Beach workouts, Ginastica Natural, Luta Livre....Living the Brazilian Dream!

Finishing up a great luta livre class with the mma guys. On the right of me is luta livre coach Pequeno Nogueira, and on the far right is coaches Andre Benkei and Mauricio  Baboo.

 
Week In Review
This week the temperature was hot, the skies bright blue and sun filled, and the training was great. With the move into the new CR house has brought a new routine. I’ve been waking up in the early morning and heading down to the beach to get a morning workout in. Training on the beach gives me several options; long runs down along the beach, sprint work through the sand, or a swim workout in the ocean. Mix in some body weight exercises at the workout stations and you have yourself a nice morning workout. The other addition I’ve made to my morning has been to add in some ginastica natural movements into my warm up. About two weeks ago Raphael Romano, a BJJ blackbelt and son of ginastica natural founder Alvaro Romano, came to CR and taught a class right in the front yard. For those who don’t know ginastica natural is a combination of yoga, body weight exercises and grappling specific movements (think of yoga movements combined with shadow wrestling). The system is designed to give you a workout both of the body and mind. I was only able to catch the last half of the class but learned some great stuff. One of the biggest things I took from the class was a breathing series, where by to promote lung/heart rate recovery you do series of short powerful breaths (essentially you hyperventilate) that way when you begin training again your heart rate actually drops. So I’ve been trying to apply this to my training. The first few times though as Raphael said you get pretty light headed, I just about dropped while resting between rounds of hard MMA sparring. The more I practice the breathing though the more I like doing it and feel the benefits.



Ginastica Natural in the Connection Rio HQ Garden.
Picture by bjjpix.com

Training with the MMA training camp went good this week. Primarily this week I trained wrestling and luta livre. For those of you who are not familiar with luta livre, it is no-gi grappling. Andre Benkei (the head coach for the camp) explains it as the forgotten submission based game of wrestling, while BJJ is an off shoot of traditional judo. Being an off shoot of wrestling it is a highly aggressive and pressing style of grappling. The classes are taught by Pequeno Nogueira who is a phenomenal luta livre fighter. His submission game is crazy! His grip strength plus his squeeze makes his chokes tighter than I’ve really ever had put on me. Needless to say being able to learn from such an esteemed submission artist is an amazing opportunity that really only comes from traveling down to Rio to train. The wrestling has been a lot of fun as well it has felt really good to get back drilling and working technique as well as teaching and helping the MMA guys improve their game. Being able to train with such high caliber fighters it feels great that I have something to contribute to help them grow as well. I tell you for not coming from a wrestling background the guys are aggressive and have a great feel for takedowns and counter attacks. Unfortunately this week I didn’t get a chance to throw on the gi and train. While I do naturally feel more comfortable in nogi, I have really grown to like training in the gi and look forward to getting some good gi training in this week.



 Where Are You At For Accomplishing Your 2013 Goals?Have you looked at the calendar lately? I mean I’m sure you know what date and what day of the week it is, (well at least you should). But what I mean is have you actually looked at the calendar and seen just how far into 2013 we already are? The start of this week is the beginning of the eighth week of 2013, by the end of next month we will be a full quarter of the way through the year already!

Remember at the beginning of the year you were all gung-ho about what you wanted to accomplish in the new year? Well where are you on accomplishing your goals? It’s easy once the holidays are over and you get back to the normal grind to forget or put off the plans/goals you set for yourself. Around this point in time it is simple to take the easy way and join so many other and say, “next year will be the year“. I know it sounds crazy, but I guarantee people are already writing this year off. My challenge to you is to not let your goals be forgotten, don’t take the easy way out.

I am not perfect and I struggle with it as well. I try to write goals for myself at the begging of each week (think I missed 1 week). These small weekly goals are meant lead me towards me larger overall goals, though sometimes that fact can get lost in translation. Yesterday I went through and looked at my goals for the 2013 and I realized I need to do so more often; while I’ve taken steps towards some goals, there are others I need to put more focus towards.

Take a look back and review your goals for this 2013. If you haven’t made any goals for the year, while the clock is ticking away, there is still time to accomplish a whole hell of a lot; you just have to decide what it is you want, write it down, and create the steps necessary to take you there. If you do already have your goals do a self assessment of where you are on the path to accomplishing them. If you are on schedule great, if not its time to buckle down regroup and refocus yourself to get where you want to be by the being of 2014. Best of luck and work hard!