The Welsh Open Part 1

At some point after Italo Ferreira had departed from teaching the Tuesday night Bristol class at Trojan, but before Chico Mendes arrived, I decided to enter into a competition. The Welsh open was coming up at the beginning of March and I thought that it'd be a good experience. Plus Ian (Rossiter) and Gary (Davies), my instructors, were keen on getting some white belt guys going in for competitions to expand their experience level and suggested that I be one of the guys to enter. I was happy with this. I felt that my nearly two years of training had amounted to something and I was being given a great vote of confidence by my instructors for suggesting that I be one of their guys to enter for competition. My head was enormous. I was getting into a zone. I was believing in myself.

During the build up to the tournament I was training regularly, Tuesdays at Trojan where the classes were conveniently being taken by Ian at the time so it felt like he was gearing the lessons towards me and a couple of my club mates, and Thursdays at Sweat FA where Gary was taking me and the chosen few aside for "special instruction" in the boxing rings. I felt like I learned and advanced my game loads in those few weeks. Particularly in the "start from standing" training. I received a great ego boost when Ben (a guy from Gary's Taunton class) came along with a much vaunted history in Judo and I took him down about 7 times. All the while I was thinking "now he's gonna bust out some uber-throw in a sec and blister my hide into the mat" but it never came. It was a big confidence booster.

Another favourite part of that period of my training was when Gary was putting us into extremely tough positions to escape from and making us work out how to escape without any prompts or help from him. Basically, if you couldn't work out how to escape, you weren't escaping. Memories of a brutally smothering half guard, which took me about 4 minutes to navigate my way back to full guard, were a bit of a low-light though and left me totally exhausted.

Now that brings me neatly on to my big issue at that point in my training. Exhaustion, unfitness in general. Up to the end of 2010 I was used to rolling for 2 to 3 minutes about 3 or 4 times at the end of a class. And I was in such bad shape at that point that I was left totally shagged. When I started the additional training up Italo's class they were doing 5 minute rolls at the end of class. You'd maybe get 2 or 3 in but there was always a rest because the class was so packed. And I was still shagged after this. When Ian took over Italo's class the numbers dropped slightly and everyone could get on the mats for all rolling sessions. Meaning about 4 spars for 5 minutes a pop. Porky little old me was cream crackered. I'd roll the first two at a hundred percent but the third I'd be really sketchy for (you know when your brain stops working textbook Bjj and the sloppy stuff takes over) and the last I was good for nothing. My last spar of the class I would either be laying in my opponents guard trying to put pressure on their neck and hoping they don't fight back or I'd have them in my closed guard locked solid tight and every time they made a move to break I'd pull them in close or make like I was trying a gi choke (something which I had neither the strength nor the motor function to pull off) to stall the fight to the end. Poor tactics I know. In short I was in no condition to be entering into a competition.

This was highlighted in my own mind when Gary, at the beginning of all this competition shenanigans, asked us (all Somerset Jiu Jitsu Alliance guys) via facebook, what weight categories we wished to compete in. At that time I was a traditional English Stones and Pounds kind of bloke. I knew that I weighed about 14 stone 10 pounds (8 pound off my fattest of 15 st 4) so I entered that into googles to find the equivalent in Kilos and a reading of 93.4 Kg came up. Cool, I misguidedly thought, that means I can fight at White Belt Adult Heavyweight. Trust me, when you look at me you do not think Heavyweight Grappling Competitor. I relayed the info to Gary and everyone else via our wonderful Club FB page to which I got a good round of you fat bastard comments. Gary then pointed out to me that I had to weigh in with my Gi on which would weigh about 1.5 Kg at least so I needed to lose a bit of weight or risk not getting in (or getting entered in the category above, thank f*** I didn't pick that option). So I hit the gym.

I did about a month of interval training on on the cross trainer and bike 3 or 4 days a week. For my efforts I lost about 3 and a half kilos, probably would've been more but I refused to alter my diet (idiot). I was weighing about 14st 3 and I looked a bit better than when I'd started. Still a chubber but my cardio had improved slightly. On the day with my Gi on I weighed 91.4 kilos. At the time I felt good about that.

So being fitter than I'd been for 3 years and all trained up with (what I thought to be) my new super takedown ability we ventured off to sunny (overcast actually) Cardiff for the Welsh Open.

Continued in Part 2 \m/