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| Just some of the people at Saturday's BBQ. Photo by vitophotography.com |
It's been a busy week down here in Rio
at the CR house. Since the start of the week the house has been full
with BJJ enthusiasts from all over the world. Currently we have
people staying here from the U.S., Canada, Ireland, France, the UK,
Jordan, Germany, Netherlands and Poland. The belt levels in the house
are as diverse as the people; there is a mixture of white, blue,
purple, one brown and two blackbelts. With so much diversity we are
constantly being exposed to new concepts and ideas involving both BJJ
and life in general.
Because of the BJJ diversity in the
house I spent a good portion of this week training with guys in the
house. I got in several good drill sessions in with Mike, spending a
lot of time on my guard game. Most of my game is either top or
scramble oriented, so my technique from guard isn't as strong as it
could be. It's not that I feel uncomfortable from guard its just
that I tend to create scrambles to either escape to my feet or
reverse, instead of using technical sweeps or working for
submissions. While I have pretty good success with it, I recently
realized I need to build a more technical guard game and show a
little more diversity from bottom. Honestly some (and by that I mean
a lot) of my technique felt loose and sloppy, which was both
frustrating eye opening. That said I realize I need to work hard on
it to turn the corner on my training. To make improvements you need
to get out of your comfort zone, and that is what I am doing.
In my wrestling class I covered some
techniques from the underhook series. I went through a basic snatch
single, an ankle pick, and a knee tap attack. The nice thing about
the series of attack is that it works great in both gi and nogi
grappling. We spent a good hour and a half in the Rio sun drilling
each attack. On Friday and Saturday a group of us got together and
rolled nogi. We divided into groups some inside, some outside and we
rolled 6 minute rounds for the better part of an hour. Overall I felt
great, my cardio was strong (thanks to my recent sprint work), my top
game and scrambles felt good, and I even played a little guard. With
my guard I found varying success; I was able to hit a couple of nice
sweeps, but I couple of times I got my guard passed and found myself
getting smashed. In the end though it will only make me better.
CR BBQ
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| Photo by vitophotography.com |
On
this past Saturday CR had a huge sponsored BBQ, with many members of
the BJJ and MMA community in attendance. Some of the guests included
coral belt Sylvio Behring, Gordo, Terere, Liuz Dias, Cleiber Maia,
Antoine Jaoude, and Claudinha Gagelha. Starting at noon we fired up
the grill and continually had food cooking until after 6 p.m.. It was
great to have so many members of the community here together with the
guests here at CR, talking BJJ, swimming, laughing, and eating
delicious food.
Also
Bossa Boards founder Nicolai came over with some of his different
designs and taught longboarding techniques. The road along the house
was filled with gringos riding longboards with varying success.
Having the different boards designs let people see just how each
style handles and rides differently from the others. He even took a
minute to switch out the bushings on my board and make a couple of
small adjustments to make boarding better. Thanks Nicolai!
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| One of our guests Nico riding a Bossa longboard. Photo by vitophotography.com |
To
finish the day off a group of us watched UFC 167 here at the house,
while others went out to Copa to check out the nightlife. It was a
great way to finish out the week, with friends, good food, and good
times.
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