It's been a while since I've posted...I blame that on brooke, hee hee hee. But I finally got a little video together of some of the warm up drills that we do. Dennis taught us these drills and when done correctly are a great warm up and can be very cardio intensive. After all, they did come from Dennis a.k.a. Dennis "the man that doesn't get tired because he may not be human" Asche.
The first two drills we would do for three minutes and then switch. On the foot pummels make sure that you bring the pummeling knee high to your chest before replacing it on the hip. The rest of the drills we did 40 repetitions. Of course you could always do more or longer intervals.
I want to give a quick thanks to Dennis for letting me post these. Enjoy and train hard!
So I've been trying to do two classes a day for the past weeks, five weeks that is, and I have started to have an issue with some elite strain of brazilian bacteria. If this bacteria did jiujitsu it would be Rickson Gracie. I have Rickson Gracie bacteria on my leg, this stuff doesn't tap. It started out as a few bug bites which I think that I scratched in the night while I slept and opened them up. Now its not contagious and Dennis said that he deals with the same thing. I guess it's an on going battle for Gringos.
I think part of the problem is that I have harry legs and you are basically soaked in sweat within five minutes of training here due to the heat and humidity. Those conditions combined with the gi pants makes my leg hair easily pulled on when people try and get their grips. I think that a lot of it has to do with my hair folliciles getting infected. It's not all open wounds, some of it is just red marks, which I would get back home after training sessions, however here some of them actually open and that gets a bit distrubing. But I felt better when Dennis showed me his leg and said that it is common for people who did not grow up in Brazil to be very suseptable to this kind of bacteria.
No worries though,
I got a bottle of Iodine and have been taking care of business. I use that and anti bacterial soap along with a clean gi everytime I train, which if you plan on doing two a days everyday you need like five gis, and things seem to be under control. It definitely has been a pain in the butt though. I think as soon as I get home Im going to go to a dermatoligist and get something for the next time we come down here.
On a different note, Brooke and our house cat Pimenta have become best friends. This is very funny because both wine till you feed them and want a lot of attention...j/k brooke.
I left for training on Thursday morning and Brooke stayed in and when I got back Pimenta had taken my side of the bed. Brooke's even allergic to cats. I can't believe this.
I have been sick this week, but made it to training this afternoon to get my second private lesson with Gordo. On a quick side note, when you order bottled water in another country and they bring it to your table and it's already opened don't drink it...we call that getting "gringoed". Lesson learned. So the private went very well. Gordo is a very busy man teaching two classes a day five days a week as well as doing many private lessons throughout the week. Still though, he remembered exactly what we had worked on last week which impressed me. In the first private we worked solely on halfguard, and continued some more today.
So as if it's not been blatanly obvious from my other posts, being down here has really brought into light a lot about jiujitsu for me. I've been here for a bit over three weeks now and have learned a lot about the ideas of jiujitsu, from concepts to history, as well as different techniques both new and old school. To be around guys that have competed at the highest level, and in many cases won, and see that they are in class training like everyone else gives me hope. They may have opportunities to train more frequently and definitely have high quality training partners, but they're still training the same jiujitsu that I am.
Yesterday was the Copa Cyclone Jiujitsu Tournament here in Rio, about thirty minutes from the house. I decided last minute to compete, actually I was talked into it last minute. My wrist has still been a nagging issue and with the rate I have been getting destroyed in class I didn't feel the need to spend R$40 (which is extremely cheap compared to american tournaments, and the quality of competition is much higher at all levels) to more than likely have the same thing happen. So I competed and lost my match on points but it was actually a good thing and I am glad now that I competed.
This afternoon I had my first of four private lessons with Gordo. It was awesome. The man is such a wealth of knowledge, I would venture to say that he has been doing jiujitsu for as long as I've been alive. Being down here has shown the wholes I have in my game...big gapping wholes. The first, and one that needs the most attention, is my halfguard from the bottom. Anything I thought I knew about halfguard, or used to do from halfguard bottom doesn't work. In general this is not a position that I play, but here it is very difficult to recompose full guard, so I have found myself in halfguard just getting smashed. Like I have said before they crossface like nobodies business and flatten me out. So obviously this was my focus of the first private.
I've finally got around to taking a few pictures of Gordo's Academy. It's just basically a house in a neighborhood right around the corner from where I am living. It is a has two stories and they are in the process of expanding the ground floor to what looks to be more than double the mat size. I am hoping that they will get this done before I leave. Right now it can get pretty crowded during class, but that can work out to be advantegous because it allows for a break between rolls. Usually there will be four groups rolling and anywhere from four to a whole bunch of people on the sideline waiting their turn.
So I've been down here for over a week and I am starting to get a bit of a grasp on life here. It is so different than in the states, however the Brazilians make it an easy transition. For the most part if I try and speak a little Portuguese, "caveman Portuguese" as Jeremy says, the locals are very cool and find it humorous. I’m getting to know the guys in the house pretty good now too. They are from all over the world; the states, Australia, England, Korea, and Canada. It's cool because they are all here train, there are no egos in the house and they all speak English. With our powers combined we get along pretty well in the community. Most of the guys that are here are here for at least two full months, some up to six months. There's one guy here that hangs out with us who is phillipino I think, but grew up in Australia so in turn has an Australian accent. It's so weird to me to see an asian guy with an Australian accent...it makes me laugh. He's super cool and even though he isn't staying in the house he is always around. Jeremy is a brown belt from South Carolina and for those of you that follow blogs on sherdog he posts under Gerbil Jiujitsu and has an ongoing blog that has been stickied in the grappling forum. He has been very helpful and plays a completely different game than Jamel so it's nice to see some variation.
I know that I've written about Dennis before, but I was surfing the web today and found this video. Enjoy. That's Dennis. He's the man who is Connection Rio. I hope to get to post video of the warm up drills that he has us do soon so you all can see how intense they are.
So I wanted to get a few training sessions under my belt before I posted anything about what is going on down here. And I don't know where to start. I guess first off I'll tell you about day to day life down here for me. I have been trying to make two training sessions a day, however there are far more training opportunities than just twice.
I'm here, I made it down in one piece! That was one of the most uncomfortable nights of my life, but from the looks of things down here well worth it. Between the two layovers and long plane rides I spent just about a total of 15 hours on trave l down here. Brasil is what I expected it to be, as well as so much more. The people and the bit of the city that I have seen so far are very different than back home.
First Impressions
The first thing that really hit me was how nice and open the Brazilians are. The longest flight that I had was from DC to Sao Paulo. It was just over nine and a half hours of total flight time in the middle of the night. I had an isle seat which was awesome and sitting next to me was a young Brazilian couple. Those two have really set the tone for how Brazilians act and interact. Right off the bat they were extremely friendly and were having fun talking to me in english. Within the first thirty minutes they had invited me to come and stay in Sao Paulo with them at their house and they would take me out. They admitted that Sao Paulo doesn't have the beaches that Rio has to offer, but that they knew many places to dance. Like EVERYWHERE. From what I gather about Sao Paulo after talking with them is that it's just basically one big club, everyone dancing all the time...like MTV's the grind or something. As we landed and they prepared to leave they forced their telephone number onto me and insisted that I call them to go dancing.
I probably should have made this my first post, but I just got a little ahead of myself explaining how I am going to Rio. Anyhow, as it currently stands I am ranked as a third strip blue belt at Jamel McCurry's academy in Detroit, MI.
How This Addiction Began
I graduated high school as a small little surfer kid from Southern Cali, I was 5'9" and weighed a hefty 140lbs. Not very intimidating, but of course I thought I was. Once I started college I got really into weight lifting. Sick of being a little guy, and convinced that my size determined how much of a bad ass I was (I know I know but I was like 18/19 then) I started eating everything I could taking supplements and lifting like a madman. Over the next few years I my weight went up to a pretty solid 175lbs and I was feeling much better about myself.
Well, now I'm less than a week away from my trip to Rio de Janiero, Brazil to go train at Gordo's Jiu Jitsu Academy. I can't believe that it is right around the corner. I have started this blog to share my trip and also help answer questions if others may be wanting to do the same thing. All the planning and double checking are pretty much done and now it's just time to pack up and get ready to go.
The Process
This whole trip started as a treat for my service in the Coast Guard. I was really unsure whether or not to go for it in the first place, but Brooke was very supportive and encouraging. For me, the first step was to figure out the cost of such an endeavor so I could plan how long I could be down there. Once I started looking into it and researching rentals and hostels I was pretty overwhelmed. I was reading other blogs and lots of posts on Sherdog.com about people who want to or have gone to Brazil to train. I originally was trying to train at Demian Maia's Academy in Sao Paulo, however I found out that during the time frame I was looking to be down there he would not be. So one thing led to another and I got hooked up with Dennis from ConnectionRio.com. Form there things started going pretty smoothly. I told Dennis, via email as he lives in Rio, what I was hoping to do and he put together a whole little package for me which basically included everything but food and airfare. It is:
After graduating from SDSU and then working and playing for a year I joined the Coast Guard and was stationed on the Great Lakes. Throughout this time my one underlying passion was to continue my study of brazilian jiu jitsu. It's hard to do out here in the Northern Mid West, as there are just not many schools. I finally hooked up with Jamel McCurry in Detroit and got my training back on track. Now Brooke, my wife, and bjj are my life.
