Day 54

Spent the weekend at my girlfriends in England. I will tell you a really good Sunday Lunch talking topic that always goes down well, BJJ. Specifically telling the father of your girlfriend that your ambition in life is to get your black belt and support his only daughter with you BJJ academy, that or become a bum.

It is the Hamburg open this weekend. I’m excited because it seems like a small competition but gi and nogi so a chance to get a bit of experience in both. I rolled last night nogi, realised halfway through attempting to escape a triangle about 3 seconds too late that I have not rolled nogi for... at least 3 months. More on that later. First I want to compare my current training regime, with my dream training regime (yes I’m currently at work so what better time to contemplate such important things?)

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thrusday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
AM	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
PM	BJJ 6 - 7.30	Swimming 8 - 9	Competition training BJJ 6 - 7.30	Climbing 6 - 9 (Bi-weekly)	BJJ 6 - 7.30	Swim once at weekend (Sat or Sun)	Open Mat 12 - 2

Total BJJ: 6.5 hours

Now bear in mind I’m up at 7am for work and home at 5.30pm (or going straight to training at 6pm) every day due to my 1 hour commute... last time I moved I lost my passport and reduced my commute from 1 hour 15 to 1 hour 5. I’m not risking another move. I probably should do something in the morning before work but really 6am is just not pleasant.

Now here is my dream training regime. (Training regime/life all the same really)

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
7 - 9am	Run	Swimming		Rest Day	Swimming	Run	Rest Day
9 - 11am	BJJ - Technique	BJJ	S&C		BJJ	S&C
11 - 1pm	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch
1 - 4pm	S&C	Rest	BJJ - Technique		Rest	Rest
4 - 6pm	Dinner	Dinner	Dinner		Dinner	Dinner	Dinner
6 - 10pm	BJJ	BJJ	BJJ - Competition	Climbing	BJJ - Technique	BJJ - Competition

Total BJJ: 13.5 hours

All taking place in Brazil and on my rest days I’d be surfing or playing beach volleyball or anything beach related. Yes I’ve put BJJ training in on Friday and Saturday night. I’m that committed to avoiding going out, drinking excessively and dancing like a tit.

The S&C is whatever Strength and Conditioning is hot at the time, kettlebells, plyometric exercises, TRX, Sandbags, stuffing chickens down your pants while dragging a pram full of Babybel cheese. I’ll do any new S&C fad, as long as I can see a youtube clip of someone shouting about its benefits while wearing a sweaty vest and glaring intensely at the camera with that “I’ve just stuck a needle into myself and now I feel massive” look.

The Technique would be looking at one position, e.g. guard passing, mount, back defence for the whole time just focusing on your goals in each position, what your opponent wants to do, how to achieve your goals while preventing his. The normal BJJ would be your standard Warm-up, Technique, Sparring and Competition Training would be War.

I love that timetable... there just doesn’t seem to be enough BJJ in there really.

The other thing I wanted to talk about is Gi vs. Nogi. I’m sure this is a topic that’s been done to death on forums, but I have not read them yet and the beauty of a blog is that it’s more like a dictatorship, I can talk about what I like. Although, comments are always welcome. I don’t really want to discuss pro’s and con’s of either anyway, the topic that usually deteriorates into bigkilla72 calling out jiujitsujack for a no holds barred street fight in order to settle how applicable the gi game is to real life, whilst both their mothers are held at gun point, winner takes all.

I love them both but we all have our favourites. Recently I’ve been trying to think about an analogy for the gi and no gi games. Are they like squash and tennis, are they more like tennis on clay and tennis on grass? Hmmmm.

I love the accessibility of the nogi game... shorts, t-shirt/rashguard and roll, that’s all there is to it. It’s like wrestling in the back garden when you were a kid, only with much more (sometimes less) technique. But I would like to point out that I think t-shirt/rashguard is essential and would like to talk about a photo from ground control london...

There is no worse an advert for a sport, already struggling with the thuggish shadow cast on it by MMA and ‘fights’ that can occasionally look like two men hugging or ‘riding each others hips’ for 5 minutes on the ground, than to see a photo of an unfit, tattooed, topless man looking to engage with another topless man. No offence intended to the people in this photo who probably have a fantastic ground games, but I think there is absolutely no need to grapple with strangers topless. If you want to do that in your own gym with your friends then fine, but at a comp, wear a top.

You can take it off on the podium for the photo shoot, loudly complaining about how much you sweated whilst imposing your will on the other fighters to win your ginourmous medal.