You can now register online for the biggest BJJ Nogi Competition in Auckland, New Zealand.  Make use of the early bird option and save $10 if you register before  Saturday 26 October 2013. Closing of the registration: Wednesday 30 October 2013 You can now start your diet to aim for your weight category. They will be using IBJJF rules but no advantages rule and also no belt system (just 3 divisions of beginners, Intermediate, and Advanced divisions for all weight classes). I expect some of the divisions to have over 25 competitors as per their last competition. So plenty of fights to get the gold medal. Get that cardio ready for November. NZ Grappler’s NO-GI NATIONALS is the largest grappling competition in New Zealand. Don’t miss your chance to challenge yourself among the best of New Zealand. This year’s 2013 event will be awarding the Men’s Absolute division grand-prize winner a free trip to Las Vegas USA to compete at Grappler’s Quest in 2014 (IMPORTAN...

Usual one step sparring for warm up. Our classes follow a teaching system based on positions. The first class is mount The second class is back Thirsd is side control, knee on the belly, north south 4: guard pass 5. guard sweeps 6. guard submissions 7. top 1/2 guard 8. bottom 1/2 guard 9. Turtle 10. Q & A The topic of the day was questions and answers. Every students get to a question and the instructor answers. Question 1 was the inverted guard. Size and back problem can make it difficult for the larger players. However, it is a great guard for avoiding getting your guard passed. Lot of the lighers are reknown for this modern sport BJJ guard.         Question 2 was the hip bump sweep. The details are in the posting of the hand (and not the elbow) and raising your hips higher than the opponent hips. Tip: hips as high as his face.               ...

Today we visited Auckland university's sister club at the Maunouchi police dojo. This is a strong club that consists of mostly masters players who are Tokyo business men. One of the team pointed out that the judokas at the dojo like Bjj so much that they had dressed up their throwing dummy in a Bjj suit :-)

Well the team and I decided to get out of Tokyo and see A local district club. This really was the definition of local as were hosted by Tomohiro san who we had met at the masters. His family also run the local Buddhist temple and preschool. The training was good japanese tradition dictated that they gave team nz red belts and threw high school students, senior and masters players at us for 5 rounds. After that it was free practice but we tried to keep 2 new zealanders on the mat all times. Luckily, for us they kept us on a masters time table of 2 minute rounds. Unfortunately, at the end of randori Dmitry hurt his leg fighting one of the top high school u100 players in japan. But he did get a black belt in return.

We did one step roll for warm up. The exercise consists of each training partners taking turns making one move at at time against each other. It has to be done at about 50% resistance. It forces students to think about their moves ahead of time and stop using strength and aggressiveness. It is very similar to playing chess. The topic of the day was the turtle position. The turtle position is to used when you are about to get your guard passed. You will give up an advantage instead of 3 points. From the turtle, you can reverse the position or recompose the guard. Please note that you can only reverse from the turtle position (meaning you cannot 2 points for the sweep, it is not considered a guard. A guard has to be from your legs.                       Training concluded with rolling from the knees.   

We used the one step roll for warm up. Topic of the day was half guard sweep. Traditionally half guard was considered a transitional position after you lost the closed guard. It was considered to be the last stop before you get your guard passed. So it was the sign of doom as you needed to recompose your closed guard asap. Recently, the half guard game has exploded in the competition scene with hundreds of techniques from half guard. If you don't believe, buy the Ciao Tierra DVD called 101 techniques from half guard. Half guard game is no longer considered to be a bad spot to be in. In fact, some modern competitors specialise in the half guard game.  Please below a video from the so not old school BJJ. I believe it is Gordo demonstrating the half guard sweeps. Gordo developped his half guard game due to a knee injury and could do closed guard. We also work in the concept of the back take from top half guard: take the back instead of trying to pas...

 View from the top Well that was a good two days for Auckland University Judo and aucklandbjj.com. We got two gold medals Vitaly Alileuv in M4 u100 and Alan Greene in M6 u100 and I got a sneaky silver in M2 u100. The day started at 9am at the kodokan with all of the 730 athletes lined up on the 7th floor mats. It was impressive seeing all the judoka up to M11 (that's 85) still competing and having fun with judo. The kodokan is a fantastic venue with the 5th 6th and 7th floor all containing matted areas. In fact, to access the competition area on the 7th floor you take the lift to the 4th floor, leave your shoes there and walk up 3 flights of stairs to the 7th, which is quite a feat if you are 85 (or even 37!) My first fight was at 14:45 so I had plenty of time to look at all the other fights. I was very lucky with my draw and had a bye straight into the semi finals. The draw was strange as the Russian in my division needed to win twice to get to the semi finals ...

Keitha received the black belt at the international Brasa Camp. The Brasa team leaders are Felipe Costa and Comprido. http://www.bjjheroes.com/tag/brasa-jiu-jitsu She is has been training and representing Brasa for years in New Plymouth. The scene of BJJ in NZ is about to change for the better. Congratulations.

Full report to follow. Maybe after beer.

Well here I am in Tokyo to compete in the 2013 Asian masters. Today we decided to weigh in in the morning as some people were worried about their weight and wanted a chance to eat something. Weigh in was at 9am at the Kodokan, the home of Judo. It was a pretty cool building with 3 floors of mats each 4 competition areas big. I easily made weight at 97kg for the under 100 category. And everyone else made weight too, though some people had not been eating for 2 days. Then we went and rode the roller coaster near Tokyo Dome. Where Dmitry caused a security alert because he snuck his camera onto the roller coaster. After all the mall cops were scrambled to move people out of the way of the falling camera the sent someone up to remove the camera from him before they let us continue the ride. After that brush with the law we went to Roppongi to check out the view from 50 floors up. I went back to the hostel to do some work and to have a nap. I turned up to the Kodokan at 1...

We did Tomoe nage for the throw of the day. It is also known as the sacrifice throw.  You can also do it from closed guard and is known as the balloon sweep.  It is very effective option to a guard pull.   If Uke defends, you can set up the tripod sweep.   The ground techniques were arm bar defence for the beginners.   We also covered berimbolo for the more advanced students.   Training concluded with 30 minutes rolling from stand up. 2 minutes stand up and 3 minutes rounds.   Stu will be flying to Japan for the Judo Masters on Thursday. We hope that he improves his knowledge of drinking sake while getting thrown around by ex Judo Olympians. Best of luck. Do not break a leg!                                         News of the week   ...

Butterfly guard is an open guard used in BJJ. It was made very popular by Marcelo Garcia as he used it against heavier and bigger opponents. The reason is because the Butterfly Guard keeps your opponent’s weight off of you. Lot of beginners would be reluctant to play an open guard and would rather play closed guard only. One must realise that butterfly guard is good for people that have short legs and also it is the base/entry to a lot more guards such as x guard, deep half guard, single leg x guard etc. Also, it gives you a better mobility than closed guard. We covered the butterfly guard last week and the following videos have great information on the topic. Tired of playing closed guard (just waiting for the inevitable guard pass and you are in trouble), start using spider guard.                 Wisdom Picture of the Week        

Last weekend UFC was exciting with a title match  which ended with a submission instead of a boring decision. Instead of stacking to defend the arm bar, Benson stood up trying to slam. Big mistake. See this Gracie Breakdown video with Machida for explanation in details

  You got to love Martial arts when old techniques get "rediscovered" all the time.   Yarden Gerbi pulled a beautiful submission to win Gold at the Judo World Championship which was held in Rio de Janeiro. She used her own lapel to choke out her opponent In BJJ, it usually reffered as the Peruvian Necktie (with a lapel). In Judo, it is called Suso Jime . I am not even sure if it is legal after reading so much controversial posts on the internet. My guess is that we should just re called it the Israeli Necktie for the lapel option. Please see below a list of videos relevant to the topic (which I found on F12).                                        

  To climb a mountain, you need to make your first step.  In BJJ, getting your first stripe is always a memorable occassion. Congratulations to Webber and Jonathan! They are the first students to receive stripes at our new location in Epsom.