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.  

   

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.  

My New Project!

Hey Everyone!

So, I posted this on facebook last week, but I haven't posted it here yet.  Starting in September I will be teaching a ladies only class at Pura BJJ!!

Like it says on the poster, Wednesdays 6 to 7 pm, starting in September.  It's going to be free for the month of September as well!  After September, there will be a special membership, that includes the ladies only classes and the BJJ 101 classes.  Of course the ladies are welcome to getting a full membership but professor PJ wanted to give them some options to help with the transition and to make doing jiu jitsu easier for them.  

My friend Heather,  in the picture, is going to be at the classes to, so the ladies will have some experienced people to work with and help them along the way.  The class dynamics will be kind of weird at first, because it's going to be almost entirely new students.  They won't have the hierarchy of experienced students that most classes have.  I  ran into this when I was starting up a judo class years ago to.  I think there will be a few less egos this time around so it should be a smooth process.

I'm really excited for this opportunity.  I'm super thankful that Prof PJ is giving me the chance to teach some classes and build a army of jiu jitsu girls:)!   I'm really hoping a few catch the competition bug eventually but I'll be happy even if none of the new students ever compete to!   I just want to help them learn jiu jitsu and have fun!

We may run into some technical difficulties,  the ladies change room is quite small... There is definitely not room for more then 3 or 4 at a time in there.  We may have to commandeer the boys changroom.  That might be awkward though, because the class is gig to be right after the kids, which is a mixed class, and I think there will be a class after as well.... logistics are complicated hahah.  We might have to move some of the boot camp junk from the cubbies to, since there will be more then 1 girl needing to store stuff there at a time. 

I've been trying to come up with a little information handout type thing, with the class details, and bits of important information to give the ladies, but it's been so long since I was new to a class, I don't really know what would be to "DUH" and what is information that they really don't need for now.   Any ideas?

I've been trying to come up with idea for spreading the word about this,  it's posted on facebook, here on my blog. I'm not going near most grappling forums because they are full of assholes.  I wonder if Goodlife would let me put a poster up at the gym there... It's right by Pura, and they have business cards there already.  hmmmm  any other ideas?  Maybe I should post it on r/hamilton,  it's a pretty  quiet sub reddit, but they might like to know.

In other news...

At the time of writing this,  I still don't have the results from my MRI, my shoulder STILL hurts all the time, I can't sleep on my left side, I can't pick shit up with my left arm, and in general it's just plain shitty.  

My work is moving to hamilton in just over a week! I could bike to work, if I had a bike,  public transit is a pretty decent option, and if I was desperate, I could walk!   

Saturday is the IBJJF Toronto Open.

Then 2 weeks after that is the OJA Tournament in Sudbury, and Grappling Industries in Montreal.  Then, in September Grappling industries is back in Toronto, and the GTA classic is also back!   We will be making the trip down the 401 to the Grappling Industries event.

Can you believe it's August already?  holy crap, where on earth did summer go?  I would have thought that with my shoulder being useless time would have gone slow, but I have no idea what happened to June or July!  

There is going to be a camp at Art of Jiu Jitsu in November!   We had so much fun last summer I really hope we ca get to it.  I've got my fingers crossed that it will be over a weekend so It doesn't take to many vacation days and whatnot.

Oh!  How could I forget,  Rick Slomba from AOJ is going to be at Pura all week next week.  If my MRI shows my shoulder is toast, I'm going to train and deal with the pain.  If it shows it's not so bad, I'll probably sit on the side lines.  Either way, it should be a pretty excellent week.

That's all for now,  I'll have a report for you next week.  Maybe Monday even, but if I am anything like the MRI department at the general, it'll be 2 weeks.

Why do the ladies get their own sub only tournament?

This was asked by a facebook friend of mine today, after this past weekends mat militia women's sub only event. 

In this case, it was because they had a guys version a few months ago and wanted to give the ladies a chance to showcase their skills as well.    It was free to compete in, and they collected donations to support a breast cancer charity.  All very cool and I am sad that I missed it. 

But, the question still stands and has been talked about by many.  Why do we need / want ladies only camps, classes, tournament and what not?

There are many many reasons, and they don't all apply to everyone and I doubt every reasons would apply to a single person, but it all comes down to community and not being an outsider.

Have you ever walked Into a  room and been the only young person? Old person? Have you ever taken a course and upon surveying the participants felt completely out of place?  Do you have a hobby that society or your friends and or family think first suit you?  Do you wish you had friends you could talk to about your favourite things but can't because none of them have a clue?  If you answer yes to any of these, then you have a slight idea what its like being a lady in the Bjj world. 

It's not abnormal for their to be zero or one girl in a typical class at moat schools. There are some that have more, and because they have more, they attract more, but that is far from the norm.
It's not abnormal for womens divisions in tournaments to have less weight classes(if any) and less belt division. But, even with these accommodations, empty divisions and combined divisions that leave huge disparities in size and skill level. 

Let's be honest when practicing Bjj, we get close, far closer then most people are comfortable with.  It's weird, its awkward at first, and as they say in all the memes "its only gay if you make eye contact".  Shit like that does NOT inspire anyone to try jiu jitsu, and most certainly not women!  Comments like "that's what I came here to see" when a fighter almost has a wardrobe malfunction are equally damning to the sport and don't really make us girls comfortable training or competing with or around guys.  

I've been lucky in my martial arts career, I started judo young before I even thought about how awkward some positions are, so it was normal and not weird for me from day one. Adults coming to the sport don't have that luxury.   I've also trained at schools that always respected me and didn't make me feel like an outsider.   That being said, I did choose to not train at a club because I was told "the guys wouldn't be comfortable with me in the class and that I should try cardio kickboxing". That was a few years ago, the club now has ladies in their classes, and will remain unnamed.

I've also been lucky because I am not an average build, I'm tall, and not exactly built like a model. Years of working with my dad in the tire business, martial arts, and Dutch genetics have made me not exactly petite.  So I don't have the troubles a lot of smaller more petite women do.   That being said, I'm still female, and. While I am not petite, I don't have a guys body either and still struggle with being less strong and having the lovely issues that come with the hormone roller-coaster that is our lives.  (water retention, mood swings, joint issues, ect, higher body fat ext). 

So you say, "really small, and really big guys have to deal with some of these problems to"!  It's true, and I feel bad for them sometimes, but the fact of the matter is, there are minimum 3 more weight classes for guys, and there are also masters and sometime senior divisions and most tournaments.   If. Guy had no one in their division at a small tournament or they are on the extreme ends or in an alder weight class, they will, almost Guaranteed have to chance to move down to adult or up one weight class.  For us, we don't have different age categories, and chances are, there is no one up a weight class, or two, or you are already in the top weight class, which is 50 lbs lighter then the guys.

Here in Ontario, tournament promoters are pretty good about supporting women in the sport.   A lot give us discount registration fees, which some of my male counter parts complain about.  But, as I have explained it to them. With the average division size for women sitting at 1 or 2, of 3 if you are lucky, and the average male division at somewhere between 8 and 16,  if they win, they get 3-5 fights, if we win, we get 1 or 2.  So, it's fair that we pay less right?  Also, many tournament give out prizes for absolutes or specific divisions,  it used to be the norm that the guys prizes would far far far outnumber the ladies, if there was prizes for the ladies at all.  This is also improving greatly, with the Ontario Open giving almost 1/2 to the ladies, and grappling industries committing to always having at least 1 trip for the ladies.  

I've had conversations with masters guys athletes, with them complaining and stating that they should have trip prizes or other prizes for their divisions to, because there are more of them then their are women.  My argument was, and still is,  they have the OPTION to compete in the old guy division, we don't have the option to compete with the guys (not normally anyway, grappling industries has allowed it, in some cases, when there was 0 competition available).  So, they choose to be in the smaller divisions, so I feel like they aren't actually being discriminated against.  That being said, saying the women are discriminated against is not really true either.  It's business plain and simple.  Should there be big trips for divisions/absolutes that have 1 or two competitors in them?  Hardly seems fair to the promoter!  It's not really the promoters fault there is no competition, and it's not the fault of the athletes that did show up either.

It's tricky to balance, and even talk about without someone getting offended.  I think it's totally fair that there are LESS trips/prizes for women, but we should get the chance to compete for a trip if our male counterparts get the chance.  What I mean by that is:  if there is a white belt guys, blue belt guys, purple+ guys, and blue and up girls trip, then the while and blue belt ladies should either have a trip for themselves as well, OR the opportunity to compete up in the division that does have a trip.  Sure, they probably won't win it,  but then, neither do all but 1 of the guys in their respective divisions.  It isn't fair to the promoter to expect them to have exactly equal prizes when the competitor pools are so insanely different in size.

So, why do we need our own classes/camps/events?  So we can complain to each other about all this.   So we can work together to try to fix all this, and so we can roll with some one who isn't either afraid to hurt us or trying to fix their ego by simply overpowering us. and so we don't always have to roll with smelly boys who have cooties. haha.  You think I am joking, but seriously,  boys are smelly.  But then, sometimes girls are to.  PSA to everyone, wash yourself, wash your gi.

For competitions, we need /like our own events because if we have our own events, we can plan them and work together to all get to them.   It's nice to have our own thing.  Also, because we are excluded from events sometimes. Like the gracie nationals, the 32 MAN showdown, and other things.  Most tournaments do have divisions for us, but they tend to be combined weight/belt classes with less prizes and whatnot, which, in most cases I am fine with. But I'm not fine with events that disclude us completely and that is why we "NEED" to have our own sub only event Kofi :P

This blog post really is all over the place isn't it?  Whatever, this is how my trains of thought work.  I am not your typical woe is me, poor me, I am a girl in a boys world type person. I've been lucky with who i've trained with, and the community around me.  I've got a great gi sponsor who supports me, even though I don't give him nearly as much exposure as the guys do(smaller divisions, lack of divisions = mess mat time = less advertising time). I'm also sponsored by grappling industries, who really are trying hard to help the women in the sport.  By being sponsored by them, I compete at their events for free.  This generally means, that any other girls who show up, have someone to fight. I think doing things like this really helps build the sport.  I know a lot of people don't want to register and waste their time/money when they have no one to compete with.  (of course, I am on the side line with this useless shoulder injury, so the theory isn't quite in practice at this moment).

So, ummm, yea.  Girls only events are cool. I wish we had more of them.  Co-ed events are even better.  Guys only events already exist and on one even blinks or notices.

If you are a member of the female half of the population, there are a bunch of facebook groups where there are open mats organized and stuff.  Ontario has one, Boston has one, There is the Women's Grappling Network,  the Grappling Camp group, and I am sure there are many more.  If you are looking for opportunities to roll and train with women they are out there!!

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.

Niagara Open March 23rd 2013

This past weekend we made the trip south west down the QEW and 406 to the 2nd Annual Niagara Open.   Last year, this tournament was quite small, and was plagued with quite a few issues revolving around staffing, draw systems and inexperience.   They tried a few new things to try to make the tournament better but unfortunately most of them didn't work out.

This year was 1000X better.  They had a lot more help from the rest of the OJA crew and that made a huge difference.  They used a standard OJA registration system and the usual Mata Leo draw system which is very powerful.  They brought in and scheduled the referees through the OJA referee group.  They also changed venues.   The old venue wasn't really bad, but this one had a bit more space.

The gymnasium was just about the right size for the tournament.   It was cozy at the middle of the day, when the kids and parents hadn't all left yet, and all the adults were there, but there have been plenty of tournaments in the past that had way bigger space issues.  It would have been nice if they had the room to pull out both sides of the bleachers, but it wasn't a big issue.  They won't be able to grow the tournament at this venue though. It only fits 6 mat areas, and there is not enough space for more.

 One thing that wasn't too clear with this venue was where to park.  They did have some signs outside, but they pointed to the gym, not the parking lot, and by following them, we ended up at a lot that cost $2.50 per 1/2 hour or something insane like that.   We turned around and found a better lot that was only $6 per day.   They did a good job of posting signs in the building that the gym was in. Unfortunately, they all referenced the gymnasium the gym was in, which wasn't on any signs until we got to the hallway that the gym was in!   But, by just walking down the hall, looking for signs, we did find it without making any wrong turns.  It was just confusing, because the signs didn't have arrows or anything.

The one issue they did have was with scheduling.  The tournament was scheduled to start at 9:00am and the first matches were on by 9:20 or so.  I'll call that pretty much on time.  It was a little bit slow getting started with only 1 or two mats running, but that's not unusual.   I feel like this is a hurting point for many tournaments.  Things always get jammed up in the weigh in -> finding the people -> getting them on the mat time process.  This happens at OJA events, and it happens at IBJJF events.  I see it everywhere.  Unfortunately, if tournaments insist on having weigh-ins right before the first match, there really isn't a way around this.

By the time the kids were wrapping up, we had managed to catch up, and were actually ahead of schedule for a few minutes.  They couldn't start the next divisions for about 10 minutes, according to the schedule, so there was a lull in action for a short time. Then, somehow, by 3pm, we ended up almost 2 hours behind!  I think this was a combination of misjudging how many white and blue belt adults there were and how long it would take combined with a traffic jam at the weigh in, and some trouble finding competitors.

There was also an issue of not being able to start the blue belt no-gi divisions, because the blue belt absolute wasn't able to run until all the blue belt divisions were done. One of them got majorly delayed because of 2 serious injuries on the same mat.  They probably should have moved some things around to accommodate those divisions so they could keep things moving, but the trouble is, no one ever knows how long an injury will take to clear the mat, and it may have taken longer to shift things around than the injuries to move!  It's a tricky situation.   Either way, we ended up wrapping up the last match around 8:30pm.  So, just shy of 12 hours of matches for the day.

Another thing the tournament did really well was feed the staff!  There were volunteers coming around constantly offering cookies, water, and other snacks.  Lunch was pitas from the pita pit!  This is a way better option than the pizza a lot of other tournaments do, but much more expensive so I understand why we normally get pizza.  The only down side was the meat ones were all ham. I try to avoid eating large amounts of pork when possible, but I ate one anyway. And by one I mean, all the meat and cheese from one.  I'm doing a ketogenic diet right now, and a pita doesn't exactly fit that mold.   It would be cool if they had turkey, or chicken instead next time.

Finally, I had a new experience at this event.  Pura had a pretty large contingent out to the even, so it was unavoidable for some of them to end up at the mat I was refereeing.   I made full disclosure to the other athlete in every case, and offered to swap out with another ref if they wanted.  Most people were like "Of course not, it's fine", a couple asked to swap, which was totally fine as well.  I didn't get all butt-hurt about it.  In one match, the coach was like "yea, no problem, it's all good" and then as soon as I scored any points for the competitor who was from my team, shit hit the fan.  He was yelling and making a scene.

As soon as the athlete from my team grabbed on and stopped moving for 5 seconds he's yelling "she's stalling she's stalling". Thanks, I see that, but 5 seconds isn't stalling, 20 is.  I DID give her a stalling penalty at the appropriate time.    She ended up stalling again with only 30 seconds left, so I gave another penalty and advantage for that.  In the end she ended up winning by 5 or so points and the other coach was livid.   There was absolutely nothing I could have done differently within the rules to change the outcome.  The points and advantages / penalties given were all clear cut; in fact, I was probably quick to give the 2nd stalling penalty.

When they were up to fight again, I quickly asked another referee to do the match.  I didn't need my teammate to be harassed and have her accomplishments marred by his irateness.   Turns out she won by armbar so it didn't matter, but I didn't want to have the tournament, my teammate or anyone else have to deal with that drama.   In the future, if there is a referee available, I won't even bother asking, and just swap out for the match.  I think this is fairer to my teammates and the tournament as a whole.  I know I can be impartial as a referee, but some people don't know the rules, or will do/say anything to have their students win so I will do what I can to avoid that kind of nonsense in the future.


The level of competition at this year’s event far exceeded last years as well.  Last year there were only a handful of purple belts, and some of the adult blue divisions only had 2 or 3 people in them.  This year light and middle purple each had 5 or 8 competitors, and some of the other divisions had a few as well.   Several of the blue belt divisions had rounds of 16 as well, which did not happen last year.   The while belt divisions grew as well, and there was even 1 brown belt fight.  The ladies divisions were disappointingly small, with only feather and light having any competitors, most of which were from a single club.  There were no blue, or purple belt ladies registered (other than myself).

There were a few guys at the tournament that stood out to me with their impressive display of skills and techniques in their matches.  I didn't get to watch everyone all day so I'm sure there were plenty of other equally impressive displays of jiu jitsu, but I wanted to take a minute or two to highlight a few that I saw while refereeing, and during my break.

Arther and Graham from team Ascension.  I mention these two guys together, because Graham is practically a blue belt clone of Arther these days!  These guys both have a really good 50/50 game, as much as I hate that game, and they both have sick straight ankle locks.  They are also berimbolo machines.  Their style isn't always the easiest to referee, but they don't dick around and try to win by a few points or an advantage, so it's always an exciting match.

Ahmed and Ramie Chaarani are another pair that stood out. I had the pleasure of refereeing  a few of Ramie's gi matches and one or two of Ahmed's nogi matches.  I don't know why these guys don't compete more often because they are ridiculous!  They have a great level of patience and control in their matches that keeps the match at their pace and works pretty well for them.  Ahmed unfortunately (for him) had to face Alasdair in the first round of gi, and lost, but he made up for it by winning the nogi division.  Ramie cleaned up his gi division with impressive style as well.   The best part about these guys is that they also referee so they help keep the tournaments running.  Maybe that is why they don't compete that often.  Either way, I’m looking forward to watching them compete more in the future.

Speaking of Alasdair... I don't want to be biased because he's my teammate, but man, he was impressive in Niagara this past weekend.  He fought in the middle weight division, which is not his normal division and still ended up placing 2nd.   The final was a really tough match where the other guy really pushed the pace in a kind of spazzy way, a style very different from Alasdair's game.  But it was a crazy match to watch anyway. In the absolute, Alasdair avenged his loss and won the whole thing.  That is insane for a light weight, who has only been  purple for less than 6 months!

Pura had a HUGE team out to this event! It was great to see so many people competing from our small team.   We managed to take home the 2nd place in adult gi, 2nd place in adult nogi, and 2nd place overall awards!!  Everyone fought hard, especially all the kids.  The club was well represented and I couldn't be more impressed with everyone's attitude throughout the day.

It's a week later and I'm finally done writing this.  I've been sick for the last 2 weeks, but yesterday it dawned on me, that it might just be allergies.  I never used to have allergies, so I don't know what they really feel like, but it seems the last couple years I've had allergy like things happen to me at typical allergy times.

There are a few things coming up:

Pura In House next weekend (Pura people only, talk to Brad or any of the office people if you haven't signed up yet!)

New York Open!  April 20th. This should be a lot of fun.

Toronto Grappling Italian Edition.  April 13th.  3 trips to Rome on the line. If you’re a purple or brown belt, or no gi advanced male, I'd get on this.

The ONTARIO OPEN.  It's not till May, but I am excited for it.

Fighter Fashion... or lack there of.

So I was watching Invicta 4 the other day, talking to my friend Tee, and we noticed the wide variety of apparel the fighters were wearing.  We talked about what we wore / would wear in a mma fight, and what works for jiu jitsu.  She mentioned off hand that I should blog about it, and so that's what I'm going to do!

Women's MMA has a wide range of apparel that seems to be allowed. You see girls fighting in jersey style shirts and board shorts to shorts that barely cover their butt cheeks and small sports bras, and everything in between!  It's interesting to see the variety and creativity that goes into everyone's outfits but I've got to wonder how they decide sometimes. Men's MMA has pretty strict rules about what's allowed,  board shorts or vale tudo shorts.  Wrestling "shorts" were allowed... until the Dennis Hallman fiasco.

Now, some people are probably going to be insulted by the rest of this post, if you are one of the girls who wears very little to fight, you probably don't want to read anymore haha. You'll probably call me a prude and be all "I can wear whatever I want that I'm comfortable fighting in" and that's fine.

Now, at Invicta, there was 3 wardrobe malfunctions. There was ass crack, a thong, and a nipslip. Two of those in one fight! From the same fighter! You would think that wearing leggings to fight in would be fairly safe, but they seemed to be a bit loose or something b/c they rode a little low and we saw a bit of bum. Leslie's sports bra also had some trouble, I don't think anything got on camera, but the people in the live show definitely saw more than they expected!  The thong incident belongs to Alexis, her fight shorts seemed to have a similar problem as Leslie's and we all got a peek at her lovely black thong, I suppose it's good she was wearing something underneath!

So, why do these kinds of things happen? Do the fighters not get their fight outfits until a few hours before the fight or something? I guess with having to get sponsors printed and everything they don't get to test them out, but man, I would be talking with my providers after malfunctions like that!

So what is the ideal outfit for fighting? It’s one which allows the fighters to have proper mobility and not be restricted by their outfits and also show off their ridiculously sculpted bodies - which they have every right to, they work their asses off and they should be flaunting it.

Shayna's outfit allowed for a lot of movement and didn't move at all. No idea what's different from her shorts and Alexis and Leslies. Her sports bra/top definitely had more coverage then a lot of other fighters and was tight enough to stay in place, but didn't seem to cause any restrictions or anything either. Seems like the best of both worlds.

When I was fighting MMA, I wore compression shorts, with board shorts over top on the bottom and 2 sports bras and a long sleeve rashguard on top. Paranoid much? Big time. I would be mortified if I had a wardrobe malfunction, but I guess that's just me.

The same thing happens, to a lesser extent, in BJJ. Lots of girls wear just a sports bra under their gi, and I got to say, I'm a little jealous of their confidence!  Like in MMA, I wear compression shorts under my gi pants, and a sports bra and long sleeve(or sometimes short sleeve) rashguard under my gi.  Funny thing, did you know in the IBJJF rules it specifies that thongs aren't allowed to be worn under gi pants. I assume they mean as the only thing under your pants, but it's still funny. It's also funny that this rule is only for the women. I guess they haven't had to specify it for the men yet. No commando allowed either.

I do see the appeal of wearing a thong, you know you’re going to get wedgies doing jiu jitsu (and MMA) so why not make it as little fabric as possible?  No one likes a big ol’ wedgie. I find some pairs of shorts, and underwear, cause wedgies a lot worse than others. I haven't quite figured out what the cause is, but I know some of my shorts never ride up, and some do. I wish I could keep them straight.

I did get a sweet pair of capris the other day from Tussle that I'm looking forward to rocking for nogi jiu jitsu. I'm going to be wearing a pair of shorts underneath them though, b/c they are a tad to big and I think if I’m shrimping and stuff they might scrunch down and make me moon everyone!!

For the tops, I don't find wearing a rashguard under my gi to be restricting at all, I like the moisture wicking abilities it provides, and also, the more of my skin that's covered, the less chance of catching something nasty off of the mats.

This all reminds me... where do you girls find good sports bras? I have a hellova time finding decent ones. Tee pointed me to under armors $70 ones, and I’ve got to say, the fact that they have cup and band sizes instead of just small medium large is a big selling point. Just because I've got a medium size rib cage doesn't mean I've got big boobs!!

So, what do you wear? Is there anyone out there as paranoid as I am????

Grapplers Quest - the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Saturday December 1st brought Grapplers Quest to Ontario for the second time in 2012. The first was June 23 in Toronto. This time around it was in the booming metropolis of London, Ontario, also known as really far away from the major population hubs in Ontario. Probably not the best choice of city, but far from the worst. It did bring some people up from the States, who probably wouldn't have made the drive up to Toronto. I don't think anyone flew in, because London's airport is very small, and very expensive to fly to. Toronto probably could have gotten some more wide spread attendance because of it's airport.

I will break up this review/report into 3 sections, like the title implies... The good: things that were good about the tournament, things that I liked, things that other people liked, and things that didn't make me curse the sport. The bad: things that weren't so good that I, or my friends noticed. The ugly: things that were really bad.

The Good

1. The mats: They were high quality tatami mats, and the fight areas were large enough. They didn't come apart, and they weren't crappy wrestling mats. I absolutely HATE fighting on wrestling mats. I can't stand the way you sink into them a bit. I feel like my knees are going to get blown out anytime someone tries a foot sweep or even a sweep from guard. Any tournament that uses Tatami gets a bonus * in my books. 
2. The whole computer system: They used Splitdraw and used all parts of it. The weigh ins recorded everything and put you in the right division. In addition to that, each mat area had a laptop that worked as a score board, and kept track of who won what matches. They also had a monitor on the table listing the orders of the matches so people would know when they were up. Finally, each mat had 2 monitors attached to the laptop for scoreboards, facing opposite directions. These showed the score, and which fighter was which colour. All very cool and very helpful for the competitors.
3. Sponsorship Prizes for the advanced absolute divisions, including the ladies. It's really nice to see tournaments giving equal prizes to the ladies, even though there is so few of us. It's strange to me, how few people (men and women) signed up for the absolutes at GQ though. Some of them were packed, but the ladies divisions were very small. There was a lot of beginer women out though, which gives me some hope for the future of the sport.
4. They collected food for the London Food Bank. I love events that try to help out with the community. Women competed for free if they brought a bag of non-perishable food! I think that's a great initiative, and I think it did help bring out more ladies. I think there was more female competitors out than at any tournament in Ontario in 2012.
5. Round Robin for small divisions. Divisions of 2 did a best of 3, divisions of 3 did a round robin, and I believe divisions of 4 also did. I'm not sure about divisions of 5, but bigger than that got into the single elimination. There was always a fight for 3rd as well, instead of 2 bronze medals. It's nice to see them realizing that people don't want to pay 85 or 100 dollars for 1 fight if they have a small division.
6. The podium area. They had a nice stage setup, and the hardware is high quality. They had a guy working the camera and had bright lights so everyone's pictures should turn out well.
7. The venue was nice, spacious, and pretty easy to find. There was enough sitting room, and plenty of room for all the vendors that were there. Also, there was food available from the venue's food places all day which is very important.
8. The Medics. They were very qualified, quick to respond, and took great care of the injured athletes. Trust me, I was in their capable hands twice. and saw them take care of a few other people while I was there. Thanks Jon the Medic! 
9. Lots of sponsors and vendors around the venue offering a wide variety of goods for sale. Was great to see so many brands out supporting the event.

The Bad

1. Started around 2 hours late. Now, this was due to a few things.
   1. Allowing same day registration
   2. People showing up really really late
   3. Not enough pens at the registration area
   4. Having too many divisions so they had a lot of lonely people that had to be sorted out.
2.  A shortage of table workers and referees. They had to use some referees who did not have a lot of jiu jitsu experience. This caused quite a stir in some of the matches as they were unfamiliar with many of the positions and scoring opportunities. This was caused by refs not showing up due to sickness and unforeseen circumstances, as well as me getting a concussion in my match, leaving them short a referee. This is a really common problem at events and one that needs to be addressed. I think the first step would be to encourage competitors to volunteer by allowing them to compete for free if they volunteer for a set amount of time. This opens up a huge pool of volunteers.
3. A lack of intermediate and advanced women competitors. Now, this is clearly not the events fault. They even let us fight for free. This is on you ladies. What more can you ask them to do? Get your butts out to these events.

The Ugly

1. The cut on my head and the concussion that went with it. Jiu Jitsu is supposed to be "The Gentle Art". But there was nothing gentle about my last no gi match where I sustained the cut and head injury, or the Gi match after that which I should never have gone into. I have no recollection of the Gi match I competed in that day. I lost... on points I think. I don't even know if the score was close, I have no idea. I think I have video of it...I'll have to check my camera.

So, that's that. Hopefully Grapplers Quest, and all the tournaments can learn from all the great things, and the less than great things that happened in London and together we can all make competition in Ontario better and better.


A little bit more about my experiences in particular:
As I suspected, there wasn't originally anyone in my advanced absolute, or purple and up absolute. I was a bit surprised, because I saw some pretty intense looking ladies walking around, but I guess they were all in the beginner and intermediate divisions. I talked my friend Tee into the advanced absolute so I would have a match, and then Chealsey's coach moved her up from intermediate absolute to advanced.

I had a lot of fun in the match with Tee. She's like 115lbs soaking wet so I tried to keep it a technical match. She snuck in a pretty tight toe hold which had me quite concerned and i finally managed to get a tight arm bar with about 10 seconds left.

The match with Chealsey was not fun. I started out fighting very calm and trying new things like knee bars and wrist locks. Chealsey came for business though and was very intense and tenacious, and rough. she took my back a time or two, and the score ended up very close 7-5 or something like that with 30 seconds left, when the ref finally noticed I was bleeding profusely from my forehead (from one of several knees/elbows/heels to the head). Once I was finally cleaned up and taped up, we tried to restart, but there was some confusion about our position, she thought we were in 1/2 guard, I thought we were in guard. Well, the reff listened to her and her coach, instead of me and the rest of the crowd. But I digress, I managed to keep a hold of her leg for the last 30 seconds and get the win.

I headed over to the medic after wards because He wanted to assess the cut and my brain. After about 25 minutes of questions and forms he concluded that I MIGHT have a concussion and that I should get stitches in my head. I, like the idiot competitor that I am, disregarded his advice and competed in Gi anyway. like I mentioned before I have no recollection of the fight, other than feeling very week, disoriented and unwell. I lost and was unable to pick myself up off the mats when it was over. I was so weak, and dizzy. I was eventually brought over to the medic area and re-assessed. I did much more poorly this time around and was told much more firmly not to compete and not to referee or work a table the rest of the day.

I will be off the mats for at least a week, probably 2, and then will have to be very careful working my way back up to proper training levels. Light cardio only first(after at least a week of no exercise), slowly increasing the intensity, then maybe light drilling, no resistance, and light weight lifting. Won't be rolling for probably a month. If I try to get back to it too fast, I'll just make it worse. This is probably going to be one of the most difficult injury recoveries I have had to deal with because once the cut is healed, I will have no real physical indicators of the injury and It'll be hard mentally to pace myself and not get to depressed when I cannot train.

I'll see you from the side lines.
*tears*

Video Contest for a VVV Rashguard!

Here's the deal! 

This contest is going to be fun, and will help spread the word about my blog, and my facebook fan page. 


The prize is going to be a VVV rashguard, in YOUR size.  It was going to be the actual rashguard that I had won last weekend, but the cool cats at VVV are going to hook you up with your size instead of my size.  Isn't that nice?    I personally love my VVV rashguard, it's a great length and not to baggy, not to tight.  It's also a lot lighter then some of my other rashguards, while still feeling like it's high quality.

Check out VVV website here: http://vvvfightco.com/


How to enter the contest:

1.  Make a video with a friend of your favourite way to get a fight onto the mats.  It doesn't actually have to be your favourite,  just one you like, or think is funny, or whatever.  You get the idea right?
2.  Post the video to Youtube.  Title it:  "YourName 's entry to Patricia's First Video Contest".   In the description include a link to my blog:  jiujitsuaddict.blogspot.com and also a link to my fanpage: facebook.com/patricia.vandermeer.bjj  . 
3.  Post a link to your video in a comment on this blog post.
4.  Post a link to the video on my fan page.

The winner will be the video with the most likes on my fan page and you tube combined.   So your going to want to share the post you make on my fan page to spread the word, and share the youtube video where ever you go.   If there is magically a tie,   the winner will be the video with the most likes on facebook.    If it's still a tie, I will flip a coin, or some other random way of determining a winner.

The contest will be limited to the first 30 videos and if there isn't 5 videos by Oct 7th, the contest will unfortunately be canceled.    The contest ends Oct 14th 2012 and the winner will be announced on the 15th. 


Video Requirements:

1. An introduction with your name, club, and mentioning that the video is for the contest on jiujitsuaddict.blogspot.com .  
2. Your technique, at least 2x, either from different angles, or fast and slow.  Just so we can get a good look at it.
3. Don't forget to include the links to this blog post, and my fan page in the description.

It's really easy, with a modern smart phone to take a video, and upload it straight to youtube!  The quality doesn't have to be amazing!    I'll make a sample video tonight and post it here when I get home.

 Have fun and good luck!  I can't wait to see what you all come up with!

Scheduling Crisis!

This is the first blog post that isn't a report on a tournament! How strange.  I'll be competing this weekend at the IBJJF Montreal Open, So expect a report on that when I get home.  anyway....


As you may or may not know, my 2nd job is working for the Ontario athletic commission as an official at mma events.  This is a great job, I love it.  It doesn't give me that many opportunities to work which is a mixed blessing.   Last weekend at the Score fighting Series  they announced their next ontario event.   Oct 19th.   The weekend of the OJA  Ottawa Open!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I've been planning on attending that tournament since It was announced.  They are giving away a bunch of trips and I've heard good reports about the event last year.  Not to mention, it's a tournament, and I am addicted to tournaments.  I know I would have some good competition at this event to, because it's in Ottawa, and there is a lot of super tough girls in the area(Alpha MMA,  BTT, other girls from Montreal and Quebec). 

This wouldn't be so bad if the event was somewhere not ridiculous,  but it's in Sarnia,  about as far away as you can get from ottawa without being in northern ontario!  There really isn't a realistic way for me to do both things and I am super bummed about it.  This will be the first OJA event in 2012 that I will be missing, or I have to miss an opportunity work work for the commission, which isn't a great option because there have only been a few events this year. 

Next scheduling drama.   The NYC Abu Dhabi Pro Trials announced there event date.  Oct 27th.  Last year it was 2 weeks after the Montreal trials which was perfect and my whole life plan/ schedule revolved around that being the same.    Now what do I do?   Make the plans to go to NYC in October and spend a freaking fortune in that expensive city?  or skip it, counting on winning in Montreal in the winter?  If that doesn't work out, there isn't really any trials after it that I could get to.     The other thing they've changed is instead of it being on a Sunday, it's on a Saturday.  Which means I'll have to take Friday off work,  again.   I only have so many vacation days, and they are running out pretty quickly!

I have a couple team mates who want to go to new york too.  We could all share a room, but it's still expensive to get there,  either gas, or bus tickets, or plane tickets. Then there is subway, taxi, food.   It'll probably add up to like $500 / person + tournaments fees and food.    Anyone out there looking to sponsor some BJJ athletes?  Seriously?   We need cold hard cash.  or just the plane tix.  either way.  I'll put your brand all over my blog, I'll share it on facebook and twitter.  I'll mention you and put your logo in the highlight video I'm working on.   I'll be eternally grateful.

  

Zombies....arrrrgggg....brains...subs...

The Zombie House is a completely unique approach to competition.  It borders on almost not being competition due to the rule set, environment, and ultimate goals.   It's been branding and run as an "Arte Suave Submission League" and has been going on since Oct 2010!    They took some time off and had their first event back just this past weekend on August 18th. 

This past weekend was my first exposure to the zombie house and I had a great time!   Stephen and I made the trip to Inner City MMA (in downtown toronto). We left mega early because you never know what the state of the 403/qew/gardiner is going to be.  Good thing to, because it turns out, spadina was closed, which was very inconvenient.  We were one of the first people there, even though we were a few minutes after the time they had suggested everyone be there by!  shame on you people who strolled in after the official match start time.  you know who you are!

So we signed our lives away,  paid the fee (only $25!) ,got changed and chilled till everyone arrived.   Once we were all mostly there we went over the rules / guidelines  for the event.

Basically, in my words:
1. Subs only.  and if you tap, you restart.
2. Roll hard, but don't be a dick
3. No Refs, but "life guards" who will do their best to keep you in your space, and will call a sub if they think your being stupid by not tapping.
4.  5 minute rounds.
5.  All belts fight each other,  but are handicapped by points, and subs allowed.
6.  4 weight classes, round robin, You fight 5 guys/girls in your division.
7. Girls and Guys fight together!

So that's that.   We got the day rolling.  4 fights went at a time. Using a single timer.  so it all ran very smoothly.  A few times we had to pause the timer but it all ran very smoothly!

Unfortunately gringo had to leave early, and took a few of his guys with him, including my 5th fight!   but i still got 4 great matches. 

#1 - Caitlin!  Yay a girl!   was nice to fight a girl after the weekend before at montreal grappling.  Even better, we were pretty much the same size! Outstanding!  We had a great roll, she almost caught me in a triangle, and i got 2 arm bars.  very back and forth.

#2.  Gregg King - I had watch Gregg at montreal grappling (he fought my team mate twice). He should just be renamed Triangle King.  Man were they slick! and tight!   we had a pretty good roll.  He caught me in 4 subs, I almost got an armbar at the end, but i think he decided to take it easy hahah.  all in all I learned I need to work on my posture a bit to avoid those pesky triangles.

#3 Nihad (from gringos).  Another Great roll!  Nihan is mega technical, and strong, felt a bit stronger then Greg, but maybe that's just their styles.   He caught me 4X as well, and I didn't really launch much of an offense,  to busy trying to keep my head out of his triangle and my arms attached haha!

#4 Andy (from gringos)  Andy's a white belt, with a couple stripes, but he rolls really really well!  We had a great back and forth match.  He has really good back attacks that kept me defending steadily.   We ended up going 0-0.

That was my day. I ended up with a score of -6.  which.. isn't so great, but I had a lot of fun, and would definitely go back.

They are working on putting together a Ladies Zombie House!  I can't wait for something like that. It'll be amazing.  Keep your eyes open for it ladies.  It's a great way to get some experience, and try new things, and see how your game is coming along in a safe, cheap, and friendly environment.

Here's the website for the zombie house: http://zombiehousebjj.com/  

That's basically it.  I'd recommend it to pretty much anyone looking for some extra mat time, or looking to try out some new setups and subs without having to worry about the other person stalling or loosing on points, or getting subbed.

Thanks to the whole Inner City MMA / Shah Franco Team for hosting and putting on a great event.  and thanks to everyone who came out for the great rolls, support, and fun.   Oh and Stephen, for coming along I LOVE having team mates that come to tournaments and compete with me!