Gracie Humaita HQ, Seaworld and sightseeing stuff!

Finally got around to write another blog post. We've spent 10 days in San Diego now and most of the time has basically passed with training, eating, resting, training and sleeping with a few stops at different tourist attractions.

The training at Gracie Humaita HQ in San Diego has been absolutely amazing and I've just learned so many things and getting updates to all the positions I usually use as I've just been getting my ass kicked left and right. Overall the training has been done by Professor Regis Lebre, black belt under Royler Gracie, and Zak Maxwell who's a black belt under Regis and by Joao "Johnny" Faria who's a black belt under Jorge Patino “Macaco”, and they are all three awesome competitors with a long list of gold medals and I just learned so much training with Regis, Johnny and Zak and they have given me tons of details and additions to the positions I usually use that I can take with me back home and work on, and especially Zak has been really great at breaking down some of the positions and helping me add some details to my guard and my guard passing, it's been a really humble experience training with Regis, Johnny and Zak.

Besides getting my ass kicked, it feels really good to get some new advanced positions to work with and hopefully I'll be able to put some it to work at the Las Vegas Open. 

I've gotten a whole new look at how to use my guard and I just can't wait to try all the new stuff and to teach it to all the guys and girls back in Copenhagen and in Århus.

Sabine and I have spent a lot of time writing down all the techniques so nothing will be forgotten, and on a side note there has also been plenty of girls for Sabine to train with and she was even invited to a girls open mat this past Sunday where I was degraded to being a taxi driver and from what I can understand it was a great training session... I wasn't really allowed inside, not that I asked either :-)

So overall it's been a great experience and I have been treated extremely good and I'm really happy I decided to train at Gracie Humaita HQ and train under Regis, Johnny and Zak and getting to know a lot of their students, and I want to give a special thanks to some of the guys and girls there like Diego, Matt, Jimmy (Jimbo), Matt, Arnett, Javier and Tracey who've all made the training there even more special. 

It's not the best picture, but here from left to right is
Zak Maxwell, Sabine, myself and Regis Lebre

Last Thursday we went to visit Seaworld and got to see some cool and funny shows like The Otter and Sea Lion show, the Blue Horizon Dolphin Show and the Cirque de Del Mar acrobatics show. We spend the whole day walking around in the park and enjoying the shows and after we had enough of Seaworld we were lucky enough to catch the sunset at Mission Beach which was pretty awesome and very beautiful to say the least, it's really rare I get to see a sunset so it was, for me at least, a very special event, next time I want to be there a little earlier to follow the sun all the way down. After the stop at the beach we went to a cinema to see Batman - The Dark Knight Rises which was a cool movie. Overall it was just a really good day and I spend it together with my girlfriend Sabine and it will forever be in my memory, thank you!

A small video from the Blue Horizon Dolphin show at Seaworld

Sabine and I enjoying sunset at Mission Beach <3

Last Sunday we went to downtown San Diego and walked around the skyscrapers and saw some cool and old submarines, the amazing and huge USS Midway Aircraft Carrier and other older US navy ships at the bay area. I hope to get the chance to visit the aircraft carrier again since its a museum and you have to chance to see tho whole carrier. It looked huge from afar so I can't even start to think about how big it must be to walk on it and see it from inside.
From downtown we went to Coronado Island which is a cool "little" island in the bay of San Diego with some amazing beaches and a beautiful view to the San Diego skyline. I also hope I get the chance to go here again so I see the skyline at nighttime, looking at the postcards you can buy it's a awesome sight.

Old US Navy ship and submarine

San Diego Skyline from Coronado

Downtown San Diego. USA!

Now we also went to Mount Soledad which is a huge mountain in San Diego that has a 360 degree view of San Diego, and on top of the mountain there is a huge cross surrounded by pictures of fallen soldiers. just makes me hate war even more seeing all the happy faces and knowing they were killed by war. Anyways, from the mountain we went straight to Torrey Pines State Reserve Park which is a huge park with very small hiking trails to different view points around the park with amazing landscape views of the coastal line of Del Mar, La Jolla and the areas around San Diego and California. Of curse there was also pine trees which was kinda cool I guess, as far as i understood it was being preserved because the american people would camp in the area and use the tree for fires and the trees was starting to become extinct. I have some cool pictures from the area that you can see below.

360 degree view from Mount Soledad

View from Torrey Pine State Reserve

Picture from Torrey Pine Beach.

View from La Jolla beach

Ok. so thats it for this time.

To everyone back home and whoever is reading my blog, take care, eat healthy and train some Jiu-Jitsu PORRA! :-)

Michael

California cruising, outlet shopping, Art of Jiu-Jitsu and San Diego Safari Zoo

Welcome to yet another blog post from California, and let me just start out with saying that, if your looking for Jiu-Jitsu updates you might as well just close down, because this blog post will not contain any Jiu-Jitsu besides a small visit to Art of Jiu-Jitsu that is Rafael & Guilerhme Mendes new academy, they are also known as the Mendes Bros.

Instead of Jiu-Jitsu updates I will try to describe our trip from San Jose down the west coast of California where we stopped by Pasmo Beach, Santa Barbara, Costa Mesa and The Mendes Bros and San Diego Safarai Zoo before we landed at our hotel in Mission Valey, San Diego, California.

Now to start out, let me try to describe San Jose a little bit as it's basically a city in a huge valley surrounded by big mountains on each side and looking at these mountains I always had this inner voice saying "Man, I really want to go check out these huge mountains", so I was really looking forward to our trip down to San Diego, as I knew we would this mountain chain surrounding the city.

Before we really got close to the mountains we decided to stop by Gilroy Premium Outlets which is a huge shopping mall with all the premium clothing brands you can imagine, like Calvin Klein, The North Face, Adidas, Nike, Rebok, Espirit, Volcom, Quicksilver, Echo United, Hugo Boss, Timberland, Puma and the list just goes on. And its basically just all these brands selling last years models for absolutely no money at all! I think I got 4 pair of Calvin Klein jeans for 800 DKK and to give an idea I looked up the prices on the internet to check the difference compared to Denmark, and I must have saved well over 2000 kr. just on the pants alone, which is just nuts! So me and Sabine just went on a crazy shopping spree.. well, I did atleast :-)  I somehow shopped so much that my credit card got closed and had to "borrow" from Sabine and sit up to like 01.00-02.00 am sunday night to do a skype call to the bank so I could get my card opened again :-) Good thing I had Sabine with me or I would have been stuck in the middle of nowhere at some point as I couldnt get money for petrol/gas for the car or money to put food in my stomach.

Mountains in California

Pasmo Beach

So after our shopping spree we finally hit the road towards the mountain chain and the west coast of California and I have to say the landscape is just f***** amazing, sorry for my language, but god damn, there is mountains everywhere and new ones popping out in the horizon as soon as you pass one its just to good to be true. And it's not like we drove for a few hours, we must have been on the road for 12-15 hours total excluding our stops a long the way, as we did stop by highway motels on the way to get some sleep, but everywhere we looked while driving there would be mountains. I even have a small video that I made that you can see below, as I think it explains what I'm trying to say pretty good. There's also some pictures from Pasmo Beach and Santa Barbara. Awesome beaches and one day I have goal/dream of buying an apartment or house in a beautiful place like this, close to some good Jiu-Jitsu academies and perhaps offer it as a Jiu-Jitsu/beach rental experience. Nothing wrong with having dreams and goals :-)

On our way to Santa Barbara Beach

Santa Barbara Beach

Me at Pasmo Beach

Sabine next to palm trees at Santa Barbara Beach

Here's a video of me and Sabine driving through the California landscape (5 minutes long)

Now our last stop on the way to San Diego was, by accident or coincidence, in Costa Mesa which is the same city that the Mendes Bros has their academy, so I was pretty persistent saying I really want to drive by and see their new Art of Jiu-Jitsu Academy although we would basically just be checking out a building from the outside. 

A quick side note, before we went to bed in Costa Mesa we did get to visit In-N-Out Burger which Joseph from the academy in Copenhagen had recommended us to check out and it was actually really good. Now I understand why he says its funny how all the crappy burger joints made it to Denmark. In-N-Out burger was surprisingly good :-)

Rafael Mendes and I in front of their wall of medals

Okay, so we wake up in the morning going to check out the Mendes Bros academy, which was just 10 minutes from the motel, and when we get there, to my big surprise, there is Rafael Mendes walking around inside talking to some guys and when he finishes he invites us inside, super awesome, he's a really cool guy, and he gives me a 5 minutes tour of his gym and more than that, his brother Gui Mendes shows up also, both dressed in their sponsored Storm Kimonos, and their are nice enough to take a picture with me. I know, complete fanboy, but I couldnt really care less. It was a super awesome experience meeting two world champions especially when the expectations was to basically just peek through the windows :-)

Rafael Mendes, myself and Guilerhme Mendes

The Mendes Bros wall of medals

After leaving the Art of Jiu-Jitsu academy we plugged in San Diego Safari Zoo in the GPS and started yet another cool drive down the coast, only stopping by Dana Point (see picture below, so awesome) and then arrived at the Safari Zoo around noon on Sunday. The zoo is, as the name indicates, a Safari zoo, so it's a huge area and not like your typical zoo experience, as they really build natural hapitats for the animals so you had to go on small buses to get a chance to really see the Animals. It 'was a cool experience and a great way to end a very nice weekend cruising down the west coast :-)

At Sunday around 20.00 we arrived at our hotel in Mission Valley San Diego and to our surprise our hotel room actually have a nice kitchen so we've been able to make good salads and and store decent food in the refrigerator which is pretty awesome.

My next blog post will definitely contain more Jiu-Jitsu as we've been training two time every day at Gracie Humaita under Regis Lebre, Joao “Johnny” Faria and Zak Maxwell, with the exception of yesterday Thursday where we spent the day at Seaworld, but other than that tt's been some really good training sessions and I really can't wait to get down to Las Vegas to test myself in the black belt division where I signed up in the -76 kg lightweight master division.

To everyone back home and whoever is reading my blog, take care, eat healthy and train some Jiu-Jitsu PORRA! :-)

Michael

  

Buffalo Wild Wings, Black Belt Training and more!

Arrived safely in San Diego after a awesome drive from San Jose which means that once again it got time for a late night blog post, this time looking back at my last few days in San Jose. As I wrote in the last post I met a super cool guy, Dominik Cruz, from Switzerland who me and Anders hooked up with after almost every training session to go for some Jamba Juice and just talk about Jiu-Jitsu. It was also really nice to hear about Dominik's experience as his background in Jiu-Jitsu is much different than mine, where I came from a past with lack of confidence, self-esteem and other "silly" things a young kid should not really have to deal with, Dominik has been training Karate and has this never quit attitude towards the training and basically got dragged along by a friend to a Jiu-Jitsu school in Switzerland and ends up getting his ass kicked left and right but somehow just kept on pushing forward, day after day, with this Karate mentality but yet really humble and down to earth just sucking in all the information and getting hooked like the rest of us who have been through the same experience, and then he just decided to save up for a 6 months trip to the US to train Jiu-Jitsu full time. Now that's dedication and something worth respect! My hats off to him. There is many gold medals waiting to be won for him and for sure his training partners back in Switzerland is lucky to have a guy like him at the gym.

He spend his last evening, Tuesday, in the US partying with the whole crew from Caio Terra's academy at something called Buffalo Wild Wings. A nice barbecue restaurant where me and Anders was also invited. For those who follow on facebook they probably already saw my update, it was just a perfect evening with plenty of good greasy barbecue food in a really good atmosphere with awesome people. I got to know a few guys from the academy that I haven't had the chance to talk to before, so that was great also.  

On Wednesday he showed up at the academy and spend the last few hours with me and Anders getting a smoothie at Jamba Juice (what else, that place is amazing!) before he left for the airport. 

Again, I appreciate all the good tips he gave us and for the good company! I will look forward to meet up with him at the London Open and European Open.

Here's a picture from Buffalo Wild Wings and a picture with Dominik, Anders, Flavio and myself :-)

Now finally to some Jiu-Jitsu updates, as I obviously have been training as much as possible in San Jose and on one side I have had some good training sessions over there and got crushed more than once by a really good guy called Manuel, who is a purple belt world champion and now a brown belt. A super tough guy that I really enjoyed training with, on the other side I still have to say i'm a bit disappointed in myself, that I never got to "break the ice" with Caio Terra, since I later got the chance to talk to talk to him I now see that I obviously got the wrong impression of him and I perhaps was way to fast in my judgement, which is something i genuinely apologize for and hopefully I will get to share the mat with him again and listen to his views on Jiu-Jitsu. I am afterall a huge fan and I love watching him when I buy the pan-am and world championship dvd's and livestreams.

I got to train with Caio two times and he caught me in a triangle choke both times I trained with him and he's a rooster weight world champion and has won numerous absolute titles beating some huge guys, so I obviously have huge respect for his accomplishments on the mat and it was also crazy to feel how he would climb his legs from the closed guard and up to the triangle choke, without me being really able to stop it although I saw it coming from a mile away. Very good technique indeed and i appreciate he at least took the time to kick my ass.
In the two classes he taught while I was there he showed two awesome ways of passing the guard, one spiderguard pass and one halfguard(shin block) pass that both ended up in the leg drag position. Very solid techniques.

After thinking about it I will most likely not go back to San Jose to train again, as I will have to do the drive back to San Diego to get on the airplane early morning August 15th, so it just doesn't make sense to go there again, although I met some awesome guys on the mat and Flavio, the head instructor, was super cool and really has an awesome personality and a guy I would love to train with again. And also Samir Chantre was a super nice guy and although he had and injured thumb, which sucks bigtime, he still passed my guard more than once with some slick guard passes and after asking him about a position, he showed me a nice little sweep to a leg drag pass from the knee/shin block halfguard position, something I look forward to playing with when I get back home.

The best training sessions I had at Caio Terra's academy was the 3 black belt/competition classes that consisted of 5 minute rounds followed by 30 sec breaks in between, which we kept on doing until everyone had rolled with everyone. Usually it was around 7-8 rounds like that. So looking back at my week of training at the academy I'm really satisfied with the sparring I got in San Jose, so now there's nothing left than to look forward to getting to San Diego to train at Gracie Humaita and perhaps Andre Galvao.

Here's a picture from the last black belt/competition session. Some guys had left before the picture was taken so that was a bummer, still a good picture though :-)

Now as I wrote in my previous blog post, my girlfriend Sabine arrived on the 25th of July to accomplish me on my way to San Diego and in my training down here. She is just as hooked in Jiu-Jitsu, if not more, and is also a beast of the mat. Very technical with a super good defense, and a great personality to go with it so I'm looking forward to spend a lot of time with her here in California. My next blog post will be about our awesome trip from San Jose, down the coast line to Los Angeles and then to San Diego.

I have already arrived in San Diego and I got to experience and absolutely amazing nature and landscape, the mountains which are never ending are so beautiful its really hard to explain in words so I will just post some pictures here so you can see what I'm talking about.

And once again thanks to everyone following my blog, I appreciate you taking the time to read and if you have any questions about my trip feel free to ask me here or on facebook. I'm happy to know that my family is reading also and I will be looking forward to share the experience with and show all the pictures to my grandmother's and grandfather when I come back home, as they have no clue about the internet. I'm sure they will be so happy to hear about it :-)

So to everyone back home and whoever is ready, take care, eat healthy and train some Jiu-Jitsu PORRA! :-)

Michael

UFC 149 and Chilling in San Jose with Dominik!

Okay, so I'm back again with another blog post from San Jose, California. I will try to summarize the last few days, actually just our weekend now that I've finished writing it. I will save the last few days for the next blog post :-)

We've meet a lot of cool people on the mat and gotten the chance to hang out with them as well, its just been a really great time here so far!

This past weekend we had a plan of going to the beach Saturday in Santa Cruz which we were told is an awesome surf spot and a really nice beach and Sunday our plan was to go to San Francisco to check out out the city as its only located like 45 minutes drive from San Jose (without traffic jams), but it turned out to be a completely different weekend than what we had planned.

Saturday we started out with the morning class training at Caio's academy which was, as always, drilling a few techniques and a lot of sparring. After the class we went to something called Jamba Juice which has become our regular place to visit after each training, as they serve some absolutely amazing and HUGE acai smoothies. There's just nothing better after a hard summer training than getting a big delicious smoothie and the menu at Jamba Juice is much more than just an acai smoothie. You can get whatever you like with the classics fruits like strawberries, bananas, rasberry, peach, lime, oranges, passionfruit, mango, pineapple, blue berries and it goes on. To give you an idea here's some of the names of the smoothies, Caribbean Passion - Aloha Pineapple - Peach Pleasure - Strawberries Wild - Strawberry Surf Rider - The Protein Berry Workout - Acai Super-Antioxidant. 

It's just super nice and healthy stuff just the way I like it. I'm in love with Jamba Juice! :-)

Anyways, we went to Jamba Juice with Jeff who is a Black Belt and just an all around genuinely nice and super cool guy who lives here in San Jose and Dominik who is a blue belt from Switzerland, who's been spending a lot of his last time in San Jose with me and Anders giving us tips about the restaurants and other good information, and also he's just a super cool guy that we also have plans of hooking up with at the London Open later this year and the European Open next year. 

Our plan was to get some smoothies and hit the road towards Santa Cruz beach, but after hitting a traffic jam towards Santa Cruz we decided it wasn't worth going there and instead Jeff invited us to his house to see the UFC149 which was a super nice gesture that we obviously accepted, so we went to Jeff's house which is, to put it lightly, f******* amazing! He had the biggest kitchen ever and plenty of space for all of us in his living room and probably enough space for the whole academy to live :-)

So we spent the whole evening at Jeff's having a kickass barbecue and homemade salad while watching UFC 149. Unfortunately it was super boring so I wont even get into the event itself, you'll just have to check out for yourself. But thanks to Jeff for the hospitality! So awesome, and did I mention he has 45 square meter of mat in his basement? Yea, so sick!

Here's a picture of me preparing the salad and us watching the UFC. An awesome evening at Jeff's house!

On Sunday the plan was as I wrote above to drive to San Francisco, Me Anders and Dominik, but after the morning training at Caio's academy both me and Dominik was feeling too wasted to go there so instead me and Anders decided to check out downtown San Jose and found a pretty cool Chinese restaurant which served some really awesome food. The most noteable about this place was the fortune cookies we received afterwards. At first I was a bit skeptical because I don't really believe in stuff like this and that it could actually tell anything about my future or any nonsense like that, but I have to say that after we opened each our own I'm starting to think there's actually something to it, as both fortunes actually told something that was very true. Let me just say that Anders at time does come across of being a bit lost at times, ment in an positive and nice way :-) heheh... He doesn't remember anything about the places we've been and without me and the GPS in the car I really think he would be completely lost in this city, hehe! As I, without giving myself too much credit, always know where I am, have been and where I want to go, I make sure to take notes of important buildings and signs and other stuff... I just take notice of stuff like this.

Take a look what our fortune cookies had to tell us. Anders is the top one i'm the bottom one. So freaking amazing and in many ways so true! :-)  Sorry Anders, i know your reading this.. I still like you a lot and I'm having an awesome time with you here in San Jose! <3

After our early trip to downtown San Jose we decided to hook up with Dominik in the evening going for some Sushi at a nice little Japanese restaurant that Dominik recommended, and after that our plan was to go the cinema and watch a movie and just chill around a bit. Although we didnt get to watch a movie we had the chance to walk around this really nice and cool area with tons of cool shops and restaurants and people driving around their fancy cars thinking their all cool, which they probably are. We had a really nice frozen yogurt with lots of fresh fruits. It was probably the best yogurt I've ever had to be honest! Here's some pictures from our trip to the area of San Jose where the "cool" people hang out :-)

Now it's getting late and its way over way over midnight Tuesday, actually its Wednesday. I'm really excited about tomorrow as my girlfriend Sabine will be arriving from Denmark, she will spend the next 3 weeks with me checking out and training in California. I've been missing her a lot so it will be so awesome having her here! I'm really happy she enjoys training just as much as me, if not more for those who knows :-)  It will be amazing to share all these cool experiences with her! 

My next blog post will be about the black belt competition training that we went to the other day and Dominik's last day here in US. It's so sad that he's leaving, but his visa expired and he'll be leaving Wednesday afternoon. He's been a great help and really made our stay here much more pleasant and convenient. My blog post will also be about our visit to Buffalo Wild Wings where we celebrated Dominiks last day in the US.

Again, thanks for taking the time to read my blog. I really hope it's worth reading. I know there hasn't been much Jiu-Jitsu in my blog yet, but so far there has not been much Jiu-Jitsu to write about as it's been more about the great people we've met over here, just by being on the mat at Caio Terras academy and we've only had one black belt competition training so far. But tomorrow Wednesday (which it is already) I will go to another black belt training at 15.00, before I have to leave to the airport to pick up Sabine.

So to everyone reading, take good care of yourself, eat health and train some Jiu-Jitsu PORRA!

See you on the mat!

Michael

California love, The Cheesecake Factory and first training session.

So I finally arrived in San Jose together with my good friend and training partner Anders. We had a pretty good but also very long (24 hours) and uncomfortable trip that saw us stopping over in Amsterdam and Seattle before landing in San Jose International Airport. After arriving, the first thing we did was to go get our rental car which is a pretty awesome Ford Fusion with all the equipment you can imagine, and to use Rener Gracie's expression, DAAANG, the car drives like a dream... I can't wait to hit the streets of California in this baby that's for sure! Here's a picture :-)

After settling down in the hotel and getting some decent food, although the food we got in the plane was surprisingly good, we decided to go visit Samir Chantre's academy which is located 5 minutes from our hotel. After meeting Samir I can say that he's comes of as an extremely cool guy and I'm looking forward to get the chance to train with him.

Samir invited us to go eat with him, Caio Terra and their good friend Vitor, who is a brown belt and also trains at Caio's academy. We went to The Cheesecake Factory which is an absolutely awesome and yet disgusting place all together. Whatever you order you can be sure is like 50% cheese.

I ordered a Chicken menu with mashed potatoes which was actually some chicken with a huge peace of melted cheese on top and the mashed potatoes must have been 50/50 with potatoes and cheese...  I have a small battle inside if this was actually disgusting or extremely awesome :-) I do like cheese but it can get too much. And another thing, the plate servings was HUGE! My stomach was feeling really bad afterwards. That said it was cool to meet Samir, Caio and Vitor whom Anders and I will be training with for the next 8-10 days.

Anyways, after The Cheesecake Factory we decided to just go back to our hotel and sleep as it was getting late and we had been travelling for 24 hours and I dont think I had a decent rest for well over 30 hours.

Here's a picture from The Cheesecake Factory. I apologize for the bad quality :-) Later on Caio's son and girlfriend and her sister joined us. Was a good ending to a long day!

After a not so good night of sleep we woke up Thursday morning feeling the jet lag and difference in time zones, meaning we did not get much sleep :-)

We decided to hit the streets of San Jose to check out the area and visit some different shopping malls. We went to Target which is a HUGE super market with everything you can imagine and after that we went to BEST BUY which is a electronics store. I really want to buy a video camera here but it's not really as cheap as I had hoped and the selection at BEST BUY was not what I had hoped. Basically the same as in Denmark. 

After checking out San Jose for a while we went to the first training session of our trip at Caio Terra's academy, Institute of Martial Arts, which was lead by one his friends/training partners, a black belt called Flavio. A super cool guy that I got the chance to roll with at the end of the class. Unfortunately I somehow busted my chin so it started bleeding pretty bad so I had to sit out for some of the class :( very bad luck. As this was our first training session we spend a lot of time shaking hands and talking to the students and they are definitely a really cool and down to earth group of guys and girls, they are all super friendly and really this is just the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu mentality. It doesnt matter where in the world you decide to train, Jiu-Jitsu is an international language that if you speak it and you have a humble and ego-less approach, you will basically fit in in' any academy in the world and it was the same at Caio's Academy. It was just an awesome feeling finally putting on the gi and training :-)

After the training it was just straight home to relax and going to bed early as we/I still feel the jetlag and difference in time zones.

I will try to get some pictures from the academy today (friday 20th) with some of the guys. Caio will be away on seminar for the weekend and won't be back before Monday. 

We also decided to check out downtown San Jose today and tomorrow (Saturday) we will drive to San Francisco and see what that is all about!

Before I close this blog post I just want to say thanks for taking the time to read my blog, i hope you enjoy it! Feedback is more than welcome in the comments section. Any feedback is appreciated, good or bad!

You can also follow me on twitter @MMPBJJ or youtube where I will be posting videos. My username is MMPBJJ :-)

Michael

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!

3 WEEK TO GO + EURO2012 Footage!

Today Wednesday 27th there is exactly 3 weeks til I board the the airplane together with my good friend and training parther Anders Rosendal. We're flying to San Jose to spend some time training with Caio Terra and Samir Chante, Anders will be in San Jose 3 weeks and I will be there for 8-10 days. It's gonna be super awesome! I'm also already getting excited about the Las Vegas International Open which will also serve as my first tournament as a black belt.

As I wrote in my previous entry I will be sharing some tournament footage and other hopefully cool Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu related experiences.

First thing i'd like to share is some footage from the European Open Championship 2012 where I got first place and a gold medal in the -76 kg Brown Belter Master Division. Overall I had 4 matches with 1 submission.

I also competed in the 2010 and 2011 European Open without any noteworthy success, although I had the opportunity to fight Rodrigo "Comprido" Medeiros in the brown/black belt +76 kg team championship in which I fought for the Danish team. A pretty awesome experience. Check out the fight below.

Michael Pedersen x Rodrigo Comprido Medeiros / EOBJJ 2011 - Team Championship (the video is private so for now you have to see it on youtube).


Now to the footage from the European Championship 2012. This is my first fight and looking back this was definitely my hardest fight since my opponent kept looking for the deep half guard which I blocked with a lot of weight and shoulder pressure. I'm not a fan of the deep half guard from the bottom but I enjoy passing from the top half guard with a tight control on my opponents face and upper body. Going in to the fight my gameplan was to look for the takedown and get the top position, luckily my opponent decided to pull guard :)

My second match was not so challenging. My opponent had a bye in his first fight and didn't get a chance to get into rhythm I guess. Again my opponent pulled guard and that allowed me to follow my strategy, get the top position, pass the guard, mount and choke.

In my third fight, also the semifinal, my opponent again decided to pull guard which allowed me to do my top game again. Although this match was much harder than the previous, I felt I was in pretty good control of the pace and I score a guard pass in the beginning which definitely helped me relax, and the match time in the master division is only 6 minutes.

In the final it was the first time I really got in trouble as my opponent decided to pull guard but this time and he put me in a omaplata that I defended and from there I'll just let you see the fight.

I actually started a video project a few months ago about Me and Ander's trip to the EURO 2012, but somehow I never managed to get it done. The last thing in I actually need is a good intro song and to do some fine editing. Then the video is done.. Let's see when I find the time to get it done.

That's it for now. I hope whoever reads will enjoy reading and watching the videos.