Half way through October already!?

Wow time flies.

We have been training hard getting ready for the Ryukyu Free fight tournament coming next month. We have a pretty big team attending and training has been tough.

We have been having pretty big classes on Wednesday nights which is awesome.

Mariko from Everground visited our gym to say hello and take some photos from class. Thank you for coming to our little academy Mariko.

Okinawa is small so it is important to support one another in the community.

https://www.facebook.com/everground.jp?fref=ts

This blog I thought I might talk about one of our traditions at the academy.

After every Friday morning class everyone goes to lunch together at a small place down the street called Chura-Soba. The food is amazing and really cheap!

I am trying to eat everything on the menu but so far I have had:

Fried Aji, The special lunch (which is huge), Chura Soba, Kim chi pork soba, Karage set, Tonkatsu set, taco rice, taco soba (its not octopus soba but actually a taco on noodles - awesome), and today I tried "Bone soup" for the first time. The food is really good and its a good chance to hang out and chat to one another outside of jiu jitsu training.

Bone soup:

Taco Soba:

Taco Rice

.

Whats been going on!?

Hey everyone we have been SUPER busy!

Professor Roberto came for a 2 week visit. Even though he was on vacation he taught a bunch of classes and seminars!

Thank you Roberto!

Roberto even invited 2 more blackbelts to join us. Tough training.

Wanderson and Vanessa are both champion black belts from Ogawa team: Friends BJJ.

My friend Arley from mainland came to train with us recently as well. Arley is awesome technical.

My awesome students surprised me with a an un-bachelor party.

We have been getting up to some "SERIOUS" training too.

Isaiah, Elijah, Ali, Leo, and Sawa all got new taps on their belts! Good job.

Kelvin got his blue belt!

We have even been doing ladies classes on Saturdays!

Thank you to everyone for the awesome support, training, attitudes, and effort these last two months!

July 16 to 31st @ Oceania BJJ Okinawa

Training training training.

With no tournaments to worry about we can get back to working on the curriculum.

Learning how to do the berimbolo, helicopter armbars, and spinning triangles from spider guard is fun but self defense is really important. We have been regularly practicing common street fight positions.

The last two weeks we have also been focused on the turtle position. How to fight on the top and bottom.

Of course we have been doing a lot of sparring.

We are lucky to have some members over 100 + kgs (200lbs). 

It is hard work but it is good to test your technique against larger stronger opponents. 

I like seeing 60kg (130lb) students succeeding against 110kg (240lb) students. 

It means they are relying on technique not strength. 

This week Roberto Sensei will visit our academy for 10 days so we have to be at our best to impress him. 

July 1st to 15th @ Oceania BJJ Okinawa

Training is going well.

Everyone is making progress and getting good results.

We have had a few promotions so far this month.

Kian, Dave, Sei, Ali, and Leo all received their first stripes. 

Congratulations on the hard work.

We had a great last tournament at the All Okinawa Open

Isaiah got 1st place, Elijah came 2nd, Leo - after one month of training - 1st place.

Kelvin McCrea did an awesome job bringing home 4 medals.

James did well in the brown belt absolute taking 1st place.

The team placed 3rd overall as well!

Now its back to the grind stone improving our weaknesses and working on new techniques.

Here is a sneak preview of Leo's tournament performance... not bad for one month.

June @ Oceania BJJ Okinawa

Mad month. Sorry for the super late post but...

The 16th of this month was King of the Gym no time limit no gi tournament held at the Capoeira Academy here in Okinawa. I understand it was the 6th installment and was very well attended.

We had 3 fighters enter the tournament. Kelvin, Kian, and James.

Kelvin won his first fight by bicep lock and his second by ninja calf slicer. Proving you don't need to be a brown belt in bjj to finish fights with compression locks. He came 1st overall in the beginners 75-80kg division.

Kelvin received his 4th stripe on his white belt the following class.

Kian who had less than one months training did his three weeks justice. Fighting an 18 minute fight and a 12 minute fight consecutively. Both of his opponents were easily more experienced but Kian gave them a run for their money. Fighting in your first tournament is always hard, let alone fighting in no time limit matches. Well done Kian.

James had three fights in the advanced under 65kg division against two worthy opponents from Paraestra Okinawa. James won his first fight by armbar in 5 minutes, second fight by triangle choke in under 3 minutes, and his third in 2 and 1/2 minutes by armbar from the triangle position. Thank you to Paraestra for entering into the tournament James didn't think he would have anyone to fight and lucked out.

The following weekend Jay joined the mainland Japan team in Nagoya and entered the Aichi prefecture open. Aichi tournaments are especially tough with almost all of the competitors being Brazilian or Brazilian trained Japanese. Jay was in for some tough fights. The team on the whole did very well with multiple gold, silver, and bronze medals coming home with the Gracie Oceania team. Jay won the ultra-heavy weight division and placed 3rd in the absolute division. Nice work! Nice medals! 

Finally, but not least Sakumoto was received his first stripe. Sakumoto is one of the most regular morning students training up to and over 15 times a month. Congratulations!

Lastly, recently a black belt from the states returned home after his posting in Okinawa. 

Despite being from another team Jay Turner often found time to support our team in tournaments, seminars, and training. Jay organised great tournaments and developed one of the toughest teams in Okinawa. Thanks for all your work here in the Okinawan BJJ community Jay! 

Building it step by step, like playing with legos.

May 20 - 31 @ Oceania BJJ Okinawa

We have been spending the last three weeks working on our guards.

Butterfly, spider, and De La Riva.

Takuma Fujii was awarded his first stripe. Congratulations Taku!

Last week we had a purple belt visitor from Jiu jitsu brothers' Mie prefecture team in mainland Japan. Seita Hirouchi. Seita was really technical. He trained with us in the morning classes and at Wakajiujitsu at night. Thanks for visiting! I hope you come back again.

Seita had some great fights with bigger guys and trained hard against 100+kg blue belt Jay.

May 6-19 @ Oceania BJJ Okinawa

Awesome couple of weeks training.

A few new students joined the team!

We have been working hard on our passing techniques.

It is important to understand how passing works and what is fundamental to each position.

A single guard pass rarely results in success but combination guard passes often work well.

If we want to be able to pass the guard without problems we need to be aware of what our opponents can do to attack us. Taking the back, sweeping, or simply returning back to guard after we have battled to almost get the pass.

We also need to consider: What type of guard are we facing? What grips? What hooks?

How do we intend to pass the guard? Speed? Power? Smashing? Floating? Sideways? Over? Under? Through? Spinning? Rolling?

Do we even need to pass? Can we finish from inside the guard with a choke or footlock?

As someone who spent a long part of my BJJ life in guard - mainly because I'm usually the smallest person in the room - I preferred fighting from the back.

Recently, I've been having more fun fighting from the top. Especially in no-gi.

Here are a few reasons why I want to spend more time working on my top game:

In a situation against multiple opponents you don't really want to be on the bottom because you will get kicked in the head.

In MMA or fights on the street the person on top generally has an advantage because he can strike more effectively.

I think once people learn the guard they fall in love with its diversity and eternal evolution.

However, we don't always want to be in the guard nor can we always get into the guard.
We need to be able to fight from everywhere.

We can't simply ask someone who is trying to hurt us or rob us on the street to put on a gi so its easier to do a berimbolo because you need your belt grip.

Last two weeks @ Oceania BJJ Okinawa

Phew. Big couple of weeks.

The Ryukyu free fight tournament and Yuki Nakai seminar were last weekend.

No one from our team fought in the tournament but some of our members went in support of other teams and fighters.

The tournament was well organised and flowed well. Good job Ryota Matsune!!!

Following the tournament was a seminar taught by the legendary Yuki Nakai.

The seminar was interesting and covered a variety of techniques from how to escape the back to the berimbolo.

The instruction was excellent and Yuki Nakai spoke excellent English and took the time to explain the moves one on one.

He took the time at the end of class to explain some BJJ philosophy.

He explained how important it is to train with different people and different martial arts.

He shared an idea that I have heard a few times recently: "You shouldn't think of positions in bjj as bad positions or good positions but instead treat them a position with its own unique possibilities."

April 7-14 @ Oceania BJJ Okinawa

We had a massive week of training ahead of the King Of The Island tournament on the weekend.

In total we had 5 members from the team fight.

Isaiah and Elijah represented the team in the kids division.

Both did an awesome job. Isaiah won his first fight in 40 seconds via armbar from the triangle position and moved on to the finals where he put on a gutsy performance but in the end lost by points. Elijah was dominating his first fight but was put into the armbar position, he escaped though and pass the guard and maintain mount to get the win via points.

Both boys were promoted after their efforts and true showing of spirit.

Kelvin fought well on Sunday making his way to the final of his weight division.

He fought a very experienced opponent and was eventually worn down. Taking 2nd place in his weight class.

Jay Matias our big boy representative fought some tough and huge guys in this weight classes.

Jay took 3rd in his super heavy weight no gi class and 1st in the gi.

James was invited by the tournament's organizer Ivan Sakamoto to take part in a brown belt superfight against Takashi Miyagi. James threatened the pass and choke early on. Miyagi's flexibility and guard kept him safe. Miyagi in counter attack threatened with a triangle / kimura combination which James powered out. James made another attempt to pass and looked like he would get his points but in a scramble was swept. Miyagi ran out the buzzer to win 2-0. Great fight.

Out of the 8 academies that came out to fight and only have 5 fighters we placed 4th overall. 

Nice Job everyone!

Thanks to everyone who came out to support. Dave, Sayuri, Sheree, Gc, Betsy, Emily, Elisa, Jojo and Ali. Having people supporting the fighters makes a huge difference. Hope everyone makes it out next time and maybe will even get on the mats to have a roll.

Finally thank you to the other teams, competitors, and organizers. Great event see you next time.

First week of April...

First week of April and no slowing down. Kids classes are slowly getting bigger. 

We have two of our students from the kids class representing our team at the tournament next weekend. I'm sure they are going to bring home the gold.

Last week we started no gi classes.

Classes six days a week is a lot of work but its good for everyone.

Last week Kawada-San (52 years old) trained 5 times last week.

It awesome have someone so motivated to train every morning class.

We have started an MMA program for people wishing to fight.

Saturday night we covered MMA grappling basics, countering strikers, and general MMA grappling strategies.

Looking forward to another week of training before the tournament.

Last week was crazy I'm still recovering.

We spent the week preparing for Betinho's visit.

His first class covered basics and some new attacks from the triangle.

We had a pretty tough rolling session that day.

In the evening Betinho taught us new drills for both conditioning and techniques.

Saturday's seminar was a big hit and the gym was packed to the brim.

I was promoted to brown belt after the seminar which is awesome but a huge responsibility.

It was awesome to have two other black belts present during the seminar giving their blessings.

All you need to do to get better at BJJ is to keep training, win or lose, never give up.