Less than two weeks to go + Nordic Open 2012 footage!

Okay, so in less than two weeks I'll be in San Jose training with Caio Terra and Samir Chante which I'm starting to be really excited about as I have no idea what to expect from these two guys. I've seen plenty of footage of both of them and they are obviously awesome competitors and in my opinion they both have a sick game.. It will be awesome to learn from two lighter guys and to be honest I will be happy to learn more about the berimbolo and the other fancy guards that the high level guys are using now.

I'm trying to play around with it in class but to be honest I dont master the berimbolo or the inverted De La Riva all to good so will be nice to have it explained and to hear their views of how to defend it. I have been checking out some videos on youtube and so far the only counter to the berimbolo that I found usefull is this technique, taught by Carlos Holanda. I havent tried it with bigger guys or generally guys that are much better than me as that's something I really miss in my everyday training.

Personally I have always been a fan of basic Jiu-Jitsu and the way the Gracie Family would teach and practise it, as that was really the skills I felt I needed to learn when I started training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. That said I have always been a fan of sports BJJ and I'm a regular buyer of pan-ams and mundial streams from budovideos whenever they offer it.

With two week to go I'm also still very much in doubt where to train in San Diego as the city has so many good BJJ academies. So far I'm thinking about having my base at either BJJRevolution team or with Andre Galvao and from there I'd visit a few different academies in the area. As I'm arriving on the 1st of august I really want to have a good place to train in the 10 days leading up to the Las Vegas International Open (11th of August).

Besides finding a place to prepare for the tournament I'd like to see if I get the chance to visit Saulo Ribeiro, Fabio Santos, The Undisputed gym and perhaps a few other places if time allows it.

NORDIC OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP 2012

Back in March my girlfriend and I went to Stockholm to compete at the Nordic Open Championship 2012 and with good success. My girlfriend already posted about her experience at her own blog, cick here to read - Juvlai BLOG.

My own experience at the tournament was good and I think I fought quite good although I did end up in some positions I should have avoided. I only had two fights and the first one is the semifinal where I fought a guy I had fought before and won against. He had a tricky game and from our first encounter I knew he was good but also if I fought with patience and using basics and not trying anything fance I could and should win again.

Here is first fight, semifinal in the -76 kg. brown belt division.

In the final I met a guy I never heard about but the word around the competition area was that he liked to squeeze or crank leg locks hard and hurt his opponent. It did get a little heated during the fight as I felt he started to get annoyed quite fast and was kinda trying to headbutt me so at one point I looked him in the eyes and told him something like "Okay man, let's go then!".. not that I'm really proud of it, I also had to appologize to the ref afterwards. Anyways, I ended up pulling to closed guard and going for a move I learned from Roger Gracie and it ended up working quite good, although I made a huge mistake that is actually still giving me pain in my foot sometimes, and I was even warned about it :-)

Final fight in -76 kg. brown belt 

Training at FIGHTZONE.SE in Malmø

Wednesday 4th of July I went to visit some friends of mine at Fightzone in Malmø, Sweden. They have an super cool academy with plenty of mat space and a big and good group of guys to go along with it. We did some warmup and some cool drills before we went into 5 * 10 minutes of relaxed and slow rolling which is pretty nice although I do prefer the hardcore sparring, but I am well aware that's not possible 5-6 times a week so this is a really nice approach that I rarely get to do.

Here's a group picture. So thanks to Stephan, Gabriel, Richard, Toni and all the other guys!