Cobrinha Seminar 2010 GB Mansfield

As most of you know I am a big fan of Rubens Charles Maciel(aka Cobrinha) and when I found out that he was visiting the UK to perform a series of seminars for Champ Camp, I was the first in line for my ticket. As, I currently train at Victor Estima's and his associated clubs I attended the Mansfield date on Sun 29th August.

I went to bed early on the 28th and as soon as I hit my head on the pillow 'bang' my nose started to run like a tap. It may have been all the excitement but I woke up feeling like crap and I knew that man flu was imminent, typical. If it was any other training session I would have taken the day off but I was not going to miss this for the world.

After a quick breakfast and a good old moan, we set off nice and early to Mansfield. With some Niki Lauder style driving and a clear run down the M1, we arrived a good 30 minutes before the seminar started. Walking through the door I immediately recognised Cobrinha and his Morrissey style quiff, and I have to say he was alot smaller than I thought he was. Strangely the first thing that popped into my mind was not BJJ related but infact related to Capoeria. Unfortunatley I was unable to pluck up the courage to ask him to show me some Capoeria or to get him to give my brother some tips on his 'jenga'. In hindsight it was probably a good job I didn't as my bros 'jenga' is stiff and unrhymthmic to say the least.

Signing the waver form hoping nothing too bad would happen ;-) I went to get changed and hid a few pieces of tissue up the sleeve of my rash guard, not for some Paul Daniels style magic, no, but in case of a nose running emergency, classy. Walking into the dojo I was greeted by many familiar faces from BJJ School, Eamonn Madden, Jackson Fortunado and Daniel Agard. Now I am pretty envious of the BJJ school guys as not only do they get to train with Cobrinha at every date on his UK tour but recently it would seem many top names in the BJJ world such as Terrere have been popping into their club for a visit. Occasionally I get chance to get a sneaky session in at BJJ school. I am always made to feel welcome there and everytime I visit I manage to get a tough roll in, especially with Daniel Agard who has some slick Jiu-Jitsu. Today I think Daniel thought he was seeing double, as it was the first time he had met my brother. Now for some strange reason people think my bro and myself look a like, but for the record he is ginger and I am not (joke). We do have a very similar BJJ game though.

Here is a pic of my bro, Cobrinha and myself:




Nearing the start of the seminar the place began to fill up nicely with people from a variety of different teams across the UK. I saw a large contingent from Alliance UK and Nottingham BJJ as well as people from GB Brum and even further a field. As usual I nearly missed the start of the seminar as I was having a good chin wag and moan to Adam from GB Leeds. The Paxman brothers have started to call me "the Jaw"for some reason, heaven knows why.

The session started with a quick introduction and a warm up. The warm up involved 2 variations of a single leg take down. It was at this moment I wished I had done some more stretching and gentle exercise before hand instead of chin wagging. After plenty of drilling and without further hesitation we went straight into the techniques. The subject focus of the Mansfield seminar was on guard passing, specifically passing the Spider and DLR guard (note the subject focus for the Manchester and London seminars were different). Cobrinha gave some nice little details on each of the techniques. I could see many similarities in his game to Andre Galvao, Lucas Lepri and Terrere, which he must have learnt from his time spent at the TT school (or so I would like to think). One thing I did notice with Cobrinha is that he made everything look easy and his movement and ability to predict peoples reactions was great.

To finish off the session we were told to pair up with someone we hadn't sparred with before. I was paired with Lee (Livingstone)head instructor at Nottingham BJJ. I could feel energy levels falling little by little. Now usually my cardio is great and I am the last person on the mat but after my first roll I felt very queasy. Not only due to the fact that Lee is good and I was feeling rough from my cold but the round turned out to be 20 minutes long. Now if I had known that I would have paced myself a little better. Wanting to spar further but feeling like I was going to be sick I sat out and watched the next few rounds (which weren't as long). Luckily I had other's keeping me company on the side lines. Victor was feeling a little under the weather today also, but I am not surprised with the arrival of a new baby and all kinds of viruses/colds going round the club. We watched the final rolls intently and there was some really good technical Jiu-Jitsu on show. A special mention has to go to 'David5' who was grappling in one shiny golden football shin pad. This was due to a bruised shin that he suffered at the hands of Jody "the Axeman' Paxman.

Below, chilling near the end of sparring:




At the end my bro managed to get a minute roll with the man himself, which made me slightly envious, but hey I couldn't complain as I was feeling rough. Unfortunately Jamie aka Young Roger Gracie cut short (no pun intended) Cobrinhas rolling when he caught him with an accidental knee to the lip. A few pieces of tissue were needed to mop up the blood and Cobrinha managed to survive his time in Mansfield relativley unscaved.

Below are the Paxman bro's with Cobrinha and Victor (If you look closely on the picture below Cobrinha is sucking in his bottom lip to hide the cut):



The seminar was brought to a close by a photo session and certificate presentation. Overall a great seminar with people from all different clubs. Just goes to show the unity of the UK BJJ scence.

Thanks for taking the time to read my boring 'school boy diary like' report.

Until next time Movimento Lento blog followers.

Knees

Jiu-Jitsu can really take it out on your knees as the knee joint is forced to move in unnatural ways and in many different planes. Take the 2010 Mundial Medium Heavyweight Finals for instance where Rommulo Barral was forced to withdraw from his match with Tarsis Humphreys due to a knee injury. Also, many people in my club have had bad knees. Recently my knee has been making some strange sounds too.

As knees can be very weak as demonstrated above, this makes them obvious targets for some seriously painful submissions. Now most people have seen the standard knee bar but sometimes a knee bar can catch people unaware I like to call these "sneaky knee bars". Here Oli G finishes a match at Ground Control "Beat the Heat":



Now many people maybe wondering what happened so here to demonstrate is Comprido:



I do not want to encourage any knee reaping type behavior, so please remember knee bars can't be done until Brown Belt in BJJ. Also, it is illegal at all belt levels for your outside leg to cross the waist line when wrapping the leg. Go lightly on your partner when dilling this knee bar, believe me it comes on quickly, my knee made a loud click when my bro put it on me.

Submission: Armbar

This months submission is the Armbar. Here is a web definition (you can't beat a good old definition):

"An armbar (sometimes called a straight armbar) is a joint lock that hyperextends the elbow joint. It is typically applied by placing the opponent's extended arm at the elbow over a fulcrum such as an arm, leg or hip, and controlling the opponent's body while leveraging the arm over the fulcrum."

To cut along story short you bend the arm to the point of snapping. Now it is worth noting that some people have double jointed elbows, so I would recommend choking them out instead. Here the legend that is Roger Gracie demonstrates how an arm bar should be done, double joints or no double joints I don't think anyone will be surviving a monstrous Roger Gracie armbar:


Movimento Lento blog followers, what is your favourite submission?