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| Photo by Carol Marinho. |
Finishing out what has been a HOT
weekend here in Rio. Summer is in full swing and I am making the most
of it. When not on the mats I am trying to get outside as much as
possible and enjoy the day. I have taken to writing all my blogs
outdoors and it makes for a relaxing time of typing. We (Nicole and
I) are starting to see return visitors coming through here at
Connection Rio. In the last month and a half we have had three people
whom stayed in early 2013 come back through to stay again. With
having so many people come through CR it's nice to see some familiar
faces. Not only is it nice on a personal level but it is nice to be
able to sit down with people and discuss how their training has
progressed since training here in Rio. Yesterday evening, after a
couple of hours of nogi grappling, a good friend of mine (and return
guest) Christian and I headed down to the beach to relax, catch up
and exchange thoughts on training. Being able to listen to the ocean
and talk BJJ is just one more great aspect of the BJJ lifestyle here
in Rio.
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| Making lifelong friends from all over the world. |
Right now with the house is pretty
full. We have people from all of the world and all walks of life. We
have guests from Sweden, U.S., Kazakhstan, Jordan, Canada, Poland,
Ireland, France, Chile, Australia, and England. Not only is there a
huge mix of cultures, but there is a huge diversity in the background
of our guests. There are people in the house on leave from the
military, those newly graduated from university, people in the
restaurant business, people in the financial sector, and in the
social services. The purpose of the guests visit to Brazil varies as
well. Some people are here for a “jiujitsu vacation”, some to
compete advance, and some to help apply what they learn here back
home. One guest who works with youths in the justice system, wants to
take what he learns in BJJ and create a program for kids to help give
them direction in their lives. That said, even with all the diversity
everyone here has the bond of BJJ to unite them. This bond plus
staying together here at the CR HQ has formed friendships that span
the globe. I can't count the times that someone has said “If you're
in England (or Canada, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Malaysia, etc)
you have a place to stay and train.” The cool thing is I know that
everyone who has said that mean it 100%.
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| Working in my "office". |
Monday
was a holiday in Rio so most of the gyms were only open for open mat
in the morning. In the afternoon we moved the furniture around in the
living room and covered around ½ of the room in mats and rolled for
couple of hours. Afterwords we all cooled off in the pool and joked
around. It's great to have so many training partners right here the
house. At any given moment you can ask if anyone wants to train and
at least two or three guys will jump in. Most of my training this
week was done at
Rio
Fighter's.
It feels great to be getting back into MMA training. On Friday's
session the focus was on ground and pound work. After an intensive
warm up that consisted of grappling drills and some technique work we
broke into groups and did grappling with striking rotations . After
about 20 minutes of this we moved into the cage and did ground and
pound shark tank drills. One guy was on the bottom with against the
cage, each minute a fresh opponent would come in and work GNP and top
control while the guy on bottom could only defend and work to escape
or submit (no strikes from bottom). If you escaped or submitted you
started over again. It was an exhausting both physically and
mentally. The guys on top had 16oz gloves on and would just rain down
strikes and try to advance position and if you managed to escape you
found yourself right back down getting punched. It wasn't the most
fun, but it helped teach how to keep calm under pressure and how to
work your way out of bad position. I ate a lot of punches, but I
worked hard and got in some great escapes or reversals on some tough
guys. After we were done I took a few moments to stretch, relax and
get my breath back.
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| Training at Miltons. |
Coming out of sessions like that is
something that I missed. I love the feeling of leaving a training
session physically exhausted, knowing that you left it all on the
mat. That sensation is almost indescribable to those you have never
experienced it; for me it's a very serene moment where things just
seem clear to me. It's having moments like that, which reassures me
that this is what I am meant to do.
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