can do some sort of bjj related drill or w.e you can do wheel barrels, buddy carrries..it should be exhausting!! Then you will do the strength movement at the end...3-infinitie rounds is what I do..i rest 1-2minutes between sets...if your in shape keep 45secs to 60secs please...it shouldn't feel good..
All the while when your doing the lifts your indirectly working your grips...

To attack the grips I'm doing rope pullups, taking 2 10 or 20lbs..putting the plates together and squez em between thumb and four fingers..do it for time...another exercise I do is I take a bar (45lbs) and I hold it in one hand, and let it seasaw in my hand..u will feel it in your forearms... And of course the bar complexes are good..but that's another email...

The olympic lifts will work work everything! Your arms, your shoulders, your back, legs, core...

Another thing I have ignored too much is core work...gotta get a good core routine.

Also something I do is long runs..nomore then 3 miles...and to make it more fun..i do some pushups pullups and some core stuff...

Stay tuned on my blog bro I'm going to be putting up fitness videos as well as how I prepare for competition to a certain extent.

Also this was a fantastic question, hope you don't mind if I share it with the world on my blog bro.

Weights, Periodization..Becoming stronger.

2010-05-31T16:10:00.000-04:00

Since beginning I would train, train, train...and when I got tired...I would train some more. Ok Im not sure why I wrote that, because it is still like that 'til this day. But What im getting at is 'Periodization'. What is Periodization? Periodization is not so much a method as it is a template into which a method is placed. Periodization is precision pre-planning (The Purposeful Primitive, 133). Initially it takes fighters 8 weeks to get ready for a fight. So typically the conditioning is brought up slow and incrementally. So you can see yourself getting stronger on paper. I am not doing Periodization for the purpose of any particular tournament or event, instead im doing it to get strong overall for the long run. To break it down even more. Essentially I am writing things down and keeping track, I am planning my workouts weeks out. I am doing for 4 week intervals. Right now I want to become stronger, I want to lose fat, and build muscle. I am not really sure what weight I will fight in the future. I know I've always wanted to be a heavyweight champion. And i think that heavyweights can a great advantage in being big enough to fight the BIGS of the tournaments but nimble enough to fight the smalls.

What am I Pre-planning with? I am planning to get really strong with compound strength movements so im using a series of olympic lifts with a barbell. I am loving snatches, cleans, power cleans, push presses, a series of deadlifts, and a series rows. I am even doing bench presses. And in my warmups with my bar complexes ( I will explain bar complexes later), I do even tricep extentions, bicep curls. Bar complexes are an excellent warm up with just the 45lb bar and an excellent stand alone workout if weight is added.

I am also using plyometric stuff, like explosive pushups, other variations of pushups.

You can also use periodization for a lot more workouts like running to improve times. I am basically going to add 5-10lbs to whatever I was doing each week. Its going to be a good time.

Other things I will be doing is running more frequently. 194lbs bjj division is sounding alright, but I like i like to eat =) and be happy. 207.5 is easy, and I havent felt that anyone was super strong. I have foguth some buff guys and have done well. So I will see how the weight comes off and decided where I will fight for the Nogi pan ams. I will come down incrementally.

There is a lot going on in this post. I will do another blog in the week about Bar Complexes, and workouts, drills and how my BJJ is going. I want to couple that post with a video of some sort. I have so many ideas and would like to help others achieve their goals. It will motivate me to stay on top of things. So be on the look out for mini instructional, workout videos, and vlogs.

Current weight: 204lbs

No Mundials this year...not all is lost.

2010-05-18T00:26:00.001-04:00

It hurts to write this. But the things that I thought would happen, whether they be financially or things just not going the way I needed or wanted them to, didn't go through for me. I waited to see if things would change and they did not, and its cool, I am not too butt hurt over, it just means I will be that much more prepared for next years World Championships. My goals are to become a black belt world champion, to re-enlighten anyone who reads and from now until then I feel i have to fight the toughest guys I can fight, go through more hardships en-route to the top. And right now fighting blue belts in California is not the toughest fights I can fight. And honestly for anyone who thinks I dont want to be great, be a world champion; last year for the worlds and the pan-ams, I essentially went broke twice trying to fight and gain the experience I thought i needed to accomplish my future goals, this year I am not willing to do that. Competitively speaking, a NAGA would be better because I would be allowed to fight up in level, Grappler's Quest makes more sense because its the best regional tournament and I would be able to possibly fight black belts in the advanced nogi division.
I have few sponsors, and little help, I would still have to make up a majority of the expenses.

Other then the no mundial tid bit, I do have good training news, and future projects.
For one, my guard passing has been getting better and better each week. Guard passing has been my project for about 6-7 months! I havent really prioritized anything else. I have had little side projects or just minor things to work on. Tim has been helping me tremendously with angles and little details that would fit into any guard passing system. I am just amazed everyday.
Some details about passing are:

Ignoring some grips when standing up in the closed guard. Because sometimes you break your own posture for the guy on bottom.
You cannot ignore a grip on your collar ever. I just am already been doing that, but some grips are ignorable.
Passing to the left is cool, but passing to the right will definitely throw some opponents off guard.
My guard passing drills are super important to my being able to be relentless when it comes to the pass. If you are not properly conditioned, you will tire when you want to compete or in the drills at school. I know I can push longer because of them.

Very soon I will be putting out some monthly technique videos, or training videos to help people better understand how i drill certain things. Because I learned from Master Lloyd Irvin a while ago that you just can't drill aimlessly, or thats what I got from what he was saying. You have to drill with purpose. This is my attempt to become a little more professional and garner more people to come here and check out my journey thus aiding me in attracting more sponsors for future events. It should be fun! Some people have been asking me here and there.

All is not lost because of lack of the World Championships. I will continue to work hard, and keep running my head into the wall until I am great.

More great news. School is over with for the summer and I have officially started training with tremendous pace again. Friday saw me training at 11a, then strength and condish at 2p, Saturday was open mat, Sunday saw me doing sprints at the track, and today (Monday) I trained 3 times. Bjj at 11a then strength and conditioning at 2p then more bjj at 6. And i am back to watching a ton of instructionals, and being a youtube freak again =) It's going to be an amazing summer!

Train hard, train more & train always.

In shape...?

2010-05-07T17:43:00.002-04:00

Boy did I think I was in shape. WRONG! Today I took my act to Brown Stadium (Brown University), and did some hurdles with some sprints. In there i added some kettlebell work, with some jiujitsu related movements, as well as some isometric holds on the ropes plus pull ups,.. I did 3 rounds. I was going to follow that up with a leg workout involving the bleachers and some body weights and some kettlebell work. But I opted not to this time homies. Go ahead and laugh, I am not sure what it is, but I felt great fighting all those fights in all the tournaments doing the routines I did at my bjj academy. I know that the future holds super tough competition, and with that comes the need to prepare and train like a mad man. Right now I will push my level of cardio to the max, or what I feel that is. Usually that feeling involves seeing stars!

From now on, its on! 3 times a week cardio! With some strength movements involved. I am going to need the help of people for this though. Im talking piggy back rides up the stadium steps, resistance runs, guard pass drills, man I am going crazy!

I will write and let the blogospere know how its coming.

In other news. My finals are almost up and just in time for the Mundials! And with that, I will begin training a few times a week with Abmar Barbosa at his school and with Dan Simmler at his school to get some different feels before the Mundials. Its going to be fun! I hear Renan Borges (BTT Blackbelt) will be training with Abmar prior to the Mundials. So i might get to train with him, and I also hear that there will be other black belts in attendance too! Not to mention Abmar has some good purple belts. I hope I can help them as much as they're going to help me. Last day of finals is the 12th!

IM PUMPED!

current weight: 203

Time to machine gun the competition!!

The other website...

2010-05-04T23:57:00.000-04:00

...Is looking rather handsome right now, thanks to my friend and one of my most frequent training partners Paulo! Who is also responsible for making my Portuguese ready for Brazil when i get there =)
Please Please visit my other website/blog JuniorFamilia.com =)

NY Open semi's

2010-05-04T11:10:00.004-04:00

Gold at the New York Open!!

2010-05-02T01:45:00.003-04:00

I will write about this later, but i won my division convincingly. I finished everyone. Had 4 fights. I finally got some people to video my matches, meaning I finally had someone come with me to the tournament. I actually had 4 friends come out, 3 of them competed for the first time in the ibjjf, so they had some lessons to learn but overall they all did great, show awesome heart. Here are some pictures and I will upload some videos. =) Finally got the CBJJ medal that i never had...I usually put all my medals in a box, but this one is special and i think i will hang it up somewhere.

NY Open, and training woes.

2010-04-28T02:02:00.001-04:00

JuniorFamilia.com
It has been forever, and I dont like taking weeks upon weeks to write in this thing. Don't think I have gotten down because of how California went. I have been been training doing my conditioning. The only thing that has been making it difficult for me to do much of what I like to do (BJJ =D) is school. Currently the most interesting thing in my life is trying to balance training with my studies. I am really struggling to maintain my GPA to where it was last semester, and math and biology are making it increasingly difficult. Not only that but I want to work on things in BJJ but the training isn't as long or as fruitful as i wish it to be, because of school work.
This post is going to sound like a downer but its really not. But I have been having problems here in there with back spasms, which are ok now. And recently while training I might have injured my meniscus is some way or possible sprained my MCL. I cant really say for sure, I just know that I have had to take some time off to to both, and it came at a bad time. I had just gotten back from CA, and I didnt do any BJJ since the Thursday I competed, i got back with back spasms, plane made it back Monday night. Couldn't train Tuesday because of bio catch up. Wednesday I couldn't train 100 percent, couldnt even do S&C. Stayed up all night Wednesday finishing a late paper til Thursday morning (til 7 AM!! lol, gotta love college). Thursday I did the thing to my knee, and I heard a pop and it hurt too! Long story short I missed a lot of time. and it sucked!! Not to mention I have had knee problems with my other knee dating back to the military and the mcl knee.

Anyway I have been back to training for a while now. The pace in training is like, man it could be a lot tougher. Im doing quality work I believe with my own classes and the sparring I get at night, but I just think the pace could be tougher. I definitely want to train with Abmar at his school a couple of times a week to get that pace I think i want. And also to have some talks with Leo (Abmar's S&C coach). I'm am a Kinesiology wanna be and talking to Leo about some S&C stuff would be great!

Anyway thats it for now...I am going to be competing at the NY Open. I'm looking for gold, LA was UNACCEPTABLE! It marked the last time i lose because of a rule misunderstanding, next time I will make sure to ask anyone I can to make sure I understand these things. This hard work will pay off. I want my first CBJJ title, i want it, and people are going to have to kill me to get them from me.

A smile on my face but it's really no joke.

Pan Am results...

2010-04-12T20:38:00.001-04:00

I have been internet-less since I came here and couldn't update the blog the way I would have liked. I been staying with friends in LA.

My trip has been sloppy, meaning I failed to prepare the best I could. For one, I forgot my video recorder, and when I tried to get someone to help with the recording, long story short, that didnt happen either. The tournament for me went without a hitch. I fought extremely well, in my opinion the best tournament I have had so far. I wish I had videos to share because all my fights were pretty fast paced, and all with finishes up until the end.
First match, I pulled guard, and got to the back right away from de la riva. I lost the back and was in half guard. I passed half guard into side mount and immediately mounted, and finished with a mount choke with about 20 seconds to go. In training I wanted to mount people and finish them Roger Gracie style, and its a finish I want to continue doing throughout my bjj career.

Second match I fought someone who I had trained with once before, well we just rolled once, so i knew he would be strong for a couple of minutes. I started the match off taking him down with a drag game I have been doing since I can remember at Tim's, Mat Santos can have credit for it. So I did the drag into a single, was on top and the guy like I remembered would go super hard for this choke from the bottom. He faded somewhat, and I passed into side mount. I wanted another Roger finish, so i mounted him and tried to apply the choke only to be reversed off, But he fell right into a triangle. I will work more on mount control, a project I had for some months, and I want to get better at triangles, not that the one I did against this guy wasn't good, but that triangles are something I have never ever focused on. I know theres an art to the triangles.

Third match, I pull guard, I get closed guard. I sweep him with one of my bread and butter sweeps. While sweeping him, he gives me a way to the back, so i get after it, and i remember that we were rolling and rolling and rolling because he was trying to get me off his back. I was looking for the bow and arrow choke from the back, but my arm was so deep around his neck I decided to finish with a rear naked choke. Another finish. This match was perfect I think, my back control was awesome! I love the back!!

Last match was another great match. I saw this kids other matches, i knew he was strong, but for how long is what I wondered. They knew I would pull guard, I saw them talking about me as I paced back and forth, trying to my Mike Tyson on, lol. But the match started, my grip fighting would be superior , so i wasnt worried about me pulling guard. I pulled guard, and used my bread and butter sweep from closed guard but missed and ended up in the half guard, and i swept him from there, got on top, passed into side control. I was up 7-0. Im not sure what happens exactly, i just know there was a scramble, and he ended up having my foot, he didnt have anything on it, I just looked at the ref, and the ref was getting ready to stop us, so before he did, I tapped thinking the kid would get DQ'd. The ref DQs the kid, and im getting ready to get my hand raised, my hand is going up and another ref comes up and talks to my ref. Long story short, the kid doesnt get DQ'd. The rules say, LEG LOCKS, MATA LEON (WITH THE FOOT) are illegal. To me that looks like everything from the waist below is illegal. Well everything is illegal except straight ankles. WTF! Needless to say I was heart broken, i was on my own out there.

I know I was the best of my division on Thursday, I could stay at the event with the head held high, no one was doing it the way I was doing. I didn't know so I couldn't prepare, and my school is foot lock friendly so im always defending them and even attack them myself, but I went into this tournament thinking they we're illegal. These types of rules misunderstandings will never happen again.

Here are some pictures from my trip. Trained at Rodrigo Texeira's place again! I love this place, I must of lost 5lbs 2 days before the pan ams there. I met Sergio Moraes, and finally took a picture with Steven Hall aka Pesadelo! All in All, it was a great trip even though I didnt get any hardware. I finally got to see California since I stayed with a good friend. California is great, but I cant wait to get back home to train super hard for the New York International Open.

**Update**

Something that Master Lloyd Irvin said that made my day!

"Although the Pan Ams is an event that everyone wants to win, it's still a place where you will find out exactly what's working and what's not working.The Worlds is for sure the top title that you can earn but The Brazilian Nationals is what is considered the toughest tournament on the Planet."

"the beatings will continue until moral improves.."and boxing

2010-03-22T22:46:00.002-04:00

Funny quote from the military days!
You know how you love jiu jitsu so much and your training day in and day out..twice in my case. And your beat down, like every roll will be a battle of inches no matter who it is...and its only Wednesday!! Its been this way the last few weeks. Nothing but tough guys around my way. People are turning the corner, getting better! Its refreshing and brutal at the same time! When im tired going against some really good blues, and the purple brown and black belts, i really got to focus on where im gripping, "am i tight enough here?", and your window of opportunity closes faster, so everything is harder, the difficulty increases. Did i mention 3 conditioning sessions per week ?

Who else but Jiu Jitsu people would love this kind of self torture !?

Anyway I believe I focus on bjj 120%..I took 5% and Put it in for some boxing on Sundays. Im just getting used to getting hit and what not. The mentality that full contact fighters have is also something im interested in. Anywho here is a picture from my first day of boxing afterwards, with one of my good training partners Luis. I got a good workout in after getting punched in the face for a few rounds. Ropes, core, and a great sweat followed.

"High physical condition is vital to victory. There are more tired corps and division commanders than there are tired corps and divisions. Fatigue makes cowards of us all. Men in condition do not tire." -Patton
Heres to making sure I never ever tire at the Pan Ams...

School/training/teaching

2010-03-09T01:33:00.000-05:00

www.JuniorFamilia.com (after this semester I will try and focus on moving everything to my new domain but You can find new posts here and at JuniorFamilia.com)

It's been a while for me, but I have been very active and my time has been consumed by school and its evil ways! But seriously school has been taking up a lot of my sweet time.

Training couldn't be any better! Recently I have picked up a few classes in my school as in Tim has allowed me to teach an adult class. Its all about drilling, drilling, drilling, and some real good sparring situationally. I also teach some of my jiujitsu, and show some of my ideas about various positions. Its been extremly enlightening. I teach Monday, Wednesday, and Friday's at 1pm. I have a small group so far of about 4-5 guys who are all tough. So the great thing is that i get to train twice everyday on the weekdays. The other thing is people are believing in my way of training, I think I am finally turning heads. I also get to format the class anyway I want which is awesome! If i want to escape turtle 50 times then i can do so. And last but not least is I get to help and inspire people to think more about their grappling. Already the kids in my class are telling me that they are seeing the positions from the drills we do in class, its humbling and awesome to hear stuff like that.

Other then teaching a lot, I have beeen training furiously for the Pan Ams and the Mundials. Two a Days bjj, and I have also been doing conditioning right before or after all my jiu jitsu classes I teach. Also I have recently started running again, its been like a month!! My circuits and such keep me in great shape and the run was really nice, and its even nicer weather! The sun was shining and the bay looked beautiful! I will have to take pictures. I want to inspire more people to workout with me in the future! Hopefully they see my results in training which I am sure they see.

Lord knows i want to start lifting, but I am wondering how effective it will be right before the Pan Ams. So much to think about there because I believe lifting will make my jiujitsu more "robust" (a term i heard in soccer), or just stronger and explosive. I want lifting in my aresnal so watch out olympic lifts! Here i come sooner or later lol.

Tim tells me the future is bright for me ;) Cant wait to reveal future news!!

Watch out everyone, Im looking to accomplish major goals this year, and do it convincingly and with style ;) ALPHA!!
weight: 198lbs. ...and i wonder..should i fight Pesado or Meio-Pesado?

I would like to thank some sponsors who help me!
PacificHealth Laboratories
EnemySkull

"There will come a point in the race, when you alone will need to decide. You will need to make a choice. Do you really want it? You will need to decide."Rolf Arands

Training..GQ up next..

2010-02-25T19:48:00.000-05:00

Its been a while since my major step forward at NAGA in the Purple belt division. I remember my first time competing at blue, it was a big deal for me and i think i treated to much like it was a big deal. With the purple division I didnt feel anything, just competing and sort of felt that as 'coming of age' sort of thing. Im learning internally that jiujitsu is jiujitsu everywhere you go. Your either proficient at jitsu or its something else. I think my fight versus Top Black Belt Abmar Barbosa, really prepared me for all things coming my way. I learned so much from that match its amazing!! Im looking forward to more competitions against high level opposition.

Breaking training records: This phrase comes from an interview Marcelo Garcia, where before every competition he tries to break his last training time from the previous tournameent. So with that recently I started teaching a class at my academy at 1pm and it runs until a while. So its an been a lot of extra good training going down in that class. With school this class was a must for me to run so that i could still train the kind of hours I want to before the Mundials and Pan-Ams . These classes are rough <3 I love doing it. Its a drilling class, with a sparring from situational positions, and on Mondays i through in exercises to make sure we are wiped out before the sparring. Right now i have only about 5 to 6 total people in there but I think it will pick up even more.

Other then training, school in general has been a drag. I mean its been interesting stuff but i dont know something about my training isn't satisfying me at the moment. I feel I bit even lazy, I dont think I have been hitting cardio the way I should be. This week should be a different story as I am going to be getting the help I need in the help i need to feel more at ease about everything. I just think im slipping a bit, being almost to casual about things. Don't get me wrong, training has been wonderful as of late, but something is off.

In any case, Grappler's Quest is up next, and I will definitely be jumping into that before the Pan-Ams, no doubt.

School thanks for making my journey that much more interesting. I truly <3 you. lol

Clark Gracie seminar today

2010-02-22T01:56:00.001-05:00

This seminar marks the first time I ever trained with a Gracie. Thats just a fun fact lol. The seminar was great! learned the takedown he used against Gunner Nelson here at 2009 Pan-Ams. Also some great and awesome drills for passing guard which i will add to my training right away. Learned some good turtle attacks, and a funk guard sweep. That seminar was 3 hours long and it was GOOD!

I also went to train with Dan Simmler, our rolls are always real good because he is one of the best bjj players around and I always see what i need work on and Dan always is good to point them out!

Purple Belt Finals @ NAGA New Englands (Video)

2010-02-10T23:30:00.000-05:00

www.JuniorFamilia.com

2 Gold Medal's in one week! Purple belt Division NAGA New England

2010-02-07T02:09:00.000-05:00

www.JuniorFamilia.com
If you been reading my blog, I just came back from the Abu Dhabi Pro Gi trials where i won my division and got 3rd in the absolute this past Sunday! So i wasnt done, I imediately signed up for a NAGA tournament right in my back yard. I Signed up to compete vs Purple belts. I feel comfortable in my own skin and I train like a mad man, so I did it, signed up. Had three fights, 2 submissions, and 1 on points.

So this tournament was another TREMENDOUS step in the right direction for accomplishing my goals for this year which are to become a world champion and a Pan Am champion. I was so pumped after this victory, it means a lot to me these results especially vs stiff competition. It proves to me that my hard work is paying off. <3 !!!!!!
Included is a video of the semi finals against a guy named Wellington.

No its not a facade , no its not a mirage, no its not far, yeah its right here, Hands in the air! ALPHA!!!!!

My Interview w/ TNGF.com after my Gold.

2010-02-05T16:45:00.000-05:00

JuniorFamilia.com ALPHA!!! EnemySKull.com

Find more videos like this on The Next Great Fighter - TNGF.com

Florida/Abu Dhabi Trials/StrikeForce experience...

2010-02-03T15:49:00.001-05:00

First and foremost: www.JuniorFamilia.com, soon this blog will be obsolete.

So its been a few days since the tournament, and since I pushed all my school work back for when I got back, I was swamped as a result, so I couldn't blog when I returned, and i couldn't while I was out in Miami because of lack of internet.

To the experience. I arrived in Florida on Friday night after many delays thanks to Delta Airlines, which I doubt I will fly them again. I stayed with my good friend Sean while I was down there and It was awesome not having so many expenses! His grand mom tried to make the 6 lbs i had to play with disappear !! The food was awesome !! I have come to the conclusion that I dont like to cut weight and I wont anymore for as long as I compete in brazilian jiujitsu.

I got in too late to do anything but eat! Thanks to the warrior diet I fasted the whole day and just waited 'til I got to Sean's place. The next day I chilled at South Beach all day! And omg what a BEAUTIFUL PLACE! Ocean Drive!! Thats all I will say.

After Ocean Drive, I wanted to just chill and rest for the tournament, but I gave in to going to see Strike Forcre, which really was a bad idea. The tickets were only 30 bucks...50 when I got there but whatever! It was the first big show I would see live.

Finally got home and got maybe 5 hours of sleep. Waking up was easy. Weighed myself before I left and i was 199, and I had to be 205 or something. I love mt diet and how my body just goes back to regular even though Sean's granny had me eating everything off my plate! I got to Florida Atlantic University and I weighed in without the Gi which was AWESOME! I weighed in at 201 after I drank and ate gronola bars. I was set!

I slept at the tournament some more and had Sean just listen for my name for when it was my turn to compete. Saw new and old faces. And I got to meet some more celebs in my mind. I got to meet Helio 'Soneca'! Soneca is the guy who taught my friend who beat me up and pretty much got me into loving bjj! So it was an absolute honor to meet him! Met Roli Delgado, cool guy, met Ian McPherson which was a pleasant surprise because I figured a guy like him would have been at the Euro's. Ian is such a nice guy, and I was so blown away by his character, I got to talk to him for a while about competition, training and even school! Ian is a fierce competitor and took it to a lot of black belts! I wish I took a picture with him, I dont know why I didnt.

My competition. At weight I had 2 fights. The first guy I felt was really new blue belt, or i dont know. I pulled guard , and he kept trying this weak ezekial, I couldn't believe it actually. he gave me this triangle and I finished.
The 2nd guy was tougher, and stronger. I pulled guard and swept him, twice with the same tomonagi sweep. I was mounted on him and his gi came off! and the ref finally stopped it to fix after I asked him to fix the situation. The ref had us start on our feet... WHY REF !? Oh my lord i will never understand the reffing in BJJ! I pulled guard and swept this guy AGAIN, and my gi came off, and the ref restarted on the feet. dude, ref...seriously !?
I won Gold.

Waited all day for the absolute to begin...And i mean ALL DAY, because day was done when it was time for me to compete lol. My absolute division was the last division to go.
I fought 3 times. Once vs someone I fought and beat before, the 2nd fight you can see here. And my 3rd and final fight which was the semi finals fight was just ugly. I got out sumo'd by this huge guy. I got bullied on the feet, and when I tried to pull guard, he actually lifted me, so i slipped lol! Not good! He smashed his way into half guard and just held on to my face with his chest for like 4 minutes. My chest and neck are still sore from this guy laying on me. lol. I tried to create opportunities for my self to escape and when I did, he Passed into mount. I finally escaped, and slapped on a triangle with 15 seconds left. The fight ended there and I was supremely frustrated with how that fight went, not only in the way he layed on me trying not to move or anything, because that was my fault, I let him do that, and i was just pissed at that and my inability to get out from under this sumo. Actually i was angry at my performance.

Now I have this urge to want to roll with every big guy in my gym all the time, and Im getting started on that straight away. That won't happen again, it will be an actually Jiu-Jitsu match.
I learned a more great lessons because of this event and I have all this stuff documented in my BJJ Journal and of course with videos of my fight.
I will Improve and its on to the next competition. Im competing at NAGA this weekend with some of my teammates.

ENEMYSKULL.COM

Gold Rush...and Video Teaser from ADCC Trials..

2010-02-01T14:44:00.000-05:00

Something quick, I have been wanting to blog, but I had no internet in Miami. I won my division and took 3rd in the absolute and i lost via SUMO! arrggghh!!
Start following JuniorFamilia.com <3
Anyway here is the video!

#ALPHA

4 Days...The war on the mat..

2010-01-27T22:38:00.000-05:00

...has been ridiculous. I was really inspired by how Marcelo Garcia brought into focus how often he would train before tournaments. He would purposely try to break his training record. Meaning if he trained X amount of hours for the Pan-Ams, then he would train way more then that for the Mundials for instance. And im approaching my training in that same way. Today alone i put in 8+ hours on the mats preparing for the ADCC World Trials this Sunday. I have been warring against my teammates these last couple of weeks whether they knew it or not. And in doing that I hope I brought the beast out in them and thats what I have been feeling.
Technically speaking these last 3 weeks had themes to them. Week 1 I worked on my escapes from a lot of bad positions. Week 2 I worked on my guard play. Week 3 i sort of am putting it all together but im focusing more on passing and my attacks. And Its been quite astounding the way I am coming along. I added a few wrinkles here and there and its just been awesome adding these wrinkles thanks to Tim being a world class instructor. I ask so many questions! And when i do i make Tim jump into his vault like Scrooge McDuck digging through his gold for his best piece of high valued item. And i Feel like the Yellow aura is around him when he teaches one of these techniques or details. I feel really privileged to be under someone as traveled and experienced in Jiu-Jitsu like my instructor.
Besides a massive amount of time drilling, I have been working on perfecting my drilling protocols and i feel i have more to improve upon just in my drilling alone, not the techniques which I do but the drilling it self.

ONWARD TO FLORIDA FOR WORLD TRIALS!!!
202LBS after a big dinner!

**Quick Hits!**
--Today i debuted the day classes I will be running on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I run a pretty tough drilling/situational practice. I have so many ideas about how to maximize my potential and those of my peers, and Tim has allowed me to do this class. I just hope I can help in anyway possible through this class. IM PUMPED!
--Tonight was one of my last hard nights, and I swear i lost like 10 pounds training in my night session.
--www.JuniorFamilia.com is up and is in its contruction faze until I figure out this website business. I am really trying to get that up the way i want through wordpress.
--I started school at URI and my classes seem to be tough and im pretty anxious to see how i will balance the grinds of school with my love and passion for jiujitsu. I am already contemplating dropping one class AHA so that i can train like I want.
--Im inspired by everyone.

Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.

Highlight video of muah!

2010-01-25T21:23:00.002-05:00

Made it myself..all my fights from those tournaments arent on it...Really i was just messing around with some new video editing software i got through linux.
Here it is..Also in the second batches of fights I had the flu so it was a crappy performance.

make sure to add juniorfamilia.wordpress.com if your following this blog..soon it will be obsolete =)

9 Days to go..priorities

2010-01-22T03:44:00.004-05:00

The last few days have been great! I'm still sparring hard and will continue to do so until I am 2 full days out from the tournament. I'm feeling like I'm zoning in on everything im good at in the practices, and the new drilling system I picked up recently has been the thing for maximizing my growth in all areas.

Also not to be forgotten are my teams who assure me I dont forget about the little things I do well and basically reminding me of them if I fail to realize them in my journal or weekly agenda for jiujitsu. So props to my teammates. And im studying a lot the rules of each tournament, I will not get robbed again because I didnt read the rules. pshh!!

I am super pumped for learning how to wrestle starting immediately! I have so much material regarding wrestling: Bobby Douglas, Dan Gable, Ben Askren, and Iowa State drills dvd. I am supremely fascinated by wrestling! And thank goodness that jiujitsu attracts so many wrestlers to the school because I can get those guys together to help me. And I will start wrestling at a high school to start picking up the basics! In wrestling i want to improve

Gain that singular mentality that wrestlers have!!!
Scrambling ability
Improve finishing singles and doubles
Learn the funky positions these guys get into and adapt them to BJJ

Also I want to compete in Open Wrestling tournaments. I just want to compete as much as possible either way in anything. Im already learning the strict rules of wrestling. It's going to be fun!

My priorities are changing, I'm really focused on passing guard right now but I think im going to be moving away from this to just learn wrestling stuff and focus on minor things like just drilling and making the stuff that i have in my tool box better.

Priorities:

Wrestling
Power and Strength training

I want to overwhelm and put ridiculous amounts of pressure on my opponents! This is all thanks in part to my visits to Maryland and Virgina. Thank god for that trip! If you really want to know what I'm thinking when I'm training...it might not sound nice..but its "i want to kill kids".

Current weight 198bs...

"You have to go into the jungle, find the lion, and spit in his face...then shoot him. You guys are not good enough to win on talent alone...you have to want it."-Herbie Brooks

PS Im in the process of getting my own domain! and trying to move away from blogger and onto wordpress.
Please addd www.juniorfamilia.wordpress.com to your blog roll =)
I will continue to update both simultaneously but would like anyone who reads my humble blog to start adding the wordpresss =)

17 days to go...

2010-01-14T16:38:00.002-05:00

Until go time in Florida at the ADCC Pro Gi Trials! I already purchased tickets and now I just have to show up. Im sitting pretty on weight, well im sitting pretty on two weights. There is a 88kg class and a 93kg class, and im at 90kg. The warrior diet is definitely the thing to thank! I have been ripping it up in the practice room with no food in my stomach besides maybe some fruits and water. Its been an amazing change around in my life with this new diet.

I just spent the last week down in Maryland and I was wildly impressed with the brazilian jiu-jitsu scene. I finally got to roll with (ALMOST) everyone I ever wanted to roll with. I spent 95 percent of my time at Team Lloyd Irvin's main school and his affiliates like Ivey League MMA with Danny Ives (who was awesome enough to let me stay at his house so that i could train), and at Crazy 88 with those guys, and I was down in Arlington, VA with Ryan Halls 50/50 school. And I think i finally found out just what hard work looks like. If anyone follows my blog, then you will know that I never considered anything I do as hard work, because I felt i had to see what the best in the world were doing. Now that i know what hard work looks like, I hope that i can emulate that kind of hard work.

The best things I took away from my visits from my trip was probably Master Lloyd Irvin, Danny Ives, and Ryan Hall. Master Lloyd Irvin spoke to me a lot about the mental aspects of fighting, and he gave me so much more to think about and to work on. Danny Ives and Ryan Hall told me I needed to wrestle! And a lot of it. wrestlers possess this mentality about fighting thats either do or die. Danny is a big wrestling fan and he gave me so much material to study, and Ryan showed in our rolls. Ryan was hardcore, I never felt the kind of pressure he brought to me, it was refreshing and it gave me a glimpse of what I needed to do to reach the level of jiu-jitsu I want to reach. Im already hard at work trying to get into wrestling!! I also got to experience training with a lot very talented people, this one guy Jon comes to mind. This one kid motivates me a lot. He won everything he competed in, and is a purple belt at only 11 months training. That kid is on fire and will kick butt at the Europeans Championships. Can't wait to get back down there! =)

I enjoyed my time down there in Maryland, I will definitely be back more often. I think the next time i show up is during Team Lloyd Irvin annual training for sure! It's one day but i hear such great things about it, im willing to drive the 6 hours to join in on that training with a zillion black belts, I also have been thinking about skipping a possible trip to Brazil and just spend a month down there when schools out, possibly before the Mundials!! =)
Lets see what life throws at me in the mean time.

I will be training super hard everyday until the 26th or 27th. I will also be doing a lot more drilling, and special drilling.

Currently @ 200lbs 90kg

"When you live for a strong purpose, then hard work isn’t an option. It’s a necessity" -Steve Pavelina

The ceiling in jiu-jitsu is very very high.

2010-01-08T15:24:00.000-05:00

I've been doing fairly well during all my training sessions. But when we talk about the top of jiu-jitsu fighters like Master Lloyd Irvin, Danny Ives, Julius Parks, Mike Fowler, Ryan Hall to name the guys I have had the pleasure of sparring with and talking with briefly about jiu-jitsu it has definitely made me feel like i have so much work to do. Im learning that wrestling is super important. Ryan and Danny have been speaking hard about it.

Thats it for now i will try and blog more in-depth later on when i return from Maryland, but this trip has been epic.

Down in Maryland!!!

2010-01-07T01:39:00.002-05:00

Me and Micro drove down to Maryland on Tuesday night, and it took us about 6 hours. We get to stay with Danny Ives over the course of a week!
So basically my whole day has been filled with Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu! In the morning I trained at Team Lloyd Irvin in Camp Springs, MD and it was like a dream come true! I mean in the past i had been seeing this place in videos and always imagined training there. I met and got to train with Mike Fowler, DJ Jackson, the Nigerian Nightmare Perry who i already met at the New York Open last year and at the Mundials and this really good kid Danny. I also met Master Donny!

At night I really had my work cut out for me at Crazy 88 BJJ, Julius Park's school. First of all the class we were going to do was a Gi class because we did nogi all day, I finally wanted to put the gi back on. So we get there and there are two nogi and gi class. And gets me to do the nogi class before the advanced Gi class that Julius himself was running. So I get worn down by doing the nogi with all the beast in there. But then to be honest it was time to do gi, and i put my gi on and i felt like super man! I was hearing all the stories of how super tough the training was and just how tough the guys were participating in the class. I heard stories from Micro, then from Danny Ives, and then from the guys at Lloyd Irvins main bjj school in Camp Springs. So starting off i appreciated the hell out of the heavy warm up we did. Julius basically did 20 leg exercises for 20 reps a piece. Squats, jump squats, shuffling squats, lunges, etc..And they call that particular workout the SuperLeg, and it was super intense to the fullest. I was done from every we had already did through out the day but I was pumped for hardcore sparring! And I did just that! I don't remember the last time trained this hard! I mean i train really hard to the point where I cant walk and what not but there was an added emphasis to just how sore my body was! I cant really put my finger on it but the training was indeed tough today!

We leave on Monday so im sure i will blog more about my experience out in Maryland!
Looking to train with Ryan Hall, and Danny Ives!
Im undecided as to whether or not I will compete at the Copa Nova this weekend. My weight is extremly low! But my thinking is, I have bigger fish to fry at the ADCC Pro Gi trials and i should just get the best training possible. lol I will see how it goes.

Current weight 197lbs.. pretty amazing that im at this weight.
Picture from the trainings with the Crazy 88 BJJ guys! RIDICULOUS SESSION!

Injury week...

2010-01-03T04:51:00.002-05:00

So it is 2010 now and I got in this new year barely intact! Let me first say, that everything up until Wednesday went according to how I wanted it to go, meaning training was great, weight was good. And then Wednesday happend. While I was at my Manfredo's gym with the Tri-Force guys trying to get my feet wet with boxing, I tweaked the hell out of my neck going for an arm bar transition I must of done a thounsand times before, but for whatever reason this particular transition made my entire neck lock in one position, and if I tried to move it was absolute pain! No joke, this was in the morning, and of course at night I had BJJ practice, and i went and thankfully one of my good friends from California was in town is going for her Ph.D, needless to say she is pretty good with her hands, so she pretty much poked around, and I found out it was severe enough I had to go visit the VA Hospital (Im former Army). So I pretty much had an intense muscle spasm or strain going on, and the docs ended up giving me a shot to alleviate some of the pain and I actually got some range of motion back. I also got some pretty potent meds which I am still taking to this day.
So needless to say I missed Wednesday, and Thursday as training days, and gained like 3-4lbs, I was not very happy about that. I felt like crap because I couldn't do a damn thing because of the pain in my neck. Friday came around and I couldn't take it, i went and got a good strength and conditioning session in with my brother, it was leg day so I didn't have much to fear doing that. I was still stiff in my neck but I didnt care.
Im still waking up with my neck being stiff all the time, but I can ice it down and get all my range of motion back. On Saturday i trained at with a few white belts and i felt great or well enough to trust my neck. I got some kinks in it but I can manage this.

#ALPHA is my slogan for 2010
"My work day is like a earthquake, you see its shaky, BUT IM INA FIRM PLACE"

Thinking critically: Passing Guard...

2009-12-21T02:54:00.003-05:00

I believe that during my journey to brown belt land I need multiple plans. And remember my goal is the brown belt because I believe in what Jean-Jacques Machado once said,

"The Black-Belt is the reward for all the years of hard work."

My current plan is to become a devastating guard passer. In my mind I want to be able to pass the top 10% percent of jiu-jitsu guards. I came into Jiu-Jitsu watching Jacare, and that man was a top player, fierce and super aggresive and never got tired. Jacare was passing everyone for the most part. And recently I was watching the Guilherme Mendes at the 2009 BJJ Mundial's DVD (Live when I was there =D), and he played from his back of course, but the interesting part is that he is a little guy, like feather weight or something like that, and he was purely playing from a top position. Gui would get into funky positions then pass, or even take the back creating scrambles. Also my instructor Tim happens to be a master on top. And another aspect of guard passing is of course experience, but whats more interesting is Tim's vision on top, and being able to see the minor transitions and movements of the guard player. He can put you on the run and and catch you somewhere else. A real sniper. VISION!
What I am getting at is trying to figure out the fine points of a dominant passer. Not the single move's to try and pass, but movements, and i forget where i heard that quote. But movements and not moves gives the passer a great foundation. Vision is especially important but I think I achieve better vision on top by gaining more experience and more detailed drilling, like more detailed then what I have been doing.Next I believe that a good fitness foundation is absolutely necessary, especially if i plan on conquering the absolute titles of the tournaments I compete in. So the three points i keep coming back to are these.

Focus on movements and not moves.
Vision
Cardiovascular, and strength endurance capacity.

I could really brain storm a lot about the 'movements and not moves' theory and apply it everywhere in jiu-jitsu, but it really means more in passing guard to me right now. You might start Margarida passing, get stopped by your opponent, and switch to something else while your opponent is still recovering from the Margarida pass and then hit a bull-fighter pass. True flexibility and the ability to adapt to your opponent is paramount in guard passing.

My guard is very formidable and trust it against anyone, literally. So if im going to be sweeping people I better be able to pass and not gas on top, because thats what was happening last year. Enter kettlebell training and other forms of cardio training, but thats another blog or this one.

So I know what needs to be done to be successful on top. I have to put it together, and my first theory is a more refined drilling regiment, and im not talking about 10 to each side type of drilling either. I will do more internal research on drilling and see how I come out.

In other news. January 5th-10th, I will be in the DC area to train with Team Lloyd Irvin, which has been on my agenda forever! And hopefully checking out some more people. I am not sure yet because im not driving but I will be checking out a few academies and hoping to train with some world class Brazilian jiujitsu fighters. This is all thanks to great friend and training partner, Dan Faggella, "back mount and scramble guard extraordinaire"! He definitely hooked me up!
And it just so happens that there will be a tournament going down while im in the DC area! The Copa Nova www.copanovabjj.com Jan. 9th. I wasn't planning on competing but who cares, I will compete in anything. Me and Dan will be in that and its cool to see Danny come back to competing i know he missed the hell out of it, and I got my tournament buddy back. <3

"We must dare to think about "unthinkable things" because when things become "unthinkable" thinking stops and action becomes mindless." - J. William Fulbright

Doing things defiantly.

Girya: The cast iron weight.../"do not des'pa'rate" im gettin there

2009-12-18T16:19:00.003-05:00

I have been improving a lot with respect to a few kettlebell movements, and with that I have been improving my strength and conditioning. Things I have improved:
-Went from 16kg swings to 28-32kg swings in about month and some change.
-Renegade Rows
-Snatches came up, although they still suck bad too do in the tabata drills we do.
-Goblin Squats are up.
-Im desperately trying to improve the 'pistol'/single leg squat! This one legged squat is TOUGH!

There are definitely other movements I have improved upon but these are the most important ones to me at the moment.

We do a lot of bodyweight drills and old guard passing, and knee on belly drills to add to the conditioning and i dont know why most academies dont do these drills. Master Oswaldo Alves and and BJJ extrodanaire Fredson Paxio show the drills im talking about, Click here.

My legs are coming along just great. My opinion on legs are this. Endurance!! When my legs start to go in a fight, so does everything else, theyre my roots and need to be strenghtend , fed and rested to promote growth through my body not just my trunks, much like a tree going through photosynthesis.

I'm trying to be smart about my cardio when I do roadwork. I suscribe to running of course because its necessary for BJJ and MMA for that matter. So im trying to my improve my runs by have super duper easy aerobic runs 2-3 times per week, and 2 hard anaerobic runs. Aparantly a lot of triathletes do this, where they run easy with a heart rate monitor of course. And they run easy for abou 2 months and you will start to notice that with the easy runs your heart rate gets lower thus making it easier to improve your pace thus improving your cardiovascular capacity. Its so interesting this stuff im into. I still have to get my anaerobic workouts in so i do so twice a week.
With this added work it makes it even more paramount that i listen to my body and take rest when i need to, but the other great thing about heart rate monitor training is that you know when your over training.
For instance, my resting heart rate is in the 60's bpms (beats per minute) and the way i know im over training is by that normal number being in the 80's 90's. Your body at this point is beat to hell and your body/heart has to work much harder to repair the damage we've done to our bodies.

Like i said, INTERESTING! And this is just the tip of the iceberg, im trying to learn as much as i can. And help the epidemic in America known as "OVER WEIGHT PEOPLE". It sad and i would love nothing more then to contribute to that cause through Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and being a coach in fitness of some sort at the end of my jiujitsu career competing and during too i suppose. I will see where school takes me.

This one was all fitness, I will blog about my jiujitsu trainings sometime this weekend i hope. the cut on my face is healing fine and I will be at Judo tonight, lets hope I dont get shinned in the face for another mini version of Diego Sanchez's cut! (I love DIEGOS PASSION)
"the goal is to show up with 10 lungs worth of gas" -Rafael Mendes, 2009 ADCC Champ and BJJ Wunderkid!

Rebel with a cause if i do it, its done defiantly !

i gots a boo boo <3

2009-12-11T23:17:00.001-05:00

So today judo practice at Mayo Quanchi, we were doing throws with jiujitsu when it got to the ground. So me and my training partner blackbelt in judo and future judo Olympian Keenen Raymond, were doing our training, and i dont know if he let me take him down or what with this O soto gari (foot sweep) and i fall in the process and i guess he was trying to jump on my back and I was trying to scramble up and in the process i caught a sweet shin to my face. All in all i got hit in the teeth, which is what i feared had received the most damage, i thought i lost some teeth, but no it was my face and a little above my eye brow as the picture i include with this clearly illustrates.

Besides this the head instructor Serge Bouyssoui took very good care of me after it happend, made sure the cut didnt bleed, and actually put some kind of tape over it, and also cleaned it out. Not only that but before this crap that will keep me from drilling for while happend Serge showed me a bunch of love with showing me some awesome techniques! Its always interesting to see the techniques on a different side of the house with the gi on it was definitely an awesome experience!
And now im thinking I can go up to Mayo Quanchi on Wednesday's and Fridays to get help with grip fighting experience and being around the atmosphere of world class fighters. There are future Olympians housed over at Mayo Quanchi, no lie. They compete all over, Japan, Europe, Brazil recently and of course all over the country. So I im definitely going to be up there.
So now the cut on my grill...It looks like i wont be able to spar until thursday, the cut on my face is deep i think i never got to see it but thats what im told. Theres a special kind of tape over my face now, but tomorrow or sunday i will be opting for some super glu, YES SUPER GLU! This non training crap, i really cant afford it if im to win everything and accomplish my goals for 2010. I will however will be drilling 110percent of the time, no doubt about it!! Guard pass, and mount control are the projects i have! Pressure pressure pressure! And it seems Mayo Quanchi have this mentality like Tim does. This works out <3

Taking a page out of Pesadelo's page..
I fight on...

Training + Diet.

2009-12-07T16:37:00.004-05:00

So I wanted to start this entry by saying that weight loss isn't a top priority. I have about 5-6 weeks until the ADCC Pro gi trials in Florida. Im currently 202lbs..I saw as low as 199lbs during the course of this week. The warrior diet has been nothing but the best. I have in fact been feeling great during the day, I have been feeling more focused and my mindset has changed on the feeling of being hungry. When and if I do get hungry, it is not bad! The sirens in my brain dont go crazy! In fact all i do when im hungry is have something real light, like some strawberries, rasberries, nuts, some protein or even coffee. Remember the cycles are Overeating cycle which is at night and undereating during the day. I havent had to count any calories, havent had to watch any foods, I feel totally free to do as I please! The problem with food is that, foods ends up owning you and me, I am not a slave to food.

I think im going to stick with this diet after trying it out for a week. The benefits are plentiful! I've discussed this with Tim at practice and at lunch on Saturday, but how about when your at a tournament and you cant drink or eat anything because you have to make weight? When your stuffing your face 5-7 times a day your body is trained to be receiving food at all times! Well now with this diet and new lifestyle, i can chill at tournaments, because my mind has been trained to go through under eating. That was enough to convince me to keep doing this diet.

It sucks sometimes during the morning from 8a-12p, your thinking some eggs and bacon sure sound good. Now that feeling is practically gone.

During my workouts and training, I feel great! I dont feel like i lose steam or feel hungry, Ill admit to feeling this way for the first couple days but now im cool. After I train I have endurox R4 a very good recovery drink with a 4:1 carb to protein ratio. Carbs are frowned upon during the day but its ok after a workout. You can play with the ratio if youd like, but I always want to make sure im getting that 4:1 in asap!

Now If only I could get this sleep thing down. Other good news is that the semester is officially coming to a close and Ive done great things. With the close of school and winter I am expecting to travel somewhere, I got my eye on DC!

Technically speaking I do a lot of great things I believe but the focus is on my ability to pass anyones guard! Thats my primary focus right now. I have been working on this one over under pass for quite some time now and I believe I am making good progress. I actually made a break through on this pass on Saturday when Tim had showed me awesome details and helped me troubleshoot the problems! I am also focusing a little attention to mount control and chokes from there, as well as seeing different opportunities that present themselves.

With a good strength and conditioning coach I have been making great improvements. I've also been working on my own on the side with sprints and my own kettlebell training. I have been also trying to improve my pullups! I can do 12 straight! Im trying to get to 20-25ish! Im using this concept of Pavel Tsatsouline called "Greasing the Groove". GTG is all about never ever training to failure, always leaving 1-2 in the tank for your next set. I know triathletes use this way of thinking. Triathlete coaches such as Mark Allen and Sally Edwards, rarely have their clients go into anaerobic capacity more then a few times per week, every other time they have them training less then what the client actually can endure. Its tedious but it works!

Anyway Im working hard to accomplish all my goals. Sometimes it would be nice to have someone going through the same things I go through. But not everyone wants to rule the world of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

202lbs!!

Rebel with a cause if i do it, its done defiantly!

Looking into Ori Hofmeklers "Warrior Diet"

2009-12-01T17:21:00.005-05:00

Recently I have been reading one of the most thought provoking books that I have read when it comes to fitness and diets. As a kinesiology major I thought it be important to start diving into topics such as fad diets, fad workouts and exercises. And this is going to be the first time i do that with a diet. I've always tried to eat sensibly and, i really hadnt had the success i thought I should have with how much training time i put in per week, per day, its really not fair. I have only read up to 6 chapters since Saturday, so i want to give excerpts of the book from this website http://www.diet.com/g/warrior-diet.
"Definition
The Warrior diet is perhaps better described as a total exercise, nutrition, and fitness program; a diet regimen is only one part of the program. The diet is controversial on account of its proposal of a daily undereating/overeating cycle. The author of the diet claims that this daily undereating/overeating pattern is a natural biological tendency that modern humans ignore to the detriment of their long-term health. The diet's slogan is “It's when you eat that makes what you eat matter.”

Nutrition
Hofmekler bases his concept of a daily cycle of undereating and overeating on what he calls instinct rather than control. He has criticized other diets for being “designed according to some kind of theme or a goal that's based on control. . . . Just about every diet you can think of is about control. This [Warrior] diet is based on the assumption that your body has the instinct, like any other instinct, to control itself and to manipulate it very well.” The basic human instinct, according to Homekler, is survival. The Warrior diet website states at the top of the home page, “The Warrior Diet is based on one master biological principle: Human Survival.”
This human survival instinct, according to Hofmekler, was well served by the eating and exercise patterns of Paleolithic (Stone Age) people. Hofmekler believes that “The current epidemic of obesity, diabetes and impotence bears testimony to the fact that humans today have betrayed their biological destiny.” He maintains that there are four reasons why modern people “fail to maintain primal health”: they eat too many meals during the day; they eat when they are not hungry; they make poor food choices; and they do not keep a proper balance between physical activity and relaxation."

Back to me. Thats so you can get the jist of things.Im allowed to eat fruits and drink water or coffee during the day. I have been supplementing with a Complex Anti-Oxidant, fish oil, a multi vitamin multi mineral, and CLA (conjugated lionleic acid, which is a more potent anti oxidant, with more benefits).

Again I started on Sunday, and I havent been feeling to bad about not eating during the day. Its also very important not to eat sugars during the day or you will mess your insulin system up. Lets see how this goes because im skeptical myself. But when i heard that men that i look up to like Steve Maxwell, Mike Mahler and other guys on this diet, including my instructor, then i felt compelled to try it out on myself. Im 203lbs currently...eating one meal a day has been benficial at sustaining weight and not fulcuating for me.

i will try to update my blog with my experience with this diet, if i continue to experience these results i might have no choice but to be a middle weight... I havent weighed in the 190lbs margin in a long time. I dont know if i should be worried about that or not.

train hard, train more, train always.

hitting my stride..kettlebell training..heart training..bjj..

2009-11-27T15:18:00.004-05:00

So its been a month since I have been using kettlebell training, with battle ropes and other tools to get ready for the competition in 2010. The goals are to improve wind, muscular endurance (especially in the legs), and muscular strength. These are my own goals. I am making good progress. When I started I could swing 16kg through the entire circuits while trying to figure in 20kg here and there,but today I was swinging 20kg, with noticeable fore arm fatigue, but the key is to improve and I am certainly doing that. I got my heart rate up to 183 with the tabata protocol today(the 20seconds work, 10seconds rest, I encourage everyone to research Izumi Tabata). This protocol is the best for those moments in jiujitsu where we scramble. I also like 1 minute work 1 minute active rest (jumping rope, jogging...)

When i first started training with kettlebells and battle ropes and these other tools, my resting heart rate was at 70-85bpm (beats per minute). And now its around 60-69bpm consistent. Im big on keeping my heart rate in check, there are various benefits to checking your heart rate while training. Im actually writing a research paper for a school project. Like i said my rate is in the 60s now.Your in better shape when your resting heart rate is lower. I want to get mine to the 50s =D benefits include knowing how much harder you can work in a given workout, knowing when to chill when your working out, and whether your overtraining or getting sick. You can tell all this with your heart. I'm training for 10 minute fights!!!

So with respect to my goal for trying to be perfect which i know is literally impossible, im doing everything i can to acomplish every single one of my goals, and fitness is super important.

In jiujitsu technically, everything will be good I believe for the level I can compete at currently. I'm working specifically more on passing right now, with a some focus in mount control and finishes. I want to get my Roger Gracie on in 2010 lol believe it!! And anti-shrimp stuff thanks to Tim, I really dont know if other guys are doing this currently. I will have to review video to see trends in the black belt category.

I still am in a stage in my fitness where im breaking down walls, and still feeling sore from some workouts. More good news is that im dropping weight like nobody's business, im currently at 206LBS!!! I definitely want to avoid cutting weight for competition haha! I was thinking maybe I could fight at middle weight, who knows. But my goals are at Pesado/Heavyweight =D

Also I'm going to get some judo back into my repertoire with the help of some friends that happen to be Judo blackbelts, yeah i got those laying around lol but hopefully i can start training at Mayo Quanchi again, those guys are a world class Judo club with Olympic hopefuls, and I haven't been training there!? Thats ridiculous of me. We will see how school in the spring affects all this.

Crushing it.

Fernando Yamasaki's seminar

2009-11-22T01:58:00.001-05:00

What a wonderful seminar with one of the best teachers in the country.

Rant and Review from Sunday's Mass BJJ tournament. (updated with videos)

2009-11-16T14:51:00.003-05:00

The fact that i got to compete in this tournament was a great testament to my family, friends and training partners support, I didn't want to compete to save money but they know how much i want to become a black belt world champion one day. I have been having a rough time financially speaking for the last few weeks because of the Department of Veterans Affair being so backed up and not paying former Soldiers their monthly stipend for attending school. Im not complaining though, I will work part time and be successful until the VA can figure their mess out.
On to Sunday. Firstly I was sick unfortunately from thursday. I felt very weak, and saw the Sunday as a rest day. I was Late registering, so I was over my competing weight by 11lbs with the Gi on. So with me feeling weak, there was no way I was going to try and cut weight. So I was pushed up to Super Pesado, no problem, Jiu-Jitsu is Jiu-Jitsu, especially if your within 20 pounds of your opponent, no excuses.

My first match was a testament to how the division was going to look for me. I fought a very big strong kid, i was able to get my sweeps off and stay on top for most of the fight, until i won a lot of points to zero. I just knew i was winning, and had no energy to try and figure out how the point clock they had running worked.

My next match was very short and sweet. I pulled guard, swept him, mounted him and then finished with an armbar in less then 2 minutes.

Match number 3 had me fighting someone much stronger then any of the opponents and was very explosive at that. I was able to pull guard and work a sweep, take the back, and was on top and scrambling most of the time. This kid wore me out, this is when my weak body presented it self to me. I never felt myself this way before in a tournament. The "why am i here" feeling. Any way it turns out that the pace i was giving that kid was too much, and when we were put back on our feet, he was thoroughly wasted from trying to explode out of all my techniques. He ended up just giving up when i was trying for take downs at the end. He almost threw up on the mat. And I actually have it all on tape. Very funny

My last match at weight, was a fairly good, I pulled guard, and worked a sweep, and was on top passing. And when i was passing unfortunately that kid hurt his shoulder in a mini americana lock and couldn't continue. I had just won my division! I was happy and smoked!

On to the absolute, and up for grabs was a 42 inch flat screen tv! I was very very tired and excited. I had about 10 minutes before my started. And I had a kid from Brazilian Top Team. I ended losing this match. The kid was very tight, and i didnt have any gas to try to impose any kind of will to go further into the absolute. Now I know why most will forgo the absolute to have the energy to do their own division.

All in All, the tournament was run well, Carlos Terrinha did a great job and look forward to getting more people out to support these local tournaments.
I even though I was sick, I know I can be tighter in so many positions and I will be spending time reviewing tape, taking notes, and fixing the mistakes I committed in the coming weeks. I was unhappy with my passing guard, and had a few holes in some of my sweeping games. I Will post the videos later when my camcorder stops acting up! Good grief!!

Train hard, Train more, train always...
P.S. My new banner is sweeet =D Picasa is great for banner making =D
Fight #1-4 are at weight super pesado

Fight #2
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Fight #3

Fight #4

Gold Rush...

2009-11-15T18:46:00.002-05:00

Will update with review and videos later...I fought at Super Pesado (a division above my usual one),I was sick and did fairly well and won in my division...I am a bit dissapointed in my showing in the absolute. I won 4 fights at Super Pesado, and to win the absolute, I somehow had to win 7 more fights. It was tough testing out super pesado, those guys are super strong, but im proud of my divisional performance.

Competing on Sunday...

2009-11-14T17:00:00.001-05:00

Indeed, i shall be present at a Massachusetts BJJ tournament to be held in Natick, Mass. It will be a nice turn out for the division i will be competing in, Super Pesado. This marks the first time i will be moving up a weight class, at Super Pesado. I was really late at registering but who cares, at the end of the day jiu-jitsu is jiu-jitsu. Im ready technically, and this should be the last tournament in 2009 and of course i will be at the Abu Dhabi Pro Trials in Florida.

Whats your jiujitsu game..? figure it out ASAP!

2009-11-07T19:09:00.000-05:00

I was thinking about this today and throughout the week seeing my friends train and seeing some of my teammates go through this problem of trying to figure out who they are on the mats, and wanted to share my opinion on people and developing games. Experienced jiujitsu practitioners know what games are in Brazilian jiujitsu. For example there are guard games we can develop such as De La Riva, Spider guard butterfly guard to name a few. Those are guard games. Those are broad examples. Now me for example, I've figured out I love spider guard, and de la riva. Those are my guard games, and i go back and forth with them, and I've stuck with them and never gave them up! There are of course games within games but I dont want to talk about that right now. I remember starting out at my school i would play spider guard and i would GET SMASHED by Tim of course, Daymon , and the brown belts and this super talented blue belt jimmy, and some purples. I mean i would get passed, and i hate being passed, i will be honest! And people actually told me, "hey man, abandon that guard game","i dont think thats going to work for your junior", "that armbar setup is trash junior, what are you thinking?" "THAT 50/50 JUNIOR??? THATS SOOOOO STUPID!!!"and thank god for instructors like Tim, great and awesome training partners like Dan Faggell aka Micro that just wouldnt let me give up. I knew there was a trick to making this spider guard stuff work for example. Now I believe i have a fairly decent guard game, actually pretty good and the only people passing these days are blackbelts, and talented cardio freaks lol. I dont want to say it doesnt happen but if i am passed someone will have earned it. And one of my ultimate goals is to have the best guard in the World! Move over Braulio Estima and Pe De Pano here i come!

So my point is this. Figure your game out ASAP, we could be talking about passing guard, playing guard, how you control side control (that sounded weird), or how you approach taking the back from various positions, stick with it, your supposed to take beatings, your supposed to get passed, your supposed to lose these positions. A good anology would be the college student who KEEPS SWITCHING MAJORS! and spends loads of time in school and spends loads of money trying to figure out what he or she wants to do in life!

And I own lots of instructionals myself, and my advice is to use them for filling in the holes in your game. There are talented kids who want to be eddie bravo, be Marcelo Garcia, Jacare, Braulio Estima, Robson Moura etc, etc...These guys Ive just named, have totally completely different games! And people admire them so much and so do i for what they've done for our sport and thats great because they are awesome to watch but dont try to copy and paste their game to your game because in the long run you will pay the price for trying to emulate so many different styles.

So get a hold of techniques you love and do it to the fullest! Take a look at any blackbelt who was a blue or purple or brown..They still have the same games from those times until the time they are blackbelts, its just they are totally better at those positions.
Even now im so infactuated with the 50/50 position and guess what? People are telling me to throw it away. tsk tsk... Helio Gracie's mission was to make non believers.. believers in our beautiful art of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and I want to do the same with anyone who doubts.

Train hard, train more, train always.

My secret weapon for 2010 competition...

2009-11-06T14:37:00.000-05:00

Well if i blog about my secret weapon that makes it NOT a secret!lol But for about the last few months I've been super fascinated with the work of guys like Steve Maxwell, Pavel Tsatsouline, Mike Mahler, Steve Cotter to name a few. More So Steve Maxwell for his work with Gracie Humaita. Anyway I've done KB work before with someone in my town but I didn't agree with how he went about training me. I need organization when it comes to paying someone to train me. So i stopped at this place and I've always kept in mind the practices of the guys i mentioned previously. Theyre training methology even if you dont train with KB's would still help you out in whatever it was that I was doing. So in staying close with them, I decided I would purchase KBs of my own and do some workouts. The workouts are ENDLESS! But before i bought my set of KB my good friend Mack that i train BJJ with was just certified by Steven Cotter. So of course i jumped at the oppertunity to work with KBs again, and he understands what we need to be succesful in bjj so im feeling really good about it. I've already done a few workouts with him. Im working Mack Monday's and Fridays and on Wednesday's I do sprints and when im up to it i will add a swim to this day as i just found a swimming facility around my area. I also have run days where i Just jog to help get my weight down even more. Im thinking maybe I will be fighting middle weight if i can stay away from oreos. LOL

Kettlebells are so tough.
Looking forward to the new season of BJJ tournaments.

Happy Holloween! not a good teacher yet but i will be.

2009-10-31T21:55:00.000-04:00

Happy Holloween everyone! I wont be celebrating this holiday tonight, instead im going to just chill and do some homework for next week.

Real quick! The other day i came across a few jiujitsu blogs i hadn't previously most notably: Georgette's blog who led me to, this one blog who I think has really good content Theory and practice i think its called. In one article he (Erik) discusses how he does all these wonderful things on the mat, and knows how to do all these great things on the mat, but can only really articulate about 10% of his technique. When i read this was right before i was going to teach a class for one of my instructors who was out of town. And i read this blog entry and it really made me think. And i know i can do a lot of great things and in my mind its perfect but what can i articulate to others? What part of my game did i know in and out in a way that i could teach anyone? It was tough because my goals for when im teaching just like my good friend Dan Faggella told me was "to build games". But this is usually done for me in a one on one scenario. And now I had to teach a whole no-gi class. I finally settled on half guard control, transitions and sweeps. I know the deep half guard really well, well enough in my opinion to show a group of 10 people. I realize how my instructors can feel at times, having to show different body types and different jiujitsu styles, actual techniques. I was trying to build half guard games for a bunch of people.

The class went really well! And thankfully most if not all my training partners in my opinion believe in my technique which made the class fun and easy.But the question still remains..How much of my game can i really teach someone? Teach them in a way where they can be successful? And really right now this topic can be a mini project for me, because right now my ultimate goals are to win many titles , become a great competitor and as everyone knows, the competitor needs to be extremely selfish in the sense that he needs to be coached himself and focus more on his shortcomings to be great, as i want to be.

But i do have a big interest in picking up a class at Tim's. Not just regular class where im teaching beginners or advanced or whatever, but a class built around the idea of improving our skills through drilling, and situational drilling/sparring. I know that there are forms of this kinds of training out there in various schools and hopefully i can bring that to my school someday if the interest is there from the students and my training partners. I think the correct term for this kind of training is competition training, or competition team training. I know i make my greatest improvements in jiujitsu through drilling. I wish more of my friends did it but it is what it is.

Pan ams are all on my mind!
and big shout out to Erik's blog, you have great content bro!

"Train hard, train more & train always.."

2009-10-28T13:55:00.000-04:00

The title was an excellent quote by Leo Vieira, one of my favorite bjj fighters of all time. The quote is relevant because thats what i feel im doing at all times. In college im learning so much about myself and improving in a lot of aspects of writing and thinking critically. I know i should probably feel a bit overwhelmed at how many projects for different classes i have but im not feeling that way. Its a fact that life isnt easy and feeling overwhelmed is a waste of time and energy. So im pretty much surving turning everything in on time and taking my bumps as far as school goes.

For jiu-jitsu its been very intense training. The focus of my training has been on a lot of sparring and drilling. There are so many things I want to improve. I want to be tighter everywhere, I want to make people pay when i get ahead because i think thats what great grapplers do, they get ahead and stay ahead. I've been finding ways to be better in side control, i want to make sure when i get there that I finish. My guard could be a lot better. I found myself being a tad complacent when it came to playing open guard. Sometimes I felt like i didnt need to take anything seriously, not that i was getting passed but i think i stopped being creative at some point for a little while. I havent sparred with my coaches in a while, and they get the best creativity out of me. But Tim has been hurt a while and he has been in San Diego for the past week for Jorge Rivera's fight (which he did awesome in!! PARABENS!) and he was also there to teach some sort of seminar with a bunch of other A list coaches and fighters to coach Marines! So you can how i probably havent sparred with Tim for maybe a month or so. Mat Santos i havent in quite a bit since i havent been training that much in the morning. Daymon is always there though, he has been the constant black belt during my daily training sessions. He has taken over teaching while Tim has been gone. Its real tough to spar against Daymon! But is such a great asset because i wont have to face him in competition. =D And Daymon is so smart, its great to have him there to bounce ideas off of.

These past couple of weeks have been tough on my body. I've been trying to turn the corner on fitness. I have been in the gym 2-3 times per week trying to get my leg endurance up, my cardiovascular, and improve my strength somewhat. That supplementary training plus BJJ has been rough! I keep having to check my self and not let my self spar when i felt like i had ran a marathon prior to bjj practice! I think some of the more discouraging aspects of checking myself is how i think im preceived by my training partners and even myself. I'd think "C'mon Jr you can do this situational sparring or i can spar here whats the worse that could happen?" I thought about it for a little bit and I know I got to have confidence in what im doing, because at the end of the day its my body thats being put in the frying pan and straight into the oven. Its not about being tough its about being smart and injury free.Strength and conditioning is so important! I cant take over the world of bjj without it lol. Im still figuring out this "training hard" process. I want to train smart!

In the gym I've been doing a lot of dumbbell Olympic lifting. Moving the dumbbells like kettlebells. Alot of swings, cleans, snatches, windmills, gladiators, and a lot of core stuff. Im not training to fight in 6-7 minute matches anymore im training to fight in 10 minute matches. Im still messing around with how i should implement my strength and conditioning but i know i feel like crap after everyone!

As far as projects go. I want to be tighter in a lot of areas. I want to finish better on top. So this past week I have been drilling and rounding out my finishing from side control and mount. My projects for the past few weeks since th Maine Open (Freestyle grappling open) I've been focusing heavily on the mistakes I committed and fixing those right up. Thats where my whole "I want to be tighter everywhere" comes from. A lot has been improved upon ! And I am pumped!

Its hard to believe ive been a blue belt for 9 months already! Time flies =D And the Pan-jiujitsu championships are right round the corner. Im very excited for this tournament! And I have a slew of other regional events coming up! November 14th I will be in a Massachusetts BJJ tournament. That should be exciting!

A Smile on my face but its really no joke.

My fights from Maine.

2009-10-15T01:32:00.000-04:00

First Fight!

My absolute debut, and like i said before im doing the absolutes from now on.

My 2nd fight in the absolute vs someone i admire. Abmar Barbosa

Freestyle grappling open results...absolutes from now on..

2009-10-12T13:12:00.000-04:00

Yesterday which was Sunday, i finally got back to competing! The tournament was the freestyle grappling open up in Maine. It was almost a 3 hour drive, luckily for me i had my brother drive me so i could rest up on the drive up. The venue was great, i competed there last year at the Portland Expo center. I had planned to do gi and nogi as well as both absolutes. I won my division pretty convincingly, with the first fight ending in less then a minute with a 'bow n arrow' and the second fight i won 12-0, i definitely felt like i slowed down. Competition as everyone knows is a way different feel. I was able to in both fights do what i wanted. It was great being back, but unfortunately i didnt leave that match unscathed lol. My ankle got caught pretty bad in the time that i took my opponents back and i also banged my head and shoulder on the way down lol i dont really remember feeling it at the time but right now is what counts haha and my shoulder is in pain my ankle is twisted up pretty good =D And im still training tonight. After those two fights that was all there was as far as my division was concerned. I went on to fight in the gi absolutes, with monsters! My goal was to get the kind of experience that big time matches offer and i did just that i believe, i think i rose to the occasion. My first fight i won 6-2 with a sweep and then mounting him. That kid was from ATT and he was tough, definitely not your ordinary blue belt. In my second fight in the absolute i drew Abmar Barbosa. If anyone know who he is, he is sooo goood and i was very honored to be fighting him as he is one of the MAJOR reasons why i play the kind of guard that I play just from one seminar he did last October. He is a really nice guy and so am i but i knew i had to fight and so i did. No pressure no nothing just jiujitsu, my plan was to pull guard before him...lol that didnt happen, i admired how he pulled guard because he sort of tapped my face and was in open guard. I never thought to use that whole wrestling head slap thing. I was swept but the way he swept me when i went back and watched taped made me realize that i sort of froze in the moment. Its kind of hard to explain but i felt as though i wanted to see where he was going with the sweep for a split second and by the time i snapped out of it i was on my face. Looking back now i could of shut down that sweep, im still green in the fights vs black belts in competition. After the sweep i had on a toe hold in place, and i remember looking up and seeing ZERO emotion in his face, because i had this toe hold on pretty good but he just seemed real chill, and i didnt think about this then, this is in hindsight. I remember feeling the kinds of passing he was doing, and it was very similar to what i do today except i just felt of course that he was more advanced at it. Even though he was trying to pass i didnt allow him too. I kept thinking "He doesnt pass unless i want him to", over and over, and i say this to myself in the academy. So he almost does one time and i regain my guard thanks to a technique my coaches. Back in guard he makes it to half guard and from there it was all downhill, he used my kimono skirt against so i didnt have full mobility, and i definitely defended the choke that he did to me very wrong, i reached up to try and stop it and he pulled my arm through and there was the end of my day.

I learned a lot of very very very valuable things to add or improve in my game. I've been watching and rewatching my fights all last night and today so far and theres just so much for me to do im so excited at the future and my jiujitsu career. My coaches seemed very excited too that i was excited so tonight im going to work on my shortcomings and become great.

I also got to see alot of top blackbelt/brown matches.. Renen Borges, Abmar Barbosa, Vaca, Dan Simmler,up and comers like Jimmy Quinlin, Shawn Williams...and myself ;) So i felt like i learned a ton and i recorded their matches too so that i could learn.

Exciting times for me, and im ready to improve greatly NOW!

first match from division.

Back to competition...<3 new projects

2009-09-30T11:51:00.000-04:00

I wont be able to compete in this weeks No-Gi pan ams but i will however be involved in everything there after. Financially speaking things are better then before and now i feel comfortable enough to at the very least travel to regional events, and finally get out to those schools. I've been saying I'm going to visit all these different schools forever. We'll see how it goes, maybe i can go for a weekend to NY/NJ area schools. Now that its possible that i can get to compete, I've been doing some extra gym work. I've been doing a bit of roadwork, and some dumbbell stuff. I really would like to get my legs up as far as conditioning goes. As the tournaments change a little more from gi to nogi, so has my emphasis and how i think about things. With nogi on my mind more I have been thinking i need to add and improve my attacks. I've been tinkering (as Micro would say) with chokes and improving the ones I have. And of course I have been playing around with footlocks. I can honestly say i have a way way way better understanding and appreciation for them these days. Its definitely a whole different world but something I'm looking to make as tight as i can before the end of the year. And as always I have been trying to make sure the details are where they need to be at. So far Daymon's helped me out a bunch with different aspects of nogi. Tim and Matt have helped a ridiculous amount on foot locks.

I feel good where im going in terms of the projects i just completed. Guard passing has been looking good. I think i have enough tools to be successful against really good grappler's. So just spent a great amount of time on Guard passing. I spent a little bit of time on bottom half guard for the prospect of using it nogi. and of course foot locks. Now i think I'm going to spend a great amount of time on my nogi half guard and looking into mounting people =D.

Another little mini mini project I've been doing all along was the use of the 50/50. Its soo vastly interesting to me. I cant get my mind off of it. When i say 50/50, i mean it as a guard and as a form of attacking. People know this guard because Rafael Mendes used this to defeat Cobrinha at the Gi Abu Dhabi and at the Pan Ams. Bruno Frazzato uses this game as well. Ryan Hall is probably the best I've at this game. JT Torres recently just got stalled out at the American Nationals. The fact that it stumped so many jiujitsu greats is very interesting. My take on the 50/50 is that like any other position in jiujitsu, its just that, a position. We have to learn how to master it just like any other. Being in the 50/50 against some who thinks its just a leg lock battle is great! Ive used this position as a guard passing tool against peoples whos guards are really tough. So the 50/50 has many great uses. Some people say the person whos better at foot locks or a better sweeper will usually win. But i disagree, I believe the person who is most proficient at the 50/50 will win 80 percent of the time. LOL We have to account for luck and scrambles =D Here's to hoping jiujitsu brings us more interestingly mind bending positions.

My imagination is always exploding with crazy freaky wonderful ideas."imagination is [way] more important then knowledge" -Albert Einstein

Its back to serious time.

Balancing act! competitions..?

2009-09-21T20:23:00.000-04:00

What a ride its been. It's my first year at college and the hits just keep on coming haha. There have been days where I would normally train twice on that given day and either miss one or both classes because of lack of preparations for school. Ill forget to put my gi in my car or be lazy and not do all my homework so my jitsu suffers. I think school has really taken over. Im not madd at it though, i belive my organizational skills will improve by leaps and bounds. Im learning once again great lessons. Tim asked me tonight how did i feel about missing time because of school. I said i would just have to be smarter about training, and I would have to do alot of quality over quantity. In thinking about that questions i think i will be super picky on what training partners i choose to roll with which is something i already take into account. I will try to get people to show up and train with me exclusively, who ever is willing to either learn from me or just cant fit regular class into their schedule then ill try to train with those guys on different times. I've definitely been thinking about this alot. Wednesday mornings are all day for me and i hope to fill Wednesday up somehow, ill have to talk to Tim.

Besides the balancing act I am changing up my projects. I think passing guard has become very good for and ive improved drastically in this department, so im going to put it down for a while and work on something else. I asked Tim for ideas on what to focus really hard on. Im still minoring in half guard from the bottom and leglocks, its been looking good here too. Maybe I'll look at improving my mount i think, i dont mount anyone haha! And i have been trying to choke people from my guard. A lot of ideas running through my mind. Not to mention i have nogi and i have been feeling so good doing nogi, everything i like seems to be transfering over just fine, so im really excited about that. Everyone knows the grips change but other then that all is good. I just need to focus on a few minor things and continue to add the different grips to various positions from the top and the bottom.

Competing..This is a tough one, im so hungry to get back on track and competing all the time like i was in the summer but its a fact in life that you dont always get what you want. Im learning a pretty good lesson about life, you know the one that your taught over and over ? You cant always have what you want. But more importantly my hunger and desire to compete hasnt gone away, and alot of people ask me when my next tournament is..I thought it was the American Nationals, then i thought it was a GQ, then i thought it was the No-gi pan ams. I wish i had good sponsors, but i refuse to go after any of them until i prove myself to them and to myself more importantly. I dont like to say im training hard because i havent trained with everyone, but i know im doing my best to sharpen up my various games. I've improved IMMENSELY in a whole bunch of areas thanks to attention to detail, mat time and most importantly training partners and my coaches, because if it were not for them who knows man. But i can say confidently that im very much a competitor and thats how i approach it every time im training, looking at the clock and things of that nature. Im still only a "blue-belt" which is something i hate referring to myself as because i am pretty good grappler, i have so much to learn and alot to prove.

Despite the set backs I will definitely see how it goes, but life is looking good =D

I look to be back competing in October Definitely in October.

Difficult weekend..

2009-09-14T01:45:00.000-04:00

I know for sure my life revolves around training. I picked my college courses based on how i would be able to still be able to train 5-7 days per week. But this blog isnt about college. Its about the military, and them trying to mess up my happy lifestyle i've got going. I've served on active duty for 4 years been deployed, i am fairly decorated for things done in combat. It was a hell of a struggle to do those 4 years for me, especially the 3 years at the 101st. And my last year in Oklahoma was no joke. Went through a very difficult breakup and found it very hard to do anything right. Life was hard to say the least. Although i will always say joining the military was the best thing ever for me to do at that age, it wasnt pretty and it wasnt easy. But i did it...And i did it honorably. Now im in the National Guard. 2 days a month, how hard could that be, right ? Im finding it increasingly difficult actually. Doing it full was easy, i mean you knew exactly what you had to everyday. These guys in the guard or reservist are just i dont know. I dont feel at all comfortable there.

Now they're talking about Iraq. I've vowed never to go back. I made sure to have certain stipulations in my contract not to go. But i seriously dont trust these people, and their lack of organizational skills kills. I am not motivated to do anything for them. With Iraq talk, that means extra training, 2 week training duties. Which by the look of things would mean no Mundials '10 or Pan-ams. Thinking about all this and possible breach of contracts on their ends has made this past weekend one of the hardest in a while for me. I wanted to drink and do silly things, but i didnt. I hung in there did some research and im deciding what to do about my military career. I just want to live a peaceful life going to school and training jiujitsu. Somehow i dont see the army figuring into my future plans. I got big dreams, and no one will stop me from going after them.

No way jose..

If i dont have tourney date...

2009-09-05T00:55:00.000-04:00

I feel incomplete =(. Its been since forever i competed (Mundials 09). Sadly times A LITTLE rough for a self funded athlete like myself. I went to Rock the Ink/Boston Brawler tournament to support some guys i trained with and check out what people had to offer as far as nogi grappling went. And honestly, i cant wait to get back in there, because i think i will be just fine. I've been doubting my nogi game forever and ive never put it to the test but going to the tournament put me at ease. I think i sound like im hating but its honestly how i felt. At one time they announced "heavyweights to ring 2" and i swear i started to head over there like in my mind and for like 2 seconds lol. But it felt great to be in that atmosphere!

Unfortunately i haven't traveled because of my mini rough financial times. And with school starting next Wednesday! Ill hardly have time to get out to the schools i want to. But im determined and ill find a weekend or two to get to New York and Maryland. American Nationals look to be out of the agenda for me.

My current projects are:

Passing guard.
Bottom Half guard
Footies!! (leg locks and footlocks)

#1 My MAIN project. So the update on this project is that I've been trying to slow things down...Sort of like slow mo. To elaborate i would let folks play there games or whatever, and just keep my balance, seeing what they need and slowly taking it apart in my brain. I'm really just trying to slow the game down, and make my body more aware. I feel that passing guard is more volatile then playing guard for me, for whatever reason playing guard is just so fun and comes naturally and i feel i excel at guard. I want it to be both ways. I want to have fun passing guard. I think my instructor has the time of his life passing, its a good chess match for him, he enjoys the top game more then bottom if you ask me. When I'm tired i my passing goes away and I'm like UGH stand up so i can pull guard and finish from there! I don't want to feel that way. Its a process. I will be a guard passing monster. For the most part i pass most guards, but there are bigger challenges. I living in those mini battles...Like HA I ALMOST PASSED! Or ill pass but not maintain on certain kids and you know ill just live in that moment lol.

#2 Bottom Half Guard. I just want it to be as fierce as my closed and open guard game. I feel i have decent half guard games, like the deep half guard but idk man im feeling out different half guard scenarios. One of our purple belts came back after a injury and he was giving me many problems in my half guard. I didnt like it. He Marcelo'd me and passed man. So that has been on my mind alot. I know ill fix asap. My half guard will be fierce!!

#3 Footlocks/Leglocks. Ive dipped and dabbed in footies in the past but never to the point where i was thinking about them on a consistent basis. Tim started a footy class on Monday, which i didnt attend because i was sick from friday until that Monday. But Tuesday he was showing stuff and it made me dig deep and actually had fun doing the footy stuff! lol Nothing major going on, but Mat Santos who is a footy master has been showing me some stuff, really traditional stuff and exchanges. And guess what? Im feeling comfortable doing this stuff, I really am. And Tim is just the man, so i wasnt surprised when he whipped out his football book lol. I never really asked him about footies, and if i did it was for escapes. But man im feeling good about these footies. Mostly for my nogi game.

In other news i officially start my college experience next THURSDAY! wooah doing a Communication class. Feeling good feeling great about everything having to do with school really. My army benefits will be taking real good care of me for as long as i attend school. So its going to be win win for me.

Jiu-Jitsu, Life and God is GOOD!

And i used to do 8+ posts a month..i am a slacker!

2009-08-20T23:32:00.000-04:00

Just because i dont post as much doesnt mean i havent been a motivated indiviual on those mats. I just got back to lifting weights again yesterday. I've been upset at my performance in school, with how some people can just manage to use just strenght to get out of techniques. This is expected. But a little more strenght and muscular endurance wouldnt hurt my game. So what did i do yesterday ? Well im a big fan of dumbells. The uneveness of using two weights for your movements has always been appealing and it just so happens that Ross Enamait thinks so too. So with one of his lighter routines i did.

3 (sets) x 8 (reps) of dumbell snatchs from the floor (each arm).
3 x 5, of push press (two dumbells)
3 x 8 dumbell swings

60 seconds rest after every set and 15 seconds rest after every exercise. I want power all around and thats what that work out gave me. Ill focus on legs another day even though the swings tore my lower body up! My whole core is still sore from this workout. I then finished up with some sets of regular pushups, closed hand pushups, and finger pushups. I also did wrist curls. All in all, it asa great workout. Im not really getting ready for anything. Although i want to compete in California in September, i really dont know if i will have the funds to spend on a trip out there. That sucks but I will be alright.

My projects are still passing guard and bottom half guard. I think my bottom half guard is going great, i cant really complain. No one is really passing, but then i again i dont feel i have enough sweeps or attacks from the bottom, so im working to fix that. I've added a few details to my deep half guard. And finally realized the different variations from the deep half guard, meaning the knee of my opponent would be in different positions. And i was keeping my opponents honest enough i thought. But its going great, im discovering alot. Ill admit that half guard has taken priority over my passing guard. Right now i think the experience is becoming a factor, or at least i think it is. I think i need to see more things from peoples guard. I dont see to many complex guards these days besides my coaches ( meaning a hard de la riva, spider, or butter fly guard etc..). Im not saying a im great passer or even a good passer, lol or even an AVERAGE passer, but i dont think i see enough. Im hoping i can travel soon. But the funds are not enough to where i can do that and feel secure in another city. I've been playing less spider guard and de la riva, which is great for my finger tips!

My half guard is going to be very formidable in the coming months. I have been doing th half guard for mostly nogi, but its been real fun for the gi.

Personally everything is ok besides the income. Im working part time, bouncing at local clubs: Jerkys and Sharks. The pay is decent but not enough to go to california for a week. Things will be back to being great once i start school and the Army (Post 9/11 GI Bill) kicks in and pays me for going to school. It will be a good time. School will definitely stop me from doing alot though. I can already tell that my Human Anatomy class will be a little tough with the times per week i have to be in that class. I will definitely have less time on the mats. But money is money and i need that. Im doing fine but not fine enough.

I also met someone wonderful ;) We'll see how that worksout. Looking good though.

Tomorrow i hit up brown stadium for some stairs.

JIU JITSU MOVES BABEH!

School is ruining my life...

2009-08-12T12:49:00.000-04:00

I've just finished enrolling into the University of Rhode Island. It was a very tough deal to pick classes! Everything fell ontop my jiu jitsu time. I was so sure i could work it around my current schedule but it doesnt look like i will be winning this fight. Im going to be a kiniesiology major and one class in particular 'Bio 121 Human Anatomy' is such an important part of my major but they only have this class o Mon and Wed from 7p-10p. I was so stressed out over this picking and choosing. So it looks like my training schedule for jiujitsu is going to be shrinken. I think i am prepared for it though, because im learning how to get the most out of my mat time. I've become better at drilling, and have employed various drilling formats, or lol im familiar with alot now thanks in large part to Lloyd Irvin's newsletter and my own experiences with drilling.

Things on the mat have been going great! Im passing guard the way i want to, and hopefully in a way like my instructor does it, which is to say, we dont rely on one particular pass we rely on you playing a certain way and going off of that. One way Id liek to learn how to pass is using one pass to setup the next pass, this is the way my instructor plays it most of the time. My surfing ability for my x-guard pass is great, passing spider guard with bicep grips or wherever really,is great.

I guess the guard game i want to beat next is my own: De La Riva, its a fairly difficult guard to beat if your not careful. And i dont believe in flying in for knee bars against guys who play this guard game really well (unless your Daymon). I have plenty of prevent defenses for it of course but i want to be destroying hopes and dreams when people decide they want to do this to me.

This weeks classes were great of course but one classin particular stood out. And it was a knee through pass/Margarida pass. I've been doing shades of this pass for a long time, but never really put it together well with anything. I have this Bruno Frazzato pass thats like a knee through pass mixed with a bull fighter pass. Its weird but i had a lot of success with it. Well in Tim's knee through pass class, he went alot over the back and forth action that happens, the pit falls, and the walls that your opponent can offer you. Needless to say my toolbox has gotten bigger because of this class.

Maybe i should start putting up videos of what Im working on...The thought has crossed my mind a few times.

what i dont like...

2009-07-30T00:09:00.000-04:00

is people assuming i go on youtube and get these techniques/style that i have. Its really frustrating actually. I dont even know how to begin this entry. I guess the thing is, im always (at least in my mind) looking for fixes to the problems i have on the mats, and im a regular at asking my instructor for do's and dont's, and how to's. And i always have questions, in fact i believe thats the thing that seperates me. I think im rambling now but my style is far different then anyone I've trained with, including the people in California and maybe that raises eyebrows and begs the questions. But I work pretty damn hard and i have such a long long way to go to acomplishing the goals I've set for myself for people to keep saying im a video fiend. To clear things up, sure i have plenty of instructionals, and they collect much dust. Yes i do my research. But dont forget just how much time i put into training, 6-7 times per week, easily!! And you can watch as many videos as you want but you still got to produce on the mat, you still have to get experience with positions and techniques, knowing what works and doesnt work. And quite frankly i rely very heavly on my instructors for these things and not videos.

*sigh*

Im still working very hard on my guard passing, and im making alot of progress if you ask me. Last week i passed someones guard who i hadnt previously. I mean i would sweep and wind up ontop in a dominant position but this time around i passed and that made me feel pretty good.

The passes ive been hammering hard recently are: Half guard which is a position i try to force once i get on top if i cant pass the full/open guard, i try to force the half guard and pass from there. I would say my passing half guard looks like Andre Galvao's passing mixed with my instructors way of passing butterfly guard. I feeel so comfortable in passing the conventional half guard. Theres a half guard in my school thats pretty difficult but i havent sparred with him a quite some time. Other passes that I've been working on have been double under hook variations or using a single hook. Ive had moderate success with this, but am getting better with my coaches help since its one of his better positions. My butterfly guard passing has been ok i think because i just learned good passes but i havent had too many people play butterfly against me. I say that because not to many people play it to much anymore at my school, i dont know why, its a devasating guard when my coach uses it so i dont know why more people dont do it, my knees cant take playing butterfly though. X guard passing is very fun! Once again something i would not have gotten if it werent for my instructor. I'd say my go to passes are the knee through/Margarida/bull fighter pass variations. I force so many things from here, and it feels like im dancing when i pass this way, because i mix them up.

I'd say 95 percent of my passing is because of my instructor and its only going to get better =D

Well im done crying =D My guard is doing fine! The days i can sweep Daymon and Tim with my goto sweeps, thats the day ill say 'hey my guard is pretty damn good'. We all have dreams riiight ?! Dont forget Daymon is a very big and very strong super athlete black-belt. If only everyone could see how he was at the seminar this past weekend.

Im on my way to becoming a black belt world champion step by step.

Another great seminar with Carlos Machado!

2009-07-26T02:44:00.000-04:00

My Mentors: Tim Burrill, Daymon Smith, Carlos Machado, and Mat Santos.

Carlos was great today! He is known well for his spider guard stuff and he helped me tremendously with minor but very important details for my spider game. How to remain heavy and strategies and also went over attacking from the spider. He also taught some guard retention, which led to a side mount escape i hadnt previously seen. Unfortunately i did not to get to roll with him which was one of my main goals in going. To be able to feel the kind of jiu jitsu which the Machado's are known for... =( Either way it was a great seminar and it was very well worth the price of admission!

Reluctance...and i guess ramblings

2009-07-13T01:12:00.000-04:00

Words which have surrounded my days after the JJ World Championships. Reluctance to continue my training outside of jiujitsu, reluctance to write or update my blog. *sigh* I've been fairly happy though with all that in my everyday life. Im not sure how to say it really...I havent been to brown stadium since before the worlds. Everyone says i still look pretty slim despite the lack of cardio, and ive been eating just about whatever i want. My legs have lost a step in fitness I'd say, and I've been feeling the burn in my lungs when the doors are shut at my academy and the air becomes dense. But viewers of this blog i haven't lost that much of step, its just i feel my self and my fitness going down a bit, i can still train for hours its just i dont feel as good at the end of training. Ive been reluctant to check weight because I'm so afraid of what it might say! And even still i train about 6-7 days a week.

Technically speaking things are great! I can say my guard doesn't get passed unless your Brown belt and up and even then its a war. Damon still to this day makes me look like a complete loser at jiu jitsu. My main coach makes me look like a loser but not a COMPLETE loser! I get to have some fun! I dont feel as bad when i hear stories of what he has done to well known black belts. But still its a challenge and im sure ill be at the level where i can start moving him im just so competitive!

I've always maintained in my mind at least, that belt colors or stripes dont mean anything to me unless its brown and black, and that all the ones below for me represent being able to compete at those colors (along with brown and black of course). I want to be great at jiujitsu, no matter who it is against, whether im a blue belt going against a black belt or brown belt. I wish more people thought like that.It irritates the hell out of me when someone says oh i didnt do so good against x person because x person is a higher belt color! GRR! SO WHAT! I think being a competitive jiujitsu fighter put me like this. I dont think i ever experienced the "blue belt blues" or whatever that is, because of my mentality. Ive had bad days or maybe even bad rolls but never ever a bad week or month in my mind at least. I think its sad when you get beat by the same thing over and over and over again and for a long time, i see it too much. It irritates me forever until i can beat something thats been beating me on the mats. GRR!. Which brings me to my next thought.
Too much and too many times people get caught up in belt promotions. I will be a blackbelt one day, i know this! But its not a goal. JJ Machado once said that the black belt is a reward for the years of training. I read that years ago and that message has had a great impact on who i am in jiujitsu. My goal is to be a brown! Especially after the worlds, and seeing the good browns there! I have so much work to do! I know im not any good yet,at least in my mind especially when im looking at my coaches and mentors and the people in jiu jitsu i admire and at least until i win a major title.

So what am i working on currently? Well I've been thinking of a way to practice perfect. And I think i might of found a lead on it through Lloyd Irvin's newsletter. I drill alot but not the way he was explaining it. So i think im getting alot out of my training recently. So now my project besides practice perfect is guard passing. Bull fighter pass. I've been passing this way for a forever but as i do get to the more experienced people it gets difficult of course. So ive been trying to figure out ways to force half guard situation from the top because i have a really good passing game from half guard. Tim has been helping alot with this since he is the MAN at the bull fighter pass or torreanda, and also looking at Andre Galvao.

And with all that im still converting my gi stuff to nogi. My guards translate, but im finding it a bit difficult to get the half guard i have to work the same way as it does in the gi. And the guard passing is even a bigger mess in nogo. lol Its all good though. Im doing nogi 2-3 times per week. And i refuse to do nogi on the days that its gi class. As the nogi tournaments begin to get closer ill pick up the nogi training.
Random rambling but i hate it when experienced people who have gis show up to a gi class with no gi, its really annoying, so ive been breaking hearts. Gi class is for Gi!! Ahaha Mat Santos tried to tell me that was weak of me and that it only helps your game. Well i thought about it and well, yes it does but when im there to do the nogi with NOGI. I enjoy gi and nogi but im different in that i show up to class with goals in mind. Im either working on this or that no randomness, i try to approach things like a mastermind, everything planned out perfect! or atleast i try lol!

i feel like im just talking crap but jiujitsu isnt a hobby for me. Its a way of life.
Thats probably kind of cliche but whatever i love this art!

All i have is this gi, these mats, and the truth.

3 days no jits...

2009-06-28T19:00:00.000-04:00

Its been a pretty Good week. Training as always with me was hard. I'm still not sure if that training was the smartest way in that im still not sure if I'm getting all I can out of my training. I had some good ol wars with Chris (brown belt)this week and he helped to open my eyes on details while we were sparring. First we always start in a disadvantage with each other, meaning since we both have really good guards we start in each others closed guards which escalate into our open guards. My sweeps as always were great but there weren't any finishes. My posture for transitioning out of his closed guard was bad at time and he almost always puts me in immediate danger. This is something I will definitely look to work on next week with Tim. I think my heart is getting bigger though lol because we sparred for a good 30 to 45 minutes straight in that dense sweaty air, my kind of war. Even though it was a war I didn't lose the mentality that I was a competitor first and I was always glancing at the clock. If I was in a bad position id be out in a certain amount of time, just giving myself goals. Thursday should be interesting from now on with Tim giving me mock competition matches with him to put myself in that competition mind state. Besides that im becoming a back taking fiend for the last 4 or 5 months or so, and i dont know how I've gotten to be more inclined in taking peoples backs, its fun though and finishing almost everyone when i get there! And id didnt realize how many setups i had for getting to the back. Maybe i should watch some Marcelo stuff. And I definitely am wanting to do it more in nogi and transfer my Gi stuff to nogi some how.

With all the training and me having to work with the army this weekend I figured it'd be a great way to get 3 days of zero physical exertion. It sucks and I wouldn't do more then 1 day off on my own. I could of had a one on one session with Daymon on Friday =( . Saturday had me missing the open mat and the grapplers quest I wanted to compete in and the naga that I could of went to, to support my teammates.Sunday has me missing wrestling and more training with Daymon. That's a bad weekend if you ask me. With that I hope everyone can see why I hate to Skipp days, because everyday on the mat is very valuable.

Well hopefully I'm in new jersey coming up shortly to get some awesome training in ith some guys over there.

(personal)
Rest in Peace to a king Michael Jackson. I've always listened to his music but drifted away in the last few years or so when I first heard the news I was shocked of course but was kind of between indifferent and sad.. Well I'm saddened now since I've been hearing his music and that he won't be with us anymore. And more saddened because i just found out he was getting ready to go on tour next month!!

I've been working hard at jiujitsu but im definitely trying to get my salsa dancing up. Im Dominican so im real good in bachata dancing and merengue. I love to dance and if I can conqueror salsa, ill never have to leave the dance floor! Thatd be great to learn and with my cardio those ladies won't stand a chance!

SPONSORS! With me being in the army I just recently found out that I can travel to many places in the world for FREE!! There are of course some catches, but the basics look good. Since im military i can get on with airforce guys provided they have space. These guys are always going to Florida and Cali and Europe so i dont see why this couldn't be a great thing.

Things are looking good!
Back to training on Monday!

Wrestling and being a good jitsu fighter.

2009-06-23T21:11:00.000-04:00

Recently training has been great. I've been as happy as when i started, hungry for knowledge, especially now that I've been doing nogi its important that i feel this way because before when i was sort of training nogi just because, it wasnt so fun, I'd always look up from time to time to see when class was winding down. I did that from time to time lol not every time. But now that I have awesome wrestling coaches, like this kid Mark that is a coach at Springfield college and Luis and not to mention my instructor, I've been having a blast at nogi and straight wrestling days. I think its because Im set on doing alot of damage in the upcoming nogi tournaments. Also the techniques, setups and what not have been mind blowing lol, im always just like wow that is sick. So Ive been having more fun and more success and feel a lot more comfortable in my own skin when it comes to the nogi.

In other news! lol jk. But I've been trying to figure out what it takes to be a good jiujitsu/submission fighter for sometime now. I think im close to figuring that out, not that ill be good, but that ill find a more specific path to take to reach my full potential. How am i close ? Well im figuring alot of things out on my own and when my coach teaches me something I'd like to think it sticks and i become good at that technique and have success with it, not to mention my many conversations with jiu jitsu's top talents and instructors over the last few months at the many tournaments I've competed in. Soon I will be traveling to train in Maryland, New York and New Jersey to see if i can put my finger on just what it is that makes folks good. Places in mind are, definitely training with JT Torres, Lloyd Irvin and Alliance. I know ive had this conversation with various people, and they tell me Talent and Dedication and desire and i think those are three things i have but i think theres alot more to being really good then just those two things and definitely more to it then just being able to tap people in your school.
I know for sure one way people slow themselves down in progressing in this art is worrying about belt colors and trying to be cool. I know its tough to not think about promotion but i do from time to time. But while some want to just be a higher rank and be able to say they're that rank is fine if thats what your into, my thing with promotion is the competition at the IBJJF tournaments. I was so excited to see the level of the purple and brown belts. Excited to know what my skill level will be when my instructor thinks im at that level, and that is scarey! Either way, im progressing and i know every month i make big jumps and become better. Im having alot of fun and i think im doing the right things and i believe my instructor when he says im making big strides. And drilling is super important to my success.

Any who i look to train with JT and Team LI sometime in july. I have no tournaments in the near future. I did want to compete this weekend at the Grapplers Quest or Naga but i wont be able to because i have training thing with the army national guard, which im sure will be a complete waste of time.

In recent news, i pulled a muscle in my upper back real bad going for an upside down armbar on Sunday and it hurt soooooo bad! I could barely breath right lol. I couldnt move as much as i wanted to, couldn't bend, couldn't do nothing of importance lol. Luckily i was smart about putting heat on it and ice on it over the night and the entire morning and afternoon before the next class. So i didn't miss anytime. It still hurt during special movements, but nothing i couldn't deal with. Ive dealt with broken toes, jacked up rip cartilage stuff and I've pushed through all that despite pain. I think some people baby small nagging injuries too much! Like twisted ankles and just small things, and they take so much time off, i couldn't bare doing that myself. I know people with REAL injuries like torn ACL MCL, shoulder stuff, that cant train AT ALL and would if they had a tiny injury like an ankle twist or sore thumb. I dont know, but id like to think i can perform through a storm! How else are you going to find out about yourself ? Some injuries i couldn't grip and play de la riva and spider or do my torreanda passes like I liked to, so i pushed through and was forced to play a tad be different and I like to think i improved so much using other details that dont require so much gripping. Anyway my two cents!

I think i now train 7 days a week. I used to train just 6 lol. But one of my mentors and blacl belt instructor Daymon, teaches the Friday nogi class, and i must be in there. Ive been doing 7 days since the mundials. I feel fine, i just take it easy on any day i feel tired and worn a bit. So i do Nogi 3 times a week instead of once like i was before, and everyday except Friday and Sunday is GI! I've been watching a ton of nogi videos !! Old Abu Dhabi's looking for ideas and new projects and seeing how top players transform their games from gi to nogi! Some of my current projects include, guard passing, a nogi half guard game, and transferring my gi guard game to a nogi guard game. Ive been having alot of fun with these projects. Guard pass mastery is my top priority!! Tim and Daymon are masters at guard passing so im sure ill be up to par soon!

I really want to become stronger and a little bigger while losing weight. I have a new program i want to get started on, but i don't know if its the right one for me, so im still looking for something to do in the gym. Definitely want a strength program for about two months, and changing from strength to endurance every 2 or 3 weeks. Ss im playing around on paper. I haven't started any lifting yet. And i also haven't been running, and haven't been to brown stadium since ive been back. Yup been lazy a bit, it hasn't affected my mat cardio, i went super hard today with Mike Campbell and felt GREAT! And if you ask anyone around the mma scene in New England, they'll tell you this kid rivals some of the best cardio freaks out there. So im cool, NOT TO SAY IM ANYWHERE ON THAT KIDS LEVEL! LOL My weight is still pretty great, im walking around at 205-208 area.

Exciting times for me!
JIU JITSU MOVES FO EVS!

Where in the world in jr san diego..?

2009-06-17T03:28:00.001-04:00

What have I been u to? I don't know really. But what I do know is, is that I've been eating some good food but with good sense. My weight is still low from california. Everyones been commenting on how much leaner or skinnier I've been looking. Its been a week and some change since the Mundials and im still pretty dissapointed over what happened at the bracket finals. Its painful and I always find my self thinking about everything, what I could of done differently and what not. Someone cool told me that "we use those losses to motivate us"...So besides eating food I've remained very focused on the mats, less smiling less talking and more rolling and training with a purpose. Im the only tournament minded guy at my school so I think its been throwing my training partners off a bit. I've been training no gi as well and it has been pretty frustrating. Its been a while since I've been out of a gi. I've been doing nogi 2 to 3 times per week and I think ill keep it that way until I get closer to a nogi tournament. I know I've said I would focus more on nogi after the mundials and I have been but im still wanting my firs ibjjf title pretty bad in the gi and it looks like the american nationals could be my last shot this year. So with that beng said the main focus remains the gi with added training emphasis on nogi. Plus the gi is much more fun for me =D
I must admit I haven't been hitting the cardio quite as much as I would like. Im looking t get stronger with a new weight lifting program. Its going to be based primarily on strenght and power for the first 2 months and trying to get size while losing fat. Any who I've been talking to one of the freaks at my school about it. Some strenght and power would be nice for the nogo worlds and nogi pan ams. My conditioning will still only be 2 or 3 times a week immediately following my strenght work.

Im doing this from my phone through email!!

Still enjoying jiu jitsu even in a dissapointing loss. =D

The Last day pictures...

2009-06-09T01:43:00.000-04:00

Meeting more people and more pics from day 3!

2009-06-07T02:53:00.000-04:00

Before the pics to just want to say i beleive Roger Gracie is the best competitive jiujitsu fighter on the planet. I mean he did the same thing to everyone including to a guy like Rafael Lovato Jr. He flew by his guard! I was amazed and shocked by that. Other things that stick out are Team Lloyd Irvin. Those guys are loud and were competing with Alliance and Gracie Barra and Atos to name a few teams in the chants and the singing department, those guys get behind their fighters. And man that kid Mike Easton is all class! He definitely earned my respect this weekend. He really got robbed of a win in his division with the ref giving him points then taking them away on a few occasions. Mike then shakes the refs hand, congragulates his opponent and just changes back in to street clothes. That guy is definitely cool. He fought on day two but i really needed to say that. There are a bunch of bad calls going on in this tournament and its sad to see other athletes go through what i went through, not cool. I hope that they can improve their reffing. The woman fighters are sooooo goood and showed so much technique!! Havent seen any upper belt female fighters compete, but these girls get after it!

Some pics from day 2 of the Mundials.

2009-06-06T02:30:00.000-04:00

Screwed at the Mundials after an impressive start!!

2009-06-05T05:13:00.000-04:00

I dont know any nice word to use instead of "screwed", but thats what happend. But let me first say what happend in m first few matches. I forget the guys names but my first match i won by far side armbar in sidecontrol. I pretty much controlled the entire match, i pulled guard immediately spider guard swept him, was on top passing guard, and eventually gaining side control and finishing a sweet far side armbar! My second match was the same story, pulled guard, swept thekid from spider guard, passed him, and unfortunately wasnt unable to finish him but i did win 7-0. My 3rd and final match was the worst reffed match ive ever been apart of, seriously... I pulled guard swept the kid, and the rest of the match until the end i spent trying to pass this kids open guard..Eventually he knocked me down with some sweep but jumped back up, he gets an advantage. From there on with about 30 seconds i let him stand up and chase me around a bit, i pull guard amd for whatever freaking reason he gets 2 points!! WTF!!! I had like 15 seconds left, i immediately transition into my deep half guard and turn into a single, and as time is running out i slam this kid ending up out of bounds!!! No points, No advantages, No nothing!! Im effing furious!!!!!!! 2 reallly terrible CALLLS!!! in the span of 30 seconds!! And with that my dream to become a blue belt world champion is dashed just like that...And he was a new ref too..Im sorry but that guys an asshole... I was seriously heart broken...I wont go into details but i felt destroyed.. I worked pretty god damn hard for this run...Now i have to wait 2 months until the American Nationals and a whole damn year for the next Mundials! Im not gonna lie but I cried thinking about that for like 2 minutes...And ran my arse out of the Pyramid really fast..I had a big tank! And alot of energy to run those bleechers...

I thought this time around it was my time, but it isnt that way...It is what it is...And all i can do now is watch some great BJJ fights and fix the little problems i made. Thats pretty much it...People drink alcohol to drink the pain away..well...i didnt do that i hate alcohol...I ate my self into a como...Mexican food followed by a burger and fries...And yes i had 3 SODAS!! Orange soda! Because i love orange soda...but i seriously hadnt drunken any soda in the longest and guess what..i liked it! Whatever the case i still have big fitness plans for when i get back home.

eff that damn ref!!

So pumped on the Mundials. Flying tomorrw.

2009-06-01T21:35:00.000-04:00

Today i hit up class, and rolled around a bit. It was pretty thick in class today with the doors closed, so it felt like i was going harder then i wanted. I sweat a little warmed up my muscled and i feel all set for the day. Before i went to class though i did throw on the suit and did my run walk sweat routine to get a few pounds off before class. I felt really good after the run, even better after class. Im sort of packed and sort of ready to go. I have to knock out some laundry so i can have some clean undies, and an extra gi for when i train in Cali after the Worlds i hope. Im definitely stopping by Rodrigo Teixiera's place to see those guys and get some good training in. I fight on Thursday, so i think im Wednesday im going to mess around to stay active and lose. I got big plans for when i return from Cali. And also i think after the Mundials and the Naga or Grapplers Quest this month, im done competing for like 2 months, just to get out of that competative mind frame. I feel like I've been locked in on my game and making things better that im missing out on a bunch of other games or techniques. Tim brought this to my attention today and made a good point. Plus itd be great to just be carefree for bit as i have competed in countless tournaments. I'd like to explore my No-Gi for sure!!!!! And different guard games for that..And Im thinking 2 months off? Maybe make a return back out to Cali to compete at the American Nationals? Ill put something up when i make it out to LA.

Current weight 206

hard work...Mundials.. LA LA LA!

2009-05-26T13:19:00.001-04:00

The place where I've been spending my some Tuesday's and all my Thursday...Running the stairs, doing different sprint programs. Its been fun, and i definitely feel ready cardio wise to get in there at the Mundials. The pain in running here has been good to me =D

Today was my last hard cardio day. I will still be rolling up until next Tuesday. I think just drilling, situational rolling and rolling light is what i will be doing (lol Thats what i always do nearing competition). I will be training again at Rodrigo Teixeira's place in Covina as well as visiting a friend over there!

Im happy to say i already spent my small fortune for my travels to California. I got my Hotel, got the ticket, registered, and my car rental. I hate how i have to be 25 to rent a car without fees...*sigh* whatever...its necesasry, even though i hate driving in that LA traffic!

Also I think i might have a small sponsor for my trip to California, which is kind of cool! I dont think i deserve it yet but Ill get in where i fit in =D

current weight 207.

This weeks training..eyes on the future...

2009-05-16T16:07:00.000-04:00

Its been a healthy week of training thus far. I pushed my body to the limits on my conditioning days (Tuesday and Thursday). Those days were coupled with BJJ training in the morning and BJJ or Judo at night. I think i trained so hard on Thursday that i had a monster headache, it was the worst thing ever, my eyes hurt and when i shut them it was hard to open them up. Thankfully a good nights rest was all that was needed.

Tuesday: I was at Brown Stadium with one of my good friends who was looking to get in shape. I started off with a mile warm up, super easy, able to talk if i liked during it. After the warm up , i hit the track with authority. I did 4, 400 meter sprints, with 60 seconds rest in between;these weren't fun at all but i could definitely notice that i had made improvements on my anaerobic energy system, not to mention 400 meter sprints are also awesome for your aerobic energy system (400 meter runs are 71% anaerobic and 29% aerobic, Ive been studying up). My legs felt not so bad which was a fantastic sign of improvement. The most fun came from doing my 8, 100 meter sprints, i did these with my partner and i averaged anywhere from 10-20 seconds rest in between sets. I actually had to cut it 2 meters short because of complications, i wont go into details to spare you. After the track session was finished I went home, chilled for a bit, and hit BJJ up in the morning. My recovery was great i believe, and i felt fine and able to do the things i wanted to until i was matched up with good friend and training partner mike campbell, who is a beast and has a fight in WEC June 5th or 6th. So he had mma gloves and it was hell because i was getting the crap beat out of me. My jiujitsu goes to shiiiit when i do mma with this kiid. I had to leave practice earlier then i had wished to because of the beat down. It was great for me because it humbled me and showed me i have much to learn mentally. I thanked Mike for the beat down and went on about my day. Night time BJJ was cool, nothing really stands out, other then me drilling armbar stuff until class started.

Wednesday: I did Judo at Mayo Quanchi. I forgot how much of a different cardio session judo could be. Little people were tossing me about whcih was cool. I did avoid being thrown by one of the bigger black belts, while i did take him down a few times, not for ippon but i would do it to where i had a huge advantage had it been a jiujitsu fight. I learned a bunch of old things, like sieonagi, foot sweeps, and other throws i cant remember. I left Mayo Quanchi feeling like i had a whole bunch to relearn and i am definitely looking forward to that since after the Mundials i will be competing in Judo tournaments here and there. Im only a yellow belt currently in Judo.

Thursday: This day was FUN! The morning had me working out at Brown Stadium running the bleachers. I ran all the sections, from left to right , up and down. My rest would be running down. After running all the sections once (which is a lot of stairs), i hit the long section for 5 sprints up. It was a very taxing session. I can say i wasnt as hurt as i was the first time i did it, by a smidge! lol I think i was a bit more mentally prepared for that session, and this time there wasnt an old guy out there saying he could do 24 of them to make me feel bad. So it was a great session and it left my legs feeling like i had none. Another bright side of this session was this one cute girl there running the stairs along side me which was cool to see a girl training that hard. Immediate following Brown, i was in jiujitsu practice. I sparred with two guys the whole time, Pete who is a monster at 170s, and is a purple belt, i did some of my guard passes, held my guard the whole time if i played. I think the hardest thing riight now is people trying to standup and not allow me to start passing, so im going to work on that. The second guy was my instructor. I was able to implement some of my guard passes, a couple back takes, and was able to hold my guard until my body remembered we just ran Brown stadium bleachers. It was a fun sparring session. After class was good, i stayed around the mat and the kid that was helping me with my judo was there along with Luis and Tim, and hopefully Tim and the guys at Mayo Quanchi can make some sort of arrangement because of im sure both parties will benefit from the exchange of information. Night time was Judo. None of the guys i knew were there, i did however get to learn from a Russian blackbelt, who helped me relearn more of the techniques i was super duper rusty on, and i got to drill my takedowns i was thinking of using at the Mundials. After everything, my wrist was really sore! and my but was kicked because i had sparred him. This is the day i had that major headache. my body was drained and my body was definitely looking forward to the Friday off.

Friday: Too much thinking not enough training. Got into trouble with food!! I wont lie, i had fries and a steak and cheese today. *sigh* i Fail at food.

Saturday: Today was awesome day of open mat sparring, i sparred with just about everyone i think. My guard was impassable until i got to Damon (blackbelt at the end), i passed peoples guards, i took peoples backs. Really good day of rolling, i was at the academy from 1130am to 230pm. I helped some guys out with technique, learned some Portuguese! I was on a roll today. My cardio felt good, and my ability to keep fighting felt good, Friday off really helped , even though i feel soreness in my legs still. I didnt however get to roll with Jimmy who recently finally got promoted to purple belt, so congratz to him. Jimmy is the most relentless guy at our school i think when it comes to everything!! LOL You know its coming and good luck trying to stop it style. Rolling with him, im always redlining trying to match technique with technique or whatever, this kid is really tough. Disappointed i didnt get to roll with him. All good feeling great!

Im preparing my body the best way i can right now for the Mundials. And as I prepare my body I become more fascinated with other things that can help my strenght and conditioning. One thing I've been looking into is work capacity commonly referred to as (GPP) General Physical Preparedness. GPP is something i read in Ross Enamait's book 'Infinite Intensity". Discovered by Mel C Siff, "Work capacity refers to the general ability of the body as a machine to produce work of different intensuty and duration using the appropriate energy system of the body".

Ross Enamait goes on to say "All athletes can benefit from improved work capacity. This is particularly true for combat athletes. You must be prepared to fight hard, round after round. Improved work capacity will allow you to endure more intense work, while quickly recovering between workouts (or rounds). Ultimately, you will enable the body to train harder, and more frequently."
Im diving into this stuff =D , After the NY Open loss i said i would try to become a tank like Wilson Reis or Andre Galvao.

Interesting thing i read that i applied to my sport jiujitsu career.

"so if you look in ,and you look at the way things look it dont look like things are lookin up".

Current weight: Just ordered Taylor Precision Pro XL Bath Scale, not digital, i hear none digital is more accurate anyhow.

Last weeks training, life is good, Happy Bday to me..

2009-05-11T12:52:00.000-04:00

I've been training hard as always, being sore from previous workouts is a fine indicator of how hard you train, i believe. Starting from last Thursday: The day started out with me going to Brown Stadium to check out the bleachers and stairs. The bleachers were still soaked from the rain so i decided it'd be best to run the stairs. Ill be honest and say my fighter friends told me i should do 50. Running up and down would be 1 set. One of the blackbelts laughed at the notion really hard. So i went in with the game plan of running 20! So i started running these stairs, right ? I got to about the 2Nd set! and my legs were hello jello. I reminded myself what a drunk would look like. Let me say that this place is huge! 144 stairs. So i got to two and i just made a deal with my self to do 10, which i did. There was a much older guy out there to make matters worse lol. He told me he did 24 of these things every time he got out there. Said he did 100 a week! I walked off the field like a trouble man! Hardly able to walk right. Immediately after the stairs i had no-gi practice at my school. I was worried i wouldn't recover in time to do anything to anyone. Thankfully my body has been getting used to taking a beating and being able to do jitsu and be as close to effective as i would without training prior. We did an open mat and it was gi. So it was a fun filled morning for me. The judo blackbelt i was working with stopped by to do some jitsu, along with some other judo blackbelts. They were all getting ready for a Saturday tournament. I did some fit in stuff with them and drilling some specific takedowns. Its looking good in the takedown department. I also tried to go to his school at night to get some training in, but something stopped me from going. I ended up going after the class was over to get some waiver papers and other things. Those guys didnt show until this time anyway. The head coach/owner of the place was cool, seemed like a straight shooter, doesnt seem like he takes any crap. So im definitely going to start training there a few times a week to get my judo game up and better.

On Fridays i chill, and i had too much time to think. Saturday was open mat at my school. I rolled until death with a brown belt. 45 minutes worth of rolling with him. Then another good mount of time rolling with a really good purple belt. I would get into troubled positions with the brownbelt, but then find ways to get to a position where i could sweep and turn the tables. This time though i was unable to pass his guard (last weekend i passed a few times). We showed each other what was going wrong and as always was a very fruitful roll. The purple and me were trading fire. I felt myself taking the roll to another level and my cardio coming into the picture more as i was doing torreanda passes. It went well for me on the passes. At one point i had my bac taken from a where i had control, so i fought out of that, and was able to submit him. As time went on i felt my cardio being fine, but my legs were suffering as a result of the bleachers. So at one point his submitted me an armbar, and i was done for the day.

Sunday was a monster workout with Damon. During my training my good friend Luis Felix has his mma guys training. So before my workout i would get some nogi in with guys from his team. They were warmups nothing more. I was able to show the guys some positions i was being successful in as well as some shortcomings they had. It was nice to teach and have guys ask me questions. Made me feel good. After that me and Damon worked.

grip strenght exercise (holding my opponent off the ground) 3x2mins
Guard pickups x 10 (i feel it in my hamstrings and back today)
Old school bjj drills, i dont kno the names but it was 3 different drills we did, 3 minutes each, very exhausting.
Side mount escape, 3mins
mount escapes, 3 mins
Guard passing, 3 mins
Side mount finishes 3mins
Fit ins, 10 each side (seionagi)
Live takedowns 3 minutes

All this with a 240lbs blackbelt! except the side mount escape which we used a lighter guy, thank goodness, and thanks Matt Phinney! I had about 50percent or less of resistance. It was very difficult to say the least. The escapes were the worst, it was very hard to move that weight around when your muscles are already spent. Good stuff on Sunday's. The MMA guys trained hard too.

At the end of Sunday i took my Mother out to Olive garden along with my brother. Happy mothers day to all mommys. We had a good time. Also this weekend was my birthday weekend so i enjoyed some cake on more then one occasion. =D It was a good week to say the least. No drinking was involved.

Current weight: Purchasing a scale today!

training hard baby!

2009-05-05T20:00:00.000-04:00

Dear Journal,

Ive uploaded several jiujitsu videos from this past weekends World Pro JJ Cup in Abu Dhabi. One of my favorite people to watch are Rafael Mendes and Cobrinha, they happen to have fought each other and Rafael came out on top! I couldn't believe it!! There a bunch of other awesome fights to mention like Braulio Estima edging out Fabio Gurgel at weight, and Tarsis Humphries fights against Braulio in the absolute and his brother Victor at weight and the return of Marcelo Garcia and Robson Moura to gi competition was truly awesome and were all involved in awesome fights to watch. Enough of that and back to #1..MEH!

I have been tearing it up in class and in the gym. My conditioning sessions have been the most rewarding i believe. My conditioning has included hill sprints, plain hill running, 400 meter sprints, 100 meter sprints, and timed sprints (ex. 15 second hill sprints, 30 second sprints). I've been mixing them up. If i couldn't get to a track near by ill do hard runs of the timed sprints. And other days ill sprint up a steep hill (which is rarely). If i cant get to a hill, ill go to my gym and run my regular sprints, followed by me setting the incline to the highest it can go and sprint for 10-15 seconds! These by far are the hardest I've had to get through, but they have been well worth it. I've been slacking terribly on documenting my runs and other workouts. So far I've been going until Ive had nothing left. One thing I do also is heart monitoring. I pay close attention to my breathing and how i recover from drill to drill. The most impressive thing is my recovery from gym session to jiujitsu training. Jiu-Jitsu is like playing for me these days. I train super hard with the upper belts and these guys have been pushing me, so this always leaves me pretty spent. Another thing I do if i miss a gym session for whatever reason, i make it up after BJJ class.

Been sleeping good, eating shitty as usual, stretching and taking my supplements that i decide to take or that i think are important. Supplements are just a Multi Vitamin multi mineral, complex super antioxidants, and acai (i know its an anti oxidant too, but it isnt in my complex one). I cant take all the other crap, or i cant keep up with taking all of them...Keeping it super simple in that aspect. Ok i don't eat really shitty, i just don't do the 5 times a day thing, i just eat sensible, and eat what i like, i don't know, i just keep it simple here too. Sleeping is always good for me, 8hours +. I read that Carlos Gracie said that 8hours is important but that equally important is a mid afternoon nap, so Ive been trying to master this as well! =D.

Today, I couldn't run in the morning due to inclement weather (rain), and im definitely trying to avoid being sick before the mundials. I did however do some recon and went and checked out Brown University's football stadium, which was LARGE! They had a track, and many stairs to run which great just looking at them haha. Im definitely running Brown stadium on Thursday when ill do my second conditioning workout for the week. After the stadium seeing, i went to do No gi! great workout as always, we had a bunch of fighters in there including some black belts. The pace was great and i was pushed through out the practice session. There after i went to the gym to do my cardio session. 9 x 30-40 second sprints with regular 2.0 incline (2.0 simulates running on pavement or a road), then 4 more 10-15 second sprints, this time with a 15.0 incline. The last 4 sprints wear the toughest! i got my heart rate up to 191 with those, and i only rested 15 seconds between sprints on the last 4, and i rested 30 seconds on the first 9. I was impressed at how fast my heart rate went down between sets. At night we had regular BJJ. Tim showed some cool side mount attacks, as well as separating your opponents arms from his/her body, which is something i excel at, but he gave me more and showed me more options i hadnt thought of previously! Little details are things that i look for in positions. After the lesson we had a sparring, i ended up having to go against the monsters lol, the ultra heavy weight guys...i did fine pushing the guys but i did wish i was in a more technical group tonight.

It was a good day. Tomorrow im doing Judo at a traditional Judo school. I forgot to mention i went to my boys mma class on Sunday and he had like 4 or 5 judo black belts in there and one of them brought their Gi's for me to work with them. It was an awesome experience. Keened was his name, and he helped me tighten up some moves i was already doing or was excelling at and help me with grips i hadn't seen before. So im definitely going to their school tomorrow for to get more of that stuff and hopefully continue my journey to becoming a judo black belt someday.

JITSU!

its my birthday tomorrow! i was thinking about eating a cake and pizza tomorrow =D

weight: no scale.

Rafael Mendes vs Rubens Charles Cobrinha

2009-05-04T12:47:00.001-04:00

I cant get over how well Rafael Mendes did in this tournament!

Rafael Mendes vs Robson Moura!

2009-05-03T14:46:00.000-04:00

For anyone who doesnt know..Rafael Mendes beat Cobrinha and Robson, all in one tournament!! which is a pretty hefty task if you ask me. Cant wait to see this guy at the Mundials!

New Marcelo Garcia Videos vs Victor Estima and Braulio Estima!!!

2009-05-02T09:44:00.000-04:00

Marcelo is back!! And is back to competing in jiujitsu tournaments! He will be fighting at the upcoming Mundials (which i will be attending to compete myself) and the ADCC and he didnt mention it but he will probably do the No Gi IBJJF tournaments. Here are the quarter finals and semi final fights against the Estima brothers.