I think we sometimes forget how easy it is to take a picture for social media, throw a filter on it and write something motivational.
What’s not as easy is training hard; day in and day out, pushing your body through pain & injury, fighting for every little bit of progress, sweating & bleeding and pushing back against that voice that keeps telling you that it’s alright being “just ok”
Train hard and don’t stop.
Oss.
“Hey, can we roll light?”
I think every grappler has heard this question at least once, only to have it followed by a roll with the intensity of a mundial final… How should you deal with a training partner or opponent who keeps elevating the pace or does not know how to moderate it? Continue reading
Participating in competition provides a huge opportunity to receive some important feedback about your Jiu-jitsu. Competing helps to sharpen the blade in a way that not even highly demanding training can; you will find out very quickly what works and what doesn’t.
More importantly, you will also learn a lot about yourself; how you deal with stress, how you deal with winning & losing and how to develop strategy & positive training habits. Competition can offer all of these things to the practitioner who adopts the correct mindset for competing. There are some Do’s & Don’ts for developing a good mindset for competition, this article will take a closer look at some of these and hopefully help you develop a mental edge going into your next competition experience. Continue reading
One of the truly unique things about Brazilian Jiu-jitsu is the connections we make on the mat; after any stretch of time training at a gym, you are bound to make friends out of your training partners. You experience various challenges together, develop your skills together and, most importantly, make friends for life. I’d like to think that many of us are conscientious training partners; striving to reach our goals alongside our friends and training partners.
I was asked an interesting question recently by a friend who doesn’t train (often naive eyes can present us with new ways of looking at a question we have taken for granted.): Don’t you find it difficult sparring with your friends when you know some techniques hurt them?
My immediate response was simple: I don’t use techniques that hurt my training partners. The more I thought about this question however, the more I started to look at it from different angles… Continue reading
We all walk a path that has been paved by our past choices and actions. We either walk this path with intention, having paved it with purpose, or we walk a path unintentionally, forced to because of causes we had no control over. Regardless, there is nothing to be gained by not seeing your path to its destination. Today I had three short thoughts about the paths that we walk…
Sometimes the path to your goal is paved. At times, you won’t see where it leads and at times the finish will not be in sight.
I had the pleasure of meeting George Miller at the NZ Grappler Gi Nationals last month. For those who don’t know George, he is a talented blue belt and great guy; he fought his way to a podium finish on the day and displayed some amazing, creative and fresh technique. I got talking to George towards the end of the day and found out a little bit about an initiative he runs in Wellington called the Banua Projects. George and I discussed the Banua Projects in an interview this week.
The triangle is omnipresent in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Many canonical gyms in the Gracie lineage and others use the triangle in their logo, one of the most well known chokes employs a triangular shape to strangle one’s opponent, or the structural strength of the triangular shape… The list goes on.
Renzo Gracie demonstrates the iconic Triangle Choke. Arguably one of the most technical submissions to apply, the Triangle requires the practitioner to arrange their limbs into a triangular shape to strangle an opponent, cutting off their flow of blood to the brain.
Recently, I have been percolating on another possible interpretation of the ever-present Triangle in Jiu-jitsu. In my mind I imagined a triangle; where the three points reflected Three Core Principals in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and indeed grappling as a whole. Those three principals were: Movement, Breathing and Technique. In this post, I will meditate on why I saw this trio of principals as the three main points of the triangle that is Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Continue reading
We’ve all heard the term ‘Flow’ used before. “Going with the flow” is a phrase often associated with an ability to move, or transition easily between tasks.
Reaching a state of Flow can feel almost transcendent; it’s that feeling of being ‘in the zone’, having that perfect training session or a highly productive period of creativity. Often we stumble across this state by luck, or the perfect combination of factors that we may be unaware of. With a bit of understanding of the concept of Flow, can we reach this state frequently and intentionally to maximize our enjoyment of our chosen disciplines?
The fight world is on the verge of witnessing what is being touted as the greatest fight in history. Two worlds, the worlds of boxing and mixed martial arts, collide under the banners of two great names in their respective sports and arguably the greatest pound for pound fighters of the time. But who really wins? Continue reading
Yoel “Soldier of God” Romero
With Yoel Romero fighting Robert Whittaker at UFC 213 on the 8th of July, we will potentially be seeing the making of the next Middleweight Champion. With both fighters boasting impressive win streaks, an interim title on the line and the chance to fight George Saint-Pierre and current Champ Michael Bisping, everything is on the line. Let’s take a closer look at the “Soldier of God” Yoel Romero. Continue reading
