Carmen jenke seminar, irish shenangins and catfight gear gi

Well, i certainly can't complain of boredom these last few weeks! Last weekend I went up to London to attend the first woman's only bjj seminar in the Uk. My fear of Sunday trains was eased a bit as I sped from surbiton to London Victoria, then on the underground to st pancreas (hugest train station ever!!!) then to mill hill Broadway. Despite my best attempts to get there on time,,, I was as usual running a bit late so decided to nip into the toilet on the train and change into my gi which did cause a few people to do a double take as I emerged from the loo wearing my blue koral gi tucked into my uggs hehe. This turned out to be a good move, as I was getting off the train I felt someone tap on my shoulder and ask weather I was going to a Brazilian jiu jiutsu seminar! what are the odds haha this resulted in getting a lift to RGA mill hill meaning I wasn't too late. The seminar its self was very interesting it started with lots of drills, a few of which I hadn't seen before and found quite hard to get the hang of! We then paired up and drilled a few things

1) collar choke from guard- this involved breaking our partners posture and waiting for them to pull up allowing the choke to be put on really easily before the person realised what was going on I liked this move as it was quite simple and effective and i found that a bit of extra hip movement using your opponents movement to swing round made it come on even quicker



2) A couple of guard passes - start by holding partners hips or their gi lapel and pushing into their sternum, then contrary to what I usually do which is placing my knee into my opponents tailbone Carmen recommended that to keep your base it was better to keep your knee more to the side which i think worked just as well, to pass we either under hooked the leg or stepped over with our knee, which i usually prefer. After we passed we drilled a kimora from side control which I usually find hard to get but Carmen showed us that it was easier to wait for you opponent to make the move and set up the grip in preparation for when they eventually try to push you off of them, I like to use my face sometimes to help pin the arm down lol

3) A sweep from half guard which worked by reaching round and holding your opponents foot and knee and another one I had learnt a few weeks ago with Ze which I will need to research more as I'm not sure on how best to describe it

4) an open guard sweep that I learned ages ago in New york which starts by holding the collar and the sleeve with your foot on their hip then switching grip to the sleeve and the ankle to sweep them you then pull the ankle and push their hip with your foot


we then rolled for about 30 mins, I was pleased at how I rolled, what I lack in strength and size in comparison with a couple of the girls I managed to keep my cool and pull of a couple of submissions including the gi choke we had learned that day, later this reminded me of Ray in Thailand yelling move of the day!!! whenever anyone managed to pull of the technique we had been working on. All in all the day was really good it was great to see so many girls on the mat at once! I left feeling extra motivated which paid off in training on Monday as I felt my game was just that more redefined.

training that week involved...
BJJ on Monday: I went over the moves we had learned in the seminar with Sophie and the new girl then we rolled most of the class
mma on Tuesday: brought my friend Anna down to train as shes a black belt in taikwondo and i wanted to work on some stand up and no gi stuff despite I kick to the ribs that made me think I was going to be sick sparing involved me taking Anna down and avoiding being punched to much.
Wednesday: went boxing with the girls at uni while not the most hard core class it is a good work out and only 2 quid a class. after boxing went to bjj but really wasn't in the mood for it haha Richard made me n soph roll no gi because we might be doing the European competition in grapple and strike, I was feeling pretty crappy after but it was still a fun day of training.

Then another weekend rolled around, as my mum was over from the Uk visiting she decided me her and my brother would spend the weekend in ireland seeing some friends which was a really nice break even though there was no training involved! we did however watch some motor cross, have some nice dinners and watch our friend wilsons band down at the pub which made for a really good break. Note to self that cinimon glod flecked goldshlager stuff is dam tasty but = god awful hangover see picture below for the extent of my hungover trek back home







Got a couple more essays to be getting on with unfortunatley and am also broke as a joke as i ordered a new gi from catfightgear.com Ah well a kul new gi is worth eating soup the rest of the month and after all the fried breakfasts and chocolate of late im sure my tummy will be thanking me. Ebayed loads of old crap so should be all good.

Sunday trains grrrr

Why is it that every time I need to go somewhere its on a Sunday meaning that there will be bus replacement services,, diversions,, and general chaos mehhh I can either leave from eastbourne on Sunday to get to the seminar which will take 2 and a half hours orrr i can go up to Hampton with my mum on Saturday dump all my stuff off for Ireland (visiting some friends over there next weekend) and then go from Hampton to mill hill on Sunday which will also take about 2 hours and involves the dreaded underground. Either way I will most likely be in a hella bad mood by the time I get there, at least a meeting with fellow bjj peeps and learning some kul moves from Carmen will cheer me up!

Green gym in Eastbourne

Finally got my lazy ass back to training! It was really fun tonight we had a little club tournament which involved me refusing to tap to an arm bar by Paul rolling out of it and then Tolly stopping the match, I suppose sensing I was in a particularly stubborn mood.

Its funny I remember Alex telling me about a match with helio gracie where even after he had broken his arm he didn't tap, at the time I remember saying how stupid, and that they should tap if they knew their arm was going to break after all that would mean sitting out of training while waiting to recover blah blah. A few months later after competing in my first competition and alot more training sessions and i completely get it,,, although usually in training I wouldn't be so tenacious, but tonight I really did not want to tap (also i was pretty sure Paul wouldn't break my arm lol)

Also, there was a girl who came to check out the class and is going to come on Monday which means for a small club we will hopefully have 3 girls training bjj, I would like to organise some sort of event maybe a free taster class for girls only, will have to see what Tolly thinks.

watching cage gladiators on TV at the moment and our friend David lee is fighting haha so funny seeing people i know on tv, I wana be on tv!!! watching the girls mma fight and its making me wanna train harder, even when i look in the mirror when we're all lined up at training i look so scrawny, need to get to the gym i think.

There is something to be said though for increasing strength through training bjj since i started I have lost a lot of body fat and gained much more upper body strength, I can do about 25 push ups compared to half of a push when i started 8 months ago.

To my excitement they have a green gym in our park now I was walking to the shops the other day and saw someone on this metal cross trainer haha seeing as I am too broke for the gym at the minute this looked like a fun way to do some extra training now I have more free time.

some pics of alex anmd my mum messing around in the outside gym

competitions I would go to if I wasnt a broke student and some I will be doing anyways

While I am happy doing all the competitions I can get to in the united kingdom (well the more southern parts of the uk) I keep seeing loads of competitions that I would want to do if i had, say my own privet jet or at least a bank account with more than 100 quid in it.

1) Grapple Girls Women’s Open 2009: they have a tournament on the 22nd of august followed by a grappeling camp fromm the 23-29th august and I really want to gooooo! being that august is quite far away i may potentially have the disapline to save up for plane tickets and could possibly find someone to say with lol watch this space

2)Alliance BJJ Mundial Championships Training Camp May 26 - June 2 in Georgia: Romero “Jacare” Cavalcanti is the head coach, this is basically a camp to prepare for the world bjj tournament and involves 2 classes a day for a week allong with conditioning classes, is it lame that this sounds better than a boring beach holiday somewhere to me?!

3) 2009 BJJ World Championships June 4-7 in California: Need I say more,,, I would love to go to this tournament perhaps if I do well in all the Uk tournaments I would have the guts to go lol

Some competitions I will be more likley to make it to!!!

1) may 23rd an 24rth U.M.A. International Open Groundfighting & Grappling Championships not stricktly a bjj comp but i would like to get more experiance in no gi

1) June 21 BJJ British Open Cocks Moor Woods Leisure Centre
Alcester Rd South
Birmingham, West Midlands, B14 6ER



I also think there will be summer devisions of the Bristol and grab and pull tournaments and,,, if anyone knows of any good comps in the uk or close by feel free to let me know want to compeate as much as possible over this summer while I have the free time :-)

The week dissertation was finally compleated! Womans only seminar!

Well its finally over! I handed my dissertation in on Friday wooooo 60 pages, 4 months and a lot of lost hours of sleep and mega huge diet red bulls and its done! I feel almost euphoric now that its over, I still have some essays to hand in but that's pretty much me finished university! Which also means I have more time to train (when not job hunting that is) As it was bank holiday weekend and I was out and about till pretty late then up early to help someone with their physio dissertation, I am almost relieved that the dojo is closed today haha don't want to go back to training for the first time in two weeks feeling all tired and decrepit soo i think will do some nice relaxing yoga tonight and catch up with my sleep and go down to zt tomorrow to check out the woman's/beginners class.

I was talking to Reza and he was telling me of the success our Bahrain club had at the world pro jiu-jitsu tournament in Abu dhabi getting 2 bronze medals and one silver! he even met ze there as he was over refing some of the matches.

I'm not too sure when I will next be compeating, was a bit disapointed we were not able to make it to the essex open as it was on a sunday and the trains were skrewed up as usual although I hadnt been able to train much the last month any ways with all my uni work.
I am hoping to make it up to the womans only seminar with There will be a women only BJJ seminar by Brown Belt Carmen Janke

Date: Sunday 10th May from 12-3pm
Location: RGA Mill Hill.
Cost £20

I will post more info on the details of this when I find out more but if anyone reads this and knows any females who are interested let them know please, the more people there the better!!!


For anyone that compeated in the grab and pull09 in brighton theres loads of videos from it at http://www.cagefilm.com/videos/detailed/1 one of mine was up there was good to analyse my game a bit althoguh frustrating in some parts when I could have maybe finished the match a bit sooner, for some reason I am just too calm when i'm fightingm which in some ways is a good thing as I dont rush and make silly mistakes but I still think I need to try and be a bit more aggressive sometimes lol