So this Saturday promises an interesting event.

Kimbo Slice vs. Tank Abbott.

I don’t know that this is a real MMA event but it still makes for some good TV. Kimbo, for anybody who doesn’t know, is an internet street fighting legend. Tank was brought into the UFC to be the ultimate street fighter. Both are pretty old with Kimbo having the advantage of being in better shape and training harder (apparently).

Neither of them are true MMA practitioners but everybody likes to see a bangfest. This one promises to be just that. Although, it would be pretty funny if  Read the rest »

A post by Hazmat at whitecollarbjj brought up an interesting dilemma that I tend to go through. That dilemma being, should I analyze my training or should I just go with the flow and see what happens.

I go through phases where I really try hard to think about each move when I’m rolling and phases where I just “roll with it” (pardon the pun). Each phase I think I have the answer. Sometimes I choose a submission that I want to win with before I roll and  Read the rest »

You remember being in high school and liking a band that nobody knew about? You know, one of those obscure punk bands or hip hop artists that all of the underground people who “really knew music” listened to. Remember how a year or two after you listened to them, they blew up and became “trendy”?

Most people would stop listening to them because they were “old” and “trendy” . I’ve done it. We’ve all done it. Instead of embracing  Read the rest »

A while back I found myself weighing 205 lbs. Im 5′8 and it wasn’t much muscle. I used to be into body building and watching what I eat but then came the professional desk job. I found that I was taking work home, going out to lunch with co-workers and since I am a programmer, I was staying up way too late to get up early enough to go to the gym. So, I went from 180lbs of nice lean muscle to 205 of not so leanness.

A friend of mine told me about the Body for Life book and how much it helped him lose some weight. He let me borrow it and it was very close to how I used to train anyway, so I decided to try it out. In 12 weeks I went from 205lbs to 160lbs.  Read the rest »

I always find it interesting when I hear about celebrities or other well known people practicing jiu-jitsu. I stumbled across a jiu-jitsu wiki entry that listed the following famous bjj practitioners:

Entertainers

• Nicolas Cage (Actor): Trains under Royce Gracie. ^[1]
• Chris Conrad (Actor): Trains under Jean Jacques Machado. ^[2]
• Jim Carrey (Actor) ^[3]

 Read the rest »

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When training or sparring, your hands are a very important part of your game. You use them to control your opponent might use yours to control you. I found a very unorthodox method to work on my hand consciousness. It sounds stupid but I train with my dog.

To elaborate, I have a Miniature Pinscher. She is full of energy, very fast and only seems to attack my hands, so every now and then I will turtle up and try to avoid her chewing a finger off. I usually close my eyes and put my hands out there for her to mangle. I try to pull them back under me before I require stitches based on feeling how she is moving around me. Since she is small enough, she can work herself  Read the rest »

About a month ago now, I weighed in at 187lbs. I was pretty surprised when I stepped on the scale and saw that because I thought that I was maintaining 170lbs. So, I decided to kick into diet mode and actually dropped down to 174 in the first week. Most of it was water weight but it was a dramatic drop. I didn’t do anything drastic with my diet either. I just ate alot of fruits and vegetables, drank only water and lots of it and did cardio everyday.

For the first 2 weeks, I felt great. My body was changing its energy source  Read the rest »

This morning I had a pretty interesting roll. I didnt go to bed until about 2:00am last night then I woke up at 6:30am and went to train with a friend at 10:00am. I was extremely tired but I think it may have helped my roll.

I felt like my mind was much more relaxed and oddly enough, I just felt more fluid. I think it helped to let my instinct take over to a certain degree. Not going into it with every move planned  Read the rest »

chew-jitsu?

What the hell does that mean?

It doesn’t sound very scary or tough but it does have a meaning, so I’m going to share that now.

It all started on a hot, humid Thursday night. I got into my car and headed off to class. Arriving at the gym, I walked in, grabbed the pen from the reception counter and looked bewilderingly for the sign in sheet. It was nowhere to be found….

Sensing my confusion, the girl at the desk slid the sheet across the counter so that she could collect my signature. While signing, I noticed that somebody had chewed the top of the pen and made a mental note to wash my hands….

Too much?

Alright, here’s the shorter version  Read the rest »

This has been a good topic of debate for many people on both sides of the fence seperating gi and no gi bjj practitioners. Since I started bjj with a gi, I may have a biased opinion. To me, starting out with a gi and growing into a no gi training regime is the way to go.

By starting with the gi, you learn the fundamentals of jiu-jitsu. You learn how to base, you learn the bread and butter mechanics of the majority of the subs you’re going to adopt in your game. I found though that when I switched over to no gi, my game noticeably improved. The reason, as I see it, is because I no longer had the gi to depend on. Without the ability to hold on to a sleeve or collar, I couldn’t muscle somebody into a sub if my technique wasn’t perfect or they happened to escape. I had to increase my speed and improve my technique because no gi is inherently faster paced (at least in my experience). Ive also found that transitioning from gi to no gi is pretty difficult  Read the rest »