I showed up at Babalu’s Iron Gym for one of their open mats a little over a week before the Metamoris 3 event in which he’s scheduled to fight Dean Lister, and I was lucky enough to have had the chance to roll with him again.
Compared to before, he’s really trimmed down. When I last trained with him he had retired from MMA for a couple of months already and looked like he put on some weight. This time he was trim and looked like he was in fantastic shape.… Read More
Getting pretty excited for the upcoming Metamoris 3 on March 29. It’s the 3rd iteration of the Ralek Gracie run submission only Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu event. The main draw of the event are a series of super-fights between hand selected BJJ practitioners. As opposed to typical BJJ tournaments that can incentivize stalling after gaining a point or advantage, there are no advantages and no points. The only outcomes are submission or draw with a 20 minute time limit. They also award cash prizes for submissions to further incentivize an attack mentality.… Read More
Prior to leaving for Italy, I suffered a minor setback by fracturing my left index finger while training in BJJ. It was just a freak accident. We weren’t going hard. We weren’t uncontrolled. I just planted my hand, shifted my weight, and felt a ‘pop’ in my hand.
Since I was still able to flex it, I simply taped it up and continued to train. I knew something was wrong when my hand didn’t have any strength and I couldn’t grip anything with vigor. I thought, at worst it was just a sprained ligament or strained tendon, but later on in the day it swelled up massively and I couldn’t move it at all.… Read More
Took a 2+ hour train ride from Milan to Venice today and I passed part of the time by listening to podcasts. Episode 209 from Robb Wolf’s The Paleo Solution caught my attention because he talked about his experience with BJJ and ketosis. It said things along the lines of:
Got to start Thanksgiving Day in the best way possible, with a special training session with Renato Babalu Sobral at his gym.
It was a great training session and he helped me drill a guard recovery technique using inversion when my guard is being passed (which happens a lot more than I’d like).
He then taught me a sequence working with the De La Riva guard transitioning to a back take from an opponent on his knees and then from De La Riva guard to side control against someone who is standing.… Read More