I'm Back!

Well, it's been about 2 months since I've posted. Really havn't had much to post on. I've been in the States since my last post and nothing really noteworthy to say, fitness/bjj wise. I did some training at the YMCA and had some great workouts with Terry Bryan at his gym. I'm now back in Stockholm and my BJJ gym has had some major additions! First, Per Eklund, UFC 80, 89 vet and soon to fight at UFC 95 is now training MMA 5x a week at our gym. That is great news! Also, the third unfinished room is now finished. Kettlebell Stockholm is now a part of our gym and holds training sessions 3x a week. We are now to the point where the BJJ training is not open to anyone. It's not first come first serve, now you have to write an email to the trainer, Kenta, and tell him why you want to train BJJ. We are about full to capacity in our night classes. So, needless to say, I'm pretty excited to get back in. I can't start til next week but I look forward to it, especially since we have the Stockholm Open in April.

Later!
Chris

Randomness

Well, the most exciting news as of late is I got a rare perfect score from my teacher on my medical research paper!!

"I am grading your paper towards the end of the rest of the class, and at this point it is easily one of the best (if not at the top)! In every area this paper was very well done, great references, written very well, organized, etc. Thanks very much for the hard work. A pleasure to read. I don't often give perfect scores. Thanks for your hard work on this assignment as well as on the course as a whole. Have a great break! Tom West"

I am pretty ecstatic! As for other news, I am now back in the states. So it's been a bit since I've done any kind of working out or training. I'm thinking of going running here in a few mins, but it is soooo cold outside!! I don't really have anything else to do right now, just kind of chillin (quite literally actually). For the next 3 weeks, I'll probably not post very often being that it will mostly be cardio and lifting, nothing really to speak of.

Finally!!

My medical research paper is over!! I am so relieved! Now I can concentrate back on BJJ, Operation: 6, and keeping on top of posting here. It's been a while! I have been going to BJJ, though I havn't been posting about it. It's been good. A lot of stand-up stuff, as well as the normal ground guard work. I'm kinda blah that I'll be away from training at Prana for 6+ weeks (depending on if Kim goes to Germany for class), but I'm gonna make it work for the best. It will be GREAT to be home though! I really can't wait. So, starting tomorrow, I'll post more about my training.

Later!

The gauntlet

Monday was a good time at BJJ. It was all sparring and passing guard drills. It was pretty easy because we had a blue belt get promoted to purple. At the end of training, he had to go through and spar everyone, with 3 white belts, 3 blue belts, 2 purple belts, 1 brown belt, and then with our instructor, the black belt. I can't wait till I get blue, though that is a long time away, probably another year.

Well, Operation: 6 is off for now. I'm too busy with my 15 page medical research paper. It's coming along, but right now I don't have much time. Basically during the day, I have time when Ollie naps in the morning and some in the evening when she goes to bed. It's due on Dec 1st, but I'm hoping to finish it within the week...

I feel like there was something else I was going to write about but I can not remember... If I do, I'll post tomorrow..

Competition and College

It's been a while without posting. I've been very busy but have been training. I went to BJJ 3x last week and lifted 2x. I'm going to BJJ today as well. I'm definitely going to take part in the Stockholm BJJ Open in March. There's no reason not to. I'll have a good amount of time under my belt.

I'm currently a senior in the degree program: BS in Sport Management specializing in Fitness and Wellness. I'm enrolled in a class on Sport Medical Research and have a 15+ page medical review paper due December 1st. It has been taking much of my time. I'll post the final draft once it's finished. I'm pretty excited that come March, I'll have my degree.. But then, it's hard to say what will take up my time. There's a few more things I have on my mind I'd like to learn, but I'll prob take a small break before I jump in.

This is a little boring of an update. Hopefully I'll have more to say tomorrow about this evening's training!

Stockholm BJJ Open Prep

So here are a couple pics of where we train. It isn't anything special. It's not big. But it's perfectly adequate and really there isn't anything else that is necessary. I like it a lot. Basically there are 2 rooms. We do all of our training in the room in the 2nd pic because it's a bigger room. The first room is used to do kettlebell stuff and other kinds of training before class or used by those who are prepping for competition which would not benefit by the normal class, ie: free sparring or doing no-gi stuff.




So, the Stockholm BJJ Open(SBJJO) is in March. I've been asked by a couple people if I plan on taking part. I don't want to start competing too early. I want to know that when I step onto the mat, I can win. Whether or not I do win is another matter, but I don't want to go to a competition and look like I just started BJJ the week before. I also dont want to make my club look bad. So what I've decided to do is train as if I am going to compete in March. Having a goal that needs to be accomplished by a certain date is much better than having open ended goals. So I'm not saying that I will compete in the SBJJO, but I am going to train hard as if I was going to and then I'll evaluate my BJJ skills as the time draws near. The problem is that I'm going to be in the US anywhere from 6-12 weeks! That's a long time to be away from Kenta's training. However, I will be able to workout more and a friend of mine who owns a gym in Cincy has a BJJ black belt in a couple times a week who I can work with. So we'll see.

Competition weekend

This past Saturday was the Scandinavian BJJ Open here in Stockholm. I did not compete, too soon, but I went to watch some of my team compete. They did good with a decent number of gold medals (and some silver/bronze too). It was cool to see and it just makes me wanna work harder so I can do good in competitions.

Sunday I took a break. Monday I lifted at the gym. My gym time has been kinda boring really. I mean I get good workouts but nothing to speak of. Since I only hit the weights 2x a week right now, I usually do about 45 mins of a full body workout with heavy weights, usually super setting or drop setting. My gym has 3 owners and one of them fights MMA here in Sweden. I don't talk to him much; he's not there too often and when he is, he is personal training. I usually talk to his brother, who is also part owner, and Saturdays we are going to try to get the three of us together and do some sparring. Will be good practice to go against someone who is actively taking part in real fights.

Operation: 6 is coming along, but I must admit, I havn't been doing the full 500 everyday, mostly due to time constraints. It really depends on what me and Ollie do during the day. And I havn't been doing any after Kim gets off work, so maybe I need to start so I can get my full 500 reps in. Also, I've decided to do only one type of ab exercise per day instead of doing combinations. It was too easy to just switch exercises when I got tired.

Tuesday (yesterday), I went to Bjj but Kenta wasn't feelling too good, so he ended up not staying. Not a problem really, we had a purple belt there who ended up leading. Well, there were 7 of us, so we decided to do free sparring, 5 min rounds, different person sits out each match and we round robin so we fight everyone. Free sparring is definitly a good workout with little rest. Of course the purple belt had no problems with us..lol. But it was still good.

I'll probably take today off (Im pretty sore) and hit Bjj again tomorrow.