Danish ADCC

Just finished uploading all the videos from the first Danish ADCC Event. It took me awhile compressing and adding the ADCC logo to all the vidoes, but now it is finally done. If you want you can watch them all at adcc.dk

There is some good fights in there, the girls -60 kg is a good fight between Shanti and Camilla.

I'm running a club with 3 others guys in Copenhagen, this year we finally got our own place, so now we can plan all the classes without having to consult anybody, and we dont have to fight for the best time slots. This makes a big difference, now we have 3-4 times as many classes a week. Before we had a problem finding time for beginners classes in BJJ and MMA. And now that we have them, we get new students every week. This did not happen before. Another factore I think is also the results that we have produced this year. At the European, World championships and the Internation Master and Senior we got 10 medals total, divided on 7 people. By far the best results for any club in Denmark.

The next big event for the club is Adrenaline 3, a danish MMA event. We have 5 guys competing in the event, one of them a title fight. If we win this we have two of the Adrenaline title belts at the club.

We are trying to get as many people to come with us to Scandinavien Open in BJJ in Stockholm, it is usually held in Malmø, whitch is close to Copenhagen. Last year we did really well, I think that we where the best club, with 11 medals. But now it is going to be harder for people to go. But hopefully we can repeate the succes from last year. For me it payed some of my ticket to Brazil, so that I could compete in the Internation Master & Senior, because I won the Brown Belt Open Class, and got a gift certifikat to a travel agency :-).

Next wednesday Peter Blackwell, my teahcer is coming over to give a seminar at the club, lets see if there is any changes in the color of the belts in the club.
There are some guys that are on the tipping point for the blue belt, I have to check up on them this week. But I reather be sure that they are ready, then to give out the belst to fast. In the club it is not easy to get the blue, purple or brown belt, we dont have any black belts yet. People have to work hard to get to the next level. But on the other hand, when you get your belt you know that you deserve it.

Training from Rio

Training hard

Started to lift weights again, have not done that in a long time, last time I seriousely did that was when I was 19 years old, and that is a long time ago.
But this time it is different, when I was young I wanted to get big, but now I want functional strength, for grappling.
So I'm not wroking so much on the cheast, but more on the core. Deadlift, squad and so on.
The strange things is that I get so tired after a workout, that I almost fall asleep, writing this. :-)

When I train bjj I get tired, but that doesn't last that long, after awhile I get my energy back again.

At the moment I'm working on my passing game, trying to stay out of the half guard, either by crossing the knee or pushing myself back so he can't get my leg up on the shoulder. It is starting to work out really well for me. I will try to film my sparring sessions this week.
I have a youtube account with me sparring with different people.

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=SparringProgression

But lately I have not filmed so much, but I will start it up again, the original plan was to film every two weeks or monthly. But it has been 14 months since I put something up. I have some video from Rio that I plan to put up there.

I think that video is very underrated as a training tool, for many people.

I was looking at some of the blue belts sparring and it made me very happy to see how much they have developed their skills. Looks good for the future.

Danish ADCC

This weekend the first danish ADCC event was held in Hillerød, a city 30 min from Copenhagen by car. The event did not see that many fighters, for different reasons, I think that many people in the danish grappling community was afriad that the level of the competition was going to be to high, because it was ADCC. But the next event in decmeber will see a lot more fighters. This is going to be the Danish nationals.

There was some good fights, all the fights will be put up on the homepage adcc.dk.

Yesterday I went to Malmø, Sweden, to help out Bobby Sundel with a photo shoot for the Swedish fighter mag. It was a technique series. It was good fun and hopefully it will turn out great.

Started to do deadlift, squad, benchpress and shoulder press, in the crossfit gym that is housed in the same building as our gym. Erik a bjj student and instructor in crossfit show us how to preform the different filt the correct way. Very nice, but I can feel it in the body.

This week the new passing game that Richardinho showed us, I will try to introduce as a drill that I will use as a warmup drill. So that people will get more comfetaple with it, and the moves will come more natural then now. It is really nice to see people do the moves in the sparring.

And I will slowly put in more moves from the half guard.

First Kids class

We had our first kids bjj class yesterday. 3 kids showed up, from 5-7 years of age.
Hopefully we can build up a big class and future competitors for the club :-D.
This is the way for the future of bjj in Denmark, because at the moment it a small sport, with about less then 10 clubs. BJJ has only been in the country for about 7 years.


Wednesday I went to Sweden with Shanti to train with my coach Peter Blackwell, good sparring. There was not that many of the higher levels at the training, but it was good anyway. After an hour or more of sparring, I had to get back to the club in Copenhagen to teach for 3 hours. I no problem sleeping that night.

Yesterday I met up at the club with some of the guys, to practice some of the new techniques that we got from the trip to Rio. Really nice to go over the stuff again and again, so that we can get some more flow and slowly get it integrated into my game.

Started this morning with some push press and squat, just training the proper techniques, down in the crossfit gym, that is in the same build.

Coming up next week is the first danish adcc event, but not that many people have signed up yet. Hopefully more will come.

My new training

After the master and senior, I have a lot that I need to work on. Not just from the competition but also from the training in Richardinhos club. My offensive game from the bottom need to get much better, I have to be able to push my game on the other guy. I think that I have been to passive in my approach for a long time.
In everything that I do, I have to be more active, attacking all the time, go more for submissions..
My standup need to get much better, got to put the pressure on the other guy.

Since the last post

In the last year alot of stuff has happend, the club moved to a new location, so now we dont have to lay out the mats every time we need to train, so this is a big big plus. And now we have a lot more classes then we did at our last location, because we dont have to fight for the space with the other users of Østerbrohuset.

When we return from South America i got my brown belt, and we got two more purple belt aswell. And we have some of the best bjj fighter in Denmark now in the club. We have a really strong team of girl fighter, double world champions and double european champions.

We also got a new cardio class in the academy: Torbens Kimono Cardio.

Really nice, and hard :-)



We also have two standup kimono classes. Which is working out really good, people are starting to get a lot better at different takedowns, and people are getting more comfortable with starting the fight standing.

And now we're starting the first kids bjj class. Looking forward to seeing how that will work out.

Back in Rio for the Master & Senior

Went back to Rio to compete in the Master and Senior 2008. The team came back to the club with 6 medals, one gold, 3 silver and 2 bronze.

Here is some video from our trip, this is just 3 of our vidoes, the rest can be found on my youtube account. http://www.youtube.com/user/mmacph

Going to try this blogging again. Lets see how many posts that I can manage to make this time. I will try to keep it in english.