Intense Training at Renovação Fight Team

The CR Crew with the RFT Team in Botafogo. Photo by bjjpix.com

Rio de Janeiro is a place of great beauty, wonder, and excitement. On a personal level Nicole and I have been planning and making excursions around Barra and throughout Rio. Last Sunday we went down to a small private beach not far from the CR houses called Joatinga. The beach is surrounded by cliffs and as the tide comes in the sandy beach is virtually engulfed by the ocean. Nicole and I went in the late afternoon and took some small snack items and watched the the large waves thunder against the cliff side as the sunset. It’s the small moments like these that really makes us realize that Rio is a paradise.  This weekend we are headed into the more Bohemian part of town, Santa Teresa, and we are looking forward to seeing what this little piece of Rio has to offer.


Week in Training

Photo by bjjpix.com

The pace of training for me was a bit slower than normal this week, my knee was still bothering me so my primary focus was on technique work. This week marketed the end of the six week MMA camp for the Brazilian Fighters, who’s overall games have jump up considerably. It will be interesting to see where some of these guys end up in the future, there is some real talent in that group. On Mondays wrestling session we covered  leg attacks off of offensive strikes, as well as attacking for the takedown as a counter to an opponents strikes.The primary focus on using punches and slips to close the distance and create an angle of attack. I did wrestle one round live with Pequeno and then decided against any further live goes. On Tuesdays Luta Livre session Pequeno went over back attacks to the arm triangle. The one I really took away from the class was a roll off of the claw ride when your opponent is turtled up. In recent years the claw ride has been extremely popular in American Folkstyle Wrestling. The position is really familiar and comfortable for me so to learn a great choke from it was awesome. I again opted to err on the side of caution with my knee and didn’t live roll. I knew I was going to need my knee feeling good for the next day.

Working for the takedown against Bellator Fighter Sergio Junior. Photo by bjjpix.com

Renovação Fight Team

Wednesday morning was the weekly CR academy visit. This weeks visit was at famed Luta Livre school Renovação Fight Team (RFT) in Botafogo. Over the years RFT has turned out many great grapplers and MMA fighters. The building has that old school gym feeling where you just know hard work is being put in. The training area is all business with hard matting and heavy bags lined up against the wall. Soon the mat was filled with people doing there own pre-training warm ups, rolls, stretches, light bag work, etc. The official warm up consisted of jogging, and various movement (high knees, skips, etc) one of the warm up exercises was sprawls down the length of the mat. On the second round sprawling down the mats Mike, the new CR sponsored athlete sprawled just as I was and I caught his heel right under my eye splitting me open. While not deep it immediately swelled and started pouring out blood. When I went to get it cleaned up the head instructor gave me a look of ‘seriously? During the warm up?’. I put Vaseline on it and went back to training. The warm up ended with several rounds of one guy shooting a double, and the other catching, sprawling and hitting a choke. The technique that where shown was an ankle lock off of a guard pass, and an arm lock from bottom. The biggest thing that jumped out at me was just how long the moves where drilled. Each guy spent at least 10 minutes hitting the technique over and over before switching positions for the other guy to work. During the entire technique period several coaches were walking around making little adjustments to ensure the technique was being hit properly. The high reps plus the close eye of coaches is what brings RFT fighters levels to such a high game. After the technique we got to the sparring portion of class. The instructor explained there would be eight, six minute rounds, and because of the high number of people in class people would have to rotate in. I start to roll, one of the first things I notice is that these guys are good at hand fighting. Sometimes with guys they are more relaxed and have a tendency to ‘hang’ on their ties, but not at RFT. Movements were quick and explosive, openings hard to come by. I hit a slide by on the guy and he quickly readjusted but when he did he his weight was forward and I was able to hit in a front headlock. I quickly extended him locked up a grip that Pequeno had shown and  rolled into a choke. I wasn’t able to finish a scramble happened and he managed to work his way behind me, instead of sitting in turtle I exploded up hit a switch and took him down. Time ran out. Then I noticed something, A LOT of the guys sitting the round out were watching me, I had a couple of guys approach me to roll but then a guy stepped in and said he was with me. I hit a knee tap from the knees putting him on his ass, where he pulled guard and slammed a triangle and got the sub. I wasn’t the happiest. The rest of the roll was intense with me threatening with several arm locks and him countering a leg lock of mine with a knee slicer (on my bad knee..OUCH). I rotated out for a round and then I rolled against a big welterweight who fights in Bellator. It was a fast paced roll, starting with him trying to arm drag and me re-dragging him and getting one hook in, then he escaped and it was on. For the rest of the day people where asking me how my neck felt from all the cranks he hit, and he was cranking them. They didn't really choke me just twisted my head in various ways it was not meant to go. For all this though I kept trying to gain the offensive going for arm locks, chokes and even a flying triangle.  Towards the end I also started to get a feel for when he was going for the cranks to I was either able to escape them or avoid getting caught in them. In the end he was baiting his leg for me to attack so he could attack my neck again. He was stepping in heavy and offering up his lead leg. I decided that if he was going to give it to me I was going to take is and put him on his ass or back. I powered through on a Barza-Gar double (which kept my head on the inside to avoid his neck cranks and took him down flat on his back. I was working to pass his half guard when time ran out.  The last guy I rolled with was more my size, but was an animal. He was hitting techniques to set up submissions on me that I had never even ran into before. Being that he was a smaller guy it was a rapid fast paced roll with one of us working for a move and the other rapidly working the counter. Turns out that the guy also fights in Bellator and has a great MMA record. When it was all said and done the mats were covered in sweat and we jogged for a cool down. I felt right at home at RFT, the people were nice, the technique and rolls were great, and the overall class warm up to cool down had a very strong wrestling practice feel to it. I can’t wait to make it back there!

Working for the finish. Photo by bjjpix.com

The rest of the week I again focused mainly on technique and decided to take the weekend off to let my knee heel up. It is feeling great now and I am exciting to get back into intense workouts and hard training!