camp report

Finally, a chance to catch up and post a report on the AGIG camp which I went to on the 17th and 18th of March.

As with the first AGIG camp, Jess Fraser did a great job. It was well organised, there were great instructors, the program kept us busy and the food was good, too. The camp was hosted by Jodie and Deon, who own Perkins Jiu Jitsu in Ringwood (eastern side of Melbourne). Deon did a great job keeping things running, taking photos and reffing in grand style at the Sunday mini comp. Jodie looked after her kids, played hostess, took part in the seminar and comp, kept things running and still had time to be a good friend. An awesome woman!




Saturday:  we had Esther Tavares-Tutida for a couple of sessions. Lots of interesting techniques. Sadly, I missed the first half of the first session, as I was running late. Stupid me underestimated the time it would take to travel across Melbourne on a Saturday... Esther showed some interesting stuff, especially open guard sweeps. Unfortunately, I found it really hard to take in three variations of techniques in one gulp. I'm one of those people who need time for stuff to sink in and I need to rep it a few times.

Part of Saturday afternoon were rounds of free rolling. We certainly all did plenty of that :-)

Then we had Murray Ballenden in for a talk about health, eating, training, good posture and how it all relates and what we should consider if we want to live well and train well. I found that presentation extremly interesting and useful. I know I've made a lot of changes to my diet and other things since I started training. And I'm aware of areas where I need to do a lot more. He helped put it all together. I was happy since I'm obviously on the right track, but I sure need to do more. First and foremost, posture-related adjustments. But more in the food department, too...

In the evening, there was a bit of the competition on who could wear the most "offensive lycra". I thought I was doing really well in my Scramble spats, which I paired with my Honeybadger rashie. But that rainbow of colours was nothing, NOTHING compared to what some of the others wore. Think leopard pattern bodysuit under a lemon yellow set of skimpy bathers. Think a big lady with a black body suit and pink g-string bathers over the top. .... think iridescent coloured morph suit covering all including the head. Wow....

Anyway, after that, a couple of the little girls did a presentation and then most of them watched a movie. As I had no interest in the movie, but a uni assignment due, I settled down in my temporary bed on the mat with my trusty laptop and hammered away at the keyboard.

Sunday: Jess gave us a Yoga session. Very interesting. She tailored it to address some of the areas where BJJ is a bit one sided for our body. Ie: we did some stuff that opened the hips and stretched hip flexors. Unfortunately, I don't function well in the mornings at the best of time. I only slept moderately well, and I was a stiff as a brick and didn't feel human until after breakfast

Thiago Stefanutti did an outstanding session on Judo for BJJ. I loved his style of teaching. And I was lucky to be paired up with a young woman who is a Judo Brown Belt. So she was able to help me with my rather clumsy efforts at some of the throws. Actually, we did start with grip stripping and then did three lots of two throws. Each time, we learned one, and then another which fed from the defence to the first one. That was just outstanding. I skipped the randori after, as I still felt very stiff and tired.

The next section was with Fiona Muxlow. We had another good warm up, then did some standing pummeling and proceeded to takedown techniques from there. Same as Thiago, techniques were presented logically and with good explanations, and we had ample time to rep them out.

Last part of the day was the mini comp. We were allocated to teams, and the teams sent their membes out to fight others in the same division. So we had two big white belt divisions, and two small coloured belt ones. Two fights for everyone. My first fight was with Jodie, who absolutely destroyed me :-) I was actually really pissed off with myself, I was like a wet rag... My second fight was with Kirsty who hails from Sydney. I was getting a good flogging there, she was well ahead on point, but in the end, I rolled her when she attempted a choke from mount, and somehow ended up in halfguard top. As she was turning into me, I went for a D'Arce choke. I was getting really excited about pulling it off, when the bell rang. Oh well, I lost on points, but at least I felt I put up a fight. We had Thiago as ref, and it was nice that when he said to me "well done".

There were no awards for individual fighters, other than best takedown, best sub etc. And our team didn't win, so we missed out.

What I learned from that is not to be such a bloody woos, not to give up before the bell rings, that I can do ok even if my body feels like crap and that competing isn't THAT bad. :-)

I got home after 2.5 hours driving and pretty much fell out of the car. I just had enough energy to feed the cats and dog and check the horses, have a shower and have a feed before falling into bed.

What a weekend :-)