Grappling Industries: Making Jiu Jitsu Great Again

Pre-training 

The night before the competition it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, it would have been a good idea to practice my shots (take down entrances) seeing as that’s my preferred method get to the “jiu-jitsu” part of the fight. There are some people that spend a good portion of their fights holding on to each other’s gis and staring longingly into each other’s eyes as they vie vainly for takedowns or throws but I’m not about that life. My game plan is always to get to the ground as quickly as possible whether it be pulling guard or shooting in for the takedown.

Things not to practice before (or after)

a competition. 

So since I haven't competed in awhile, it occurred to me that I should have probably drilled  a little bit more before my next competitions (which is this Saturday in Virginia beach).

Pre-competition training didn’t end up at all like I planned. I’ve recently taken a job teaching at a night school, which leaves me free to spend my morning's training, writing, and subbing at two different GED programs in the city. I unexpectedly ended up working all day week, so I missed out on a considerable amount of training and countless hours of drilling. A couple of years ago I might have been concerned about the lack of preparation since these damn competitions are so expensive and I’m out of glutamine, the money I got from working was more than welcome.

They say jiu jitsu is about technique over power, but it’s actually the philosophy that has saved my tiny ass on multiple occasions. This being one of them.



When I went to interview Vedha Toscano, Erin Herle, and Dominyka Obelentye in New York about dealing with the pressures of competition. There was one thing they said that made sense. “Don’t worry you do this every day”

So anytime I worried about anything leading up to the competition I just thought about that. Even though I wasn’t able to train during the week and had to work late the night of the tournament, I didn't need to worry. I do this every day, I've done these everyday for a lot of years now. Their advice has turned into a kind of calming mantra for me any time I worry about whether I should be training enough or not.  A few days off wasn’t going to make me any less lethal (plus I was doing a lot of pushups at 5 a.m. before work).

Pre fight 

When we showed up to the fight I discovered two things. The first being that there were a ton of other people there from Beta competing which was dope because its always better to have people from your team to support you.  The second was that I would have several more fights that I had expected adding up to a grand sum of 10 fights (6 in a gi and 4 nogi). I’ve never fought so many times in one day but again, I just have to revert back to the first mantra. I do this every day!

When you have 10 fights with only a couple of minutes in between fights there is no time to worry.

 I try to get all my worrying out of the way a day or two before the tournament. Seriously, I try to visualize and feel just how nervous I’m going to be. The feeling of looking around a room at every person that is your size and wondering if you going to fight them, the nervousness of not know how to get to the ground, worrying about my grips or my sweeps. I think of any and everything that might potentially go wrong beforehand so that, on competition day I can be confident, worry about warming up, and just go with the flow instead of stressing about the “what ifs”.

Through competing and training you find your weaknesses (if your paying attention) and I’ve become familiar and started working on each one of mine. I know where I like to be and I know where I don’t like to be. I know where I can sweep from and I know where I can pass from. I know where I can finish from and I know where I’m going to just be fucked and fumbling around… like with the stupid collar choke that everyone learns day 1 of jiu-jitsu. I try it every competition and it never works (except to tire out my fingers and forearms). So real talk, if I’m trying to collar choke you, I’m just stalling for time.

When we finished taking pictures and realized we 

had no medals! 

Stalling for time is somewhat an important strategy I use as well. 

It’s VERY HARD to fight 10, 5-minute rounds. That like almost an hour of fighting. But chilling… anyone can chill for an hour, so it’s important to learn to chill during rolls. Your ability to chill during a roll is generally contingent on your willingness to sacrifice chill time during the week and actually take your ass to the gym and train… better yet, DRILL!

I’ve spent what has to be at the very minimum 5 hours drilling passes from half guard thanks to Isaak. There was a point where my face was rubbed so raw from having someone’s kimono grinding across my face as they pressured down with their shoulder on across the bottom of my chin and forcing me to look away and then we'd start the next class and he would teach THE SAME DAMN PASS.I got sick of it, I wanted to cry in a corner, or better yet, chuck something at Isaaks's bearded head because apparently the extra layer of hair was protecting his face from the same torture that I was being subjected to.

Couldn't find Isaak for a pic but I did score 

one with Master Nak. I have gotten 

substantially better since I started training with these guys! 

In the end, it was worth it. Ain’t nobody bout to keep me in half guard. No way no how. And if they try, well, instead of fighting,  I’m just chilling, applying the right pressure, and focusing on getting my breathing back to normal and my nerves calm while waiting for the right opening.

Tthe time I spend in top half guard I consider to be chill time. It’s the best time to feel your opponent out… literally… because generally they are trying to wiggle out and will wiggle open the perfect attack, BUT if you’re going bat shit crazy trying to rip your foot out of half guard you miss the perfect kill and end up in a sloppy scramble.

Rules are Meant to be Broken (by athletes not refs)

No matter how well you prepare. A bad ref will make or break you! 

Apparently, if you’re not fighting IBJJF people give zero fucks about the rules... They vary substantial depending on who you ask, to say the least. There were several discrepancies between athletes, coaches, and refs when it came to scoring. Luckily part of “Favela Jiu Jitu” means making sure that you don’t get robbed, so I definitely have the habit of getting my points, securing the positions, and then waiting for the ref to make the call. When your mid fight and you have the time to look a mofo dead in the eyes, for 3 seconds until he holds your points up, they generally get the message that you’re not fucking around and are quick to start giving you the rest of your points in a more timely fashion.

This tournament was so bad that I had to stop and actually talk to the ref. I got my pass he didn’t give me the points so I looked up and asked about it. No points for passing half guard?!?!?! Ok but what about knee on belly I said (literally I was having this conversation with him during the fight) nope not that either! WTF! Had I not been paying attention to the score and time I would have thought I was up by a lot when I was winning by a lot more than I actually was.

In another match, due to the ref’s randomness, I was down on points in the last 10 seconds attempting to push the girl from turtle to side control. I heard a combination of things from my coaches which caused me to look up and see the score and the time. When I saw I was down with barely anytime I stopped pushing and jumped for her back and won the fight.

Make friends don’t break them 

I won all my fights except one in NoGi. I lost to a girl from MD who was running through her gi division submitting everyone. I knew she was going to be strong so I went in quick and hit her with some kind of twisted nogi freak variation (safadinho variation/ one of Terere’s takedowns). From there she was able to get guard (I believe) and ended up twerking my arm from a triangle.


It was a good fight. It was actually a fight. The other 9 fights were me meticulously working through what I wanted to do. There is a point with each opponent where I established control and kept it, even when my opponent was able to get to a more advantageous position I was able to protect myself, and mentally work my way out without feeling too threatened.


With Johanna, it was just a whirlwind. We went at it and there was no mental calculations, just pure intuition. The ref said we had one of the best fights of the day (she ran through her opponents just like I did expect she was finishing them and I was winning on points) and most definitely the best bracket.

Several people came up to me and told me my takedowns were beautifully terrifying! My wrestling ability is based solely on some highly ridiculous but super productive privates that I took with at Torryn and his wifey at Connection Rio almost 2 years ago.


There is probably a pretty way to end this blog. But i'm currently on a bus on my way to Virginia Beach to compete again tomorrow so....

The End.

EuroPeans Part DeuX: StranGers With CanDy

Facebook Friends

As with most problems in my life, a solution was soon found via Facebook. Roque needed a place to stay and had already spent the majority of his money and I was too busy working at Europeans to be looking around for hostels.  So, I put a message up on Facebook and within an hour a solution was found somewhere in Switzerland.

Tuesday morning, one of my Facebook friends offered a free room in her Airbnb from Saturday-Monday. I accepted! Afterwards, I went about figuring out who our host actually was.

(to what will probably be my dad’s dismay, I meet a lot of strangers off social media). 

So we had a hella nice place in down town Lisbon to stay for the week.

But that still left us with figuring out the rest of the week...

To complicate matters even more, when I got home from the tournament around 10 P.M. on Tuesday night, Kidd sent me off to stay with his cousin. It was somewhat chaotic but my new accommodations were pretty fucking sweet. The decked out apartment was inhabited by the young King Tay who holds shit down for his aunt and uncle who work in Angola. Since Kidd was my brother's friend and I didn’t know him or have any idea who this Tay kid was, Roque got sent to stay with some guy who was working at the tournament who apparently had a house full of kids from the City of God favela. 

Kids from the city of God

Is this making sense so far?

Just as Kidd has promised on the long car ride from Playboy's house in Moscavideo to my new accommodations, King Tay lived literally two minutes away from the tournament. He also turned out to be an amazing cook who spends his free time watching Fresh Prince of Belair and Prison Break on Netflix. 

Other fun facts: 

• Tay is a white belt whose preferred submissions are the Americana and Guillotine. 
• He can do a ridiculous amount of pull ups and 4 pushups with me on his back. 

On to the Next One...

Unfortunately, all things good must come to an end. Friday night Tay took a road trip to watch a soccer game and I hopped in an Uber and went to stay with Moicano and Thomas at the Bengali guesthouse. 

The only way to survive the night at the guest house was to bundle up in sweatshirts and gi pants and wrap yourself meticulously in blankets. Thomas and I have both gone through winter… but for Moicano it was an extra shock.

I stayed there one night with them, two nights with the swiss girls then went back to the guest house once on Monday when everyone else had gone home. 

Other fun faces of Lisbon:

Summarizing Vlad

Vlad is a Ribeiro black belt from Fortaleza and another familiar face from my first months in Rio. We moved into the favela around the same time in 2013 and to this day, he is probably the only person that has a more chaotic and unpredictable life than I do. I have no idea how exactly Vlad ended up in Rio, probably to train with Terere or something like that, but a lack of financial solvency soon saw us living with the same Peruvian family in their house in Pavao.

I slept on a mattress on the floor in the den with their 18-year-old son and Vlad slept on the roof in a lawn chair (and got locked up there several times).

Vlad loves to talk, which is perfect because I love to not talk. Vlad talks to such extent that he is the only person that I know that actually uses the phrase “in summary” in his spoken vernacular. Generally, that’s something that I’d only expect to find in school on a list of popular transitional phrases to end an essay, but for Vlad, it’s a necessary part of his conversational repertoire.

Vlad is always supposedly going somewhere. He had some intricate way of finessing plane tickets that was beyond my scope of understanding. On any given day he would have pending plans to go to compete in England, teach in Poland, or go back home to train in Fortaleza. He told me he was leaving so many times that we finally came to the agreement that I would refuse to believe him until he could produce an actual ticket. I’m not sure if he’s in Poland or South Africa right now. The dude is pretty hard to keep track of…

Three years ago I thought it was irresponsible and unorganized and that maybe he should look for a real job. Now, I see that that is just part of the jiu-jitsu lifestyle… and that jiu jiteiros (like myself now) don’t take real jobs.

Hywel formally known as HT

(Because Hywell is unpronounceable in Portuguese)

I’m pretty sure if I knew how to do math and I worked it all out that HT would prove to be a good 10 or 20 times more useful and 100 to 200 percent more cost effective than the entirety of my post-graduate education. Its amazing the things you can learn at Starbucks or eating acai along the beach. Since moving back to the U.S. I’ve met up with HT a couple times to do work with Flograppling in New York and now in Portugal. 

Moicano 

You should know who he is already... but if you don't... click

Moicano and Mastwo 

IBJJF Europeans: Live From Lisbon

2017 Europeans in Lisbon, Portugal

Working with Flograppling

“The effortless, lazy, and safe has nothing to do with heroism. The hero is one who beats the odds, who chooses to not take the conventional road just because that’s where he’s expected to be”

At 10 A.M. on Monday morning, I was outside of a Bengali guest house frantically pushing buttons, kicking the door, and trying to peer through the cracks. Europeans had finally ended and I had reserved my last day to try to explore some of Lisbon, but in actuality, all I wanted to do was find a warm place to sleep. 

The Bengali guest house was definitely not that, but my suitcase which I had left with Thomas and Moicano was locked inside. So there I was, at 10 A.M. with two bags and a bad attitude trying to reunite with my belongings. Three years ago I probably would have been a little more concerned about my own welfare or that of my belongings, but considering that I have my life spread out between Virginia, D.C., Philly, and Rio and always have a bag or two stashed at Terere’s, in Curitiba, or with a friend in New York, the fact that the majority of my possessions were currently unobtainable and the owner of the house unreachable was nothing out of the ordinary.

3 years ago I probably would have accepted defeat, maybe cried a little out of frustration, and then sat around waiting for the guy to open the door. That was before I started working with kid’s in D.C. though. One time after almost peeing myself trying to find a bathroom driving around with one of my students, he made a comment that changed my perspective on handling problems. He asked me why I didn’t just ask to go to the bathroom before we left his house. I did I told him, but he didn’t hear me.

“You should have made me hear you,” he said.

So that’s what I did, I turned around and I made the first person I saw get me inside of the guesthouse. It took about 5 more minutes of button pushing and several phone calls but then a freshly dressed Bengali man came strolling down the street and let me in. 

The guest house cost 12 Euros a night and was a veritable piece of shit that retained no heat what so ever, but I was only staying there until I left for my flight at 4:30 in the morning and after a short nap I knew I would be out wandering the streets until late that night.

Had everything gone according to plan I would have spent 5 nights bundled in blankets trying to deal with the unbearable draft (for some reason people always leave doors and windows open to air things out and maybe try to catch pneumonia.

But things didn’t go as planned, they never do. Instead of spending the week with Moicano, who I had spent month raising money to get him to Portugal in the first place, I ended up in taking care of an unexpected addition to my crew: a kid from the first social project that I was involved in when I lived in Barra da Tijuca.

Roque (Pronounced Rocky)

Brotherly love just without the city

Somewhere between London and Lisbon, I started getting text messages from Roque, a 17year old blue belt that I know from Rio. He wanted to know where I was staying.

I met Roque 3 years ago at a Kyra Gracie seminar when I first moved to Brazil. For my first 3 months, we trained together at Gordo Jiu-Jitsu in Barra da Tijuca and two days a week I would go over to the Gigoia Island where he lives to train at a social project with Perninha, a black belt. Because of his long blonde hair, it took me about 30 minutes to determine his sex and about 3 minutes to pass his guard. Now I’m 100% sure that he is a guy and about 25% sure that I can still pass his guard. Puberty is a son of a bitch.

Frankly, I wasn’t too sure where I was going, so I took my time in responding. I had an address with no house number, a Whats App number for a guy named Kidd (that’s for texting), and a lot of faith in Terere (who had arranged our accommodations with a friend). I got picked up by one of Kidd’s students at 7 P.M. after almost 24 hours of traveling. We hopped on the metro and headed back to Kidd’s house… Or at least that’s what we thought. In actuality, we ended up at the kid’s house waiting for Kidd to get home from training (and seeing his girlfriend). In the morning, Kidd went off to train and left me at home with Playboy who gave me a quick rundown of how to get around in Portugal. Sound confusing... it definitely was, especially considering the differences in the Brazilian and Portuguese pronunciation. After about twenty minutes of trying to decipher Playboy's Portuguese I finally found the best way to meet up with Roque. 

It turned out that 17-year-old Roque had managed to acquire the sponsorship necessary to travel to Portugal, but he failed to acquire a chaperone or to tell his parents about said detail. His mom took him to the airport only to find out that his sponsor and supposed travel buddy was nowhere in sight. He wanted to know where I was staying because he didn’t actually book a room to stay in until he arrived in Lisbon. I found this all out the next day when we met up with each other. I would have caught a proper ass whooping from my dad had I tried to pull something like that.

I met Roque when he was 14 years old at a Krya Graice seminar when I first moved 

to Rio. It took me about 30 minutes to determine his sex because of his long blond hair. 

A black belt from Gordo BJJ used to take me over to Gigoia island to train with people my size.

Now I'm 100% sure of his sex and about 25% confident in my ability to pass his guard. 

Moral of the story: Puberty's a bitch. 

If it wasn’t for Roque I would have spent Monday, and one of my only days off of work sleeping, playing GTA and moping because my suitcase was lost in transition somewhere on my way to Portugal.

 To be continued....

Kunta Kinte, Castles, and the 2017 Europeans

~oss~

“The answer is to let go and move with the chaos that presents itself to you- from within it, you will find endless opportunities that elude most people”

I was training with Kunta Kinte’s father in New York when it occurred to me that I could hustle my way to the 2017 Europeans in Lisbon, Portugal.

 I’ve spent the last 5 months in a transitory hell trying to find pieces of sanity in between D.C., Virginia, New York, and Philly. It only seems natural that I would escape this chaos by booking my first ever trip to Europe.

If I could make it to New York. I could make it to Portugal. Right?
and if I was going to Europeans, why not compete?

zf

The 2017 IBJJF Europeans is historically one of the biggest jiu jitsu competitions there is with the exception of IBJJF Worlds. I say historically because now the growing number of super fights, sub only events and the rise of competing federations like ADCC are slowly beginning to cloud the once omnipotent presence of IBJJF’s point based tournaments. There's going to be a lot of people from around all over Europe and the U.S. there to compete so it should be an interesting week. Normally this is the kind of competition you spend months training for but I'm just kind of going with the flow.

When you drink and philosophize about jiu jitsu. 

#drunkendarce

So, like I said, I was training with Kunta Kinte’s father in New York when it occurred to me that I could actually make it happen. I was in the city to work the IBJJF New York Pro with FloGrappling and I stopped by Fabio Clemente's gym to interview his daughter, Vedha Toscano and a lot of time World Champion, Dominyka Obelentye (I think I can finally spell it without looking it up!) for an article with Digitsu. Both of those endeavors were financially gratifying but due to the fact that its about time to file taxes I'm just going to insert a commercial break instead of actually explaining how I'm financing my trip...

Mr. Kinte's insight on training jiu-jitsu

You can find Kunta Kinte's father (aka Babs Olusanmokun)  teaching at Jiu Jitsu For the People 

in New York

And then pick up back here.

So, I'm getting to Portugal the same way that I got to New York with the added bonus of actually getting to compete. I might not be able winning double gold like Vedha and Dominyka had done at the BJJ Pro, but at least I will have half the European jiu-jitsu community there to console me if I don't win. More importantly, Fabricio and Moicano would be there from the social project. Terere and I have spent the last couple of months raising money to get these two to Europeans. We raised over a thousand dollars and with the help of some sponsors and companies like I Ain’t No Saint Tattoo Studios (in England), Fightland Vice (with the favela jiu-jitsu articles, and Tatame we were actually able to make this happen.

"Your opinion of yourself becomes your reality. If you have all these doubts, then no one will believe in you and everything will go wrong. If you think the opposite, the opposite will happen. It's that simple." 

Never. Never in the constant turmoil of my daily life would I have thought that I would compete in Europeans. I mean, it's Europe. That's far, so far it seems almost impossible. And, of course, I have shit to do here, important shit. I lost my license last month and still haven't replaced it and my winter jacket doesn't even zipper. I could, maybe/should invest in a better coat before traversing a whole ocean, but that would have been using fear as an excuse to turn down a free trip to Europe.

The next step on the path to living the dream was to tell at least 3 people. Most ideas sound good in your heads but when they are actually articulated by other people. When your crazy ass ideas that you think about after one too many beers are actually manifested, not as unsubstantiated ideas, but as facts, it becomes more tangible.If everyone else thinks that you can or you are, then you either start to do or be or you're going to look like an idiot. This method worked for me when I was planning on moving to Brazil, and trust me, the first time I heard coach Issac say it in front of the entire class, I was no longer able to hide behind poles and try to avoid rolling. Once other people started asking me about the trip, I had no other choice but to get my shit together and go to Europe because trying to explain to all those people why I was NOT in Portugal would be worse than any apprehension I had about actually going. So yeah, I fly out on Saturday. Hopefully, I'll win a medal, see a lot of friends, get to visit some castles, and eat some good food.

The whole favela will be watching Moicano and Fabricio compete next Saturday. O bicho vai pegar. It's about to be LIIT.

and I'll be mat side

with my new camera.

= )

Fabricio at Brazilian Nationals in 2015. Moicano, Moleza, Fabricio, and I took a bus down to Sao Paulo. It was the first trip outside of Rio that the project sponsored with food, registration, and transportation all paid for from donations sent to TKP. Watching Fabricio eat his victory acai after winning gold for the first time (after many attempts) is definitely something I'll never forget. Fabricio has changed a lot in the three years that I've known him, he's an amazing teacher, a great friend, and a father of 3 beautiful children. 

Last year the project sponsored Moicano to travel 

to San Diego to compete in IBJJF PanKids

It was a long, stressful, crazy, amazing, humbling, 

experience. 

Jiu Jitsu for the Ladies

The goods that got left out of the Digitsu Article

Dom always takes ridiculous pictures! I would come 

out looking stupid as hell but she pulls it off. My hat is

off to her for constantly pushing to be herself and

encouraging others to do so as well!

I first met Dominyka, Vedha, and Erin at a BJJ competition while in New York catching up with some of my seasonal friends that I had met during their summer vacations spent enjoying the tumultuous winter weather of Rio de Janeiro.

The day after the competition I headed over to Fabio Clemente’s gym Jiu Jitsu for the People to attend the 12 P.M. all female open mats that are headed up by Dom and Vedha. Erin was in town for the competition (Erin and Dom used to train together at Marcelo’s before Dom switched teams and Erin moved to California) so she showed up at open mats as well…. With her whole life in tow.

Seriously. She had like 5 bags with her and was sitting disheveled on a bench with her tired eyes intent on her iphone. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside to know that I wasn’t the only person in the game that was struggling. I mean she was a brown belt, in the upper echelons, the crème de le crème, and if she could have her life thrown into an upheaval at the drop of a dime thanks to untimely accommodation issues, then the Everest-sized mountain of problems that I was dealing with didn’t seem so isolating after all. It was reassuring to know we're all in the same boat!

The struggle is REAL and I confirmed that as we sat there shooting the shit for 30 minutes notably not donning our kimonos and getting in on the open mats that were starting. Dom finally laid down the iron fist and sent us to change. Either way the girls ended up spending more time in the corner huddled around a cellphone discussing boy issues and food porn than they did training.

There was mad talk about boys, tacos, and ice cream. Like they like 

food just as much as they like jiu-jitsu.

And why shouldn’t they? They had each double medaled at the previous day's competitions after multiple fights and still managed to make it to training the very next day. Dedication needs a day off every now and then.

The next day I interviewed the 3 for an article that I was writing for Digitsu on women in the sport. I get a lot of question from girls that are just starting or thinking about competing so I thought I would be insightful to hear what someone more experienced than myself had to say. This blog is a follow up with interesting tidbits that got left out of the official write up.

Have fun. 

Feel the BJJ love!

Jiu-jitsu is about learning (not winning). That means learning about yourself: what you’re capable of doing. Learning about other people: how to build relationships and how to diffuse tension.

Erin says the best advice she ever got was when Kron Gracie tried to console her after losing a fight.
“No one cares.”

Simple yet powerful. Compete to compete, to learn new things, to test what you’ve already learned, to have fun. But other than you, your mom, your dad, and social media following that have faithfully double clicked the selfies that you have inundated their timeline with… no one is really going to remember or care who blue belt absolute champion was at Worlds, Europeans, or any other local competition.

So don't take yourself to seriously and just go out and have fun (then follow it up with pizza and icecream with friends).

Boys are meant to train with not to fight.

It’s insulting when Reddit warriors, couch samurais, and youtube black belts try to speculate on a sport that they are not involved in or on topics that are irrelevant to them. One particularly frustrating fantasy that has been floating around the web is the idea of women fighting men. I mean, women want equal pay and equal attention so why not put them up again men, they’re age-old oppressors and let them go neck for the same cash prizes! Right?

Wrong! Men are men and women are women. This is a physiological fact and there are concrete physiological features that accompany it that make the idea of a fair fight between men and women to be purely fictional and highly insulting.

So, no, Dom will not be facing off against King Gordon anytime soon.

Quitting is Not Ok. Avoiding is. 

Don’t banish yourself to a world where you’re only training with females. It’s important to learn to train with guys just as much as guys need to learn to make the training environment more accessible for women.

Prone on the ground with your eyes closed: The best position to stay in to avoid eye

 contact and unwanted training partners. Just kidding. Vedha relaxing in between

fights at IBJJF New York Pro

You have to train with the boys but that doesn’t mean that you have to roll with every last spastic white belt, smelly blue belt, or pretentious purple belt. Learn to say NO! Erin recommends telling the truth, let them know what’s up. Maybe they’re too aggressive, maybe they need to invest in better laundry detergent, maybe a rash guard to cover up their chest hair would make them a more amenable training option.

If you’re like Vedha and are too timid to drop the truth bombs, well you better undo your ponytail right quick and take your sweet time re-braiding it and re-re-braiding it while the time one the clock winds down.

It was funny to hear the girls trade horror stories of training with over rambunctious boys or how to tactically tie their belt in the slowest way possible to avoid an undesirable training partner.

“I got you tomorrow” or “I’m really tired” can only go so far. By the time you get to the higher belts you don’t just learn to train, you also master avoiding training as well.

Maintain the power by keeping your hair dry and:

Just drill.

You don’t need to roll with everyone and you don’t always have to roll. Sometimes drilling, or reviewing positions and techniques is enough. You go over a lot of stuff in class and most of it probably goes in one ear and out the other as you insist on doing what you do best… and if you’re a lower belt doing your best thing and doing the right thing are rarely the same thing. Break your old habits and develop new ones by drilling (preferably to music). It’s fun, it’s easy, and you don’t have to get sweaty so you don’t have to wash your gi or your hair when you’re done.
Save time. Save energy. Save shampoo. And just drill.

Submit the Stigma: Fight for a Cause

Submit the Stigma

I know about Erin through (her now officially registered non-profit) Submit the Stigma a campaign that started off to promote awareness for mental illness. After losing her father to suicide, Erin started the movement to with the hopes that more people would become aware of mental illness and the signs associated with it. 

Erin is a brown belt having made her way up the ranks while working for Gracie Mag, studying for a college degree, and traveling around the world to compete and write about jiu-jitsu... all the while coming to terms with her own anxiety and personal problems. 

Jiu-jitsu has helped change the lives of a lot of people and for me, it's definitely inspiring to see someone going out and creating awareness on the therapeutic effects that BJJ can have, I hope that my own organization Terere Kids Project will also reach official nonprofit status one day! 

Find out more about Submit the Stigma:
Submit the Stigma OrgSubmit the Stigma of Mental Illness- FloGrapplingSubmit the Stigma Charity Seminar on Demand- Digitsu

You Can't Submit What You Can't See

Training @ Padilla Bjj

on asking for forgivenness, not permission: 

Epic photos pirated from Lynn Tran's facebook! 

I drove hours out into the middle of nowhere….

Ok, that’s a lie. I drove maybe about 40 minutes, but after passing the 2nd open field, 4th farm, and at least 3 shiny, red tractors, it was safe to say that I was definitely in the middle of nowhere.

I grew up in the area, but long stretches of single lane roads divide the towns that populated the peripheries of Philadelphia creating a sense of isolation that is a stark contrast from shooting up and down I 95 highway in the D.C. area that I now call home.

I drove back and forth on a solitary road looking for a sign that would substantiate my GPS’s claim that I had finally reached my desired destination. I found none, so I parked in a large empty lot in front of a church or an antique shop or something of that rural nature so that I could figure out where the hell I was.

When I looked up, address on the sign in front of me revealed I was indeed in the correct location. Less then a minute later a figure with a shaved head, swollen ears, and massive legs appeared out of nowhere. He was making his way towards the large warehouse with a duffle bag in hand.

I fell into step behind him as he headed around the corner of the building to a small door that had a Padilla BJJ sign plastered in the lower corner. For an American, this might have been considered to be subpar marketing, but for someone coming from Brazil, it’s not uncommon to have trouble locating, identifying, and entering some of the biggest BJJ gyms. Real jiu jitieros, after all, care about jiu jitsu and don’t waste mental effort on menial things like signs.


The gym is located inside of a warehouse that shares its space with an assortment of different businesses. In order to get to the mats, you had to walk by a huge stack of boxes and some haphazardly placed office materials that looked suspiciously like the headquarters for some kind of Ponzi scheme.

I followed the sound of break falls, skirting the edge of the tower of Ponzi merchandise, and made my way to the matted out half of the warehouse. The coach Mike Padilla was drilling shoots and sprawls with a little kid while guys on the sidelines started stretching and getting ready for Sunday morning open mats.

Some people might have questioned the random boxes or the oddly placed desk at the top of the stairs, but the only thing that registered in my mind was:

“Damn, that’s a whoooole lot of mats.”

And it was. Freshly laid wrestling mats covered a good portion of the warehouse providing more than enough space for people to train.

The gym may have been lacking showers or glass vitrines for selling merchandise, but there was more than enough mat space for everyone (and there was music). There is nothing worse than cramped rolling sessions where people are lined up on the wall waiting for a chance to roll.

I sat down amongst the guys that were lined up on the side of the mats stretching out their thick necks and massive legs (I have a serious small man complex when it comes to open mats so everyone over 150lbs is a giant to me). Jiu-jitsu has long been empowering the undersized nerd, coach mike himself is a small dude, but these guys.... were not.

As they sat discussing John Danaher, the vicious beast that lives in the basement of Renzo Gracie NYC (Padilla is an offspring of Renzo Gracie PA), I wondered if I was in for some gentle flow rolls, or it was going to be one of those days to practice my framing, shrimping, and breathing while have my ribs pushed into my lungs.

For some reason, open mats always seem to be NoGi. Oh, how I hate NoGi!

Mike ended what appeared to be a private with a highly skilled kid that barely came up to his waist and then we started to roll. The only thing I actually remember about training that day was the sensation of trying to catch a ghost.

That feeling of lunging forward in a desperate attempt to capture it, but instead, your arms hug thin air and you face dive to the floor.

That’s was rolling with Mike was like. I’ve rolled with a lot of people from around the world in Rio, New York, DC, and PA, but I don’t think I’ve ever encountered anyone that was so elusive. Hands down must be the fasted person I’ve ever encountered on the mats.

He would move and I would try to counter, but by the time I could even wrap my mind around what I was supposed to do, let alone get my body to obey, he was gone.

I know it's done right when jiu jitsu gets awkward and confusing!

Cause seriously how do you go about getting out of that?

Occasionally, he’d reappear, snatch up a limb or a joint, give a little tweak or bump his hips in the subtlest of ways. You'd barely notice it happening because it was so quick, but it was his little way of telling you, “I could have submitted you, but let's just keep flowing”.

Eventually, he’d stop, lie still, and let me score a few pity points. There is nothing more terrifying than when a black belt lays still and lets you slither your way from side control to mount without defending. You’re either walking into a trap, where you will probably get viciously submitted without realizing your folly until its too late. Or a test, where you have to defend your honor and prove your knowledge, but generally will end up getting nervous and mentally thwarting yourself because, really, what black belt is just going to let you armbar them from mount?

At the end of the round, he confirmed, that after 3 years in Brazil, my jiu-jitsu had most definitely improved.

Which I guess brings me back around to the beginning of the stories, and in essence, the very origin of this blog.

This January it will have been 4 years since I found out about Renzo Gracie Pa and discovered jiu-jitsu (not to be confused with NoGi submission grappling which in Brazil doesn’t count as BJJ). For 6 months, I traveled to PA once a month and trained in a gi, until I ultimately decided to move to Brazil. Before relocating, I spent a whole month in the dreary suburbs of Philly trying to absorb everything I could learn about the arte sauve before moving to the mecca. Most people thought I was bat shit crazy, but like every pretentious white belt, I thought I knew exactly what I was doing, so why not move to Rio?

I took my first private class ever with Mike. He asked me what I wanted to do. I had no clue. So we worked guard passes from open guard.

6 months to a year into my trip, there was a click, a light bulb began to shine, and I finally realized what Mike had been trying to show me that afternoon so long ago, when I had no concept of what the hell I was doing. I was ecstatic that I was finally understood and highly entertained by the fact that it took me that long to fumble through basic positions, techniques, and philosophies just to understand the beautiful intricacies of a knee slice!

In true creonte fashion, I’ve trained at  a lot of academies and studied with multiple black belts. Some people may consider this to be traitorous behavior but I’ve definitely been able to learn and develop a style based on the different thing I’ve picked up from different people.

Dennis Asche has some of the best speed drills. (Connection Rio Academy)

Terere is a long-stepping legend and all around beast. (FT Jiu Jitsu)

Rich Latta is like a college professor that has given me a lot of detailed insight on my game. (Renzo Gracie PA)

Perninha is the man to go to for all things to do with the lapel. (Gordo BJJ)

Beta academy has some of the best leg locks I’ve seen and a highly technical team of training partners. (Beta DC under Nak)

I learned to escape mount to half guard from a purple belt from Boston while staying at Connection Rio. This in combination with my friendship with Moz sparked my subsequent relationship with (a failed/fucked up version of) deep half which has become the foundation of my game. 

And Mike Padilla (Renzo Gracie PA/ Padilla BJJ) is hands down the fastest mofo I’ve ever hit the mats with! He’s a small person with a dynamic game and seems to be well rounded in both gi and nogi. 

When I grow up. I want to be like Mike.

Everyone wants to be like Mike
~Bad Boys

Find out more about Padilla BJJ on their 

Facebook or by going to their website

Long Island Hustle. Jiu Jitsu for the People

I just finished moving. Now I’m leaving again. First stop Philly. A quick stop. I left my kimonos there because I didn't have enough room to haul them back to D.C. with me. So I have to stop by, say hi to my dad, and then off to New York less than 24 hours later. 

Philly

New York is loud. And fast. People rush by in all directions caught up in the whirlwind circus of their lives. I cleared my throat, clutched my belongings, and looked up from my phone in search of the exit.

Hesitation attracts attention.

Before I could complete the 90-degree turn that put the subway entrance to my back a skinny black guy with a worn out baseball cap and an oversized coat was asking me where I was going. New Yorkers are a mix between warm generous direction givers and rough, cutthroat entrepreneurs looking for the next naïve person they can scam a couple dollars off.

I shrugged the guy off and made my way towards the door with the faked confidence of someone who knows exactly where they are going in life. Bright lights and the overwhelming sound of rush hour traffic invaded my senses as I exited the Port Authority.  Once outside, I looked for a stationary figure that looked like they belonged. I hate blundering up to someone to ask for directions only to find out that that person was just as lost as I am. I also despise the ever-present tourists with their eyes glued to cellphones trying to orient themselves in the middle of a crowded sidewalk. Both actions leave you tainted with the mark of the beast, a naïve, unsuspecting beasts that are 100% more likely to have their possessions snatched up in a random act of robbery.

New York

I quickly found someone that looked like they knew what they were doing and walked up to them for directions.

“Yo! Which way is Penn Station?” Polite but not too much. It was a straight shot down 8^th street. Perfect, I wouldn’t have to walk around looking, consulting my phone for directions every two seconds.

I returned to faking an impassive façade of confidence as I made my way down 8^th street. I was heading to Long Island. I had two hours to get over there and find my friend, a brown belt who teaches classes to kids at a local library. 

A lot of people train Jiu Jitsu for a lot of different reasons. Some want the medals. Some fall in love with in intricate allure of the Arte Sauve. Some people are looking to be more rounded MMA fighters. Some people, like my friend’s students, just fall into the sport. Whether they like it or not, its one of the few recreational activities provided by them as an after school alternative to roaming the streets (apparently some of his kids were recently found wandering the streets which just goes to show you the lack of responsible adulthood we are dealing with in today's educational system). Government funding is quick to fix budget deficits by cutting extracurricular activities, especially those that are designed to get your mind and body moving in a creative way. 

Brazil is oversaturated with martial arts or sports based social projects, and now, more recently I’ve been peeping a lot more of said programs creep slowly into the east coast culture.

More and more people are starting to offer free jiu jitsu classes, especially in New York, where I have a few friends trying to bring the gentle art to the big apple's not so gentle school kids. On Wednesday, once I finally found my way to Long Island, I was able to catch my friend's class that works with kids from 3-13 years old at an after school program that holds free Jiu Jitsu and music classes. For most of them it's their first time experiencing something like that, for a few of them, it seems it's the first time they're experiencing any kind of mandatory physical activity. What the hell happened to gym classes and youth sports leagues? 

It was definitely dope to see the next generation be introduced and slowly find a love for a jiu jitsu. Hopefully its something they will continue to grow in throughout the rest of their academic careers. 

This Tuesday I'll get to stop back at the Bronx to see how jiu jitsu has been integrated into highschools by another friend of mine.