Countdown: 9 days left!

We close on our new house in 9 days, which means I'm about 12 days away from starting up training at a new gym. I've got a lot to be excited about with this, not least of all is the space to actually setup my mats and my workout equipment. I'll have some work to do on the little building I'm taking over, but within a few weeks I should have it in shape... probably.

Just thinking about being able to lift weights regularly, and train multiple times a week has me all giddy!

I should also be able to start posting videos again of technique references and things like that.



AAAAND I am putting together plans to hit up a pair of tournaments between august and the end of the year. Not sure which ones yet, but more news on that as it develops.

There's an Englishman in my Jiu Jitsu!

More news on the training front, world famous Jiu Jitsu blogger and all around cool guy Slideyfoot came to the states to visit some gyms in the southeast, so I made the trek down to Tampa for the chance to finally meet and play with him and Stephanie (Sister of Allie the Clear Belt). I left work at about 10pm, drove until about 4:30am and then racked out in my Smart Car in a Big Lots parking lot about 30 minutes from where Slidey was crashing.
I woke up about 8:30 and went to pick him up, then we headed east to the gym another hour and change. The guys and gals at Fabio Novaes Lakeland were awesome and super friendly. I rolled with Slidey for a while, then with Steph, and then with one of their purple belts who was a little bigger than I am that was flawlessly hitting a butterfly guard pass that I have been working on off and on, so I got him to show me some pointers on it. I hope to be able to implement those tips when I get back on the mats regularly (News about that upcoming). I also rolled with a four (I think) stripe blue belt who made literally zero mistakes. His positioning and reactions were all as close to flawless as I've ever run into. It was a pleasure to roll with him and I expect that two or three years from now we'll see him taking the brown belt podiums by storm.

Me and Slidey, being the geeky fellows that we are, spent a lot of time chatting about theory and concepts and movement and playing around, but one thing I did really notice about his game is that while his top pressure was excellent, he wasn't very adventurous with his rolling. Branch out Slidey! Take some risks!

A few hours of that and then I rolled back out with Slidey and we hit up an awesome little pizza place (Slidey ate an entire pizza by himself. I was impressed.) and then after hanging out a bit more and screwing around with some shin on shin combat base counters I had to head home. Eight hours later I was back in my own bed.

Additional updates: We close on our new house at the end of this month, which will reduce my commute time by an hour and a half. It will also put a new gym directly in the middle of my route to work, which just happens to have 10:30 am classes. So the monday after we finish moving I will be heading down there to check the place out and make arrangements. With any luck I can still get 130 or so hours of BJJ in this year (4 classes a week, 1.5 hours per class = 24 hours a month, June-Dec = 7 months, so 168 total possible BJJ hours available). Hell, I might even end the year better at Jiu Jitsu than when I started it!

The next update here probably won't be until after I start at the gym there, once that happens the blog will be back in full swing since I'll have actual training to write about again.

DNS Issues Resolved and Training update

Due to some snafu within GoDaddy my DNS servers borked themselves. As you can see that is now fixed!


My training has been steady, but light. I've been making it out on saturdays to our open mats the last few weeks and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. I'm in the process of buying a new house right now, so everything is kind of tied up getting that done.

I'm going out to our local Police Academy this weekend to help my instructor with their classes, so that should be fun!

Time to get serious again

A bout with ringworm kept me out of the gym for the last 3 weeks, and a big client deployment at work has been sucking up all of my free time, but now the ringworm is gone and the deployment is complete so I'm back on the mats.

I still feel a need  to be stronger and more athletic, but that need is warring with my ability to consistently lift weights and eat enough to actually build muscle.

I started this journey in November of 2006, so I'm coming up on 7 years of training and it's time to make the push for my brown belt, which means getting to class 4 days a week, hitting the weights, and generally taking everything to the next level. I need to make a serious commitment to my training at this point or get used to the idea of being a purple belt forever.

Atlanta Open - 2013

I've been hugely busy at my day job with a new client project, so training has been sporadic, but I will be dropping in at the Atlanta Open to cheer on my guys from Megalodon who are competing as well as the crew from Team ROC that is coming down from NC.

Anyone who is also going to be there, I will be wearing a blue 'Shut Up And Fight' Megalodon MMA t-shirt, I have really long hair and glasses. I'll be hanging around wherever the purple belts are competing for the most part. Drop by and say hello, or punch me in the mouth, or whatever.

Ian McPherson Visit!

I've been hitting class, but not writing about it, which is a bad habit I know.

I have NOT been lifting any weights or anything like that which is bad and I should be, but I'm still inherently lazy. However I have continued to be solid and assertive and force my game and it's getting more cohesive. I'm getting better about standing to execute my passes and not always trying only for the kneecut/teleport pass.

So, last night we had an awesome treat, Ian McPherson came down to teach class and train with us. He taught 5 back control techniques for taking the back from turtle and finishing. I have all five of them on video, but they are only available to students from the gym, so too bad.

I will say that the biggest thing I took away from the class was the basic back control position that he uses. He has his rear knee jammed into his opponents ribs, and his front knee (the one nearest the opponents head) posted back as if in knee on belly. That combined with the seatbelt grip gives amazing back control and mobility. You have the constant option of just ramming your opponent over with your knee pressure and taking side control or KoB, and your weight distribution stops them from rolling away from you without giving up position. It's awesome.

All of the back takes feed almost directly into collar chokes, which brings me to the next thing that I learned which was way stupidly simple compared to what I THOUGHT it was. The double collar choke from the back. I always thought there must be some kind of trick that I was missing. I was CERTAIN that it wasn't as simple as it looked, but I was completely wrong. You just grab the collar, then you grab the lapel with the other hand, and you pull and they tap. It was just mind blowing.

After that I got to roll with Ian, which also was awesome. He did the great blackbelt thing where he would let me work with just enough resistence for me to feel whether what I was doing was correct or not, and even let me succeed to a point, and then just magically sweep and submit me.

He'll be competing at the Atlanta Open at the end of this month and I'll be there spectating and taking video of our guys, so come out and watch!

Newbreed Tournament Writeup and Videos

I drove out to the venue to weigh-in Friday night and got there about 10 minutes before weigh-ins closed. I made weight comfortably at 137.8lbs and everyone I talked to there was very nice and professional. I got a good impression right from the beginning.

I verified that my division was schedule to start at 4:30, but that I should be there around 2 just in case things were ahead of schedule. Keeping that in mind I arrived at the venue at about 1:50 and got changed. Almost right at 2 I got paged to the weigh-in area to find out that I had no one in my division. So, they medaled me out in the 139.9 and rolled me up to compete in a division with a couple of 149.9 guys and a 159.9 guy.

I had about 30 more minutes of waiting and then got called down to the ring to start our division at about 2:45.

My first match was one of the 149.9 guys who looked like he cut rather a lot to hit that weight as well. I kept grip fighting standing looking for my takedown until he pulled guard. I immediately went to pass and he turtled and managed to get a pants leg grip and stop me from securing back control and transition to side. He never passed guard, so no points for anyone. At the time I had no idea how close I came to catching his collar and seeing it in the video drives me nuts. I was an inch away from winning via collar choke with that grip. He got greedy and tried to step to mount and I caught halfguard. I ended up having to bait the kimura in order to get enough space to curl up into him, and as I'm trying to sweep he secures a guillotine and it became obvious that he was preposterously strong. I fought it out while continuing to try to get on top as long as I could, eventually I had to tap.

Second match was against the other 149.9 guy. This time I was able to get my grips immediately and hit a perfect Tomoe Nage, then slid right into a triangle choke while working to pass. I defended the choke, and escaped it and caught an inverted triangle, but I couldn't secure his far arm and I could never force enough movement to get on top. I feel like I could have done better managing this position and possibly won this match had I been thinking clearly, but I rarely end up here in the gym and I don't have a good path built up around the position. He eventually worked free and was able to take S-mount and secure the armbar.

For the third match they were actually looking for someone to volunteer to compete against a ~190lb guy who ended up with no opponent. I was done with my division by then and I'm used to competing in absolute divisions, so I said I would give it a go. I went for my tomoe nage, but he ended up being a hair too tall for me to get control of his hips, so I ended up pulling guard. He shook me free and ended up in my halfguard. I fought of an arm triangle and a darce and he eventually passed my guard. Time ran out with me still fighting against the d'arce and looking for an opportunity to sweep, so I lost by 3. So, I got a silver medal for not being a wuss.

Overall, I was both happy with my performance and extremely disappointed. I was more assertive in my rolls, but I continue to run into brickwalls against people who are my general skill level but far more athletic than I am. I've decided I have no choice but to hit the weights again if I'm going to find success in competition. So starting monday I'll be back to Stronglifts 5x5 and I probably won't be competing again until spring of 2014 at which time I think I will venture back to a NAGA event in the hopes of finding people in my own weightclass to test myself against.

Tournament Time! Newbreed Ultimate Challenge Atlanta

So for the first time in over a year I cut weight for a tournament. Two weeks ago I weighed in at 149lbs, tonight I tipped the scales at 137.5 for successful cut with room to spare. I then found the nearest smoothie vendor and knocked back their largest raspberry, banana, and orange juice smoothie before returning home to eat a delicious steak. I'm feeling great now. Strong, full of energy. I'm going to get a full night of sleep too since my division doesn't start until 4ish and we are guaranteed that it won't start earlier than 2, so I can leave the house at 11:30ish and make it in plenty of time.

That means full sleep, breakfast, the whole nine yards. I won't be going into a tournament hungry, or worried about anything expect competing. I'll be competing in my proper weightclass and I feel like I'm right at the peak of my current improvement cycle.

So now it's time to see if Operation Be More Assertive translates into results on the tournament mats.

I will have a full report with videos up Tuesday.

This is not the guard pass I am looking for....

We actually managed to put together a pretty good class for July 3rd with 9 or 10 people showing up to train. I spent about 45 minutes teaching super basic judo stuff, fit-ins, foot placement, how to load someone before the throw and then how to complete the throw without trying to muscle it. Just partner drilling back and forth a bunch to get those basics down.

Then we rolled for over an hour. Great stuff. I was assertive in every aspect of my game and was on top of things in general.

Had three rolls apiece with Wyatt and Kris, which is always good training. The final roll of the night with Kris I went into specifically trying to think about ways to pass his guard without getting swept which resulted in him throwing on a triangle in the first 30 seconds or so as I tried to dig for a double under pass and he popped the arm free.

I threw on the defense, burrowed down, and drove my elbow through and out to secure the pass and take side control. That is NOT what I meant when I decided I needed to look for different guard passes. I definitely don't want to do that again since I doubt I'll get away with it against him a second time.

I did hit one of my favorite stealth tech submissions on him though, attempt overhead or butterfly sweep, then when your opponent posts you slap on an armtriangle, then hit the half butterfly sweep to mount and finish.

It was a good night, and I feel it. Sore everywhere.

Guard Passing Plateau and Hulk Smash

A solid OBMA class last Friday. I forced several sweeps through serious wrestler resistance and was consistently assertive with my submissions. I also worked the Leg Lasso sweep I posted about a few days ago.

One thing that I'm a bit ambivalent about is a roll with one of our larger white belts who is very strong and explosive. I swept him to mount and was working on setting up a choke and he attempted to full on fling me off of him and sit up via pure hulk strength. This annoyed me, so I ended up smashing him back down in return. There wasn't a lot of technique involved, I just smashed him back down onto the mats while he was trying to sit up. I don't know if this counts as me being assertive, or if it was spazzy. It's definitely a difference in my behavior compared to a month ago.

Rolled with Kris again at the end of class and this time he just had way too much energy for me. I got mauled and armbarred. I'm going to have to figure out something about my energy levels going forward, but I'm not sure what.

Still, good training.

But my rolls with Kris are bringing to the front an issue with my jiujitsu. My guard passing has gotten stagnant. I have one pass that I fight for, and if it fails I generally just sit in guard defending sweeps now. I need to kick myself out of that rut and go back to the active movement passing game that I started developing a couple of months ago. That's my next OBMA inflection point I think, a return to active passing.

Backsliding and Leg Lasso Sweeps

OBMA report:
Felt like I backslid a little bit and was letting people attempt to pass my guard and work instead of putting myself in control of the roll more assertively. I will have to revisit this next class and make sure I take control of the roll from the beginning every time.


Leg Lasso Double Pump Sweep to Spinoplata to Triangle Choke:
Couple of discussions about Leg Lasso stuff on the internet led to me filming this quick reference video for my preferred Leg Lasso sweep.

More OBMA and Some Insights Into Learning From Losing

I felt... moderately assertive and moderately exhausted. The heat/humidity drained me pretty quick and I really couldn't get mentally in gear. I was still more assertive than I would have been 2 months ago, but I felt like I was missing opportunities that I could have hit, especially with sweeps.

More importantly one of our guys just got back from a tournament where he lost, really bad, for the first time in his BJJ Career. In the past he's always done well at white and blue belt and he's gotten used to that success. This was his first tournament as a purple belt and it hit him pretty hard. I talked to him about the specific situations that cost him the match and while talking through it we isolated a root cause of his issue. He's not losing enough.

In class he's a strong, technical guy. He can impose his will on like 90% of the people we train with. This is a problem because there are places in class where he NEVER ends up. No one really forces him to turtle, so when he ends up turtled he doesn't have a good reflexive escape. No one can really stop his sweeps, so when he runs into someone that shuts him down he doesn't have a reflexive action. The problem is that there are deadends on his BJJ roadmap because he never travels those paths.

So I grabbed him for some relaxed rolling, forcing him to just let things happen and not resist too much so that he would end up in positions that he didn't normally end up in. As a result he was able to learn counters to both of the situations he was in over the weekend in just a few minutes.

This underscores an important point that people say a lot, but not everyone understands the reasoning behind. You hear it all the time, 'Put Yourself in Bad Positions!' But why? So I can practice escapes? Well, sort of. But a more accurate statement would be 'Put Yourself in Weird Positions!' Why? So you can develop a plan of action for as many possible positions as you can find.

If you never end up in a position in class, then you won't know what to do when you end up there in competition. So remember to EXPLORE your jiujitsu. Roll with the idea of finding new branches of the tree and seeing where they take you and how to move from one branch to another.

This is pretty much the exact opposite of the Assertive Jiujitsu project. This is for people who are naturally assertive with their Jiujitsu ( Like my training partner) but for that reason don't often end up in weird positions. For those of us who are naturally lazy with our jiujitsu and a little more playful we did most of this first. We explored the tree, ended up in all kinds of positions and know we KNOW all kinds of things. We just have a hard time putting them into practice because of our relaxed attitude. Two ends of the learning spectrum that both seem to collide at purple belt from what I can tell.

Now, go forth and explore! Remember, Adventure is out there!!

OBMA - Day 6: No-Gi

This was the first No-Gi I have had since starting this project and during my first roll I realized I have ZERO plan in No-Gi anymore. I used to play an overhook to triangle/omoplata game almost exclusively, but people have gotten good at maintaining posture so I rarely get the overhook long enough to work anything from it. It took me a couple of rolls to figure out what direction I was going to be working so that I could be assertive with it.

I settled on armbar and the pendulum sweep from the armbar setup. I hit it on pretty much everyone I rolled with at least once and landed quite a few armbars. Also a kneebar from KoB that I have been thinking about but hadn't seen an opportunity for until tonight.

Overall I felt like I had less direction, fewer options, and less control over the roll than I have had in Gi recently. I'm definitely more fond of Gi than No-Gi now which is 180 degree change from when I started in the Gi four and a half years ago.

I also was reminded that one of the primary No-Gi grips involves hanging on the back of your opponents head. My neck is killing me. But still, my jiujitsu felt moderately assertive. Better than the last No-Gi class I can remember. I do need to put some more thought into my no-gi game plan and path if I really want to improve though.

OBMA - Day 5

I ended up at the gym a little before the kids classes started, so I jumped in and did their warmup and drills and then helped coach the kids while they were rolling, and did some gymnastics with them and stuff. We started off our class with armbar defense and escapes and drilled those for a while. Basic stuff, elbow pops, stacking, and the hitchhiker for desperation.

Assertiveness was in full swing while rolling. I was insistent about my sweeps, and continued to hit combinations. My collar drags weren't working quite as well today, but I was switching off to spider guard and hitting sickle sweeps when needed. It actually felt very strange at one point, I realized I had rolled with 4 or 5 blue belts and completely controlled them with almost no effort. I caught myself wondering if that was what I was like as a blue belt.
I rolled with Casey for the first time in a while and for the first time I can remember everything he did wasn't dark magic and sorcery. I could tell what was going on and avoided a lot of things that would have swept me a few months ago. I was able to execute an effective guard pass and avoid a trap that usually gets me immediately swept. All in all I felt a lot of progress tonight.

I also rolled with Johnny and was able to prevent him from passing my guard up until the last 15 seconds of the round, which hasn't been the case in a couple of years. I had to fight hard for it, but it's what I NEED to do, so it was super good for me.

Closed out the night with another points match with Kris, again I could tell he was tired, but that didn't stop me from tomoe nageing him in spectacular fashion and breakdancing on him. He'll recover from this fatigue or whatever in a week or so and be back to being one of the best guard passers in the gym, so I'm getting my licks in now while he's weak and helpless.

This is been the most successful mental project I've done since I started keeping track of my training and I think it's what I needed to finally break through and get my Jiu Jitsu to brown belt level.

OBMA: Day 4

Another solid day for the project. Today was takedowns mostly working from the russian 2 on 1 grip, which I never use, so I spent a lot of the time working with Kris on gi grips, grip breaking, foot sweep combos, and the very non-wrestling standup game we both use.

Started out rolling with Kris and continued to be assertive with my gripping and execution, he felt a bit less intense today than he usually does so I think he might have been backing it down a notch due to the heat and humidity in the gym. I hit a bunch of sweeps to KoB and executed my baseball bat choke. My assertiveness and determination to complete sweeps was leading me to combos that I had worked on before but never really was able to put into practice. I used x-guard or x-guard variation sweeps, the hook sweep, and some others that I am now too tired to remember.
Also rolled with a bigger guy that trained with us before, but was gone for a while. Went immediately to my standard big guy game and omoplata, swept to mount, worked for bow and arrow, then transitioned to his back. Ended up just riding it out on his back and refusing to be shaken off while working for the choke.

Rolled with a new guy that turns out to have a lot of previous wrestling experience. He was preposterously strong, so right off he tried to canopener the hell out of me, then head crushed me. I tapped to the headcrush real quick before my nose could get too smashed, then loop choked him immediately. After the reset I was setting up the loop choke again and he performed a very ballistic sitout that turned it into a kimura, which only didn't wreck my arm because I was lucky and was already going that direction. Rolled through it, and he head crushed me again. Tapped and then pulled him into full guard and x-choked him on the restart.  After that I just held him in guard until the round ended while he tried to canopener me repeatedly.

At that point it got hard to continue my assertiveness due to exhaustion, but I did what I could.

I also have noticed that I am trying to pass the knee shield the same way no matter what size my opponent is. I need to adjust that so that on the stronger guys I back out and work to generate an agility advantage instead of trying to pressure pass through them. I can do that on guys my size, or inexperienced bigger guys, but bigger blue or purple belts it just isn't the appropriate passing method for the situation.

At the end I rolled with Kris again, and as our like 7 minute long round ended, Johnny called for a points match again starting from where we were with me under side control. I spend about 6 minutes playing full on defense unable to muster any kind of offense until I regained guard and at some point accidentally clipped Kris in the face with my knee.

Still it was continued progress mentally and I'm pretty happy with this project so far.

Operation Be More Assertive: Day 3

Due to some transportation issues I missed out on class for over a week, again, which sucked. But I was back last night to keep working. I ran into a few problems this time around, first of all popcorn and a hard cider is probably not the best lunch to prepare one for future athletic endeavors, just for anyone who might be wondering.

Technique for the day was armbar attacks when your opponent attempts to stack or slam out. Heel curls, leg hooks, spin unders, and regular ol' sweep to finish. Good basic fundamental stuff.

Rolling I partnered up first with a newer guy who is apparently a fresh blue belt who has been out of training for a little while. I maintained my assertive mindset and went immediately to the scissor sweep and a strong knee on belly top game and finished with a baseball bat choke. Continued in that vein and completed a few other submissions while refusing to allow sweeps or escapes for the most part. Towards the end of the round he did get a really did situp sweep on me that eventually succeeded, but I was happy with my mindset in that round.

As rounds went on my ability to maintain started to drop as I became more and more exhausted. I maintained my assertiveness through a round with Chris, and one of the other blues, and then rolled with Ian whose top pressure just sapped the energy right out of me this time. Then with Johnny, again enormous top pressure that drained my reserves. I tried to maintain the mindset, but I ended up falling back into unproductive patterns because I felt physically unable to assert control over the roll.

Final roll was against Kris again, this time Johnny was calling points for it so Kris came out like he meant it and I was flat out exhausted. This led to 6 minutes of pure defense on my part hanging in quarter guard, fighting off collar chokes, and barely blocking guard passes until I finally got to deep half guard and executed a sweep, then fought off a berimbolo to close it out.

It's definitely easier to maintain that assertiveness when I have more energy, but I feel sore today as if I did work, which is good, and I give myself a 6/10 for my assertiveness for that class. Next class will be next wednesday and we'll try for 9/10.

Operation Be More Assertive: Day 2

Apparently this is actually Operation Turn Me Into a Badass.

I had more success today with sweeps than I think I've ever had in a single class. I think my success rate was damn near 100%.

Multiple times the sweep was blocked temporarily and I fought through it to completion. I also successfully fought off several reversal attempts that I normally would have allowed. I was more explosive when I needed to be during my escapes and transitions and again I just went in and comboed my scissor sweep and collar drag with no care for what my opponent might be doing. Huge success rate.

I still have things to work on, but this is definitely getting me into the right place mentally.

Also, for the first time in a long time I feel like I really worked out. My arms, my core, my back, and my legs all feel like I went weight lifting. Normally I would think, "Shit I was muscling things too much." But for this project that's GOOD. I was actually using strength when it was needed in order to block my opponents explosiveness.

I need to continue this trend and keep this mindset all the way up to my next competition as well as hitting the weights and working to improve my strength and muscular endurance. The early results of this project are already very heartening though.

Operation Be More Assertive is a Go

In the past I have had what I definitely consider to be 'Lazy' jiujitsu. This has been hurting me in competition, and I've now compiled enough competition footage from the last year to see exactly where the biggest issues are and start to address them. The following is my plan for addressing these issues and making my jiujitsu more assertive and dynamic.

1. Ignore my opponent - I have in the past had a tendency to play defensively and wait for my opponent to make a mistake and then pounce on it. This lead to a very reactive game which frequently was very passive. This hurts you against opponents that don't make many mistakes or don't make mistakes that you know how to capitalize on. I have now begun ignoring my opponent and working to implement what I want to happen. 

2. Don't give up sweeps and don't give up ON sweeps - I previously would begin a sweep, and if my opponent blocked it I would just chill and wait to try something else. Instead I am now continuing to fight for the sweep and push harder to end up on top. I also would frequently allow my opponent to complete a sweep if it was pretty close instead of spending effort blocking it. Now instead I am actively working to block all sweeps no matter what stage they are at. So even if I miss my first opportunity to counter I am continuing to push back and work to stay on top. 

3. Take risks for submissions - Another passive point of my game has been being very relaxed about seeking submissions. I would be content to positionally control someone for 5-6 minutes and threaten a few submissions, but not seriously. Now instead I am aggressively seeking submissions, and a wider range of submissions and combining them. 


I began this project last night and immediately was able to see a difference. I secured more sweeps and submissions than I normally do and was able to do much more to control my opponents and force them to play the game I wanted to play, to my advantage.

Of course, I also managed to force a white belt to waiter sweep me, which was not exactly what I intended, but it was fun. All of my rolls felt more fun and dynamic as well. I feel good about this project and my expected results.

USG - VA Beach Writeup and Videos

Another great tournament in the books.

I drove up Friday night. The trip took me from about 5pm to about 2am and I slept in my car after arriving. Woke up feeling pretty rested and had some yogurt then hit the awesome Virginia Beach Fieldhouse. Weighed in at 143 with my pants on and could have gotten to 139 without trouble, but not down to 135 which is the next weightclass down.

I spent the morning reffing the No-Gi matches and had a great time. I made no questionable calls and had no upset people, though I was approached by a parent later on about an incident on my mat that I had seen at the time, but chalked up to being an accident.

One of the guys in my division was a younger guy who was very intense, I assumed he was from a wrestling background and was just a little spazzy. He forearm checked another guy in the throat and I said 'watch the contact', but it seemed accidental and I didn't see anything else excessive. However apparently the guys dad on the sidelines was talking about 'doing whatever it takes to win' and several other people had fallen victim to some questionable contact.
The guy who approached me was the father of the guy that had been forearmed in the throat and he wanted to let me know that other people had complained about the guy as well. So, I'm going to keep a more careful eye on this fellow in particular and 'accidental' contact in general next time I ref. We're all here to enjoy ourselves not to turn it into an MMA match.


The divisions went smoothly and I then reffed some of the womens Gi matches where I got to watch Colleen Merullo rep Da Firma Kimonos while collecting some arms. I believe she took double gold, I know she took at least one. The girl is 14 and already a monster on the mats.

At that point I had to go change and get ready for my matches. So, here are the videos. I'll drop some commentary after them.


Match 1 -

 Match 2 -

Match 3 -

So, as you can see, I got obliterated. After the first 2 minutes of the first match I felt more exhausted than I did after 40 minutes of grappling at the sub only last time. I felt weak and completely overmatched at almost every point in every match. It was terrible. Definitely not a good performance.

I'm at the point where I need to be solidly brown belt in my technique to compete with guys that are 15lbs heavier than I am. They are just too good to be giving up any kind of physical advantage to.

I felt like I never got my game in gear at all. I missed my Tomoe Nage attempts. Couldn't seal the Berimbolo, couldn't complete a scissor sweep, and then couldn't escape mount. Absolutely terrible.

So, I will probably STILL do Richmond, because it's USGs 100th event, but after that I'm going to take a year off from competing in order to train more and hit the gym, spend my competition budget on private lessons or trips to train at different schools, and try to come back in a year both better and stronger.

But, the event was awesome, very smoothly run, the venue was great. As usual US Grappling puts on an awesome tournament.

US Grappling - VA Beach

It's time for another USG Tournament! Back to VA Beach this time and I'll only be doing two divisions since I'll be reffing all day.

Get pre-registered now and come out!! It's a great time and a great tournament for everyone!