Striving for Improvement and Visiting a UPP

This past week winter struck in the normally sunny Rio. We had several cold rainy days, in which I was forced to wear a jeans and a sweat shirt. That said, yesterday the sun came back out and in the sun it’s warm enough for shorts and a t-shirt. Not a bad “winter” at all.

Dennis covering some details of a technique. Photo by bjjpix.com

Week in Training
I started the week off with a two a day training of wrestling and BJJ. In wrestling we worked takedowns both in the center and along the cage. In Dennis’s class we covered some more gi chokes and got right into rolling. There were a ton of new CR guys on the mat (most all in for the Rio Open) for the situation drills and the first live roll I was matched up against Mike, a guy from NY who wrestled for Brockport College. Our rolls were intense but fun and heavy with wrestling. We spent our rolls jockeying for position- one of us getting a takedown and the other reversing. It was a lot of fun, and enlightening. I could really see the issues a wrestler can give a guy in BJJ. The rolling continued and continued. Unfortunately for whatever reason it was just not my day. Things weren't as smooth as normal and I just couldn’t get into a normal rhythm. As frustrated as I was I continued on and fought hard to improve position. Frustrating as it was I refused to give up, and carried it over to after training where I got some open guard drilling in with my friend Adam, then hit some weighted pull ups and swam a few laps before calling it a day. As frustrating as having a bad day on the mat was I would have felt worse if I simply closed down mentally and gave up positions and tapped whenever someone put a submission on instead of trying to fight out; it would have also been far easier to have called it a day after training instead of getting the extra little bit in, but hard work drives improvement and my overall goal is to be better everyday.

Hard grappling. Photo by bjjpix.com

The rest of the week training went good. Since getting back into striking I feel a bit more relaxed in my boxing and my combinations seem to be flowing good. On Friday I spent the last 20 minutes of striking blocking various body and head kicks and then closing for the takedown. Kick defense have been a bit of a glaring weakness for me (including almost getting my head kicked off by Milton Viera a couple of months ago), especially with so many guys in Brazil coming from Muay Thai. Like I said I spent about 20 minutes with one of my MT coaches stalking me and throwing kicks from all angles. For the first 10 minutes or so it did not go well. I was eating some hard shots or executing horrible technique. Everyone kept correcting me and explaining my errors. Finally in the second half I was able to make some good adjustments and finally started to block and stepping into takedowns to counter. It’s not much fun getting kicked around the cage (literally), but as I said above hard work drives improvement. I am far happier being a bit battered and bruised, than I would be knowing that I wasn’t giving it my all (or if I was doing something else for that matter).

UPP Training and BBQing in a Favela

With Some of the members of Dark Wolf Team at the UPP in Andarai.

On Saturday afternoon Antoine called and asked if Nicole and I wanted to go with his family to the UPP station and then bbq in Andarai. Andarai is a favela near Tijuca in the North Zone of the city. Driving in Antoine’s black SUV we rode with the windows down as to not attract unwanted attention (military police and BOPE also use black SUVs and we didn’t want people to think we were them). When we got into the favela all eyes were on Nicole and I. However, and let me stress this, the looks we got were not of anger but rather curiosity over why we were there. I got the impression that this Favela doesn’t get much gringo traffic coming through. We made our way to the UPP HQ and to the small training area with in it. The small room in the UPP houses Dark Wolf MMA. The Team is ran by Walmor Silva da Souza, and Marcelo Leite de Medieros and others. Walmor and Leite also help run the kids UPP wrestling program for Andarai.  The mma training area is small but nice. The end wall of the room is caged off and the equipment they have is nice. Antoine showed some MMA wrestling techniques and I showed some ways to get into the takedown from boxing. I also had the opportunity to hold mitts for some of the kids and fighters. One of the kids Matheus, is getting ready for his first fight so I spent a while with him correcting and showing techniques. You could tell everyone was appreciative and excited to have me there to help and I was more than happy to oblige.

After some hard grappling.

After training we headed farther up the hill to a small Churrasco (bbq) restaurant. We sat for the next couple of hours talking and laughing while platter after platter of steak, chicken, and sausage came off the charcoal grill in the back. The view as the sunset and the night sky of Rio was simply amazing. We then played several games of billards and listen to Brazilian music (and a little Snoop Dogg). As we left the crowds were filing in, playing games and dancing Samba while they laughed and ate great food. We all walked back down the hill where we said our goodbyes and headed back to Barra. The training in Rio is great, but the hospitality and friendliness of the Brazilian people is hard to match anywhere else in the world. It is great experiences like this that will stick out in my mind for years to come.