Here’s a picture of me and Professor Larry on my last day at the Ricardo Almeida academy in Hamilton, NJ.  I feel very fortunate to have had an opportunity to train with this team.  They showed me the most generous hospitality and were amazing representatives of Ricardo and the sport of BJJ.  I hope I get another chance to learn from Professor Larry and Ricardo under better circumstances.

I met Ricardo Almeida today when I went to train.  He knew who I was and he walked over and gave me a big hug and welcome.  After the crummy week I had with my mom I practically started crying.  Kindness costs nothing but it is worth so much.  Here’s the pictogram for Jin (kindness), one of the seven virtues of bushido.

After class I stayed for some randori and Professor Larry tied me in knots.  I notice that when I spar with black belts everything I do is the wrong thing and I have no idea I’m in trouble until I’m starting to black out…

I haven’t blogged for a while because I had to drop everything and fly out to New Jersey because of a sickness in my family.  My mom is undergoing chemotherapy.  The chemo causes severe nausea and is pretty much debilitating.  Anyway, I’m here in New Jersey trying to be helpful to her.

Sometimes if I can break away I go to the Ricardo Almeida academy in Hamilton NJ.  I’ll have to remember to bring my camera and take some pictures.  These guys train hard.  The first twenty minutes of class is taken up with running, cals, and throws.  All of their judo-style throws are smoother than mine, even the whitebelts.  So far, we’ve done hip throws, shoulder throws, and collar throws.  Then the rest of the class is skill training.  If you want to hang around afterwards, there is half an hour of randori.  I haven’t done that yet, because I’m on sort of a tight schedule, but maybe I can make it later this week.

I’m interested in the cultural differences across BJJ academies.  The Ricardo Almeida academy is closer to what I think of as a traditional Asian martial arts environment.  Students bow onto the mat and bow to each other before each go.  The instructors are addressed as “Professor”.  Most conspicuously, nobody is late to class.  Everybody is lined up at mat side ten minutes before the class begins.  As a first-generation Korean American I’m very comfortable with these social protocols and I find I slip into this environment easily.

At Hollywood BJJ we don’t bow onto the mat.  Instead of bowing to each other, students will exchange a fist-bump before each go.  Our instructors command the utmost respect, but we address them by their given names.  Overall the academy’s culture is one of informal camaraderie.  It certainly doesn’t raise any eyebrows when people straggle into class late, which is a frequent occurrence.  Lots of times we have music on when we roll, which I love.  BJJ and AC/DC is an unbeatable combination.

Since I haven’t been able to train much, I’m basically in maintenance mode.   A few posts ago I wrote about wanting to improve my guard game.  I think I’ve made some limited progress in that area.  I’ve been working on my arm bar from guard almost exclusively and I’m a little better with that.  My triangle is still pretty lame so I’m trying to work on that whenever I can.

As my teammates at HBJJ progress I find that the techniques I used to rely on no longer work.  For instance, I used to think I had a decent triangle escape, but I’ve realized that I’m only good at escaping white belt triangles.  A lot of the guys who became blue belts around the same time as me are submitting me with triangles now.  Their submissions evolved and my counters didn’t.  I have to raise my game for sure.

I was talking with a buddy of mine about jiu-jitsu one day and we were laughing about the frustrations involved with the art:  So when do you start to get good at this?

I went to Nationals to support my teammates from HBJJ.  I shot a bunch of video and took a bunch of pics.  I shot video during their matches and photos in between, so I don’t have a lot of action shots.  Here are some of the stills.

Here’s Sam in the bullpen.  I was waiting to video his match but somehow it happened and I didn’t even know about it until it was over.

Adam getting ready to rock.  Adam just moved from Crosley Gracie’s academy in Norcal.  Adam won a silver and fought five hard matches.

Here’s no-gi world champion Alex.  Alex didn’t compete today but instead was on hand to coach a lot of the HBJJ fighters.

Here’s Rachel putting a collar tie on some guy who happened to be walking by.  No, seriously, that’s John a purple belt teammate.

Dane won a few matches and then was eliminated in a very tough match by a cross town rival.

Just a couple of bad asses.  Andrew, the dude on the left, is competing tomorrow.

This dude is living my dream.