One word: treat. It's the only word I can think of to describe Robson Moura's seminar today. I mean the stuff he taught us was quite the most amazing collection of brilliant techniques, all gift wrapped and tied with a pink ribbon and a little courtesy card containing the words: use these techniques and you too will be awesome.
Story book
I've always had the mind set that a seminar should not be just a random bunch of techniques thrown together. It should have some sort of context, or narrative. There should be a beginning, a middle and an end. Even if I have a hard time remembering the exact details of the story, I can still remember my favourite passages - words that I will recite again and again when it comes to incorporating stuff into my game. Today, Robson showed us a quite beautiful series of techniques all stemming from the trick of inverting oneself when having ones guard passed, and morphing that seemingly risky manoeuvre into something devilishly devastating.
Vibrations, they be good
I've been to a lot of seminars and the vibe has always been good. But there was something extra in the air today. You could see it etched on everyone's faces - whenever Robson showed the next stage in the series of techniques, everyone's eyes were popping and mouths were agaping! I kid you not, Robson made us collectively gasp 'WOAH!' for each and everything he taught us. Why? I'll explain more in the next para..
I'm spinning around
Ok so like you know whenever you spar and there's that guy who always seems to pass your guard? And no matter how hard you try to defend, using good solid fundamentals, he still passes? Ha! Robson showed us how to turn that situation, into a submission. Not one, but a whole bunch of them. He also threw in a quite wicked little sweep in the mix too, in case you got bored of submitting people at will.
But here's the cool part. He showed us how to do all that by turning instinct and convention on its head. Your head. Hell, doing jiu jitsu the Robson Moura way means having to quickly get used to inverting all sorts of things. And we all loved it!
The three hours went whizzing by. I can't express enough how stupidly happy I and all the other seminar attendees felt after experiencing this event. It was that mind blowing.
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| Champ Camp with Robson |
Big thanks as ever go to the organisers of the event - Ed Brown and Leo Marcantonio, who together run Champ Camp. It was also lovely to see my friends from other academies again and meet new faces, many of whom read this blog. A big hello also to Matt from Scramble and Omar from K2 who helped support the seminar. Thank you to the Stars Gym in Battersea who granted us permission for the photoshoot. This fitness place is amazing, like a gigantic fitness spaceship from a distant galaxy!
Robson is spending the rest of the week teaching and will then go back to Brazil to prepare for ADCC. It'll be his last big tournament he says. I have no doubt a lot of people will be cheering for this easy going and friendly warrior when they see him in September. Look out also for Issue 4 of Jiu Jitsu Style magazine when it comes out soon. It'll contain an interview with Robson and more of the photos I took from today.
:)
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