SENI 07

Gudzukes I just knew it. I opt to not attend this year’s SENI and judging by all reports, the BJJ tourney was a massive success and a must see event.
But it’s not all about me. In a blatant example of reflected glory transference, here are the results of the competitors that DID show and have been a part of Meerkat world in some way:
1. Marie Paule Ahanda, fellow Jikishin instructor at Imperial Ju-Jitsu Club, won silver and bronze in the women’s blue belt division.
2. Remus, the Romanian big guy at Eddie’s RGDA club wins gold in the white belt super heavies.
3. Oliver Geddes, regular email buddy and one time guest at Imperial – joint gold (awarded silver) in the blue belt 76Kg category.
Meerkat extends his paw of congratulations to all those who competed and the continuing success of SENI and BJJ.

byMeerkatsu

in

May 22, 2007

SENI 07

Gudzukes I just knew it. I opt to not attend this year’s SENI and judging by all reports, the BJJ tourney was a massive success and a must ...

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Not a lotta bottle

The Gracie BJJ Invitational tournament at SENI is almost upon me. At first there was a definite resolve to compete, then the resolve turned to some umming and arrring, now it seems, fate has dictated the fact that Meerkat will sadly no longer compete at SENI this year. Shame, as it would have been an excellent opportunity to pit ones skills and learn from the experience. Maybe next year.

byMeerkatsu

in

May 14, 2007

Not a lotta bottle

The Gracie BJJ Invitational tournament at SENI is almost upon me. At first there was a definite resolve to compete, then the resolve turned ...

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Rubber neckin'

Some war wounds from Friday's sparring class. This is what happens if you refuse to tap out to a collar choke - the thin edge of the gi collar grinding into my neck. Well, what can I say, the choke was not on and I felt I could escape (I did), but perhaps received a good deal of unnecessary tissue trauma in the process.
Some of the tips from David Adiv's seminar were beginning to filter through, including improved tips on how to hold posture whilst in the guard (floating hips and stomach down), and how to make it really hard for uke who is in your guard (non-stop attempts at unbalancing using your legs). Simple stuff really, but easy to overlook.

byMeerkatsu

in

April 28, 2007

Rubber neckin'

Some war wounds from Friday's sparring class. This is what happens if you refuse to tap out to a collar choke - the thin edge of the gi...

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Chewing water

Just finished a two-day weekend seminar with 2nd Dan BJJ expert David Adiv.
What an amazing teacher David is. I mean, the sheer quality and attention to minute detail is amazing and just blew my mind away. The emphasis this weekend was on balance and base- the root foundation of Gracie and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
David started off the seminar by showing us a few simple throws. Even here, the insights into where to place your foot or the grip or the turn of your hips of shoulders - you could train this for years and still not get right, but one session with David and he shows you instantly.
Then a long section on passing the guard. Something all us novice-intermediate students frankly are poor on and try our best to avoid if at all possible. David showed us the fundamentals, but taught in a straight forward- this is nothing to be afriad of once you know the basics - sort of way. Here, David's catch-phrases came to the fore, such as: I don;t want to see his knees! Or, if you don't understand this, then you just chewing water!

The final section focused on submissions from the guard, including one amazing trick that I shall not divulge but suffice to say, it is the most outrageously simple choke. Just goes to show, it;s not what you know, its the way that you do it.

I wish I could remember even a tenth of what David taught us these two days. I look forward to his next visit to the UK.

byMeerkatsu

in

April 23, 2007

Chewing water

Just finished a two-day weekend seminar with 2nd Dan BJJ expert David Adiv. What an amazing teacher David is. I mean, the sheer quality and...

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It's back - 24 fighting chickens, the world's greatest martial arts website

Hoorah! It's back. After a lengthy absence, the 24fighting chickens website is back. I thought Rob Redmond had gone into hiding due to the very strong opinions he voiced on his website about his views on karate, Shotokan and the organisation. But obviously, all has become clear. He was busy being a daddy and finding time to do a complete website makeover.
There are some publishings in the martial arts world that every student NO MATTER WHAT THEIR STYLE, simply must read. One is Angry White Pyjamas and the other is this website. Read every article, absorb in the wisdom and common sense, laugh at the humour. Honestly, if any of my online offerings can reach a mere fraction of the depth and wit of this guy, then I can rest in peace. Truly the work of a legend.
Speaking of books and writings. I see the Gracies have put out a couple of new titles. Oh dear, looks like my groaning bookshelf will have to accept a new intake of tomes as these look especially good. I prefer instructional books to videos. I fall asleep to vids, but books you can pick and choose when and where to read them. Mind you, I never actually remember or learn anything from them. I just like buying jujitsu books.

Week 2 of my road to SENI. So far I have managed one run around the park and two sessions of BJJ. Very poor. In fact, I doubt I can really make a good stab at proper training due to family commitments. But I will still compete. Tonight's BJJ class was the best so far. Eddie taught some truly awesome techniques and my sparring was on top form, even managing a baseball bat choke from knee on belly against a bigger guy. But then I had to show off and got caught out in a rear naked. Pah!

byMeerkatsu

in

April 14, 2007

It's back - 24 fighting chickens, the world's greatest martial arts website

Hoorah! It's back. After a lengthy absence, the 24fighting chickens website is back. I thought Rob Redmond had gone into hiding due to t...

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Fightin' Talk

Let me state first and foremost, the Meerkat abhors violence and will always seek peace above all else. But there has been some bad mouthing on the MMA forums and the Meerkat felt obliged to step in and take sides. http://cagewarriors.com/forums/showthread.php?t=32183
When someone slags off your sensei, in the old days, you would be fighting to line up and defend the reputation and honour of your instructor. These days, all the fighting is done online, on internet forums and chatrooms. Today's flaming post is tomorrow's digital fishnchip wrapper - but withe the difference that messages on forum posts tend to remain permanent unless the mod removes them, so it is important to right wrongs and say what must be said to clear the air.

Whilst on the subject of confrontation. A regular at Meerkat's Imperial club reported that he had got into a fight. It was totally unprovoked and, despite several attempts to disengage from the row, it led sadly to him having to 'clock' two of the three antagonists. One of whom was knocked out cold. Rather than feel victorious, our man felt nothing but regret, that he had to use physical aggression to hurt someone, when the entire incident was totally unnecessary on their behalf. A sad world, but I'm afraid young lads high on testosterone and alcohol will always do stupid things - like pick fights with the wrong people.

byMeerkatsu

in

April 11, 2007

Fightin' Talk

Let me state first and foremost, the Meerkat abhors violence and will always seek peace above all else. But there has been some bad mouthing...

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Man Flu

Had the 'Man' flu all week. Pah, still didn't stop me training, although hacking up
greenies every five seconds kinda puts people off wanting to spar with you.
Anyway, today marks the day when Meerkat ups the ante. In 6 weeks time, the Gracie Invitationals beckon and it may offer me one last hoorah before I retire from competitions. The training towards the contest will incorporate 2-3 BJJ sessions a week, 3 runs a week and once a week JJ teaching at Imperial where I will roll with 'volunteers' to help me get more mat time. With my weight teetering on the borderline of the lowest weight category (aptly named rooster weight of under 57.5Kg) I may be in the unenviable position of having to shed a few kilos before the big day.

Leo Negao's Fight First website made use of my Porchester centre pictures. They don;t look too bad I suppose, but I am determined to get a better hit rate in future and I know where I went wrong.http://www.fightfirst.co.uk/portal.htm

byMeerkatsu

in

April 03, 2007

Man Flu

Had the 'Man' flu all week. Pah, still didn't stop me training, although hacking up greenies every five seconds kinda puts peopl...

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Kickboxing Damages the Brain

Image courtesy:Karolinska Institutet


A new scientific study has shown that kickboxing damages the brain. The researchers have found that repeated head trauma by competitive amateur kickboxers affects a specific part of the brain known as the pituitary. This part of the brain is tiny and sits at the base of the brain. But it has a range of very important functions, mostly to do with hormone control. The scientists found that a lot of kickboxers suffered from hypopituitarism – meaning they were deficient in one or more bodily hormones. A BBC report includes a statement from the WKA (World Kickboxing Association): I have never heard of any such damage.

The Meerkat view: Getting hit in the head or face lots, week in week out, hurts (and I definitely know from painful memories of my kickboxing days) and I’m not surprised that it causes brain damage (although the paper did not look into permanency of the damage). Medical and scientific study of getting hit in the head obviously increases the public knowledge about such activities, but I have a slightly sneaking suspicion that the scientists chose a particularly easy target guaranteed to make headlines and coincidentally boost their careers and peer esteem. Don’t get me wrong, I am pro-science and public understanding. But it’s kind of like studying the effects of cars on roads and saying: yep, cars kill in very messy ways, just thought you should know, I’ll go and collect my Nobel now.

byMeerkatsu

in

March 28, 2007

Kickboxing Damages the Brain

Image courtesy:Karolinska Institutet A new scientific study has shown that kickboxing damages the brain . The researchers have found that r...

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Fight First - Porchester Centre, 23rd March 2007

Just got back from the MMA event at the Porchester Center in Bayswater. This is the first event hosted by the Fight First Team and it was not without its hitches. The omens were not good when, two days before, I heard that all the RGDA-UK fighters, including Sami 'The Hun' Berik had pulled out due to injury and an objection from the organisers of Cage Rage Contenders. The argument being that the Fight First Promotion was 'No rules' and Cage Rage do not want their fighters being associated with events that could lead to adverse publicity.


On the actual night, half the remaining fighters either did not show up or pulled out at the last minute, leaving a frantic search for replacement fighters. One poor chap had about five minutes notice before he volunteered to take someone's place. Unfortunately for him, it was against a much bigger guy.
The whole event was therefore a bit of a downer. The interminable wait between each fight was only marginally made more bearable by the capoiera and samba dancing entertainment. But the final showpiece fight of the night ended up being a lightweight boxing match which was more of a scrap than anything you see on TV.
To cap off my night, my photos of the event turned out really crap. My lens was simply not fast enough and I couldn't get a set-up to work well in the poor light and fast action. If you really want to see my crap efforts, click here.
Let's hope the next Fight First promotion is more successful.

byMeerkatsu

in fight, mixed martial arts, MMA, photography

March 24, 2007

Fight First - Porchester Centre, 23rd March 2007

Just got back from the MMA event at the Porchester Center in Bayswater. This is the first event hosted by the Fight First Team and it was no...

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reawakening Dragons

The Meerkat finally got away from the house on Friday to attend BJJ at the new location of the Clapton KO Muay Thai gym. This place is great. Huge floorspace. Wall to wall (soft!) matting, proper changing rooms and showers that don’t block up and decent lighting. It reminds me of Paragon kickboxing gym, but probably better cos Paragon have those annoying pillars in the middle of the room. And with it being only a few minutes drive away from the Meerkat den, I’ll be sure to enjoy training – at least until new baby Meerkat is born.

Sunday’s JJ kyu grading were the busiest I have ever seen. 105 students were present, including a massive 40 going for orange belt. Clearly these were the product of a drive to up the membership and some New Year resolutions taking effect.

Been reading snatches of the book ‘Waking Dragons’
By Goran Powell. It’s a sort of autobiography of this chap who follows different karate styles, leading up to his peak achievement – the 30 man kumite. I haven’t read the final bit yet but his stories about his time with the kyokushinkai mob brought back some harrowing memories of my own time training under this style. The endless knuckle pushups, the squats (oh God the squats), the situps – all done with metronome counting in bad Japanese. The repetition of drills. The unapproachable senseis. I had cold sweats reading about it again.
One thing the author describes that hit home, was his meeting with a Gojo Ryu intructor who would always explain the applications to techniques hidden in the kata – in all the many years of karate training – nothing before had ever been explained in depth. It was a revelation. The same thing happened to me. Four years of hard karate training and all those endless kata. Not one single damned movement was ever explained to me. Once I took up JJ (and I include BJJ too), where the culture is to explain everything in detail (sometimes too much for the brain to handle in one go!), it all made sense. The myth was shattered. As far as I was concerned, if an instructor could not or would not explain why something was being done, either he did not know, or he did not want you to know. In either case, my time should not be wasted on said person/style. I mean you wouldn’t learn to drive a car or fly a plane with the complete lack of explanation that some instructors offer.
I also experienced this with equally non-communicative instructors when I tried tai chi and aikido, but since my time there was short, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.

byMeerkatsu

in

March 19, 2007

reawakening Dragons

The Meerkat finally got away from the house on Friday to attend BJJ at the new location of the Clapton KO Muay Thai gym. This place is great...

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No Pressure

A very contrasting martial arts weekend for Meerkat as I attended a Pressure and Nerve points seminar on the Sunday afternoon, then whizzed over to the Hackney Empire afterwards to watch the 10K submission grappling tournament.

The P&N points seminar was ok. I am not a 100percent believer of this kind of stuff. If you hit a bony part of your body real hard, of course it hurts. Plus all the talk of meridian lines and energy flow is against my scientific education. I think the sensei in charge was also aware of not going too OTT with the talk of energy flows and was keen to emphasise more on the applications and context. For example, a strike to a nerve point on the top of the forearm elicits a buckling of the knees. If you try this in isolation, it may work, it more than probably doesn’t. But add it to a syllabus technique such as defence to a strangle, and suddenly, it makes better sense. There were more syllabus examples with added emphasis on N&P points, which I quite liked. Rapping the top of your uke’s hands with your knuckles, a wince-inducing favourite. Overall, an interesting diversion from syllabus ju-jitsu and worth knowing about, but it didn’t convert me into a full believer of energy flows and meridian lines.



On the other side of the MA planet, the Hackney Empire was an inspired choice of venue for the big 10K Grappling Challenge. 32 elite fighters pitted against each other, only one winner. From where I sat, I had a great view of the event and the big screen showed close-ups and repeats in case you missed something. To my left sat a vocal Mike Bispring (UFC), to my right, sat World BJJ Champion Roger Gracie, yes, the audience was certainly a who’s who of the MMA and BJJ fight world.
The competitors came from all over the world – a sprinkling of UK competitors, the USA had a few, South Africa showed up in good numbers as of course, did the Brazilians. Interestingly, most of the Brazilian v Brazilian contests were kinda chess-like stalemates. They obviously knew all the tricks and were both waiting for mistakes that never happened. But there was quite a few great technical fights, one amazingly flash bout and some, not so good draws. The best two fighters IMHO were 6 times Pan American BJJ legend Braulio Estima and No1 ranked American, Rafael Lovato Jnr. They wowed the audience with their superb display of grappling skills. And then there was Jeff Monson. A leviathon of a man who ploughed his way through each contestant like a bulldozer on high octane fuel. The size of his huge arms are an enduring image that stay burned on my retinas. Of course it was fated that Braulio and Monson should meet in the final. Monson executed a single, superbly timed takedown. Braulio, the magician that he is, could not do anything once the 'Snowman' got his claws in. Time up and Braulio was visibly upset at the defeat. Monson huffed and puffed, arm raised, but was humble in victory.
The first 10K Grappling tournament was a great night and an inspiration to all us students and fans of the fight game.

byMeerkatsu

in

March 12, 2007

No Pressure

A very contrasting martial arts weekend for Meerkat as I attended a Pressure and Nerve points seminar on the Sunday afternoon, then whizzed ...

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A Clockwork Blue Belt

Meerkat World is more like a waiting-world at the moment. I’m waiting for the Cobrama website to be finished. I’m waiting for news of where exactly my BJJ club will be relocated to. I’m waiting for my press pass to arrive for the UK versus France MMA fight. I’m waiting for October, when crossed fingers, our second baby-Meerkat will be born.

At last Monday’s BJJ class, I managed to work my first ever ‘clock choke’ during sparring. My uke, having turtled up, neglected to defend his collars, so in I went for this most awesome of gi submissions. It is basically a classical samurai collar choke. In trad JJ, we learn this by sitting behing uke and reaching over his shoulders to grab the collar wings. One hand pulls across the carotid, the other hand pulls the lapel downwards. Imagine this but on an uke who is curled into a ball on the floor. The submission works properly by keeping the pressure on his shoulder with your hips. The ‘clock’ part of it is the scissor-like movement of tori’s legs in the final part of this move.

byMeerkatsu

in

March 08, 2007

A Clockwork Blue Belt

Meerkat World is more like a waiting-world at the moment. I’m waiting for the Cobrama website to be finished. I’m waiting for news of where ...

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