Oct 21/15 5:30 pm BJJ

Got to LEMMA around 6 pm…

Got a really long warm-up round of rolling with one of the newer guys…

He had a new shiny new Fugi GI on… awesome… Chris? Tom? John? not even sure… so many new faces and white belts lately. Hope they stay.

Great movements by this kid, smaller so a lot more technique then you would normally expect in lieu of a bigger newer white belt.

Great long session, fantastic rolling and a great vibe!

He was completely the opposite of the meme below lol…

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Great class… nice review of self-defense from our head Coach… I partnered with Trina.

Crazy though how when she asked me to partner with her, immediately after she stated, ” you don’t have to, if you don’t want yo, and that I understand…,” I immediately replied, “that its all good, white belts are human too,” then giggled.

Training with newbs help your game. Period…

Dumbing things down, making you have to articulate movements you never would have normally to someone that gets the technique, learning how to coach, so to speak…

All good homie! We learn and grow together.

There is a place for everyone OTM!

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Got a chance to get some rowing in this morning… yep.

Still got it.

Been so busy lately… seriously, when I say busy… I’m busy.

But I still need to keep up with my rowing. Results below…

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Thor ran the warm-up and also had us review the single legged x-sweep from a shin guard entry.

Awesome class!

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A lot of repping technique, my favourite classes!

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Oct 20/15 5:30 pm Kids Class

Word… almost caught up on my gibberish… almost.

One more day to go after this.imageWhat it felt like helping out with the kids class…

Travis, Scotty and Erin was also in to help…

Coach has a lot of patience…

But the kids can be cute too. All they want to do is play… yay!!

lol Coach got them to do a bunch of bully self defence stuff, drills, games, and beating up on us… fun fun.

 

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Oct 19/15 6:30pm BJJ

Yes sir on Monday…

One step closer…

To something cash can not buy.

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Proud of all the homies that stuck with it… and got promoted too!

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A lot of newer blues, and Thunder Bay newest brown belt OTM!

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Oct 18/15 LEMMA Sub & GI Only In-House Tournament

I’m still trying to get caught up on my gibberish…

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All I have to say was wow… was I ever a headless chicken.

We hosted a Open/In house GI, Submission Only BJJ Tournament with IBJJF rules for uniform with illegal submission techniques that included slams, fish-hooks, eye-gauging, biting, any-slicers, heel-hooks, toe-holds, knee-bars, knee-reaping, neck-cranks, & small joint manipulation (finger locks). Having such a smaller pool of guys that train BJJ up here makes it harder to set up a bigger tournament. Let alone travelling to compete… 8 hour drive to Minneapolis, fight to Chicago, 18 hour drive to Toronto… in some cases $2000 to go win or lose, just for a shiny medal lol… so having a miniature in-house tournament makes sense, especially so some of the guys can gain some kind of experience if they chose to join the competition circuit. Experience is everything when competing, from the training required to the legalities of your GI, then the competition jitters. What a better way to gain some of that competing safely, cost efficiently inside your own house.

Our format consisted of a 6 min, round robin matches, with at least 4 matches for each competitor. 1st, 2nd, & 3rd place awards and then cash awards for absolute division only… noted that it wasn’t much, but it was something to encourage more guys to compete in the division. A win was worth 10 points, draw 5 points, and a loss 0 points. I included sudden death rounds in the event there was a tie in points for awards, competitors had to fight another fight to decide placement in a 6 min round in which by the way we only had 1. In the event that the fight for placement turned into a draw, there was to be sudden death rounds starting with a full back take, harness and hooks (first submission, or fastest combined of 3 escapes, or fastest of 3 combined submissions)… yes I ripped it off EBI and Submission Challenge. So Sorry…

We had 4 divisions which was tentative and based on the participants with the following:

  • Below to 155 lbs & All Woman Registered
  • 156 to 175 lbs
  • 176 to 205 lbs
  • 206 lbs to over in Absolute Division Only, (anyone was allowed to register but they had to pay extra… We had 3 other guys enter… next time I hope there is more)
Weigh-ins with a GI from 8:00 am to 9:00 am, review of the rules and illegal techniques review 9:00 am to 10:00 am… everything was pending on the logistics and time. I ran 1 clock with 3 matches on the go. 3 refs including me, Travis with the videos, Jayden on the score keeping and clocks, Scotty a ref and Gary jumped in our listed competitors listed below.
  1. Katrina Jones
  2. Scott Hall
  3. Kole Trenholm
  4. Michael Hinsperger
  5. Nathan Hatton
  6. Damien Valdock
  7. Juneau Barnett
  8. Hilling Ezack
  9. Jared Maki
  10. Alex Wawia
  11. Alex Pecchia
  12. Travis Snell
  13. Philippe Jecker
  14. Colin Gilbert
  15. Morgan Frazer
  16. Justin Sillman
  17. Jesse MacDougal
  18. Winston Loh
  19. Mitch Bulmer
  20. Marc Perrier
  21. Tyson Rybak
  22. Kevin Smith

From getting the guys weighed in, to reffing… thank god for Travis, Scotty, Gary, Jayden, and even Hassan for the help… no way could this ever only take one person.

I’ll be honest I tried to put myself in the matches… with the amount of guys and the way it worked out. It would have made no sense considering the even playing field of guys in the brackets…

22 guys and everyone worked their but off in their matches… great stuff guys.

Next time it will be bigger!!

Competition is always good… helps you grow, its just a format for you to practice, especially in front of your peers.

The matches that were put together below…

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 Results below!

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I’m hoping to put up all the videos of the matches at some point… quite a lot lol… not even sure if that’s feasible. Maybe just a DVD and then get everyone a copy??

Any who… peace out, I  still have to catch up on the other days of training!!

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Sat Oct 17/15 2pm Clint Hollet Seminar

Worked on repping a tonne of movements today… tonne.

Partnered with Thor.

Yes tonnes…

Shins were bruised lol.

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Quick clip below of him demonstrating a powerful pass and us repping…

Trying to get caught up on this shizz… shins sore, bruised but hey, muscle memory!!!

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Fri Oct 16/15 Open Mat

BUSY BUSY… trying to keep up with everything… monkey getting sick, wife getting sick…

Got to LEMMA around 5:30 pm on Friday, rolled for an eternity with Big Steve, then with Clint Hollet a visiting black belt from Calgary under Gracie Barra.

Have been a little stressed out on the preparation of the in house tournament, which by the way was opened up to other local gyms… no one wanted in.

Oh well… next time. Bad timing I guess.

Bought some new GI’s… at least to me lol… a SYR Xcomp, purple from my Homie Morgo, then a SYR Absolute which I had delivered to the border. Got Morgo to grab it during his travelling… Went to the gym with no GI, assuming he would drop them off… no dice lol had to borrow Tony’s GI hahahaha.

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The roll with big Steve was straight up was like with a typical with a bigger white belt, he worked for a takedown, I got smashed, then I had to work my way out of bad positioning… wished he would have tried to pull guard sometimes.

Working off your back is key, especially when your opponent is bigger then you and you get put on your back…

Fighting tooth and nail for the top position can be an inefficient way to burn up energy, maybe its just when rolling with me… the target lol.

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lol

I guess it could also be the intrigue that sometimes I’m smaller and that the 50 to 75 lbs I sometimes give up to the bigger guys, its more efficient for him to work for the top… not sure… game development, I guess.

Either way, its always a great way for me to warm up by struggling on the bottom with a bigger guy on top and me gasping for air… lol

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Big Steve has improved since his first time OTM, a lot of growth, it was a fun roll… he just needs to open up his game and try using different strategies, like pulling guard and setting up attacks from there…

The rolling with the Black Belt from Gracie Barra was awesome.

Dude was in full control, used a guard that I’m definitely not too familiar with.

A full body x guard, which was interesting.

His pressure passing was on point!

Felt the whole time he was trying to set me up for specific things, but changed it up in mid transition which was just lovely… lol

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I definitely was just a pawn today while rolling with him lol… He was just toying with me.

Caught a quick clip of us rolling below…

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Great night of rolling!!

Osss

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