Grappling Industries: Montreal Sub Only Feb 1st 2014

This was supposed to be the 2nd sub only event of the year for us, but The OJA one in Kitchener got shut down by the snowmagendonpocalyse that was a minor snow storm. It was pretty disapointing for everyone involved, but there was nothing the OJA could do, the venue shut them down. But, this post isn't about that It's about last weekends road trip to Montreal.

It started out like a typical drive to Montreal, so that means horrible traffic from Mississagua to Whitby.  We headed out around 3pm, and got to our hotel at around 10:00pm.  Which isn't actually that bad, we made great time past whitby, and only took 1 gas/food/pee stop.

We stayed at the Novotel near the Mirabel airport. It was only $100+tax per night, and had free parking and wifi.  The parking and wifi are two of the biggest factors when I pick a hotel.  It's great that a hotel is like 75 or 80 per night, but if parking is 15 bucks (or 20 or 25, or even 35) and there is a fee for the wifi, suddenly $100 looks a lot better.  The room was quite nice, the headboards had cool lights built into them, that we didn't discover until we were heading out in the morning. We couldn't hear people in the hall, the beds were comfy, the room was big enough, and the bathroom was quite nice.   The pillows were kind of flat, and there was only 2 on each bed, so that kind of sucked, but if that is the worst thing about a hotel, I'll stay again.  The bathroom doors were weird, and there wa s a gap in them, which meant zero sound proofing. I swear, this is the one thing hotels can't get right.  We DON'T want to hear everything that is going on in the bathroom!

Anyway... We did our ussual morning routine for these events, go weigh in for the very start of weighins, then head to Cora's for breakfast and back to the venue intime to digest, relax, and get ready to fight.  Cora's is a bit pricey, but it's realiable, never very busy, and pretty close to the venue.

The event started with a 20 minute sub only super fight between Gabe Sagman and Steve Shipinkas.  It was a pretty entertaining match and ended in a draw.  Steve did get a penalty, which the reff used to award Gabe the win, but that was changed right away, since it was only 1 penalty, and it was sub-only, ect.  Neither guy dominated enough to be declared the winner so a draw was a fair outcome.

Next up after the super fight was the GI Super Absolute. This was IBJJF ruleset, open belt, open weight, open gender and it was an extra $10 to enter.  I admit, some of the match ups that happened were pretty interesting, but I am not a huge fan of the concept, especially the guys vs girls thing.   I'll be the first to say that women should be allowed to compete in men's divisions if there is no one in theirs, but to hae the potential for a 120lbs white belt women to fight a 250lbs purple belt guy,  It's just asking for injuries.  There were quite a few girls in the nogi version, and none of them made it out of the first round (that I saw). I admire them for giving it a go, but It's not something I will ever do.  Toronto's Sub only coming up in March has the trips as prizes for the super absolutes and I am pretty disapointed about it.

Anyway... The format for the tournament was round robin, where you get 4 (ish) fights, and then there may or may not be tie breakers. A win by sub got you 3 points, decision got you 2 points, and a tie got you 1.  This worked pretty well, but got a bit tricky when you ran into people who didn't show, and people who dropped out to injury. These were treated as decision wins, and got the "winner" 2 points.  I think, down the road, they would be better of re-doing the draws after weighins closed so that no-shows were eliminated and everyone got a fair shot at getting the full 12 points for 4 sub wins.    After the round robin, if there was  a tie, we did tie breaker matches.  If, after the first 5 minutes, there was no clear winner, they fought another 5 minutes, and another 5 after that if there was still no clear winner.  I only had a few of these come up, and almost all of them had subs in the second 5 minutes, or were clear cut after that 5 minutes.  I don't think anyone ended up in the 2nd overtime.

I reffed for the first 1/2 of the morning, while switching off and watching a couple of new(er) referees.  The I competed in my division (blue+ open weight) and went straight back to refereeing till the end of the day.  My second fight was a real eye opener for me.  I fought Ashten, and she is really tough!  It made me see that I really need to tighten up my game and never give an inch. it was a really good match, and I look forward to competing with her again down the road.

As you probably know, grappling industries uses really small mat areas. It's something I've complained about as a competitor and a referee on many occasions.  I know mats are expensive, and they have limited venue space, blah blah blah blah, but it is DANGEROUS to have such small areas, with such limited safety areas between them.  Especially with inexperienced referees who cannot control the fighters they are refereeing.  On Saturday, I saw fighters repeatedly ending up on the mat beside them, and even once, on the mat beside that.  This is ridiculous.  The referees need to be more assertive, and have better positioning,  the fighters need to have better awareness of where they are, and the tournament needs to have bigger areas and/or bigger saftely areas between them.

This issue was highlighted by a situation that happened to me, while refereeing min-afternoon.  I was standing at the edge of my mat area, keeping myself between the fighters I was refereeing, and the mat behind me, focused on those fighters, when, out of the blue I got full on taken out from behind.   Thankfully, my fighters were still standing, were paying attention, and stopped and waited, while the fighters from the mat behind me climbed off me me (while i was pretty much face planted) and I dragged myself up.  I rolled my ankle and got some pretty awesome bruises from the whole ordeal, which isn't to bad, all things considered, but it could have been MUCH worse and should NOT have happened.

On to happier things.  Pura had a pretty great day, we had 4 people competing:  Steve, Jon, Andrew and myself, and took home 6 medals.   Steve won gold in gi and nogi,  Andrew won gold in gi and bronze in nogi, Jon won Bronze in gi (did not compete in nogi) and I won gold in gi (did not compete in nogi).  Steve was on fire, subbing all his opponents handily.  Jon had a bit of a rough day, he'd been sick for over a week and was still quite under the weather, but he still managed to put a guy to sleep.  Andrew dominated his gi division and looked good in his nogi division as well.  His gi final was a tie breaker that he won after overtime by decision.

I'm not entirely sure what happened, but the gi absolutes for the guys just didn't happen.  My division was already combined, so I didn't have one.  Since there were supposed to be "Season Passes" for the winners of the absolutes, Andrew and Steve were suposed to compete for them.  They both ended up getting a seasons pass, I guess because they were the only ones that followed up about it, or they gave all the winners one, I don't know.  I also earned a seasons pass by winning my division (which was, in reality, an absolute).  Having the season pass will be a nice cost saver for us, since we attend so many competitions and they add up quick.

As the day was winding down, some mats finished way before others,  the mat I ended up refereeing at for most of the afternoon somehow had way way way more matches then the others, so I pawned a few off on 2 other mats.  Then I ended up being done before one of those mats (the other still finished ahead), so I got some of them back.   The guys were giving me "can we go yet" faces for about an hour and a half, so I found one of the other referees who had not started till later in the day, and got him to take over for me.  Thank You for that!  It made me get home at 2am instead of 3 or 4 am!

Yea,  2 am.  We left the venue around 5pm, and it was snowing. Surprise, a snow storm, when we are on a road trip to Montreal.  If we are going to Montreal, between Oct and May, there WILL be a snow storm. It's a fact, it's science, and it cannot be disputed.  The 401 was snow covered and kind of drifty from Montreal to Kingston, where there was a bit of a break, then again from just past Kingston to about Ajax and sporatically on the outskirts of Toronto. Once we hit Toronto proper it was just went so we could make decent time.  In the snow covered bits, we varied between about 60-80km/h.  We saw a bunch of cars in the ditches, and a plow that looked ot be stuck as well, which is kind of hilarious.  I was having flashbacks to last february's nightmare trip TO Montreal, but the good news is, my car handled the snow fine. It stayed out of my air filter, so I am confident we are going to get to the trials without any car trouble this year.

The event Photographer did a really great job taking pictures.  He got a good mix of the mat areas, and got some great shots. You can see the album here on facebook.  As ussual, there are plenty of pictures of me looking stupid while refereeing.  I swear, not a single picture exists of my refereeing where I don't have a stupid look on my face, or am in an awkward position, or am just generally looking stupid or fat or something.  I might have to open up a bounty for event photographers: First one to get a good, flattering, not ugly picture of me refereeing will get a prize.


That's about all I have to say,  overall it was a pretty good event.  It ran surprising quickly considering the format, but I would like to see longer matches, I think it would end up with less draws, but, then we need more mats, more refs, more staff, more space, or we would be there all night.  I'm looking forward to their Toronto Event on March 29th.

Coming up next for me is the Abu Dhabi Pro Trials in Montreal on Feb 22nd.  I'm attempting to cut to the -145lbs weight class, and let me tell you, my body is not a fan.  It's not a fan of middle weight, let alone 145 with a gi on, but I think I will make it.  I SHOULD be able to given what my scale says my body fat is, but who knows, time will tell.   We have a pretty good size crew from Pura heading out for that Trip, so it will be a fun weekend!

Also coming up, just confirmed, announced, registration opened. Is Ascension on March 1st.  This is one of my favourite tournaments of the year.  Omar puts on a great event.  I think I wil just be refereeing though, since Pans is only 2 weeks later, and last time (Ontario Open last year) I competed that close to a major event, it didn't quite work out my way, and thousands of dollars were wasted.  Wasted might be a bit harsh, but I ended up on the sideline for months, wasn't able to compete at worlds, and wasted over a week of vacation time on the trip.

See you on the Mats!

Tournament Draw Systems Part 3 - Round Robin

So, we talked about Single Elimination, and Double Elimination already, the only other system that is really used is Round Robin. 

Round Robin is a weird one,  it's got a million variations, and it makes a big difference how large the division is as to how it works.  The basic premise is that everyone fights everyone, and whoever has the most wins, is gold, and second most is silver, and third most is bronze.  Of course, nothing is ever that simple in the real world.

Generally, if a division is larger then 5, it will get split into "pools",  so you only fight the people in your pool, and then the winners of the pools move on to a single elimination bracket.  Also, generally, the number of pools is kept to an even number, that makes a nice single elimination bracket at the end.  The pools aren't always the same size, so sometimes people will have more fights then others.  

Sometimes, only the top 1 from each pool moves on, and sometimes top 2.  in this case, the #2's fight the #1's from the other pool.

Confused yet?  Let's add another complication.  Sometimes (quite often) there is a tie, in a pool,  in a 5 person pool, two fighters go 3-1, now what?  There are a couple ways to determine the winner:

1. Who won the fight between the two?  That person is #1. (If there is a 3 way tie, this falls apart)
2. It goes to points:  X points for each submission, X points for a win by points, and X points for a win by decision.
1. If those points are tied, it sometimes goes to who score the most points in the matches, or who won their matches the quickest.
2. Generally with those criteria someone comes out ahead, but in case they don't I would think that another fight between them happens, or they go to the first criteria I mentioned, who won the fight between the two of them.

There are many different ways that round robin draws are visualized, There isn't really a right or wrong way, but I think there are varying levels of complication and understandability when it comes to the draws.  

This style takes up the least amount of space, and is easy to calculate, BUT, it is a bit confusing at first.

This might need a bit of explanation.  Each ROW represents that persons matches.  They don't fight themselves, that is why there is that diagonal line of greyed out boxes.  Each fight, in this style of sheet, is represent in 2 boxes, one for each fighter.  As with all my other samples, the match number is in red.  The purple is all things the draw person would fill in.   As you can see, there is a lot more information that has to go into recording round robin,  to handle the times.   Personally, when I am running a mat, I record how they won for all types of sheets, just to be safe, and for the promoters records.  If I am feeling crazy, I'll write the match time down too.  

So, in this case, who gets what place depends on if they are going by option #1, or option #2.  

If we go by option #1 we have a situation,  the each loss to each other,  Fred beat Bob, who beat Same, who beat Fred. If Matt had won against Fred, then we would have had a tie for first/second and a tie for third/fourth.   Let's figure out who wins what medal,  in that revised senario.

Going by option #1.

Bob beat Sam, so Bob get's first, and Sam gets second and based on our revision above, Mat beat Fred, so Mat gets 3rd and Fred gets 4th, leaving poor, winless Joe in 5th.

Going by option #2 (still with the revision of Matt beating Fred).

Bob and Sam both have 3 wins, 2 of which are subs, and one of which are points, so in the round robin scoring, they are tied.  Next we look at how many points they scored in the match that was won by points.  Sam scored 14 points and 4 advantages, while bob scored 4 points and 2 advantages. So,  Sam wins Gold and Bob gets silver.  

Going by option #2(with the original, scoring showed in the image)

Bob and Sam are still tied on the round robin scoring, and Fred, who only has 1 submission, 1 points, and 1 decision, loses that tie breaker and gets third place, Sam still gets gold, and Bob gets silver. 

It's important to note that the round robin scoring (X points for sub, Y points for winning by points and Z points for a decision)  ONLY comes into play when there is a TIE of wins.  You cannot play the numbers,  lose more matches, but end up with more points to get the gold, no matter which way of figuring out ties is being used.

Here is another style of sheet, filled in for the exact same scenario:

In this mode,  the order of fights and who fights who is a bit more clear,  but, calculating the totals is not nearly as handy.  

Fun fact,  technically, the top or first name is supposed to be the blue/colour fighter.  So, if you are ever competing, and see the draws ahead of time, dress appropriately, or get the silly belt ready.  At big tournaments like the IBJJF worlds, for the black belt finals, they REQUIRE you to follow this rule, first fighter MUST wear ROYAL BLUE(not navy, not black, not white).   This isn't a new concept, Judo has done it forever.  At big judo tournaments, you have to wear the right colour gi as well, that is why I had to bring 4 gis to every tournament.  (a spare of each colour, in case of blood).    I personally, as a referee, fan, and competitor, like this policy, it makes keeping the fighters straight so much easier.  I hope it becomes a trend in NOGI to.  maybe have a white based rashguard and a black based rashguard or something.

I mentioned Pools earlier.  Let me illustrate that system for you now.  I got a bit lazy, and just changed the names, and the outcome of fight #10.   In a case like this, each pool could be run on a separate mat, and then the semi and final matches run once the pools are complete. Alternatively, they could be alternated doing 2 matches from pool #1, then two from pool #2 and so on. 

Now, this is all well and good, when you don't promise a number of matches to your competitors, which, the main user of round robin here in Ontario does.  Grappling Industries uses their own wacky version of round robin where you fight 4 people in your division. There isn't pools like in a standard system.  So if you have a division of 20 people, fighter # 1 might fight fighter # 2, 8, 10 and 19, then fighter #2 might fight # 1, 10, 17, and 4,  and so on.  Divisions of 2 you fight the same guy twice, divisions of 3 you fight each guy twice, divisions of 4, you get three fights.  and divisions of 5+ you fight some subset of the fighters in the division.  The table gets a list of matches for the division, which has the fighters names, and a column for the winner and what they won by.  It does work quite nicely for keeping the mat running, but it's difficult to keep track of the points and who's fighting who.

They end up with a LOT of ties,  some of which I think could be avoided using a proper pooling system.   When there are ties at grappling industries events they take all the tied people and have them battle it out in a single elimination bracket. 

This all might change, since they partnered up with Mata Leao to do their draws.  I hope they start using a more standardized system because it can cause a lot of confusion for the fighters, and the table workers using this style.

The other time you see round robin in Ontario is with KIDS divisions at OJA events. They use sheets that look similar to the second example.  For the very young kids, they split the categories into pools small enough so that every kid gets a medal, and for the older kids, they split them up so that the kids get a few fights, and then the pool winners go to a semi final and final single elimination bracket.   I think this is really fair for the kids, because it sucks for everyone to lose 1 fight and be out, and while I am all for kids learning by failing, giving them they opportunity  to compete in more then 1 match is good for them.

So, that wraps up the round robin.  There are probably some complexities that I have missed.  It creates a lot of matches, but It's a system that can create a lot of experience, and is pretty good for fairly assessing the true best competitors. 

  

  

Grappling Industries: Sunshine Blvd Sept 7th 2013 Recap

Grappling Industries was back in Toronto this past weekend for a smaller event then their past events.  I didn't count the competitor list but  it we ran 5 mats with about 90 matches per mat.  In the past there have been as many as 14 mats but with less matches per mat. 

First, I have to say, as a referee I LOVED the setup.  The small mat areas they have had in the past has been the biggest negative for their events.  They had very large mat areas, with a double row between for a safety area.  I wasn't run into from a neighbouring mat area once!  Only having a single row(of mat areas), Instead of two also allowed for better viewing for the spectators.  Speaking of spectators, the fee was 15, which to me is pretty high,  but they post what it is on the website so I can't complain to much, and as a referee I didn't have to pay, so it didn't affect me.
 
There are a few reasons why I think.the event was smaller then their past events.

1.  The proximity to the GTA classic.  This is a well established event that a lot of people really look forward to.  It's a solid tournament that is always in mid September so people plan to attend it.  Hosting an event only two weeks before will certainly make you lose some potential attendees.

2.  Their last event in Toronto was only 6 or so weeks earlier.  When the Ibjjf comes to a city twice in one year, its 6 months apart, not 6 weeks, they do that for a reason!  They also have another event at the end of October, 6 or 7 weeks away again.  There is lots of talk of an over saturated market, and I think they will feel the pain of it hosting 3 events so close together. 

3.  It was the weekend after everyone went back to school.  Kids are just getting back into their school routines, post secondary students are settling into their school year homes and parents are dealing with kids who are back to school.  The last thing on any people's mind this weekend is a Jiu jitsu competition!

So yeah, it was smaller, but it was well run, there was really good competition in a lot of the divisions and there was acai!

I love acai bowls.  I discovered them when we went to Costa mesa for the first AoJ training camp is summer 2012.  I had resisted trying them until the last day of the camp because I don't know why.  Anyway, we.all went the the place just down the road from AoJ after class and waited like 40 min for the bowls, it they were amazing.  Fast fwd to worlds 2013, we were in Costa Mesa for a few days before and I was really watching what I.ate for the first few.days because I was still disillusioned into thinking I could compete, but then I realized I could not,and ate a bowl the last day we were in Costa mesa, and then every day at worlds. 

So anyway, a couple guys from Toronto Bjj have started the Acai Cafe and this past weekend was their first event!   The bowls were simple, just granola and banana,  it they were really tasty anyway.  They seemed sweeter then I remember from California,but that could just be me.  Hopefully next time they have a few more toppings like coconut, peanut butter and cocoa nibs.  The prices were reasonable considering the costs to get acai packs up here.  The bowls were smaller then California,  it that's not terrible because the ones in California are almost too big.  Just a side note,  they will be at the GTA Classic next weekend, and also at the next Grappling Industries Toronto event as well.
 
Ok, enough about acai. 

I got to referee some pretty excellent matches and I was also requested to not referee some other matches.  This is a first for me, and I have to admit I was pretty shocked and sad when David came over to my mat and said someone wanted to have a different ref for their matches.  This was a first for me and I didn't take it very well.  I'm sure it's nothing personal, maybe they don't like that I ask the fighters to switch sides so I can raise their arm properly. Who knows.  Anyway, after that, I sat around for a bit and got over it fairly quickly after I ate some pizza and acai.

One competitor stood out for me while refereeing the blue belt -154 gi division.  The whole division was pretty stacked with some amazing fights,  Myles Allen hit a pretty sweet triangle on Kevin Wheeler really fast, which was almost disappointing, because I was looking forward to seeing them really duke it out ya know?  Props to Myles though, he has sick triangles.

But, That is not who I wanted to talk about, one of the competitors went 4-0 in the round robin, winning every single fight with a loop choke!   Milkias, from Body of Four, has ridiculous loop chokes!  It's scary how he sets them up, from almost any position.  Standing? No problem, Guard?  done,  Getting guard passed? done.  It's like Jon and his silly baseball chokes!  I had an inkling about that he worked them a bit, when he was training at the redstar training a ways back.  He hit it on a few people there.  Those were good times,  I hope we can do that redstar training again soon.  Maybe I'll actually be able to roll this time! Back on topic:  Loop Chokes are pretty awesome, and I think I might want to start working them into my game a bit.  That's right, me... doing a choke, we shall see.  I'll probably just end up using it to set up an armbar.

One other thing about refereeing that I wanted to talk about was how disrespectful a couple of coaches were to some of the referees.  If you think you know the rules so well, put on the tuxedo shirt and bowtie and try doing the job yourself.  Seriously.  I know, as a coach, you want your fighter to win, but abusing the referees isn't going to help them.

One particular case that stood out in my mind relates to the infamous baseball bat choke.  Fighter A had fighter B in his guard,  fighter B passes, and fighter A sets up a baseball bat choke, but incorrectly his arms never crossed so fighter B, who is passing is never in danger of being submitted.  The referee gave the 3 points and eventually fighter B ended up back in fighters A's guard, 3 points ahead.   Maybe the coach didn't see that the choke wasn't being effective because of the angle, but that doesn't give him the right to make a scene and insult the referee the way he did.  Even if the choke was effective, I've seen HIGH level referees(at IBJJF events) give pass and back points for competitors stuck in baseball bat chokes(I've seen points given to a guy as he promptly takes a nap) so to go off about how terrible the refereeing is because of a situation like that is even more ridiculous.

Personally, I had one case where I had the crowd pretty upset with the delay in giving an advantage.  There was a scramble, I can't remember exactly what, and one guy almost gets the other guys back, he's got one hook in, and is controlling pretty well, but never get's that 2nd hook in.  Anyway,  the crowd is yelling for the advantage, but I am focusing on the fighters, and in my head reviewing how they got there to make sure I didn't miss points or an advantage for the other guy before I give the advantage for the back.  It probably looked like I wasn't going to give the advantage so I can kind of understand why they were yelling for it.  So I didn't let it phase me.  I just hope that people didn't see the delay as me being influenced by the crowd to give the advantage.

The event started on time, as usual, and ran pretty close to ontime.  Nogi did start a bit later then estimated, maybe by 1/2 hour or so, but there wasn't much a lull between gi and nogi so that wasn't to bad.   I headed out a bit early, since I was going camping, but 2 mats were already shut down, and it was pretty much just absolutes running when I left at around 4:15pm.

As with pretty much every tournament I have attended as a spectator/competitor/referee/other  there was some confusion about which techniques were legal and not legal for the various ages of kids.  I was lucky to not have to referee kids, so I only had to keep what's legal for different belts straight and not worry about ages.  You'd be surprised that adults sometimes don't even know what they are allowed and not allowed to do.  Anyway,  with the kids, guillotines are not supposed to be allowed and there were some matches where they happened.  I don't want to blame anyone, but it sucks for the kids when they get guillotined(and the refs stops it before they even think about tapping) and lose, when that technique isn't supposed to be allowed for like 5 or 7 more years!

As referees, especially for kids, we really need to review the rules and know what is allowed and not allowed.   Like I said, this happens all the time, not just at Grappling Industries but it's something, as a referee I know I even need to work on, because I was asked the next day, which subs are legal and which aren't and I couldn't nail down a solid list off memory.  I usually have a copy of the rule book with me at tournaments (IBJJF Rules for ones that follow that anyway) so I can reference it before a match If I have to ref some kids of various ages and I think perhaps tournaments should supply an easy to read, clear, and detailed list of what is allowed at what ages/belts for the referees, but also for the coaches and spectators.

Grappling Industries is making some pretty major changes to their events for their next one in Toronto, On October 26th.  You can read about the new changes to the format on the announcement post here.  The highlights are: kids will be split between white and colour belts, and white belt kids will be no-sub, while colour will follow the IBJJF rules for allowed subs.  Finally, they will be changing the weighins so that nogi will use the IBJJF nogi weight classes, and Gi will use the Gi weight classes and weighins will be done before your first match, instead of the night before/first thing in the morning.

 I am a fan of pretty much all of this, except for the weighins not being first thing in the morning.  I love the first thing in the morning weighins, it gets it out of the way, it lets you know who is there and who isn't and it keeps things running better throughout the day.  Jiu Jitsu is pretty much the only sport that uses the right before the match weighin system and I don't know why it loves it so much. I know it's to combat weight cutting, but It generally just means people who are naturally close end up fighting hungry and dehydrated.

Coming up next (in my best Mike Goldberg voice):

The GTA Classic:  Saturday Sept 21st in Toronto.  There will be Acai, samurai swords, food bank donation collections and lots of Gi Jiu Jitsu.  It's pre-registration only and registration closes sometime next week. I couldn't find the date off hand. I imagine it closes on Tuesday or Wednesday.   You have to be a member of the OJA to compete and you can register through the OJA's website.

The Canadian Submission Expo aka Sub-X:  Sunday Sept 21st in Toronto. This is a really cool charity fight show that will feature the absolute finals from Saturday's GTA classic as well as a bunch of other really great super fights.  It's all for charity and well worth the trip to Toronto for the afternoon.

JCC GTA Invitational: Saturday Sept 28th. This is a kids/juniors only event put on by the OGA.  These tournaments are unique in that it's kids only and they use simulated submissions for the younger/less experienced competitors (this means they only have to lock the submission on, not apply it).  They've made some changes about what is allowed at what age/belt so make sure you check the rules before you go!

Zombie House Submission League: Saturday Sept 28th.  This is a really cool event that has been fairly "underground" for the last couple years.  It's basically sub-only matches that go 5 minutes, and you get as many subs as you can.  It's a very chilled out atmosphere and very friendly.  It's split up by weight classes not belt and there are handicaps applied to the various belts, so if a white belt subs a purple, it's worth way more then purple subbing a white.  It's worth checking out on a Saturday afternoon.

Grappling Industries Montreal: HWY 401 Edition.  Saturday Oct 5th They are moving up to the big gym at the same location, and using 5 big mats like this past weekend in Toronto.   The last event in Montreal was pretty cozy, so this will be a great change.  They are giving away 8 trips to the last Grappling Industries event in Toronto for 2013 (Oct 26th).  If, you happen to be from the GTA, you can always cash out the prize.  I like the idea of giving trips to Toronto, I hope it gets some more mixing of the Jiu Jitsu scenes in the two cities.

SAU: Autumn Jiu Jitsu Games. Saturday Oct 12th in Montreal.  I still have not made it out to one of these events, and I don't think I will this time around either. But I have heard a lot of good things about it. They do a double elimination Gi tournament, and a subonly nogi event in one day.  Worth checking out if you are in the area.

Ottawa BJJ Open: Saturday Oct 19th  Sunday Oct 20th in Ottawa.  This is a Gi Only event that should bring out a lot of the Ottawa area teams that don't often make it out to the GTA or Montreal events in big numbers.   You need to be a member of the OJA to compete and it is pre-registration only.

Grappling Industries Toronto: Pans Edition: Saturday Oct 28th. This is the event I mentioned earlier with the format changes. Don't tell me I didn't warn you about the weighins when the time comes.  They are giving away 5 trips to California for the IBJJF Pans.  If they get 500 competitors, they will double that and give away 10 trips!   That is absolutely crazy.  I may just register and fight with 1 arm!

So, that is a busy time coming up. There are a bunch more events to round off the year, but I think that is enough for now.  I'll probably be at all the grappling industries events, and any of the ones in the GTA.  It's not really worth it for me to travel to the non-near by ones unless I have teammates competing so we shall see about Ottawa and the SAU event.

IBJJF Toronto Open August 3 2013 Report

I've been putting off writing this report and I could say it's because I'm busy at work, or training, or beating The last of us, but while that is kind of true, it's really because I'm just not really excited to write the report.   The tournament was just kind of mediocre.  There was nothing super horrible that stood out, and nothing super amazing.  So I just haven't really felt a lot of drive to write about it.  But, writing about tournaments is what I do, and I promised I would, so here we go.

There were a few things that were not great.

1. The date:  what is with big tournaments coming to Ontario on long weekends?  Five did it in on Canada Day weekend, and the IBJJF comes to down on Civic Holiday weekend.  Don't these people understand that Canadians like their long weekends to be away?  Also,  Toronto was super busy this weekend with some food festival going on, and, oh yea, the Rogers cup, at York University,  where the tournament was.
2. The location:  I mentioned it already on the date, but it's worth mentioning in two points.  Don't have a tournament at the same university campus as the rogers cup (kind of a big deal tennis thing apparently)  and then have no directions or information about where to park, which part of the building to go to(if you were lucky to find the right building easily) and whether you have to pay for parking.  We were lucky, we got there super early (no thanks to the parking lot that was the 401), and there was a tiny lot close to the building we needed.  The one ticket machine took my card, charged it, and didn't give me a ticket, but a different one worked.  
3. The scale was heavy.  A LOT of people complained about it.  A LOT of people were left running and skipping after being well on weight, or under on their home scales, which are usually accurate.  2 of my teammates didn't make weight.  One showed up late (because of the traffic, parking, and location issues) and didn't even get a chance to check before he had to weigh, and was dq'ed, even though he had a lighter gi he could have worn and likely made it.  The other, after flying in the night before and cutting and making weight on the hope scale, was a couple pounds over, and couldn't cut it fast enough.  
4. The scales were inconsistent.  The outside "test" scale was weighing people .5 heavier then the inside scale, so it was extra heavy.  This is alright, in theory, but it makes people cut extra weight and tire themselves out, just to end up being .5 under on the official scale.  Listen, If you are going to have zero weight allowance have accurate scales that are consistent.  Test them with multiple weights to make sure.  
5. Ghetto IBJJF score boards, as usual.  I complain about these every time, but I KNOW the IBJJF has good score boards, they had them at worlds.  Use them at all the events PLEASE!!!!   It's not impossible to tell the time by looking at the video recording, but it's not perfect with pauses and whatnot.  Not to mention,  it helps everyone make sure the timekeeper is doing their job.  Let's be honest, we've ALL seen it happen where the time keeper puts 5 instead of 6 minutes on the clock, or forgets to hit start or stop.  It happens more then you think and can be a case for serious issues.  If we could see the time, we (as spectators, coaches, referees) could keep the timekeepers on the ball and know when they are making mistakes.   Not to mention, it's nice as a fighter to be able to see how much time is over / left.  
6. No warm up area.  We are spoiled in ontario. The OJA always has a warm up area, it's not always big, and it's generally crowded, but it's there.  Five brought a warm up area, and Grappling Industries has introduced one as well.  It's past time the IBJJF stepped up and did the same.  They already have a corralled off area, just put mats on it.  
7. Spectator Fee: Ok, I know these are pretty standard,  but is it so hard to put it on the tournament information page on the IBJJF website,  and tell us if it's cash only?  Or maybe,  put it on the facebook event,  or tweet it, or ANYTHING!   I know in the states cash is still the more common way of paying for things, but seriously, no one around here uses cash for anything anymore.   I was left scrambling, and thankfully my buddy David helped me out.  it was nice that it was only $5 though.  Props for that. 
8. The Staff:  They were ok, for the most part.  But there were a few cases of people who didn't seem to be fully trained for their jobs.  This is a pretty common problem at tournaments, and especially when it comes to only hosting a tournament once a year and using a fresh staff.  They were all quite friendly and were working hard though, so this is really more of a neutral point.  
9. The entry fee. 100 bucks for early bird, I think it was 120 or 125 if you registered late, which wasn't really late at all, it was when most people register.  That is EXPENSIVE.  It was less last year,  even WORLDS was only 100 bucks.  I think they hid the OGA fee in the tournament entry fee, which is sneaky and I am not a fan.  I understand paying a lot for a high quality tournament, but, this tournament did not offer ANYTHING that other, cheaper tournaments don't(unless you count the t-shirt and gracie mag i mention below, but you get that at worlds to).

So, apparently there were a bunch of things that were not great... once I get going on a rant It just kind of keeps going and going and going.  A lot of this is pretty minor and a lot of it is pretty common among many tournaments.   So, please,  if you run a tournament, do not make these mistakes.  

We can't be all negative, well, we could,  there was that one tournament in Michigan that really had nothing good about it.  But, this tournament had lots of good points to:

• The photographer they had, Veron,  did an amazing job!  He's been around the Ontario scene taking pictures at quite a few events lately and he is a pro.  He always manages to get the pictures of me making funny faces when I announce the winners of fights while reffing.  Seriously though, he's got some great timing in matches and takes great photos.  He didn't stick to just one mat, or division, and covered the event really well. You can see the photos here on the ibjjf album.  (This point is totally a ninja edit, I don't know how i forgot to mention him originally, but seriously , he is a great event photographer).
• Started On time:  Even early actually.  My teammate Steve was lined up and ready at his mat almost 15 minutes before the start time. Their match (which he won,  fairly dominantly (until the last few seconds when he got to relaxed and almost got bow and arrowed)) started at 10:00 sharp.  But the mid afternoon they somehow ended up a bit behind schedule, but It was manageable.  They should probably have more mats next year.  
• Competent Referees:  I didn't see any terrible mistakes by the referees. No blatant robberies or really bad calls.  That's not to say they didn't happen, but I didn't see any.  The refs weren't always quick to give points, maybe double checking in their head the situation was right or whatever, I don't know.  I just realized, there was definitely one questionable call.  My friend Arwin got ankle locked and knee reaped. You can see it in this picture.  Ankle locks are tricky, because, like in this case, the guy getting ankle locked can roll that way and it turns it into a reap.  
• Free T-shirt and Gracie mag. Everyone loves getting an event t-shirt and having a gracie mag to entertain you on the drive home, or while waiting for team mates or whatever is nice to.  
• Schedule out a few days before the event.  This is pretty helpful for planning, and they have a fairly detailed schedule which is nice.  
• Brackets online the night before.  They may not have really announced it well (or at all) but they were up by Friday afternoon.  Some people like to see who they are fighting, some don't. It's nice to have that option.   It would be even nicer if they were in a simple PDF or searchable, instead of the ridiculous silverlight app, but hey, it's better then nothing.   It would also be nice if they were posted on the wall at the venue. 
• More black, brown, and purple belts then last year.  Last year, I think there was only 1 blackbelt division and absolute. This year there was 3, or maybe even 4.  There were a bunch of brown belt fights, and tonnes of purple.  The scene is evolving and I like it!  I hope this trend continues at more tournament in Ontario. 
• More ladies were there then last year.  Last year, I don't think there were any purple belt women, no masters women, and only a handful of blue and whites. This year, there was a purple division, one or two masters divisions, lots (well, relatively lots, for women) of blues, and lots of whites!  It was nice to see.  
• More international feeling then last year. Last year, there was a few from the states, and Oli Geddes to give the tournament a non GTA feel.  This year, Oli Geddes was back again and there were a LOT of unfamiliar faces from New York especially but also a big team came from Ottawa and other fairly long drives away.
• There were some great matches.  The purple feather and light weight divisions were ridiculously competitive.  There some serious wars in them. Congrats to Arther for picking up his first IBJJF Gold!  The black belt matches were pretty excellent to.  Gringo Vs Andre Figueira was great.  Andre went after a baseball choke which was quite sneaky and put a stop to Gringos pass for quite a while.  Gringo managed to get past it though, and ended the match with his back going after a bow and arrow.  Speaking of baseball chokes! There was another guy in Jon's division who put someone to sleep with it!   It was weird to see!  They ended up faceing each other, and Jon lost, but not by the baseball choke. I'll be honest, I probably would have laughed pretty hard if he had been caught by it. But Jon respected the grips (maybe to much) and didn't try to pass when he had them set up.

Pura had a decent sized team out, but with a bunch of us sidelined with injuries and away on vacations and whatnot they weren't able to reproduce last years 3rd place results.  Everyone looked really good out there though. Especially Greg Young,  man, that guy is scary.  He is so explosive and balls out, I would not want to have to fight him.   I hope he competes more because it's pretty entertaining to watch.  

Tomorrow I find out what my sports doctor wants to do with my shoulder.  There is a small tear in the labrum, and in my bicep tendon.  No big tears, so maybe no surgery. We shall see what he says.  Either way, competition is still pretty far down the road, since I tried training earlier this week, and ended up hardly sleeping at all on Monday night because of it(truth be told, it's quite possible i just fell asleep on it wrong, because it didn't really hurt when I went to bed).

Next weekend we make the drive up the 401 to Montreal for Grappling Industries No Gi Worlds something something something. Should be a pretty good event,  they are giving away a couple trips to No Gi Worlds which would be cool to win. Alasdair and Jon will be competing, I'll be refereeing.  Should be a fun time. Then on Sunday WANDERLEI SILVA IS IN TOWN!  Tickets are very reasonable(and they are supporting relief efforts in Haiti), and it should be a cool little event.  I'll be there talking pictures and stuff.

September 7th is the next grappling industries event in Toronto.   Here is the poster.  They are giving away a bunch of trips, as usual.  I've got my fingers crossed my shoulder will be magically ok by this, but I think that is an unrealistic dream and I am planning on more like maybe the IBJJF Montreal, or even something early 2014.  

Also coming up is the GTA Classic.  This is one of the OJA's best tournaments.  It's a good back to school kind of event.  Gi only, so it's not a super long day. Plus they give samurai swords to the absolute winners, which is bad ass.  (I'll be honest, the quality of last years swords is a bit suspect, but maybe mine was just a lemon).  Registration opens Friday(August 9th), and the first 50 get a t-shirt!  

There is a cool new site in the works called True North BJJ.   It's focus is on getting tournament information out there that is useful for people.  It's going to steer away from the Meme's and bro-ness that seem to be around on a lot of jiu jitsu communities and work more on getting quality content that people who do jiu jitsu in Ontario and the surrounding area want and need like transit information for tournaments. You can find them on  twitter and facebook or their website.  Look for some content written by yours truly to be there soon(ish), as I get time to write it.

Don't be surprised if you don't here from me till after grappling Industries Montreal. Life is pretty crazy right now, with my work moving to Hamilton(YAY), and probably going to be starting seeing my phsyio therapist regularly (and for doing more then a few range of motions exercises) plus lots of strength training outside of that.  

I'm going bike shopping this weekend I think, it would be pretty pathetic for me to drive the 6-7k to work when the weather is nice.  I'll probably end up biking some days, taking the bus there and running home some days, and then when the weather gets shitty, driving.  I haven't really biked since like 5 years ago camping, and before that, it was probably almost 5 years to.  My butt was super sore after that, but hopefully it adjusts quickly.  I think I'm just going to get a super cheap one first, and then if I actually get into the habit of biking, maybe next spring save some money for a fancy one. I don't want to spend to much, b/c let's be honest, downtown Hamilton isn't the safest place to have a bicycle.

IBJJF New York Open April 20th 2013

ROAD TRIP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I love going on road trips, especially Jiu Jitsu ones!  On Thursday night the 5 of us piled into my little accent and drove down to New York City for the IBJJF Open.   Well, actually, we drove to New Bergen, New Jersey, which is just across the river from New York City proper.

Staying in Manhattan is insanely expensive, and not really that convenient.   Your looking at 200+ per night, for a room with one bed, or maybe 2 doubles, if your lucky.  But, they you have $25 per day for wifi,  $50 or 60 per night for parking, no free breakfast, $25-$45 per night for every person over 2 you stick in the room.   It adds up,  FAST.    Our stay cost a total of $535 bucks or so,  free breakfast, free wifi, free parking,  and we snuck around the extra guest fees.  Either way, we saved a TONNE of money by staying outside the city. I would recommend it to anyone going to New York for a tournament.  Sure, the neighbourhood wasn't ritzy, but we walked around fine, not nervous or scared for our lives.

Anyway, we got to the hotel around 12:30 or 1am.  I checked us in, and we went through the back door to get to our room (to avoid the front desk seeing we had 5 people when I booked for 2 lol).  It was more convenient going through the back anyway, the front lot was very hilly, which is a pain in the ass in a standard car.

Along the drive, I saw some interesting sites, while the boys took naps, played video games, and watch get him to the greek.  That is a freaking hilarious movie by the way.  Russel Brand is a funny funny guy.  I saw about 5 gophers,  a herd of deer, a solo deer,  some hawks,  10 or 12 trailer parks,  lots of mountains, and trees, and water.  Once it got dark, it was a lot less interesting, and once when we were driving through some seriously heavy fog,  or a cloud, hard to say,  It was much less interesting, and much more stressful.  I couldn't see more then 10 meters or so in front of me.  It's crazy how fast some people still drive when they can't see shit.   I just got behind a truck and followed the tail lights, knowing trucks can't stop fast, so I wouldn't rear-end him. 

We stopped in Lafayette for gas, it's a tiny little intersection of a town, outside of Syracuse.   The sign said there was a gas station at the exit, but then failed to have signs pointing which way to go.  A couple lucky guesses and we found it.  They had all sorts of amazing snacks and road trip friendly food at the station. It was a gas station, convenience store, pizza parlour, and grocery store all combined in one.  It MAY have been the only store in the town.   They had flavoured cheese curds,  little cups with cheese and pepperoni in them (super keto diet friendly), and not to mention the usual selection of nuts, chips, 80 million kinds of pop, and energy drinks.   The bathroom was surprising clean as well!

On the drive home, we took a very different way.  It's weird how a GPS will take you to a place on one set of highways, and then take you home on a different one.  It always takes us to Montreal and back 2 different ways as well.  We didn't change any settings or anything either.  Even weirder was, after a pit-stop for gas, it changed our route!  We ended up having an ETA of 2 minutes earlier then it was before our stop.  We cut across back roads instead of following the highways,  It was interesting to see the countryside of New York (outside of buffalo).  It was a bit annoying to have to slow down for all the little towns, but was a lovely drive over all.

So....like I said earlier, we stayed in New Jersey, at a Holiday Inn Express. I love the Holiday Inn Express line of hotels.  You always know what you'll get.  I've stayed at a few of them, and they are pretty reliable.  The breakfast is pretty much the same at all of them as well. Though, some have a waffle maker, and some have the automatic pancake maker.  Either way, you get eggs, bacon or sausage, lots of different bread options, coffee, juices, and either fresh waffles or fresh pancakes. What more can you ask for for free?

Our room had 2 queen beds, and a sofa bed.  After setting up the bed and testing it out, Steve opted to leave it as a sofa, not a bed.  Sofa beds are the worst, I have never slept on one that was more comfortable in bed form then sofa form. The room was really big, had a nice tv,  a mini fridge, and a microwave!   The outlet situation wasn't great, but we manged to keep all our devices charged.  I forgot to bring my power bar, which has 3 outlets, and 2 usb ports.  It's compact, and super handy for hotels.  I would recomend them to anyone who travels with a laptop, a couple phones and other random electronics.  It's so frustrating to have to try to find outlets hidden behind all the furniture.  A lot of hotels just weren't built for today's electronic device obsessed culture.

On Friday, we slept in,  had breakfast, then sat around debating how to get to time square for a while.  We opted to go with the "Public Shuttle"  which wasn't quite public transportation, but wasn't the hotel shuttle either.  It was 3 bucks per person, each way, which is a pretty good deal.   We roamed the streets around Times Square for a while, didn't do much shopping.  We did go to foot locker, where I bought some socks, and then couldn't find the guys back. I panicked and thought they left me there!  I walked up a bit, and couldn't find them.  I tried to call Jon and Brad's phone, but got straight to VM. I found a starbucks, and was going to try to get on the wifi to post on facebook, when Steve texted me,  turns out they were in the store the whole time!   I don't know how I missed them, and they missed me.  But, crisis averted.  We carried on to Central Park.

Central Park is pretty cool, the last 2 times I was in New York, we didn't get a chance to check it out, so I am glad we did this time.   We probably spent almost 2 hours wandering around,  watching random guys doing some little dances and trying to get money.   The one group looked like they had a lot of potential,  the guy did a handstand and did a little dance while hand standing.  But, they seemed to not be interested in actually doing much, so we got bored and left.  I tried to convince everyone to go on the carousel, but the boys would have none of it.   The park was full of trees and bushes and flowers that were already blooming!  Made coming home to the brown grass and mud extra depressing.

On the way back towards the port authority,  Steve stopped at some ritzy store to get a present for his wife.  It was pretty funny, they opened the door for him, but then didn't bother holding it open for the rest of us, apparently we didn't look rich enough hahaha.  We didn't mind waiting outside though,  It was really nice out and we didn't really want to look at the store anyway.  5 hours later... we were on our way.

We were really hungry, so started looking out for a place to eat.  We walked past Carnagie's or something like that, but it was vetoed, then we opted for a place a couple doors down, and Steve was like "If we are going to a deli, we have to go to Carnagies".  Man, was he ever right.  This place was amazing.  They pack you in like sardines, I have no idea how it meets any fire code standards.  The washrooms are in the dungeon down stairs, and it's all very cramped and claustrophobic.  I would NOT recommend it to anyone who doesn't like crowds and busy atmospheres.   But,  the food, oh man,  it was amazing.

 Our sandwiches were MASSIVE.  I could only eat 1/2, and I wasn't even eating the bread.  I got the Bacon whoopie, or something like that.  It had about 2lbs of chicken salad on it, and then about 20 strips of bacon.  per half.   It was super tasty, and gigantic.   Jon got an omelet, which wasn't that exciting, but it was big, and tasty.  Alasdair got an egg sandwich of some sort, which was the biggest breakfast sandwich I've ever seen.   Steves lunch took the cake though. He got the roast beef sandwich,  it was more like a mountain of amazingness with a piece of bread underneath.  He gave Alasdair a bunch, I ate a bunch, and I think Brad did to, and he still couldn't finish it!  The gravy on it was the best gravy I have ever tasted.

If your not on a diet, or trying to make weight for a tournament. You HAVE to go there. and also, you have to get desert. Oh my goodness, the size of the cakes.  It took all my willpower not to order it.  Apparently they taste just as good as they look to.  Speaking of desert, and completely unrelated,  apparently the cheesecake factory has a low-carb cheesecake that is keto friendly. I really want to go there and try it.  Maybe while we are in California I can get some!

Alright, so, now that we are completely stuffed, we headed back towards the port Authority, which, for those of you who don't know,  is where ALL the buses that come to Manhattan go, basically. It's a gigantic bus terminal.   On the way, we stopped at a surf shop (Elements, i think) and the boys looked at some board shorts.   They were planning on going swimming, but turns out, the pool wasn't opened anyway.  No one bought shorts, b/c none of them had any lining in them, and they all seemed like they would be pretty see-through when wet.

Carrying on,  took the shuttle back to New Jersey, and hit up Old Navy, the liquor store, and some fancy ladies clothing store.   Old Navy was fun, it was gigantic, and very spaced out, like they didn't have enough stuff to fill the store,  I think everyone bought something there,  some cheap t-shirts, some nail polish, shorts, and jeans. I'll let you guess who bought what.  At the liquor store, the boys wanted some beer for after competing on Saturday.  It was insanely cheap, they went with Heineken, which is gross, but then, all beer is gross, so I suppose it doesn't really matter.  I found some "Skinny Girl" pina coloda pre-mixed drink.  It was pretty tasty, and sweetened with stevia (i think).  They also had some vodka ice tea that was sweetened with stevia and had pretty much 0 carbs, but It was like 40% alcohol, and I didn't really want to get wasted, so I went with the drink I could sip away at without getting the sightliest tipsy.   I only had 2 small cups, that were mostly ice full.  I don't know what happened to the bottle, I hope it made it to my fridge, it was pretty good.

So, as we were walking back to the hotel, with our booze in-hand, we walked past this weird fancy women's cloths store, and in the window, they manikins had these AMAZING tights on. They were super busy, with kind of comic book style drawings on them.  Alasdair actually pointed them out to me, and I HAD to have them.  I haven't tried them out yet, they certainly aren't spatz, but even if they hold up for a few classes and 1 competition they are worth the money.  They are glorious.   I just have to work up the courage to actually wear them, without hiding them behind giant fight shorts that cover all my legs.  Maybe I need a new pair of fight shorts to...  something a bit shorter, but still modest haha.  I think, even if I had like 10% body fat, I still wouldn't be comfortable wearing just tights to grapple in. No matter how amazing they are.

I suppose I should talk about the tournament, since that is why we went to New York in the first place....

The venue is on the north end of New York,  near Harlem,  if you walk for a few minutes, away from the venue, you will end up in some pretty interesting neighbourhoods.   That being said, we didn't end up anywhere sketchy, so no big deal.   The parking situation is not idea, and neither is the check-in process.   There is a lot, right on campus, but it was for the referees only.  There is some street parking, but it filled up very fast (we were there by 8:15 or so, and the streets near by were all full). Good ol' garmin saved the day, and we found a lot about 10 min walk away.   It was down a big hill, which was a bit tiring with all our crap getting to the venue, but was lovely getting back to the car at the end of the day.

The check-in process was two-fold.  first, you line up on one side of the road, and they check your name off a list, and give you a stamp (or for spectators, you pay $15!!!! and get a ticket). This was surprisingly slow, but not as slow as the next step.   Since New York seems to have some kind of crime/gun problem.  You go across the road now, to the actual venue, wait in another line, and get your bag search, and go through a medal detector.  This isn't a terribly slow process, but when there is 1000+ competitors,  it kind of takes awhile. 

The gymnasium itself is quite nice.  Very big, with bleachers on both sides.  They weren't pulled out all the way, and got quite full towards the middle of the day.   There were a LOT of people standing in-front of them, around the barricades, so navigating to the weigh-in area was a pain in the ass.   The bathrooms were small, but the girls at least, was kept fairly clean.  They were a bit run-down but not as bad as a lot of the ones I've seen.  Why can't schools keep there bathrooms nice?  It would have been nice to have a bathroom/locker room combo, so there was more room for people to change, but whatever. 

The tournament, like all IBJJF tournaments, ran like clockwork.  Right on time, all day.  My absolute ran about 15 minutes early actually.  Which was a-ok with me, it was a long freaking day.   It might be time for the New York Open to move to a 2 day format, so they can have more competitors, and not be running the event till 8 or 9pm. They had to close registration really early (like weeks before the event), so there is obviously demand for a bigger tournament,  2 days would solve that problem, and the long day problem.

Alasdair was up first,  he won his first fight quite handily with a triangle.  It was a great fight, he controlled the pace and handled the guy well.   His second fight was a back and forth war.  He did a great job working his guard and keeping the guy in his guard, and it ended up going to a referee decision.  The referee choose the other guy.  It really could have gone either way.  I think  a few advantages could have been score on either side, but I cannot argue with the way it went.

Brad competed in the light weight master division.  I usually give people a hard time for fighting in masters, but hey,  If your a master, and there is a decent size division, I guess it's alright.   If there was only like 2 guys in the division, I would have given him a hard time, but there was 8 or so i think.  Anyway,  Brad won his first fight on points,  it was a really good fight, and he was never in trouble in it.   His second fight didn't go so well, he scored a nice sweep, but it went down hill after that and he ended up loosing by triangle.  Still good to see him scoring a win at a very big tournament.

Steve Estey was on fire!   He won his first fight dominantly, he was calm, controlled, and very methodical.  It was great to watch.   His second fight was very close,  with him winning due to a penalty that the other guy had.  It was very closely matched.   I didn't see a lot of the fight, I was busy losing in the absolute.  It was great to see Steve winning gold.  Hopefully he comes on more road trips with us.  This was the first road trip that he has come along with and he's fun to travel with.

I suppose since this is my blog, i should talk about how i did.  Badly, Poorly, awful, terrible, sadly, pathetically, embarrassingly  and any other negative adjective you could come up with.  Man, I was bad.   I don't know wtf was wrong with me, but it was not my day.   the first fight, i pulled guard terribly, tried to keep a weird position, turtled, stayed there for some reason even though I didn't have a leg, and then promptly got bow and arrowed.  Not good. I didn't do a single thing right in the entire fight.  Not one thing.

The absolute fight was almost as bad.  We did a bit of stand up, but I couldn't get much going,  not committing enough.  I give up on that, and pull DLR.  I hit a berimbolo pretty much perfect,  That was awesome.  It was one of my goals for the weekend.  But, we went out of bounds, so we got stood up and I only got an advantage.   She pulls guard, and i spend the next 6.5 minutes stuck in her closed guard.  It was awful.  I'm so bad at it.   I've got a million reasons  excuses  as to why I am bad at it, but none of them are really good enough to justify the situation.  It's something I need to fix, I just need to figure out how to get past all the things stopping me from doing it.

A few other locals and friends were there competing.  We hung out with the gringo crew most of the day.  They cleaned up their divisions pretty nicely.  Nihad won his divisions, and destroyed the ankle of guy in the final.  His guard work is a thing of beauty.   Antonio got 2nd, losing a very close final on points.  It probably should have gone the other way though.  He passed to mount at one point, but the guy was still spazzing, even though he was passed for probably 8 seconds, he didn't get any points.  I don't know if he got the advantages even for it.   That ref was pretty on top of things for most of the day, so maybe he saw something we didn't from the stands.  Andy also won his division.  I didn't see much of his fights, but what I did see, he was pretty dominate!

Also local guys, Alesandro got silver in his division,   and Scott Bacon won his division.  I didn't see a lot of their matches, but the bits I did, they looked great! Jonathan from Open Mat lost to Nihad in the semi's  and got bronze.  He also did the absolute, but I have no idea how that went.   Also competing from the area was Eric Phan, but I don't know how he did,  and Oscar DeWitt, who had a bit of a rough day.

So, I think that is enough about that...

This weekend We are in Montreal for the Grappling Industries event.  I've got 2 girls in my division :)   Looking forward to rolling with Sissi again,  She dominated this tournament last time around so it should be a great matchup!   There is one other girl, who I don't know, so that'll be fun to,

In 2 weeks is the Ontario Open, where I will make my middle weight debut!  I'm about 1.5 lbs over right now, but it shouldn't be any problem to make by then.  I'm hoping there is someone in my division to fight and it hasn't all been for nothing.  I am doing middle at worlds to, so I guess it's good to be there before hand anyway.   Speaking of worlds.... Jon and I are heading to Costa Mesa  /  Long Beach March 24th - June 2nd!  It's going to be amazing!!  We are training at Art of Jiu Jitsu for a few days, then heading to Long Beach to compete at worlds.  Alasdair is also going to be there, he is heading up even earlier and we are flying back together.

Hopefully my blog post about tomorrow doesn't take so long to get up.  It's been a crazy week of working, training, and car shopping and visiting my dad(who is recovering from surgery).

This novel is long enough!   See you on the mats!

IBJJF Boston Winter International Open Trip March 3rd 2013

This past weekend Jon and I made the trip down to Boston for the Open.

 I've had to expand my competition attending area geographically because there just isn't really anyone to fight locally anymore. It's a sad state of things, If I want to fight in more than one or two tournaments a year, I HAVE to travel. The sadder state of things is that even with traveling all the way to Boston, for their biggest tournament of the year, I still was alone in my weight class. But, there is always the absolute, with a whopping 4 girls entered.

So, here's how the weekend went down.

I left work around 2:30 so I could do a bit of running around before picking Jon up at the arranged 3:00PM. I headed to the bank to grab some american cash (sadly at only 0.97 to the dollar) filled up the gas tank and bought a couple sugar free rockstars, and then picked Jon up from work. We headed straight to the airport since we had packed everything up the night before and had put it in the car in the morning. 

The border is always an adventure, you never know what they are going to do, one of the last times, we had to go in the car x-ray, which was new and exciting, but took almost an hour. Thankfully that didn't happen on Friday, or we would have been freaking out. We were on a fairly tight schedule with our flights departure at 6:40pm. Anyway... We got the usual questions: citizenship, where do you live, who owns the car, where are you going, for how long, who is competing? Oh? just you? What are you bringing in? Then, he asked me to turn off the car, step out and open the trunk. That's a new one. usually they just ask you to Open the trunk from inside the car. Of course, the trunk is empty, so he was all "Where is your stuff" and I was like, "In the back seat".. "Oh, take off the cover". No problem, nothing under there but a spare tire. He seemed satisfied that we weren't terrorists and we were on our way.

We hit traffic once we were in the states, so it took about 1/2 hour longer than we expected, which was annoying, because we both had to pee! We opted for the closer long term lot, which is like $12/day but still a very short walk to the terminal, instead of our usual long term B lot, which is like $9, but you have to take a shuttle. Buffalo Airport parking is soooo much cheaper than Toronto, just one of the reasons we prefer to fly out of buffalo.

So we get to security, and go through the scanners, and I'm waiting for my bags to get scanned, and my purse has set off the scanner. In my head I'm going "Awwww man, what did I forget to take out this time???". The lovely TSA lady was like "Who's bag is this?" and I go "It's mine, what did I forget this time?". She didn't seem amused. She takes it over to the desk, puts on the rubber gloves and starts rummaging around. To be helpful I said "I don't mind if you just dump it all, I know it's hard to find things in there because of the lining". Again, not amused. So, she rummages around for a minute or two, and finds one of my swiss army knives. Ooooops. "There's one" she says. "in my head I go "one? what? am I dumb enough to have 2 in there?".... rummage rummage rummage... "Here's another". DAMNIT! Why did I have 2 swiss army knives in my purse??? I don't remember what exactly I said, but It was along the lines of "I forgot to dump my purse out on my couch before I left". She put the purse back through, and didn't find anymore, thank goodness. But, now I had the choice of going back and checking a bag with them in it, or bringing them back to my car and going back through security. At this point, our flight was leaving in less than an hour, so I didn't really have time for those options. So, now I am short 2 swiss army knives.

The worst part about this part of the story is that, once we were through security, we found our flight on the board, and it was delayed. So I had time. *sigh* We decided to get a bit to eat at the restaurant right by security, since it was also close to our gate, and seemed like it was the best bet for "real" food options. It really wasn't. Everything was deep fried, or a sandwich. I'm playing with doing a keto-diet right now, so none of that was really an option. I opted for the steak and cheese sandwhich, and just ate the toppings. Jon got some onion rings, and something else I forget. Very nutritious food. Jon's stupid card wouldn't scan b/c his magnetic strip is worn out, I've told him to replace it a million times, but I think he just avoids it so I have to pay for more things LOL. The waitress thought it was because we have chip cards, she didn't seem to understand that that is just an alternate way to use the card, not the only way.

So, we head over to our gate, and it turns out our flight isn't leaving until 8:45. What a pain in the ass. All that rushing around, losing my knives, getting out of work early, and careful scheduling for nothing. The plus side is, we got $25 each credit for JetBlue because it was over there "allowed" time. 10 more minutes or so and it would have been $50. Too bad. Thankfully our flight was direct and we were deplaned in Boston by 10:30 or so.

This is turning into a novel. Oh well, that's what happens when I go on an adventure. Carrying on...

The car rental was pretty smooth, they had lots to choose from, and it was a bit of a different procedure than other times we've rented cars. Basically they walked us out to the lot, and told us the options and said "Which would you like?" We choose a bright orange Dodge Dart so we could find it easily in the parking lot, and remember which car was ours. We didn't really like how the car drove, it seemed like the gas and brake were both overly sensitive, and it wasn't that comfortable. The trunk was gigantic though, and once I got the seat back, and lowered, it had decent space for a small car. The whole thing felt kind of cheap though.

Our hotel was a pretty typical Holiday Inn Express. Free WiFi, free parking, free breakfast, decent TV and a fairly comfortable beds. They are my go-to hotel these days. We stayed in Braintree, because it was way cheaper than staying in Boston proper, and it was only like 10 min from the airport and venue. Braintree is such a weird name for a town, I wonder how it came to be? 

On Saturday we went to Bruno Amaral and Nathalia Azoff's school in Medford to do a bit of training. They have a great little school and it was really friendly and fun. If you remember from a post a while ago, Nathalia is the one who stole my trip to worlds at the first Toronto Grappling. and by stole I mean, came , kicked my butt, and then we became friends. She's ridiculously good, and it was a lot of fun to roll with her, and her teammates. They have a great group of ladies at their school to. There was almost as many ladies on the mat as there were men!! Unheard of! Embarassing fact, I forgot my belt at the hotel, because I had be rearranging my bags, so I didn't have to lug all 3 of my gis and cloths around for the day.  I felt pretty stupid, and kind of disrespectful showing up with no belt, but it was a pretty casual class, so it wasn't world ending. Thank you Professor Bruno and all the guys and gals at their school for allowing me to train with you. It was a great experience and I can't wait to come back. 

After training we did a bit of shopping. First we went to Building 19, which is pretty much the American equivalent to Liquidation World (which I think went out of business, funny, they sell stuff from other stores going out of business, then they do.). Jon picked the store, apparently he has read about it on Something Awful and other internet places he frequents. We found some interesting things, like a bunch of copies of the same book, with 2 different prices. Bottles of body wash that were obviously Irish Springs, but with paper labels hinting that that is what it was. Some old books from like 1995, and shoes that looked like they were from the 80's. All in all, it was a bit disappointing, but a nice littler diversion and good for a laugh or two.  

After that we hit up this GIGANTIC mall a couple blocks from the hotel called South Shore Plaza. It had 4 entrances from the main road in Braintree, or, what seemed to be the main road anyway. This mall had more department stores than a small city has I swear. It had: Lords and Taylor, Sears, Macys, Nordstrom, and Target. Alright, I guess that might not be as many as a small city, but it seems a bit excessive for 1 mall don't you think? Anyway, it was a really nice mall. It had a lot of the usual stores. I hit up Body Shop, since they tend to have more selection than here in Canada. They had a sale going on, where you play plinko with a lip balm and get whatever discount it lands on. They basically all worked out to 50% off, just differently, like buy 2 get 2, or 50% off, or spend $20 and get $10 off, or spend $40 and get $20 off. Unfortunately mine ended on spend $40 get $20 off. Normally this would be great, it's not hard to spend $40 on all the delish smelling amazing products they have. It's a lot hard to spend $40, on things you can take on a plane, without checking a bag, when you don't wear makeup. So, I hit up the travel section and stocked up on small size body wash, lip balms, and body butters. Their new sweet lemon flavour is pretty excellent.

We also hit up PacSun, which is a skater/surf store that we don't have here in Canada, think west 49, but a little less juvenile. They had a t-shirt sale on, so we picked up a few RVCA t-shirts for $10 each. I bought this ridiculous one with a bunch of cats on it.  We browsed Macy's and a few other stores, then got bored and hungry and went back to the hotel for the night.

Did you know Domino's now has stuffed cheesy garlic bread? Our hotel key told us about it, and of course, Jon had to order it. It's pretty tasty, but not as amazing as it looks on the commercials. Worth a try though, if you're into that kind of thing.

Now, what you've all been waiting for. Me, talking about the actual tournament!!

So, Sunday morning, we checked out and headed for the venue, note to self, and to future people going to this tournament in the future. The address is NOT where your Garmin GPS will bring you. That may be the closest real address, but it took us about 25 minutes of wandering down the roads and driveways in the area to find the actual athletics complex venue. They really should put a map to the actual building on the website. The venue was nice, but they should have pulled out another set of bleachers, It was quite crowded and a lot of people were standing in front of the barricades because there wasn't a lot of room in the stands. 

The setup was a typical setup, with a fenced in area that only people in gis were allowed in. I wasn't even allowed to check my weight in my street cloths. A bit of a PITA, but a good policy to keep it from getting over crowded with people who aren't supposed to be in there. The gi check and official scale area was very small and crowded. It caused traffic jams, and made it difficult to get in and out of the area between matches and whatnot

The organization of the tournament was pretty much what you would expect from IBJJF, except that single person divisions kind of got lost in the chaos, so we had to remind them a few times, and kind of bully our way in to get weighed in, and our divisions closed, so we could register for the absolute. I saw we, because pretty much all the purple, and brown women's divisions were solo divisions. I think that the IBJJF should combine Purple brown black for the women, for the Regional Events like Toronto, Chicago, Boston, Montreal, and the like. It's not necessary at the Pans, Worlds, No Gi worlds and NO Gi pans, but for these other "local" events, It really sucks to make the trip, pay $115, make weight, and then have only the absolute. 

Speaking of the absolute, I lost. To a feather weight. *hangs head in shame*. Man, Erin Herle is so good. She's got ridiculous guard retention, and kept making me sit down on my butt lol. She's also deceivingly strong for someone so small. I really think it's time for me to start lifting heavy things. Anyway, we had a great fight I think, It was a 7 minute fast paced war. She put me in more bad positions than I've ever been in a fight, but I managed to escape them all, with out panicking, and that is a victory for me. This was a tough event for me mentally, coming off of over 2 months off from a bad concussion. The weeks leading up to it I was having some minor panic moments where I would be sure I was going to get kneed in the head again and end up having to quit jiu jitsu. I would play scenarios through my head of what I would do if that happened. How fat I would get, how lazy I would get, what would I do with myself? It wasn't good, but I got past it, thankfully. I did get kneed or elbowed in the nose, it's still a bit tender, but it didn't bleed or anything. I also got some styling gi or mat burn below and around my eye. That's how you know you've had a good fight. 

As you probably read on Facebook, I had a bit of a scheduling conflict, the last flight from JetBlue (my preferred airline) was 8:50pm, and the schedule came out weeks after I scheduled the flight. Turns out the absolute wasn't till 6:40. That's complicated, considering we had a rental car, and you're supposed to be at the airport 1.5h before your flight leaves. I talked to the head table guy, and he said he could close the absolute registration after all the women's purple belt fights were done (which was 3 I think) and then we could run it right away. He was mistaken, not his fault. Because it was posted online and everywhere that it closed at 5:00, he couldn't do it any earlier than that. OK, we can still work with that. So at 5:05 they called our division and asked the other 3 girls if they minded fighting then, instead of 6:40. They were all for it. So we were done by 5:45 or so. Erin Herle won the absolute, which made me feel a bit better about the loss. After watching the other two fight, I am looking forward to fighting them in the future, I think they will be good fights.

The tournament organization wasn't perfect. There were a couple times where there was 0 fights running on the 8 rings. This didn't last long, but It's something to improve. I think it's partially because they were to cautious with the schedule, and partially because they scheduled to many divisions to start at the same time. This caused traffic jams at the gi check and weigh in area so no one could get started. They should have staggered it so that only one weight class was on the scale at a time, so they could get started without having to wait for the other ones mixed into the queue.

The awards area and medals were all the standard IBJJF. Super shiny gold, shiny silver, dull bronze. I've got a gold, and bronze to add to my collection, but I don't really care to talk about them, or even say that I won them, because I didn't win them. While it is true that it's not my fault that I had no one to fight, and that I did train, and make the trip, and show up, I still can't justify saying I earned the gold medal. The bronze, from the absolute, I can almost say I earned. No, I didn't WIN a fight to get it, but I did fight for it, so that's something. It was a good fight to, not just me getting tapped out in 5 seconds. There are so many debates on the internet about default medals. I'm still not fully committed to one side or the other. I think that is because, as a female fighter, It happens to me, and my friends so often, that we have a different perspective of it than the light weight guys who always have tonnes of people. They never experience what it's like to have no one, or less the 4 people to fight to EARN your medal. Does the fact that there was only 4 in the absolute make Erin's gold worth less than one of the men's divisions that has 16 or more? I don't think so. Sure, she had less fights to get it, but who's to say the level of people she fought wasn't higher than in the larger divisions? It's hard to say. I say props to her for doing the absolute as a feather weight, and for kicking our butts. She deserves the right to her double gold. Anyway... that tangent doesn't really have anything to do with Boston so I'll end it now.

They weren't being to picky about gis on Sunday. I saw a girl who's pants literally came up to mid calf when she was standing straight. They were practically bermuda shorts when she crouched and/or squatted. Based on that, I wore my smaller, black A1 redstar instead of my A1L navy Redstar. I can make it passable at the gi check, because it actually has reasonable length sleeves, but the jacket is short, and the pants are very short. If I have the pants low enough to look long enough, you can see my rashguard through the slit in the side of the jacket. But, they don't seem to care about that, as long as you wear your belt high enough that there is a decent amount of jacket below the belt. So, wear my belt close to my actual waist, and BINGO IBJJF legal gi. I did see one guy have to change his gi because his pants were frayed. I don't know how that got passed the inspectors, but the ref stopped that pretty quick. The refereeing in general seemed pretty solid. They were calling penalties for stalling FAST which I like, and calling ones from bad grips and such, which are often neglected. I saw one DQ for a knee reap/turning the wrong way on an ankle lock. It was sad to see, because it was obviously a case of neether fighter really knowing it was wrong, and neither of them wanted the fight to end. It's a hard way to learn the rules, but I don't think either of them will do roll the wrong way on an ankle lock again.  

NOTE TO EVERYONE: READ THE RULES AND UNDERSTAND THEM. If you don't understand them, ask your professor, team mates, or the internet for clarification. There is nothing worse than preparing hard for a tournament, and then losing by DQ for something you should have known better. 

I got to watch a couple of my extended team mates from Art of Jiu Jitsu compete while we were there to! They all preformed extremely well. I didn't get to see everyone's matches but I watched most of Rick's and he competed excellently. He survived what looked like an insanely tight triangle for quite some time to win one of his fights, and I was really impressed with how he stayed calm and didn't panic. He hit a couple beautiful subs as well. I think I have a couple pictures, I should put them up on Facebook. After Chicago maybe I will have some time lol. anyway... Congrats to the whole team for an excellent performance. I cannot wait to get back to California to train with them all again!

In a few hours I am picking Jon up from work, and we are making the 7.5 hour drive to Chicago for the Chicago Winter Open. I've moved up to Heavy Weight for this one, so that I have a fight in my division as well as the absolute. Last weekend I weighed in at 161.5 with my Gi on, 2lbs under the 163.5 weight limit for medium heavy. I think I am down about 1.5lb since then, I'm on my way to middle weight! Once I get to middle, I think I will move between middle and medium heavy depending where the competition is, but I'm not sure fighting in 163.5+ will be a great Idea when I am weighing 152.5. I guess it really depends who it is in the heavy weight division. I'm not saying I won't fight big girls, I've been doing that my whole life, but there is always the absolute for that, so I will be more picky about shifting weight classes once I am down to middle. I think having people to fight will be less of an issue once I'm in middle weight as well. The lighter weight classes have more bodies in them generally. Locally, I'll probably end up fighting in the +141.5 (at Grappling Industries) and whatever division has people in it at the OJA events.

After Chicago we have a week off, then the Niagara Open. I'm pretty much counting on a refund for that one, but I've registered anyway. I think I will be refereeing, so I'll have plenty to do that day anyway. A decent amount of guys from Pura are going, so that'll be a fun team building day

Grappling Industries Toronto: Italian Edition is also coming up soon. April 13th. This was formerly being known as the Redstar Open, but that is not the case anymore. If you're a purple or brown belt guy, this is where you should be. They are giving away 2 trips (light and heavy absolute) to ROME for the Europeans and the NoGi one that runs on the same weekend. I wish there was enough girls to make it worth their while to have a girls division, because that would be a hellova trip.

Alright, this novel is long enough now. See you on the Mats!