Tips for Newbies from a Referee

As a referee I get to interact with a LOT of competitors.  If a tournament with 250 competitors runs 5 mats, that's 50 competitors (ish)  per day.  Most tournaments I've worked at have had more competitors then that, but also more mats.  But 50 is probably a decent average.

So I see all the ranges of experiences, age, and belt and it's always really obvious who the first time competitors are. Generally, they are white belts, but every events got a few first time blues and even purples!  

So, to help you all you new competitors out (and by doing so  help myself and fellow referees out)  I'm writing up this post to cover a lot of the etiquette, rules, and situations that competitors should be aware of!

All this stuff is going to apply to tournaments that follow the IBJJF ruleset.  So that means, the OJA tournaments, the IBJJF tournaments, the Buffalo Classic, and a very large portion of other events that get put on across north america.

I think we'll just start at the very beginning and go through the whole process, from weight classes, weigh-ins, matches, draws, ect.

1.  Weight classes:  This is one thing that varies event to event, some events follow most of the ibjjf rules but deviate on the weight classes. So I'm not going to specify them here. One thing that I do want to point out is that the weight classes are the UPPER limits of the category.  I've seen a few parents put their kids into the wrong division because they thought they were the bottom.   The only exception to this is the top division which is generally specified as OVER 220  or 220+  for example. Also:  NOGI divisions tend to be 3-5lbs lighter then the gi divisions and you generally have to weigh in for both.  SOME events don't do the second weigh-in and some events have a larger allowance if the competitor competes in gi and nogi. The IBJJF has ZERO tolerance.     Here's a chart of the IBJJF weight classes

2.  Weigh-ins : This process varies a bit tournament to tournament as well. Generally you should be at the event 1h+ before your division is scheduled to start.  Weighins will happen right before your division starts.  You weighin in your uniform. So if it's a gi event, you need to be wearing your gi and your belt. If it's no-gi you need to be wearing your shorts + rashguard.  The IBJJF has no tolerance for missing weight.  zero. none. ziltch. If you are over you will NOT compete.  The OJA tends to have a 1lb allowance and many other events do as well.

3. Gi Check : The IBJJF is, of course, the strictest when it comes to "legal" gis.  Only Black, Blue and White are allowed.  You cannot mix and match the colours (like blue pants and a white top) and they have to be in good repair(no rips, frays or tears).  There are several rules in place about the baggyness and length of the sleeves and pants, as well as maximum collar thickness, gi "skirt" length and belt width and length.  Finally, there are rules about where patches can and cannot be placed on the gi.  Page 30 and 31 of the IBJJF rule book outline the rules pretty specifically.

Some details to note about uniforms.

1. Men are NOT allowed to wear a rashguard under their gi.

2. Women MAY wear one, they are also allowed to wear a sports bra only or a 1 piece swim suit.

3. Everyone needs to wear non-thong underwear underneath their gi. (note: if you have Shorts under your pants, you can wear all the thongs you want, this rule is just so their are no bare bums).
4.  Men: no tights under your pants.

5. Women are allowed to wear tights under their pants, as long as they are shorter then the gi pants.

6. For NOGI: you need to wear a rashguard, and it has to be black or white, with ate least 10% and up to 100% of it being your rank colour. (most tournaments are not that strict about this).

7.  For NOGI: men are not allowed to wear only spats,  they used to not be allowed at all, but now black spats are allowed under your regulation shorts.  Your shorts have to be board short style, no pockets, no zippers.  They need to be black or white with up to 50% of your rank colour.

8. For NOGI: women are allowed to wear lycra tights, OR lycra shorts that are mid-thigh to knee length.  Interestingly, board shorts aren't mentioned in the rule book, but I'm fairly certain shorts that meet the men's guidelines would be ok as well.

So, bring at least 2 gis (or nogi sets) to every event, just in case.  Because it would be really shitty to get to a tournament and not be able to compete because your gi isn't legal.  Also, if your gi rips, you need to get a new one to carry on in the match.


4. Pre-Match You made weight, you passed gi-check and you are brought over to your mat!  Congratulations, the hard parts over! ;)  The runner(they'll be the one with the clipboard or tablet that has your drawsheet on it)  will tell you which side to go on.  Wait on the side and do NOT go on the mats until the referee invites you.  (the gesture for this is their arms are up and they wave you in).

If you both competitors are wearing the same colour gi, the fighter on the referees right side will wear a green/yellow belt to identify them. Generally the competitor who's name is on top or the left of the bracket will go on the green side.  If one competitor is wearing white, and the other blue or black, the blue or black competitor will always go on the green side.  If one is wearing black and the other blue, the blue competitor will go on the green side.  so basically, blue trumps everything and black trumps white.

Once the referee has invited you onto the mat, make sure to shake the referee's hand.  If there are 3 refs, make sure to shake the corner refs hand as well.  If you like, shake your competitions hand at this point as well.  Many competitors will do the slap / fist bump after the referee says combatche, this isn't required, and I would be wary as there are always those guys/gals who will fake and go for the arm drag or takedown.

5. Referee Comands  There are only 4 commands from the referee (in Portuguese) that you need to know.  Make sure you know them and respond to them appropriately. There is nothing more frustrating to a referee (and coach) then a competitor stopping and getting up when you gave them a penalty.

• Combatche: This means go/fight.  The referee will say this at the beginning of the match, and any time the match is stopped and needs to be started again.
• Parou:  Stop.  Don't move.  Just STOP. Generally this happens when standup goes out of bounds (in this case, head back to the middle) or when the ground work progresses to close to the edge or ends up out of bounds (in this case, don't move until the ref says, they'll want to check your grips and make sure they can reproduce the position).  
• Lutche:  This is a stalling penalty.  If you are just sitting around, not doing anything you're going to get called for stalling.  It can happen while standing, or on the ground.  There are a few positions that you cannot be called for stalling:  Mount, Back Mount, and Back Control. This is because these are the highest on the progression scale.  You can't progress further.  That being said, they must be maintained in the point scoring style. So putting a body triangle on in back control will make you eligible for a stalling call if you don't try to sub.  
• Falta: This is the newest one.  We used to not say anything when we gave penalties. Now we say falta.  The progression for penalties is as follows:  Penalty + nothing for the other guy -> Penalty + advantage for the other guy ->Penalty + 2 points for the other guy -> Penalty + DQ.

6. Penalties  There are a lot of things that'll get you a penalty. I'm not going to go over all of them. Just a few key ones.

1. Don't talk to the ref. Don't question their calls, don't talk. At all.  The ONLY 2 cases for talking to the ref are medical emergencies / injuries and uniform problems.  If you are injured you can tell the referee and have the medic come over. This will NOT automatically make you lose.  Having a muscle cramp will though. Don't ask the ref to stop the match for a cramp that's a match ender.
2. Illegal Grips:  inside the pant/sleeve collar is no good, neither is inside the jacket.  You CAN grip the top of the pants though.  If you accomplish something because of an illegal grip (a sweep for example) the referee should penalize you, and put you back to wear you were before the illegal grip caused the progression.
3. Illegal techniques:  Know the chart on page 24 of the rule book.  It's important. Doing an illegal technique will get you disqualified.  

There are a LOT of things that will get you a penalty.  You can find them on page 27-30 of the rule book.    Read them, be aware of them and don't be this guy. (warning: swearing and kneebahs).  

7. Slams  This is a topic I get asked about pretty often. Ussually from wrestlers who are scared their takedowns are going to get them DQ'ed. Most Judo and Wrestling take downs are not slams. Even if the other guy hits the ground hard.  It becomes a slam when you elevate them, and then help increase the force they hit the ground with. like, double legging, and you jump up, both feet into the air and land on top of them.  Most slams are called from guard or triangles and armbars.  For example Jane is armbarring Sue from guard, Sue stands up, and then drives Jane into the ground head first.   Or Bob has Joe in closed guard.  Joe stands up, and then jumps back down to their knees accelerating Bob into the floor.  A slam will get you an instant DQ. 

8 Some Rules that cause some confusion

1. Out of bounds with a sub = 2 points and restart standing. 
2. Sweeping to turtle is 2 points.  
3. Passing and causing the guard player to turtle is an advantage
4. Fleeing the area to avoid a takedown or sweep is a penalty, and will result in 2 points for the competitor attempting the action.
5. Reaping!  Read page 26 of the rule book. Basically, don't let your leg cross the middle, especially when there is is a submission in play.  DQ if there is a sub, penalty if there isn't.  Unless your leg goes ALL the way across to the far side, then it's still a DQ.
6. The Estima Lock.  For a couple years, this was a big of a grey area, at the IBJJF rules course they were saying it was legal and up to the referee discretion.  As of the last New York Open it's back on the black list for everyone but brown and up .  

9 End of the match
At the end of the match, the referee will say Parou and direct the competitors back to the middle.  stand facing the score boards at this point.  The referee will hold the arm of both competitors and raise the arm of the winner.  At this point, shake the referees hand to thank them and you may shake your competitions hand as well then head off the mats.  If you won, make sure to confirm with the runner that you won and find out when your next match will be.


10. Random Things

The runner is the person to ask about when you are up next and what place you got.  Don't bother them if they are busy.  Especially don't bother the score keepers.  They need to focus on their jobs and answering your questions is the very bottom of their priority pole.

Most tournaments use a single elimination draw system. This means if you lose you're out and the semi final losers both get bronze. This blog post I wrote a while back explains the draw system.

Be respectful always. If you are disrespectful to your competition, the referees, or the tournament staff you may be DQ'ed and it's a disciplinary DQ, which means you are OUT for the day. You don't get your medal and you do not collect 200 dollars.

Always wear your shoes when you are not on the mats.  Many tournaments will DQ you if they find you with no shoes on outside of the mats, particularily in the bathrooms.

Always keep your gi/ uniform on when you are inside the competition area.  There have been reports of the IBJJF suspending people for taking their gi of inside the competition area.  They even insist on it inside the warmup area.

If the referee instructs you to fix your gi or tie your belt, you have 20 seconds to do it.  It's a penalty if you take to long.  If you are the competitor with the green/blue belt, you get an extra 20 seconds to tie that one.

For most tournaments, to qualify for the absolute, you need to medal in your division. That means making it to the semis.  Grappling Industries tends to do absolutes / super absolutes as separate divisions that you don't need to qualify for.  Abu Dhabi Pro does 1 bronze medal,so after the semi-final is lost, the two losers fight each other for third and only the winner is eligible for the absolute.

Generally, coaching and filming is not allowed inside the competition area.  In Ontario, for most events, kids are allowed to have a single coach with them inside.

That covers pretty much all the random tid-bits of information that I can remember wishing the competitors knew over the last few events I've worked at.   I'm going to write another blog post soon about advice from competitors for first time competitors.  This will be less rules / process oriented and more about advice about nerves and what to expect and so on.

So, feel free to share this any new competitors  you know so they'll be more informed and ready when they head to their first (or next) competition!

Thanks for reading!  See you on the mats!

I am in the worst shape of my life.

My level of fitness has always had ups and downs, it comes with the territory of doing sports and competing in weight division driven martial arts.  The last couple years have been a pretty steady decline with only momentary blips of increase that quickly fade and end up even further down the chart. 

I've dealt with a plethora of injuries, many of which were to my brain (and knees and wrists and shoulders and who know's what else, I've lost track of all the joints I've damaged in some way or another).  Most of them you can just rest / physio and carry on some x weeks later and you're fine.  

Concussions don't work that way.  The current accepted treatment is to stop all physical activity until initial symptoms are gone.  Then slowly follow the return to play protocols which are basically baby steps in level, with steps back if you get any symptoms again.  Here's a nice chart for the curious. http://www.concussiontreatment.com/images/SCI_RTP_Illustration.pdf

Now, there's nothing in there that says "eat all the things" while you're not doing any exercise, but when you'r depressed b/c you can't do shit, and you have no idea how long it'll be this time to get back on the mats, and your a dutch emotional eater, it's what happens.  At least to me anyway.  I've resisted it sometimes and have made grand statements on myfitnesspal a couple times saying i'm done with that destructive behaviour, but without fail when something happens (another injury, or a special event, or party, or a work lunch that is full of badness(delicious badness)) I derail and we're back to eating all the badness.   So, that's a really bad combination that's been happening on and rarely off for the last sayyy 2 or 3 years.   

There have been moments of clarity, like prepping for old man worlds, but then I landed on my head, and go a concussion.   Then again shortly before our vacation to cali/vegas for training.  Then I got need in the head 1/2 way through the trip and got another (minor) concussion.  I'm pretty much in the clear from that one. I was able to do a bunch of snow shovelling, and have been teaching classes and whatnot so I'm at about stage 3 of that recover chart, with likely hitting 4 this week.  But, to be honest, I'm terrified of going back to rolling, and the eventuality of competing.  

Having a concussion sucks and dealing with the post-concussion symptoms/syndrome is different for everyone.  Some people are fine after a couple days,  some people, it's weeks or months, some people it never goes away.  In the MMA and Jiu Jitsu community, there have been a few pretty public cases.  TJ Grant was supposed to be fighting for the light weight title, but he got a concussion training jiu jitsu back in 2013 and hasn't been seen since.  Jared Weiner in 2014 had a pretty scary string of concussions that he's lucky to have fully recovered from (http://www.graciemag.com/2014/10/jared-weiner-shares-his-story-of-why-we-must-be-more-aware-of-head-injuries/)  I HIGHLY recommend you watch/listen to the podcast he did with take it uneasy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4ElrMdtFfE).   

For me, personally, the concussions I sustained 2012 and 2014 were the worst. They were the hardest impact(s)  and left me off the mats the longest.  I've had 2 since then as well, but they were more minor and were from impcts to the head that 99% of the population probably would have noticed.  But I did, and still dealt with the symptoms for weeks.  So of the symptoms I've struggled with over the years from the concussions are:  headaches (of course),  depression,  irritability, weird moodyness, inability to focus,  trouble making decisions (even minor ones like, what am I ordering to drink at dinner) and forgetfulness.  

Speaking of focus, let's get back on track, this wasn't supposed to be a blog post about concussions and how shitty they are (SPOILER: they really suck, and need to be respected, or you'll end up like me).  It was supposed to be a bit of an accountability post.  This is me, telling you, that i'm in shit shape and i'm ready to claw my way out of this injury and concussion induced funk and get back to some semblance of shape and fitness.  

I haven't had the great luck with going public with my goals / plans / challenges.  Not that long ago I was going to do 30 days of fitness where I did jiu jitsu or lifting or something every day for 30 days (not a big deal for most, but coming back from an injury it's a good way to get back into the habit of fitness).  I got a concussion on day 3.    But keeping them quiet doesn't usually work either, because last time I tried that I tweaked my knee shortly after I had my goals all set up and since I hadn't really told anyone, my extra shitty moods took everyone by surprise.

But, I'm a very goal driven person.  I NEED goals / milestones to motivate me.  My eventual goal is a return to competition,  but I need to set some smaller short and medium term goals to get there.  So here they are:

1.  Get my weight under control.  Short term: -28 pounds.  Medium/Long term - 40 pounds. Maybe one day crazy goal: -52 pounds

2.  Get my fitness back.  It's a lot more the just weight.  My cardio is abysmal and I am mega week.

3.  Get my confidence back. Confidence might not be the right word, maybe trust, maybe whatever the opposite of fear is, who knows.  This one's the hardest, and also the most important.  It's a weird balance between respecting my body/brain (the limitations, the potential for injury/concussions(which, get's higher every time you get one btw)  and still going out there and training / rolling / eventually competing again.  

I probably should have reversed the order of that list because it's basically reverse order of importance.  But it's also in order of attainability the way it is now I think.  Also I think they will cascade into each other,  getting my weight down will lead to improved cardio /fitness by nature and improving both of those two will help me gain that confidence back.

So, there you have it.  I am going to TRY to keep a bit of a log of my progress, I would love to say "I'm going to post weekly updates"  but honestly, that's probably way to ambitious with how busy I am with work / training / teaching.  You have my permission to hassle me if you don't hear from me though, please do in fact.

I'm taking suggestions for blog post topics as well, aside from these progress updates.  So if there's anything you want me to write about let me know!  I'm toying with the idea of an "Ask a ref" type post series where people can send me questions and I'll answer them and/or get answers from my referee friends about particular situations, scoring questions and so on.  

PS:  If your dealing with a concussion, or any injury and want to talk to someone who can relate, hit me up anytime.  I've been through the ringer and back a few times and I can likely relate to what you are going through.  

My facebook Page:  https://www.facebook.com/patricia.vandermeer.bjj/

My Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jiujitsupatricia/

My MyFitnessPal:  http://www.myfitnesspal.com/mmaqueen

 Lastly: Thank you Redstar Kimonos for always having my back, no mater how low I got and even though I'm probably the least active competitor on the team these days.  I WILL put these amazing gi back on the podium soon.  

   

Did you miss me?

warning: a lot of feels and semi personal shit. If you just want to read about what my plan of attack is, skip to here.

Did you miss me? Just kidding, I know you didn't.   I missed me though.  It's been a long time since I wrote a post,  mostly because it's been a long time since I felt like writing about anything.  There have been some great tournaments, that I should have wrote about, like the Ontario Open and IBJJF Toronto Open, both of which were amazing.  The Ontario Open was huge, ran great, had great matches and solid refereeing.  The Toronto Open had more black belt matches in one tournament that I have ever seen in Ontario!  It ran really well, had great medals, had great competition and was a very typical IBJJF event(they even posted the spectator fee on the website ;)).

But I didn't,  because I've been to bummed, sad, angry, disappointed, pissed off, and generally just negatively feeling towards jiu jitsu because of how the ontario open went down, for me(not anything to do with the tournament itself, just me).   I've been on a pretty bad downward spiral since then,  I almost climbed out of it a few times, but never really did and when I failed to climb out, it went worse in a hurry.

So, what happened at the Ontario open?  Leading up to it, I was in a really weird place mentally, ussually I am super excitied about tournaments.  I can't wait to compete.  I look forward to them for weeks and sometimes months(though, usually I don't go months without competing).  I didn't feel anything for the tournament. I wasn't looking forward to it, I wasn't nervous, I just wasn't there.  Then, the week before,  my shoulder started feeling weird,  not bad,just weird.  But I competed anyway, because that's what I do.  It's what I expect myself to do, and it's what everyone else expects me to do.  Even the night before, packing my gi bag, I was just going through the motions and ussually it's a kind of focusing and ritual thing for me that gets me right into the competition mindset and everything.

My game plan was to coast through my weight class, and focus on the absolute, so I fought in heavy, instead of medium heavy, b/c there was less people.  I didn't give a rats ass about the weight class matches, I only cared about the absolute.  I didn't lay down and die or anything, but  had no killer instinct, didn't really do a lot of jiu jitsu and even then, my body just fell apart.  The first problem was my knee and the second was my shoulder. I could do anything with my right knee: I couldn't bridge, couldn't keep my dlr hook, couldn't use it to keep the distance on the other dlr side, couldn't reguard, it was useless.

My shoulder quickly jumped on the "Let's abandon Patricia"  bandwagon too.  My brain said "make a frame", "pull", "push", "drag", "do anything other then hurt for fucks sake" and all my shoulder would do is... nothing.  It was useless,  I'd have been better off with no arm, because then at least it wouldn't have been such a liability.

I lost 2 matches in my weight class, and then got smashed in the absolute again.  It was an awe inspiring train wreck.  It wasn't the losing that got to me though,  yea, losing sucks, but I lose all the time, it's part of the game.   It was the fact that my body completely and mercilessly let me down when I needed it the most.

Now, I just have to clarify something, b/c this may just sound like i'm making a whole bunch of excuses for getting the shit kicked out of me.  I know,  if i didn't know what my body did, this would just look like "whaaa whaaa Patricia lost and is making excuses".  I get it.  But a bunch of ppl have asked me about it, so I'm telling you what's up.  Would I have lost if my body hadn't shit the bed?  Who knows,  probably,  Before the Ontario Open Sissi and I were even on wins, with her having the more recent ones.  Alison and I, well, I think she's up to at least 12, maybe more wins against me with at least1/2 by sub and I have never beat her. Caitlin and I have only fought twice before, once in a very casual zombie house, and once at provincials where I squeaked out a close win.   So, in all honesty I likely would have lost and it wouldn't have affected me in nearly the same way.  Whatever, I don't think i'm really making any sense, but All I really want to make clear is, I am not trying to take away anything from the wins of those ladies, they are awesome, and are super good at jiu jitsu and  would have won even if my body had cooperated.   What got me so down wasn't the loss, it was that my body let me down.   Alright, enough rambling about that.

So, after all that, I took a week or two to let my stupid body rest, cos it was a mess, and I tried some physio and blah blah blah.  I started training again and it was all feeling ok, and then just as I was feeling like I could take it up a notch and think about competing, BAM  knee craps out again training.  and the cycle starts over, then BAM   shoulder almost dislocates itself while doing an arm drag and I'm out again.  rest, feel good, feel bad, repeat.   Every time something (either knee or shoulder, or, something my "good" knee) went wrong, I'd make a vow to myself to not let myself get to messed up about it and not let my diet slip, and every time, after a week or so I'd fail.  So every time I got back to the upswing, I'd be starting a bit further back weight wise.

Now, I'm fat.  Like, 5lbs off of being the fattest I've ever been.  It's terrible.  I could blame the week in Mexico at the all inclusive, or how much I like to have pie for lunch when I'm camping, but honestly, It's just that I am an emotional eater, and when I get depressed I eat.  Even when I'm in a good place mentally, and training is going well, I struggle with my relationship with food.   I know
all the tricks and have successfully undone this kind of damage before. But the older I get, the harder it is.  I know what works for me, and what doesn't and I know exactly what I have to do.  Doing it, again, is going to be a struggle, but with realistic goals, and plans, I will compete in medium heavy again, it won't be the next time I complete,  I don't have time for that. I know weightloss isn't something that the hare wins the race of.  I also know I'm getting old,  I'm realistic, If I wait until my weight is perfect, and my body is 100% and the stars are all aligned and everything is just right to compete, it will never happen again.  So, I'm going to do what I can, with what I've got.


The Plan

The IBJJF Masters Worlds(From here on in know as "Old Man Worlds") is in 8 weeks.   Ever since I started competing in Jiu Jitsu I have aimed to compete at the worlds.  I know the masters worlds isn't quite the same, don't get me wrong, When I win a medal there, I will be very specific about where that medal came from.  I'm not delusional, I know the difference between winning a purple belt masters medal and a black belt adult medal. That being said,  at last years pans, some of the masters womens divisions were actually LARGER then the adult (or at least the same size when I checked, whatever) and a lot of masters women have mom strength, which is a scary scary thing.  Anyway, this blog isn't about masters vs adults and all that drama.  It's about me, wanting to compete again.  The first time I was supposed to compete at the worlds I ended up a really bad shoulder injury 3 weeks before that I had every intention of competing with anyway, but then didn't b/c I couldn't put my gi a few days before.  Anyway, this past year was more of the same, but at least I didn't have the flights and hotel and everything booked already.  So, that's my goal.  To whip my fat, lazy, emotionally unstable self into all kinds of shape and compete at the old man worlds. Which I can do, because, I'm old.

I don't have a plan for the weight class, Chances are it will be super heavy. Yea, I'm that fat.  I might make heavy, if my body decides to be nice, but honestly,  it's NEVER EVER EVER played along, it is my greatest enemy. Weight is secondary,  getting back to the competition tatami is primary.

So, to get there, I'm taking a (shorter) page from my teamate stephen's book and going 50 days of doing something fitnessy.  That will bring me up to a couple days before the tournament, by which time I'll need a rest day or two to recover and travelling and whatever.  This starts tomorrow.  Things that I shall be doing:  Jiu Jitsu(aiming for 8+ hours a week), kettlebell circuits (aiming for 2x a week), and probably some kind of cardio, cos mine sucks right now. I know, I know, the best cardio for jiu jitsu is more jiu jitsu, but there isn't always jiu jitsu available when I have time to do this shit, so HIIT will have to supplement a bit.

I know 8 weeks is not a very long time to go from 0 to competition, but, it's what I've got, and, barring any unforseen bumps along the way, it will be enough.

It's not a complicated plan, it's barely a plan at all.  But it's something, and I've written it down, So It's going to happen.  If, for some reason(finances, work, whatever), I can't make it to California,  I shall continue with this plan until I return home to the competition mats where I belong.


Righto, that's enough feels for one day.  I feel like I was missing some emo stuff in the middle and begining, but whatever.  I promise to not write another blog post with so much of that kind of crap for a long time.

Upcoming Events!
I really did miss writing these bits, I donno if anyone even reads them, or if they help people out at all.  If you read these and they help you, let me know.

Saturday and Sunday Sept 13th and 14th:  Professor Rafa Mendes at Pura and Ouroboros.  4x  Black Belt world Champion Rafael Mendes returns to ontario for 2 seminars.  Saturday at pura is sold out, Sunday at Ouroboros has 3 spots left.  You can register online at the link right up there.

Saturday Sept 13th: The GTA Classic I love this tournament.  2 years ago I won my very first samuri sword here!   It's got a great atmosphere, is gi only, and has great prizes for the absolutes!  Also, it's a great way to kick off the tournament season.  Registration closes on Tuesday night, so get on it ASAP. (PS don't let the competitor list fool you, everyone is like you and waiting till the last minute, b/c they like to make the organizers sweat a little).

Saturday Oct 4th Grappling Industries Toronto:  IBJJF Rules and Round Robin. They've recently added more weight classes for masters and women, so it should be a solid event.  This has been on their schedule since early 2014.

Saturday Oct 4th  The Abu Dhabi World Professional Jiu-Jitsu - Canada Pro JJ Championship  Aka the Montreal Pro trials.  They've re-named it, taken away more then 1/2 the women's trips, and moved from Feb to Oct, but it's still not a competition to be missed if you are serious about jiu jitsu.

Nov 1st and 2nd World Masters IBJJF Jiu-Jitsu Championship aka Old Man Worlds.  Ok, this isn't local, but it shall be the location of my glorious return "home" to competition. So it's being included.

Saturday Nov 1st: Grappling Industries Montreal  These events are solid and a great way to get lots of matches because of the round robin format.

Saturday Nov 22nd IBJJF Montreal.  Not to much info on this one yet, no registration page or anything, but it's always a solid event.

Saturday Nov 22nd  Grappling Industries Toronto:  I don't have much info on this yet either, but it's been on the schedule since like January.

There are a few others on my calendar that I haven't heard anything official for yet so once I do, I'll add them to the next post.

SEE YOU IN THE MATS SOON!

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. 

  

  

Tournament Draw Systems Explained - Part 2 Double Elimination

Welcome back to this series on tournament draw systems.  Part one introduced the series and talked about the single elimination system.  This is part 2 and we shall talk about Double Elimination.

There are 3 main variations of Double Elimination:

1. Modified Double
2. True Double
3. Double with Repechage.

Modified double is the simplest, true double is a bit more complicated and the repechage is where things get a little crazy.   Most events that use a double elimination system tend to use the modified double elimination, but the Repechage system is what is used at very high level sport events such as the Olympics.  The repechage system itself has a lot of variations, but we will get to that when we get to that.

The basic concept of double elimination is similar to single elimination, where you have rounds, and the winners move down the tree.  The difference is, once you lose, you move down to the losers bracket and have an opportunity to fight for 3rd at the very least, and in some cases, silver, or even a shot at gold.

Let's start with Modified Double Elimination. In this system,  The person who doesn't lose any gets gold, the person who loses in the final gets silver, and the winner of the losers bracket gets bronze.  Sometimes you will have the two people who got to the end of the losers bracket get bronze, but usually, in modified double, there is only 1 bronze.  Confused yet?  Let's look at a picture.  We will start with a simple 8 person division, just like we did for single elimination.

8 person modified double no fight for silver

As you can see, the concept of rounds / quarters / semis/finals gets a little muddled, because of the dual bracket, but once you follow the Ws and Ls it's pretty clear how it all works.   The losers of the first round of the top bracket fill in the first round of the bottom bracket.  The winners of the first round of the bottom bracket move on to the second round of the bottom bracket, where they are joined by the losers of the 2nd round of the top bracket. 

The losers of the 1st round of the bottom bracket have now lost twice, and are out, they place 7th.   The losers of the 2nd round of the bottom bracket have no lost twice as well, and place 5th.  The winners of the 2nd round of the bottom bracket move on to the "final" of the bottom bracket, this is the fight for third place.  The winner gets bronze/third, and the loser gets 4th.   At the top bracket,  the third round is the final, the winner gets gold, the losers gets silver.  

In this example,  the gold medal winner has zero losses, silver has 1 loss, and bronze also has one loss. This is where one sometimes,  the loser of the final, will drop down to the bottom bracket, and fight for silver/bronze.  Like this:

8 person modified double w/ fight for silver

 Here, Alasdair loses in the final, drops down to the bottom bracket, and beats Bruce, to win the silver, and Bruce gets bronze.  

There is one other detail to keep in mind with double elimination.  In the second round of the bottom bracket, the losers switch sides.  L7 goes to the bottom half, while L8 goes to the top. This is so that they don't fight someone they have already fought.  Fighting someone you have already fought becomes unavoidable at the very end in the fight for silver/bronze sometimes. As you can see Alasdair and Bruce fought in the 2nd round of the top bracket, and then they fought again in the last fight of the bottom bracket. 

13 person modified double elimination bracket

As you can see, once you start having divisions with weird numbers, the byes complicate matters, as do the extra rounds, but the concept is still the same.  When you lose at the top, you move down to the bottom, and when you lose in the bottom, you are out,  keep winning, and you can work your way back to medal contention.   Like in the 8 person division, some events may chose to have the loser of the last fight on the top bracket drop down to face the last fight of the bottom bracket for silver, this way gold has 0 losses, silver has 1, and bronze has 2.

True double works almost the same as either of these modified doubles, except that the winner of the bottom bracket gets a chance at the winner of the top bracket.  In this case,  they need to beat the winner of the top bracket TWICE to get the gold, while the winner of the top bracket needs to beat the winner of the bottom bracket just once.  Thus everyone except the Gold medal winner has lost twice, in true DOUBLE elimination style.   This isn't a super common way of running the sheets, but it does happen, and it's kind of interesting to see if the underdog can take the cake. 

There are 3 ways that a true double elimination draw can end.  #1, the winner of the top brackets defeats the winner of the bottom bracket the first time. In this case, it's over, top winner gets gold, bottom winner gets silver.

True double, the shortest ending.

The second option is, the winner of the bottom bracket wins the first fight against the winner of the top bracket, setting them each to 1 loss each. Then the winner of the top bracket wins the 2nd fight, for gold, while the loser gets silver.

True double, top bracket winner still wins

Finally, the winner of the bottom bracket gets the upset, defeating the winner of the bottom bracket twice in a row, and taking gold, while the loser gets silver.

The ultimate upset, true double, with the bottom bracket winner taking the gold

So, this leaves us with the final, most complicated version of double elimination, the repechage.  Like all the others, there are a couple ways that this can work, but the general idea is,  if you lose, then the person that beat you has to win in order or you to get to the losers bracket.  

In they Olympics, for judo, this only applies if you lose to the four athletes in the semi(they split the athletes into 2 pools and do a repechage for each side, this picture shows how it would work with only 1 pool), lose to anyone else, and your out.  It sounds kind of complicated, but once you see it, it's not to bad.  

This system is used when divisions are large(ish), so I will use a 16 person division to illustrate it.  Sometimes, only the people who lose in the quarter finals get a second chance, which makes for a much smaller repechage bracket.   All the times I have seen repechage in action, the winner of the repechage gets bronze, while the finalists get gold/silver respectively.

You see that Matt and Alex are the finalists, so everyone who lost to them, goes into the repechage. The people who lost in the first and second round face each other, then the winner of that faces the person who lost in the third round. Then the two people left in the repechage fight each other for bronze, and the finalists of the top bracket fight for gold/silver.

So that pretty much covers the basics of the double elimination style.  Modified double is probably my favourite of all styles. It's efficient, and slightly more accurate at determining the podium then single elimination can be. I can't say whether I like the version where the final loser gets silver or if there is a fight for silver best, either is good. In theory, true double is the most accurate style, but to have to beat the top guy twice seems inefficient, and takes a long time, especially when you factor in the rest times between matches and whatnot.  

The third and final post in this series will be on the round robin system.  like single and double elimination, there are different ways of doing the draws in a round robin format.  

Zombie House Oct 20th 2013 Recap!

This past Saturday we took a short drive down the 403/401/402 combination West to London. It was pretty weird going west instead of east, sure was nice not having to drive straight into the sun to get there.

 This edition of the zombie house was a fundraiser for a little girl who just turned 4 years old and is fighting cancer. She is the daughter of one of the members of London BJJ, so they held the competition, and a seminar on Saturday to raise some funds for Gabby and her family. Man, cancer sucks, especially for kids. I can't even imagine how hard that is for her parents. Showing up to the event and helping out while the rest of the team competed is the least that we could do to help them out.

 In case you aren't familiar with the zombie house concept... It's a sub only competition that you collect submissions and don't stop. The matches are 5 minutes, and it doesn't matter if you get subbed, you just start again. At the end of the matches, subs are counted up ad tracked. Then whoever wins each weight class (the most subs) moves on to the golden sub single elimination bracket. In golden sub, it's first sub wins, and the first rounds are 10 minutes maximum, and the final is 20. If you don't get a sub, you are both out.

 The weight classes are 10ish pounds and in London it was all belts combined (there was only a couple purple belts). At bigger events white and blue are together and purple and up are together. They used to use a system where there were handicaps based on belt, but white the belts separated it wasn't necessary anymore.

 We had a great time at the event, Dashti ended up being put up with the 180 guys because there was no 170's and the 160 guys were all full. He did a great job with the bigger guys and managed to get 2nd in his division with a purple belt wining the division. Josh and Joel were in the same division, with some pretty excellent competitors, including Milkias from B04 who won the division very impressively despite being the smallest guy in it. Joel hit a baseball choke which would have made Jon proud and Josh demonstrated great passing and control (and a few great subs from that control). Greg was in a division with a lot of much younger, active competitors and showed a lot of good submission defensive and heart.

 I really like the zombie house format. It's friendly, it's casual, and it's 25 minutes of working your ass off. There is no tapping and getting out of the fight. The people that show up to these events aren't looking for medals or bragging rights or trips or anything like there. You are there to test out your submission game and not worry about points and staying on top or any of that nonsense that sport jiu jitsu has evolved into. Don't get me wrong, I love regular competitions as well, but it's nice and refreshing to see people just going for stuff and not worrying about position and points so much. 

Interestingly, the only techniques that were not allowed were heal hooks and neck cranks, and the only injury that happened was Dan's knee, but it wasn't during a sub or scramble or anything, I didn't even see how it happened really and I was watching the match. People were going after kneebahs, toe holds, slicers and people were tapping (or not) and NOT getting hurt. It was great to see that these techniques are really as dangerous as people seem to think, it's the environment that controls the level of danger.

 I was "life guarding" for the event, which is like refereeing, but since there is no scores, and it's self regulated, and friendly, I really didn't have to do much. There were a few cases where I "tapped" for the competitors when they were being a little to stubburn for their own good but generally everyone was great about admitting when they were caught and also not cranking on subs. Sometimes I had to stop them from getting to close to other matches but even that rarely happened.

 I would recommend checking one of these events out to anyone looking for something a little different to try out there jiu jitsu. No meatheads allowed and no ego. I think the next one will likely be back in Toronto, but they are hoping to move them around the province.

 You can check out this facebook group for more information, stats, pictures and whatnot about the zombie house events.

 I almost forgot to mention who won the whole thing! Iron Mike Aviado, the rooster weight! He took out his teammate in the first round of the golden sub with a leg lock (I can't remember if it was a toe hold or straight ankle lock), then won the semifinal in decisive fashion with his signature flying armbar.
 In the final, he fought Josh (who won the first round against Sen, then got a bye for the second round because Milkias and Seth was a draw). Josh and Mikes match went about 7 or 8 minutes with Mike constantly threatening subs and Josh doing a great job defending, until Mike snuck in a crazy armbar and got the tap.

 I've also got to give a special mention to Becca and Mandie, two ladies who joined in on the zombie house. They are both white belts and quite small and competed with the guys. Mandie ended up placing second in their division next to Sen who won it.

 SO, that's that, it looks like the next one will be a NOGI event, likely in Toronto, sometime next month! Keep your eyes open for details on Facebook!

 There are a few other tournaments coming up, Grappling Industries this weekend where 5 trips to Pans will be awarded! The women's divisions are looking pretty good so ladies, you should get on that asap.

 IBJJF Montreal is Nov 16th. Should be good the competitor list is pretty sparse still, but that is not surprising. 

OJA Provincials is Nov 30th. I am HOPING that this will mark my return to competition! My shoulder is starting to feel pretty good so now I just need to get back into shape and get rid of the rust that 5/6 months on the sidelines creates. We shall see how my body holds up to the hard training it's going to take to get back into shape for then.

 Grappling Industries last event of the year will be Dec 7th in Montreal. Should be a great event to. They will be awarding a whack of "season passes" to the various absolute winners. This equals free entry to all their tournaments for 2014. I think it's a cool concept. That's all for now! See you all Saturday at Grappling Industries, I'll be refereeing, then jetting early to head to the Provincial Fighting Championships in London that evening.

GTA Classic Sept 21st 2013 Recap

Last Saturday was the Annual GTA Classic. This is one of my favourite tournaments of the year. They have been hosting it in mid September or years and it's one I know a lot of people look forward to to kick of the back to school season. It's an OJA tournament, which meas it's consistent with a lot of the other tournaments in Ontario as far as weight classes, age divisions, and allowed submissions.

 It also means they use the Mata Leao software to do the draws which is pretty sweet software. On two of the mats they had the new scoreboards running which use giant tv's and a laptop instead of the normal electronic scoreboards. It also recorded all the matches automatically. The one downside to this system was that is really slowed down the progress of the matches. It seemed like the table workers had to enter the names and division into the computer from the paper draw for every match which doesn't sound like it would take a long time, but it certainly delayed things since it had to be done in between each match.

 The Acai Cafe was in attendance again. This was their second event and they have stepped up their game! They brought in a small size, which was great for kids, or weirdos who don't like a lot of acai and they brought in hemp seeds, cacao nibs, and shredded coconut. These added toppings were amazing and make the cafe even more amazing. They had to set up outside of the gym, which made them less visible, so I hope they still made lots of sales. You can check them out on facebook and suggest they add peanut butter for their next event :)

 The tournament was scheduled to start at 9:30 and started around 9:50, not bad at all, considering they re-work all the kids brackets that morning because parents don't know how much their kids weigh and they never dq a kid for being over weight. I think that this is a great policy and I can totally forgive them for not starting on time because of this.

 The kids turnout for this competition was great! I think, other then the ontario open, it was probably one of the biggest turnout for kids I have seen all year. The GTA classic does round robin for the kids, so they tend to get 3 or 4 fights. They also don't allow any subs for the younger ones, and progressively add subs as the kids get older and higher ranked. It's a bit complicated as a referee or coach, or even athlete to keep it all straight on what's allowed for which kid, but it generally keeps the kids safe while allowing them to do jiu jitsu. It ran a bit behind, but it was running solid throughout the day. There wasn't many times, that I saw, where nothing was going on on the mats.

 There was a break around 1:00pm for a special presentation. Professor Scott Shilling was presented with his third degree by Mestre Sylvio da Matta Behring which was pretty cool to see. Scott has been a very active member of the community and has produced some top notch competitors as well. You can watch the video of the presentation on youtube.

I was refereeing at this event, and was pretty focused on that for the entire time I was there.  I reffed a pretty wide variety of matches from 7 year old white belts to coloured belt kids, to masters white and blue belts.  It was kind of nice to have such a variety.   I stopped a few kids fights for armbars before they tapped on Saturday.  Every single one was pretty upset about it, "I didn't tap", but the look on pretty much every single coaches face was that of understanding and appreciation for me keeping their students arms safe.  I had one kid in a triangle/armbar and It very much looked like they tapped, but when I stopped it, they said that they did not tap.  Everyone else seemed to think there was a tap as well, so I stood by that decision to stop the fight.

I got to work with the usual skilled crew of Ontario referees, including Ontario's newest black belt Jason Chin-Leung who is a really great referee.  New to the team was Matthew Isaacs who is quite young but has been around jiu jitsu for a few years now.  I didn't get to watch him to closely, but when ever I had a minute and looked over, he seemed to be handling himself very well.   I'm looking forward to watching him develop as a referee.

While I was refereeing, one of the other res came around to give me a break so I could get some snacks, but he told me it was all cookies and sweats, so I passed.  I really appreciate a tournament that provides snacks and water and drinks throughout the day.  It helps us out a lot, it just happens to be that I follow a very low carb "diet" right now and can't eat any of that.  Then, the most amazing thing happened around lunch time.  Tony came to my mat with a giant caesar salad with chicken!   He remembered from past events that I try not to eat pizza and crap when I am not being a fat /depressed/glutton and made sure I got one of the salads!!  Man,  nothing makes you feel more appreciated then that!  It's seemingly small gestures like that that make all the nonsense that we as referees have to put up with a lot more tolerable.

The GTA classic had pretty nice event t-shirts, which they gave to the first 50 people registered, I think they even extended that to everyone registered before a certain date.  They also had sweet prizes for the absolute winners: Samurai swords, and tournament hoodies.  They were really nice hoodies to,  well built and great looking style wise.  I wish I could have competed and won them!  That sounds like I think I would have won them if I competed, which is not what I mean.  There were some very tough looking purple belts that I watched for a bit between reffing and I think I would have had some very excellent matches if I had been up to competing.

On a semi related note... A whole bunch of new purple belts have just been promoted!  I hope they all come out to compete soon!   You know who you are ladies!!  We need to work together and compete together to help grow the scene.  The purple belt ladies divisions in Ontario could be realy interesting very soon!  There are some matchups I really want to see  like Caitlin vs Tiffany and Tushara vs Kaitlyn.    Someone make this happen!

I had to leave at 3:00 to go work at the UFC event at the ACC.  I didn't need to be there till 5:00, but with the Gardiner being closed, I wanted to give myself some extra time.  It's a good thing to, what google mats said should take 50 minutes, took just over 2 hours, before I gave up and parked and walked the last 2.5KM.  My plan was to take the 401 to the DVP and take that down to whatever road that was before it hits the gardiner, but when it was stop and go at Eglington I abandon ship and took the streets all the way down.  I was on queen st for over an hour!

The UFC was a pretty great experience, as working MMA events usually is.  I did not get an opportunity to judge, but since reading all the shit people have been saying online about my colleagues, I am actually happy that I did not.    It's so infuriating to see people who have NO IDEA what the are talking about saying people were robbed and going on about controversy or blind judges.

Here is what I say to all of you.  You sit through a 24 hour course,  pass a 3 part 6 hour test that you need (IIRC) 85% on to pass, and judge a 5 round barn burner of a fight that you cannot get a single round wrong on.  Then, shadow a judge for a few fight cards, and then actually sit in the judges seat and THEN, and only THEN can you say ANYTHING about how a fight was judged.  Hearing people say things like round 4 should have been a 10-8 and that Gufstason CLEARLY won the first 3 is as maddening as spectators or coaches asking for points for back control when there are no hooks or when they get made when adults do ankle locks.

OK, enough about that. It isn't really jiu jitsu related, but I know a lot of people who follow jiu jitsu follow MMA so I had to get that out there.  There was no controversy in the title fight on Saturday.  NONE.  The most controversial thing was Jon Jones corner trying to sneak Greg Jackson in as a 4th corner when the Ontario Commission only allows 4.

The Ontario Provincial Championship was announced this week!  It's going down November 30th, in St. Catherines.  I am undecided on wheter I like that it is in St. Catherines or not.  I was quite looking forward to Kingston, which was the tentative location announced at the beginning of the year.  I think that St Catherines is a very very long drive for anyone east of Toronto and I fear it will be the south western Ontario regional event with a few americans mixed in, instead of a true provincially attended event.   That being said, it's a much shorter drive for me then Kingston, so I won't have to blow money on a hotel, which is always nice.  They are giving away 4 trips to California, for the IBJJ Pans.  That, in theory, should bring out some bodies!  I'm a bit said it's 3 trips for the guys and only 1 for the ladies, but the numbers can justify it.  Sort of.  I think that there will be just as many blue belt girls and brown/black belt men and they should get their own trip, instead of being lumped with the purple/brown/black women.

This Saturday is the Return o the Zombie House!!!  This is a great little event that is a completely different format from anything else out there.  It's friendly but competitive and a great way to spend the afternoon.   You can read about the event on their website, and on the facebook event.  I am planing on heading down to body of our to check it out!

Grappling Industries has at least 2 more events on the Horizon.  Montreal on October 5th, and Toronto on Oct 26th.  In Montreal they are giving away 8 trips down the 401 to the big event on Oct 26th, where trips to California will once again be on the line.  I won't be going to Montreal (firt One i've missed this year I think!) because I am getting in some much needed nature time with my sister.  I will be at the Toronto event on October 26th and you should be to!

That's all for now!  See you on the mats!

Grappling Industries: Summer Havoc July 20th Recap

This past Saturday was Grappling Industries fourth foray into the GTA.  The event was held at Ryerson University in downtown Toronto and had somewhere around 300 competitors.

They've gotten the format down pat, and it's all very smooth these days.  They have weigh ins on Friday night, and Saturday morning with gi weigh ins closing 15 minutes before the start of the competition and nogi weigh ins closing 15 minutes before the start of the nogi.

Some of the things that were excellent about the day:

• Started on time ran on / ahead of schedule and was pretty much done by 4pm.  Most mats were done by 3:00pm
• The registration / weigh in process was quick and easy.  Especially compared to past events where there was huge lines for registration due to the OGA paperwork.
• They gave away 8 trips to big IBJJF tournaments. Now, these 8 trips were not worth as much as some of the ones they have given out in the past, but with 8 of them, I'm quite certain the total value was the most they've given out.
• People are starting to understand the system and are at their mats ready to go,  making the whole day smoother.
• There was a good size warm up area
• There were more masters out then at previous events, a trend I hope continues.
• The white belt ladies division was a decent size, and very competitive.
• The blue and up ladies -141 was the biggest I've ever seen.  

Some things that were less then excellent about the day:

• my shoulder really hurt by the end, I was careful with it, making the fighters switch sides to raise their hand and stuff, but it still got sore.
• I had competitors from the mat beside me come onto my mat 3 or 4 times, twice they ran into me and/or my fighters.  The mat area or safety area NEEDS to be made bigger somehow.
• Yacinta was the only one in the +141 blue and up divisions, so she didn't get too many fights.  She still got to fight the winner of the -141 for the trips though, so at least she got some fights(and prizes).
• at least 3, and I think 4 referees who were scheduled to work did not show up on very short, or no notice.  This lead to us having less breaks, and the promoters having to use backups.
• Coaches and Athletes STILL don't know the rules.  Seriously people.  RTFM.  
• I got yelled at for not giving sweep points when someone reversed side control
• I got yelled at for DQ'ing  for a heal hook.
• MANY competitors had no idea what a knee reap was and that they were doing it
• I got yelled at for allowing white belts to ankle lock. (News flash. they are LEGAL)
• The medics did an pretty good job. It's a hard job. But there were several times they had to be called multiple times to get their attention.  Perhaps they need to have more so that they don't end up attending to to many athletes and not being able to keep an eye on the floor.
• There were several times throughout the day when fighters were called a whole bunch of times, and they weren't ever at the event.  It would be good for the organizers to figure out a way to quickly/easily go through the weigh-in list and cross reference the draws and make notes of who never showed up.  This would save some headaches for the table works.
• They use IBJJF GI weight classes, but allow you to weigh in with out your gi on. I like that they use the standard weight classes, but I think it would be better if they used the nogi weight classes because they don't have a weight allowance built into them.

Pura had a pretty small team out to the event. With it being summer and all not a lot of people are around on weekends.   Here is how everyone did:

• Brayden: 4-0 in Gi, all wins by armbar  for Gold! This was his first Nogi competition and he had a great showing winning silver.
• Kyle:  His first competition and he went 3-1 in Gi and I believe 2-2 in nogi.  Great work for his first time out hopefully he is hooked now :)
• Eric: 2-1 and one default win in Gi.  This was his first time back competing in a very long time so it was good for him to work off the ring rust and now he is ready to really kick ass at the Toronto Open.
• Stephen went 3-2 looking like a beast.
• Jon went 2-2 in gi, putting 1 guy to sleep (that's 10 now).  He entered in the advanced for nogi, which was a bit silly,  and had a bit of a bad time against the killers David Mosleh, and Arther.
• Alasdair went 2-2 in gi.  winning silver.
• Greg had a rough day, going 0-2 against a younger, larger guy.  He did some great things in his matches though, and is steadily making his way down to super heavy where he is going to ruin a lot of peoples days.

The competition medal results can be found on the grappling industries website.  Pictures from the event can be found on their facebook page and videos will be up on youtube soon.

On a completely unrelated note, I should get the results from the MRI today.  I won't really know exactly what they mean, but it's progress.  I have an appointment with Dr. Levy to go over them on August 7th.  It's been pretty annoying the last few days.  One day it will feel fine, the next it will feel awful.  I imagine it's probably because it feels ok, so I move it more, and that pisses it off.

I guess that is all for now.  The IBJJF Toronto Open is in a week and a half, registration closes this Friday. So get on that.  It should be a pretty excellent event.   We are heading to Montreal for the Grappling Industries event on August 17th as well and after that is another grappling industries event in Toronto, and then the OJA GTA Classic both in September.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention this!!

There are some women's open mats coming up in the Province as well!   This is pretty awesome, and I wish I could participate in them.  You ladies should all check them out.  

Check out this facebook group for details and information on ladies jiu jitsu in ontario.

THIS SUNDAY in Toronto
Women's ONLY OPEN MAT on Sunday July 28th at 10am at Action & Reaction MMA.

August 25th in London:
See the facebook event for details.

Five Grappling - Ontario 1 June 29th Tournament Report

So, this past weekend was Five Grappling's first event!

On Friday night they held a seminar at the venue with jiu jitsu legends Marcelo Garcia and Xande Ribeiro.  Also at the seminar was 27 time mundial champion Renato Laranga!  On a semi related note, a super fight between Marcelo and Renato was announced on Saturday.

I wasn't able to attend the seminar, but from what I heard it was quite excellent.  Marcelo and Xande have fairly different styles and body types so it was great for people to get their different perspectives on the techniques and see what kind of changes you need to make to have things work for different body types and styles. A couple of my team mates, and some of my friends from other schools attended and had nothing bad to say about it.  I was originally registered, but had to withdraw from it because of my shoulder.  I'm pretty bummed I missed it.

My perspective of the competition is a bit skewed because I was working the entire day.  My job was to sort out 1/2 the fighters into queues for their mats runner.  It was a chaotic job, that left me with tired feet, a sore shoulder, no voice and no patience by the end of the day.   I'm not sure I would do the job again, but it was interesting anyway.  There were some issues that were out out fives control.that made the job more difficult then it needed to be and I think at their next event it will be much easier and less stressful.

The event started at 10am with a rules meeting. They basically went over the major differences between the five grappling ruleset and the ibjjf rules that everyone is used to.  This was a really good idea, because not everyone reads the rules of the competitions they enter and it probably saved the table workers and referees some grief from the coaches.   That being said, moat of the adults were not at the venue yet, so they did not benefit from the meeting.

The first portion of the day, which was gi kids, women, and masters took longer to get through then planned.  This was mostly because the competitors didn't listen to the instructions from the meeting, and the runners and myself.   They would not stay in the bullpen, when they were coming up, or enter the exit and go straight to their mat, and all sorts of other, incorrect behaviour that left us looking for fighters and waiting around.   The other issue was that the speaker and Mic setup in the bullpen did not get loud enough and the speaker was at the back of the bullpen, when it should have been at the front, near the warm-up area so the announcer could call people from the bullpen admin area without setting off lots of feedback.

The system for the draws was pretty sweet, each match got a number, so if you paid attention to your mat, and kept an eye on things, you would always have a pretty good idea of when you would be up next.   This is not a new thing for competitions in other sports like wrestling and judo, but it is new to jiu jitsu, so there will always be a learning curve.  I hope its a system that is adopted across the board by all the various promotions because it really is a great way of doing things.

So, the super fights ended up starting later them scheduled, and running before all the kids/masters/womens nogi was complete. This was a bit annoying but not the end of the world.  After the super fights things got back on track quickly and I believe the tournament was wrapped up by 6 or 630 pm. 

The superfights were all great fights.  There were 2 submissions I believe, Thomas Beach won by submission(sadly I missed this fight because we haf a mini meeting during it) and Michael Lierra Jr submitted Dainis Ng. 

Alison vs Sijara was a very entertaining match. They both almost got a kimura and if there had been a few more seconds Alison would have likely score some more points to take the lead.  Sijara won 5-2.
In the main event Darson and Gianni double guard pulled but Gianni came up for 2.  The rest of the match was Darson playing Dlr and Gianni trying to pass.   This may sound boring but it was actually quite entertaining. 

The medals and belts for the divisions were really nice looking.  They even had kids size belts for the advanced divisions. The award presentations were pretty delayed for the first half of the day, but I believe once they got going they handed them out as things went along Hopefully next time they will give them out as the divisions complete, since people had places to go and things to do, it was a holiday weekend after all.  They gave out sweet gear bags to every competitor, and also gave a bag, with a certificate for hatashita international to the competitors who their matches by submission.  I like this idea and I hope it becomes more popular.

All in all it was a successful event, and or their first tournament it was more than acceptable.   There are some kinks to work out, but they almost all revolve around the draw system and should be fairly easy to resolve.  I'm working on writing out some tips and fixes for the promoters that were apparent from my end, and I am certain that the next event will be even better!

Transitions and change and losing

First off, I want to say,  I am NOT trying to  make excuses for all the losing I've been doing lately.  I'm more trying to figure out why I've been having such bad "luck" lately  and convince myself that I'm not terrible at Jiu Jitsu. 

I don't even really know where to start.  I suppose, at the very beginning, with Judo and my first transition to Jiu Jitsu.  It went decently,  I was able to use my judo to get a take down most of the time, and then flounder my way through the rest of the fight.  If they had a decent guard I would spend most of the match inside it.  I gave up my back a lot those days because I had instincts ingrained into me from the Judo rule set.  Mount/Side control, North South, and most other positions where I'm on my back, and they are on top (without a guard), I was 20 seconds away from losing.  Back Control, in Judo,  isn't points and if you can hold off the choke for 5-10 seconds you get stood back up.   It took me a long time to stop doing that, and it cost me a lot of matches.  I still do it sometimes, but quite rarely.

Everyone around here got savvy to my Judo pretty quickly and everyone started pulling guard before I could even get a decent grip.  This was pretty frustrating, because I was (and still am)  pretty bad at breaking and passing a closed guard.  Let's be honest,  It's really hard!!  Anyway,  that made for a big turning point in my game,  I started pulling guard instead of letting them pull guard.  It was awkward at first, but I got the hang of it, and started hitting a lot of armbars from there.  I still love going to closed guard, but I'm working on other things now...

Next big transition was switching schools.  This was a hard decision to make, but since retiring from MMA, and wanting to focus on BJJ, being only able to train 2x week wasn't going to work out. I could always go to the affiliate gym, but that was another 20 minutes (on top of the 40) to get there.  I know there are people out there who drive 60 min to train on a regular basis,  but with a full time job, and the dojo's being in the opposite direction of home from work.  It just wasn't really viable.  The switch came off a pretty long layoff from injuries and when I hit the mats for the first few months at Pura I felt like I didn't know any Jiu Jitsu.  It was awful!   I felt embarrassed to wear my blue belt because I was so awkward and awful.  Turns out, a year off from injuries, and switching to a school with a very different style will do that. 

That is the second last part of the transition/change/making me suck.  Jiu Jitsu is constantly evolving, and Pura is at the front of the curve with Professor Rafa and Gui designing the curriculum. It's "Modern" Jiu Jitsu as they say and it doesn't really involve a lot of arm bars from closed guard, my bread and butter and winning formula.    At first, I just drilled and worked the technique in class, and when I rolled still went back to my old game.  At competition pretty much all of 2012 I didn't use a lot of the new stuff,  but towards the end of the year, I started adding it in, because like earlier in my journey, people got savvy to my style.  I am really bad at this stuff still, and I'm at a weird point where I don't instinctively go for my old game, but still have to think about my new game.  It leads to a lot of fights like my fight in New York where I went for something, had to pause to think, it failed, and shortly after I was taking a nap. 

The final key to my being terrible at Jiu Jitsu is the insane jump in the level of competition from Blue to Purple.   It's partially because there is so few local girls for me to compete at, so I have to travel to the bigger competitions, and the only people that bother to go to those seem to be people who are really really good.  I'm not saying the local girls aren't good.  But when you go up a belt, and go from the local, to the non-local scene. It's like 2 giant steps instead of just one.  That being said,  I lost to a blue belt a few weeks ago, in Montreal,  so, there goes that excuse.  Anyway... I was talking to a few people, and the general consensus is that the step from blue to purple is bigger on the women's side than the men's.  I've been trying to figure out why that is, but I haven't been able to come up with anything concrete.  

I'm trying to figure out if my size is also part of the problem.  I've been steadily shrinking and often still competing against girls in medium heavy, and heavy, just because that's the way absolutes and +whatever divisions work. I have also lost to smaller girls, so it's certainly not the only reason.  I think I haven't quite adapted my game to my smaller size.  I don't have the weight to throw behind things and to use in top positions and it takes less work for the competition to get things to work on me.  This seems like a pretty weak excuse/explanation but, I wasn't even the one who came up with it, I forget who it was.  

When I got my purple, I had all these grande schemes in my mind. I would travel to New York, Chicago, Boston and California and get lots of fights and experience and wins.  I would continue winning almost all my fights, and maybe pick up some serious sponsors along the way.  Instead, I've been floundering on, getting 1 or 2 fights per competition, mostly losing, and feeling like I've been wasting my money and embarrassing myself, and my team with my "performance" or lack there of.

I keep trying to tell myself it'll get better, and I'll find my place in the purple belt world.  But I'm getting pretty sick of losing.  I hate it.  I hate losing at anything.  When I was a kid,  I got 2nd place over all in my class for track and field day. I threw out the ribbon because It wasn't first.  I'm competitive at pretty much everything I do and I despise losing.  When ever I play a board game, or card game, I get caught up and have to remind myself it's just a game. 

I need to put all this negativity behind me, maybe actually listen to my own advice from my blog series on the mental side of the game.  I've gotten away from a lot of my pre-comp and comp day habits.  I have been doing a lot of the opposite of positive self talk, and not a lot of visualization and whatnot.  I need to stop making excuses and trying to explain away the holes in my game and my lack of ability to implement my game plan, wait, I'd have to have a solid game plan to implement it. So, I guess making and drilling a solid game plan would be a good start.  This blog post is the last you will hear any of this negative excuse like bullshit. 

Worlds is just under 2 weeks away.  We are leaving Friday to train at Art of Jiu Jitsu for a few days then competing on Thursday or Friday. The Pre-Schedule has me fighting on Thursday or Friday.  Jon will be fighting Wednesday or Thursday.   My division has 9 people in it!  It's the best opportunity I have to have multiple fights against girls my size and level. 

After worlds is Five Grappling Ontario 1.  This should be a pretty cool event.  They are giving out lots of swag, and having prizes for submissions.  I think that's a cool idea, and hopefully it will get people to push the pace and not win on advantages. Oh, wait, there are no advantages!  They are following basic IBJJF rules except no advantages.  I think this will get people to screw around a lot less, but who knows. Jiu Jitsu is at a weird place right now and hopefully events like this will help steer it in a good direction.  Part of this tournament is a super seminar with Marcelo Garcia AND Xande Ribeiro.  That is going to be amazing! 

Also coming up this summer, is Grappling Industries: Summer Havoc.  They are giving away a whole bunch of trips this time around and 2 of them are going to the ladies!  I will be competing in the Gi and NoGi portions of this event to try to win a trip to Atlanta and Nogi pans.  I will also be refereeing!  So that will be a pretty busy day.