Category Archives: Jiu Jitsu

Top 5 Brown Belt Battles of 2013 Worlds

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I watched a lot of the purple belt and brown belt matches from the Worlds. I enjoy watching good lower ranks (especially blue and purple) competing. They seem to take more risks and also are an indication of where jiu jitsu is headed in the next several years. The lower ranks integrate the popular new positions and techniques much quicker than the black belts (who already have a solid game that has served them well for years).

My top five favorite brown belt matches from the Worlds revolve around 6 people: Keenan Cornelius, Sebastian Brosche, Jackson Souza, Kit Dale, and the Miyao brothers.

5. A Moment’s Hesitation: Sebastian Brosche vs Jackson Souza

This match might not at first glance be very interesting outside the fact that these are two of the best brown belt top players (“top” meaning they look for takedowns and guard passing). In fact, were I to rank guard passers, I would put Brosche at #1 among all the brown belts in the world. This absolute division match up was the quarterfinal that came after the Brosche vs Miyao match (below). Sebastian is a medium-heavy bronze medalist and Jackson is a heavyweight gold medalist.

One of the reason I like this match is because it has two people who are usually unwilling to pull guard, and going aggressively for the takedown. The biggest reason, however, is that this match captures something very dramatic about the Worlds tournament that I’ve experienced myself. You train your ass off for a year (or really for many years) for this one day. And in a single moment the tide can turn from winning to losing, because of your own screw up or some other element of confusion. The frustration in Sebastian’s face and body language is very relatable. I’ve been there. I’ve felt that. He went toe to toe with one of the toughest dudes out there and took him down to take the lead but let that slip away.

4. One for the Little Guy: Keenan Cornelius vs Paulo Miyao

I wouldn’t feel right not including this match in the top 5. I didn’t like watching the match, but the end of the match was probably the purest moment of happiness I’ve seen on the face of any competitor. I don’t think anyone works hardest than Miyao brothers. In some sense they represent the original beautiful ideal of jiu jitsu, that a little guy could defeat a much larger opponent. Most people don’t like this double guard pull style match, but I can appreciate the technical complexity and strategy of the exchange. I just hope that matches like this are few and far in between, and I think they were for the most part in the absolute division.

3. Keenan’s Closest Match: Kit Dale vs Keenan Cornelius

Keenan Cornelius submitted everyone on his way to medium-heavy brown belt gold EXCEPT for his first match where he faced Kit Dale and barely squeaked out a victory by advantage with the score tied at 2-2. The only thing more epic about the jiu jitsu in this match is Kit’s mustache:

2. War of Worlds: Jackson Souza vs Keenan Cornelius

In the minds of many observers (based on my conversations with people, the forums, and live chat during the event) this was the most anticipated and the most exciting match up of the tournament. Keenan Cornelius has become more than just a top notch jiu jitsu competitor, he is also a jiu jitsu personality/celebrity (partially thanks to Lloyd Irvin and the Kumite). He seemed unbeatable, and it was thought that if anyone could beat him it would be Jackson Souza, an aggressive guard-passing Checkmat heavyweight from Brazil.

1. Sebastian Brosche Solving the Unsolvable Miyao Puzzle

Sebastian Brosche is a guard passing genius. He has a unique style, and has passed some of the most difficult guards out there. The relentless pressure, base, grips, and balance are all on display in this match. I’ve never seen anyone else systematically take apart the guard of Joao Miyao, even going for a submission with an old school cross choke.

Visiting Fight Sports Miami (Cyborg’s Academy)

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While visiting Miami for a conference, I got a chance to train at Fight Sports Miami (Roberto “Cyborg” Abreu‘s academy headquarters). I went there directly from the airport and ironically enough shared a cab with a sweet older lady who mentioned casually that she used to train at Renzo Gracie’s academy in NYC. She now lived in Chicago and seemed to be a little disappointed at herself for taking a long break in her jiu jitsu journey.

Fight Sports has a lot of top-notch competitors, so the training was right up my alley. Cyborg himself wasn’t there this week. He had just competed at IBJJF Worlds the previous weekend and stayed in California training for his Metamoris 2 match this Sunday.

miami-bjj-fight-sports-cyborg-deninho-lexI attended an afternoon gi class that was run by Denis “Deninho” Mitchel Pinto (pictured left) who is a long-time black belt and MMA fighter. The class was basically everything I could ask for from a competition-centric class. The warm-up was intense, the drilling was focused, and the training was hard but technical. I could tell if I was a regular student at this school Denis (and the others) are the type of coaches and training partners that can really turn it up when preparing for tournaments.

I got to roll with everyone including Denis himself. I also ran into Ricardo Rezende (a top-notch black belt competitor) after the training and was looking forward to training no-gi with him the following day, but I unfortunately couldn’t get away from work then. Next time I’m in Miami, I’ll definitely be hitting up this school again.

I should mention that Cyborg has an excellent online instructional site full of detailed videos at BJJWorldChampion.com. Check it out. I’m a member of it for almost a year now and it’s definitely worth it.

Good luck to Cyborg competing in Metamoris 2 this weekend against Brendan Schaub. Here’s the countdown video for their matchup:

Visiting Rio Jiu Jitsu in Chicago

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rio-jiu-jitsu-lex-visit-in-chicagoAs I wrote yesterday, I visited Chicago this weekend, and of course couldn’t help but bring my gi and get a little training in. There’s an academy a couple miles away from Matt’s place called Rio Jiu Jitsu (see my big ugly mug in the picture to the left). I didn’t know much about it, so I emailed them and got a quick response back from the head instructor (Pete “The Greek” Letsos). He was really welcoming, gave me the schedule, and said to come in any time.

I only had time on Sunday, so I decided to come in for the noon session. It was a memorial day weekend Sunday, so I was expecting no one to show up, but there was a good number of people. Pete wasn’t in, but a very good purple belt (whose name I forget because I’m horrible with names) was there to teach a few techniques and run the training. I really liked rolling with him. At about 140 lbs, he was in a tough position of having to face another purple belt visitor 40 lbs heavier than him whose game/personality/history he didn’t know at all. Given all that he moved very smoothly from technique to technique, letting me do stuff without any ego. The sheer number of techniques he did very cleanly was fun to watch: everything from calf-slicers to spider guard sweeps to side control escapes to rolling back takes to a number of creative kneebar entries.

It sucks that I just missed the head instructor Pete (who’s there most days) but I can tell he is a great teacher and coach by the way his students approach the game. There was a relaxed learning atmosphere and the drilling was very precise and grounded in good fundamentals. The purple belt had a great line about his approach to jiu jitsu that he just does it because he loves it and gets on the mat as often as possible. He related it to “Getting XP points in Skyrim” which I believe is the first time I heard anyone compare jiu jitsu to an RPG game, but it’s a very good analogy.

Anyway, it was a great experience, and I’m glad I dragged my gi all the way from Philly to get a couple hours at this school. I’ll be sure to visit it again any time I’m in Chicago. If you live in the area, you should definitely get over there and try it out.

Attack and You May Lose, Defend and You May Win… for Now

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In the video below is an amazing chess game where black is on a seemingly reckless path of strategic destruction. The technical brilliance of this game reminded me that, for me, the sweetest victories do not come as a consequence of strategic defensiveness but from absolute non-stop offense. The popular-to-the-level-of-cliche speech from Braveheart speech is appropriate here:

Fight and you may die. Run and you will live at least awhile. And dying in your bed many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance, just one chance, to come back here as young men and tell our enemies that they may take our lives but they will never take our freedom!

Coaches have often told me that at the end of the day competition is about winning. That never sounded right to me. I have never been happy with winning just because I won. For me, what I did on the way to winning has always been important. If there is ever a moment in the match where I stall on a lead because I’m tired or nervous or scared of taking a risk, winning sucks almost as much as losing.

Just to be clear, all losing, no matter what, SUCKS. It’s just that not all winning is great. I walk off the mat proud and happy only when I win and I didn’t quit at any moment in the match.

Anyway next time you see me win a match 2-0 or by an advantage, please walk up to me and smack me in the face saying something like: “You disappoint me”.

Avoiding Knee Injury Against Jumping Closed Guard

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I firmly believe that the road to improvement in any sport should involve the mastery of injury prevention. I am constantly trying to understand what positions may lead to injury and look to avoid those positions or it least avoid the aspects of those positions that result in injury. Let me be more specific with an example from a recent tournament…

A common dangerous situation is when I’m looking to take my opponent down and they are looking to jump closed guard. In most cases, neither person has extensive experience with this exact situation. Most grapplers do not drill (nearly enough) jumping closed guard, and I certainly don’t drill shooting a double while a person is jumping closed guard. Those drilling sessions are too painful to imagine. What has happened to me in the past a few times is I made the mistake of not keeping my knees bent (even just slightly). There are a million reasons not to keep you legs locked out, but when you get tired you do stupid things. So when my opponent jumps closed guard, it’s tempting to step the straight leading leg forward. If they jump too low, this will result in their bodyweight slamming up against my knee. Here’s an example:

When your opponent jumps closed guard, they often pull you forward. This naturally forces you to step forward with as the person does in this video. Injury result when this step is taken on a straight leg not a bent one. The way to avoid injury is to keep a strong base and a bent leading leg. That way the leading leg can support the weight of the jumping person’s body. In general it’s good to have at least a slightly bent leg at all time, kind of like Olympic-style wrestlers do. With a slightly bent leg you can change levels quicker, sprawl back quicker, move around quicker, etc.

Tai Otoshi Judo Throw in BJJ Competition (2013 Pans)

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To me one the main benefits of judo for a jiu jitsu competitor is as simple as providing confidence in basic movement on the feet, basic gripping, basic posture, etc. That’s how it helped me, but it’s especially cool to see the occasional judoka pull off a textbook throw at the higher level of competition. I’ve seen a few drop morote seoi nage’s and a lot of excellent foot sweeps, but I haven’t yet seen a tai otoshi pulled off quite as nice as it was done in the following clip of a brown belt match from the 2013 Pans:

Here’s Jimmy Pedro breaking down this exact technique. He describes a useful grip variation for a BJJ competitor, but the guy in the above clip didn’t need the variation. He did it the old school judo way.

Why I Like Promotions

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level-upSeeing people I train with (or am friends with) promoted to a new belt color is always exciting to me. It probably taps into the same neurochemical wellspring of joy I get from leveling up in a video game. (I just realized that it’s been a LONG time since I actually played a game, especially an RPG).

It’s a demarcation of progress. The most exciting one, to me, in BJJ is the white belt to blue belt promotion. There is so much possibility and hope for the future at that point. A new blue belt has not yet been beaten down by the reality that mastery takes a long, long, long time. When I got my blue belt, I still believed that just around the corner, I will begin my meteoric rise to amazing skill levels. In reality, the path to mastery is much more like hiking the Appalachian trail. It takes a lot longer than you think. It’s not glorious. There’s no sparklers or beautiful women (or dudes if that’s your thing) in bikinis cheering you on. It’s just a long daily grind full of simple pleasures derived from subtle improvement of skill and overcoming of challenges.

But again, I think what I like most about promotions is the same reason I like driving a brand new car: the new car smell. When my training partners are wearing a new belt, it feels like I just beat the game at the “normal” setting, and am now upgraded to the “expert” setting.

It’s amazing how a belt can be a canvas to project my thoughts on. A belt color is a set of goals, a set of techniques, a set of injuries, a set of tournaments.

In the rest of my life, there are no belt colors. When I publish a conference or journal paper, I don’t get stripes on my belt. The video-game-playing kid in me wishes that I would be “awarded” a green jacket or something like that for a week after publishing in a prestigious journal. I would wear it proudly, and write a blog post about how much I like the idea of green jackets that my colleagues would read and shake their head at in shame.

Train Less and Save the Fun Stuff for Last

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It’s been said many times in many ways that “practice doesn’t make perfect; perfect practice makes perfect”, but I was reminded of it with a particularly good phrasing of this concept in a new book Winning on the Ground by AnnMarie De Mars (her blog):

“The difference between being #1 in the world and #100 isn’t so much the hours on the mat. It’s what you are doing in those hours.”

I think this applies to people who train professionally as well as to people who train as a hobby for different reasons. In the former case, your body and mind can only take so much in a day. Anyone who’s ever tried to drill (really drill) a move for an hour will know the wear it can have on you, not physically, but mentally. The focus required to perform a technique to the best of your ability is as draining as trying to solve a difficult math problem (or puzzle for the non-math-inclined).

For the hobbyist, the reality is that you really do have a very limited amount of time per day that you can train. Ironically, with the higher constraint on time, I find that people do less of the good stuff (drilling very specific techniques, transitions) and more of the fun stuff (rolling in jiu jitsu, randori in judo).

rocky-in-russia-in-the-snowI was always of the opinion that you have to earn the fun stuff. To me “fun” is rolling without any constraints on my game, without a focus on a particular position/technique, etc. That’s very good to do a lot of, especially if you have 4-6 hours a day to train. But if I only have an hour (or less as usual), I have to become my own drill sergeant. I’ll get in 30-60 minutes of hard fast paced drilling on a dummy or a partner no matter what, and enjoy a few sets of training. It’s a balance between short term “happiness” and long term “happiness”. Ultimately, I really enjoy getting a better understanding of the art of jiu jitsu, and that requires the not-so-fun process of drilling and rolling with a purpose.

By the way, I’m also realizing that “drilling” is like “dieting”. It’s a concept that is used by a lot of people to describe a wide variety of activities. So I have to be more specific. I do a lot of kinds of drilling, but the one I refer to as “really drilling” is where I do 100-200+ reps in 30 minutes of one technique. This isn’t some new technique, it’s one that I’ve already done thousands of reps of and most importantly have tried in positional training, live training, and competition. Every other kind of drilling is more relaxed. This is hard work. Productive hard work.

Video of Good Fight Matches with Commentary

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A month late, but better late than never, here are some parts of my matches from the March 2013 Good Fight tournament in Philly. I described the experience in more detail in a previous blog post, but here are the matches:

I’m trying to make sure that I video, edit, and put up the matches from most of the tournaments I go to, win or lose. Hopefully it encourages other to compete as well, when they see that it’s not much different than training back at the academy.

While my jiu jitsu slowly improves, it’s also exciting to see that my play-by-play commentary skills remain the same at a steady level of mediocrity that I so proudly strive for.

Days Leading Up to a Big Tournament: Training, Weight, Work

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ibjjf-new-york-open-2013-banner

I’ll be competing in the IBJJF New York Open next weekend. If I win every match, I’ll have around 7-8 matches. I’m of course only thinking about the first match, but it’s still good to go in knowing that I very well could have a long day and to be mentally prepared for it. Here are some thoughts off the top of my head at this moment on the week leading up to the tournament…

Moving Up a Weight Class

I have a tough week at work and my experience taught me is that lots of work means I’ll be sleeping less, and that staying on diet will be harder to the point where I very easily could burn out and not enjoy the competing experience. I’m currently 2.5 lbs under without the gi which means I’m probably over by 1-2 lbs with the gi. So I’m deciding to move up a weight class. I am confident I can do well against any size opponent. Most of the stress that comes with competing for me is derived from having to cut weight.

It’s tough to fight up a weight class in a culture that sees weight cutting as an absolute necessity. I’m sure many of the people that train with me will read the fact that I’m “1-2 lbs over” as an obvious case where I should cut those two lbs without question. But I really believe that I need to develop the ability to enjoy tournaments more, and that means doing nothing different than I do in training. I don’t cut weight for training. There are many days after training when I’m exhausted but happy. That’s how I want to feel at the end of next Saturday.

It boils down to this: I want to continue competing into my 40′s, 50′s, 60′s, and in order to do that I want to build a mindset that allows for that while having a more-than-full-time-career, family, etc. It might be different for different people, but from my experience of myself and people around me, a failed plan to “get in shape” is the main reason people stop competing. I want to compete when I’m skinny, I want to compete when I’m fat. It doesn’t matter. That mindset requires practice. I’m starting this weekend.

Bas Rutten: Competing for Yourself Only

I heard Bas Rutten (of all people) give two excellent pieces of advice on the Joe Rogan podcast recently. First, he said “if you fight, you can’t lose”. He explained that to mean that if he gets in there and gives everything he’s got, then he will be proud of himself at the end of the day. The only way to lose is to give less than you can, to give up, to quit. So I’m thinking less about winning and more about putting everything I have behind the techniques I’ve drilled over and over.

Second piece of advice the wise old Bas Rutten gave especially struck a note with me. I don’t remember the exact phrasing but basically he said that the only nerves and stress he felt about fighting is because of others: expectations, judging, etc. He said something like if he was locked in a room with a dude looking to fight and no one would see it and no one would hear the results, there would be no stress and no fear. It’s just another chance to test your technique, your conditioning, and your heart. That’s what I love about competing. The trick is to put myself into that state of mind. That, too, requires practice.

Competition Training

We’ve recently done a bunch of high-paced competition training sessions. That helped me develop a more aggressive pursuit of improving position in terms of wrestling, guard passing, sweeping, etc, but mostly it helped me deal with the feeling of being too tired to keep going. Last two big training sessions I came in mentally tired which was great because I got a chance to hit “the wall” early on and pushed through that.