Roger Gracie visits the clinic

For those on facebook you will need to view this post at http://www.jadonbjj.blogspot.com/ to see the pics.

Last saturday we had the honour of hosting Roger Gracie as visiting instructer. For those unfamiliar with Roger heres a quick bio from wikipedia:

"Roger Gracie Gomes (born September 26, 1981) is a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioner. He was recently promoted to 2nd degree black belt by Carlos Gracie Jr. He is a member of the Gracie family, the son of Reyla Gracie (who is the daughter of Carlos Gracie) and Mauricio Motta Gomes (one of the six Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belts of Rolls Gracie). His most notable achievement to date is winning the ADCC Submission Wrestling World Championship in 2005, taking first place in the 88–98 kg and Open-weight categories by submitting all eight opponents—a feat that had not previously been achieved. He has also won the BJJ World Jiu-Jitsu Championship (the Mundials) a record 8 times including 6 time in this weight class and twice at open weight. "

Ive met him on a few occasions and his always had a smile and a handshake for me (and everyone he meets).

So there we were milling about and Roger steps and blows us all away with his chi:

He taught a very nice judo outside trip and then a variation where you fake the trip and go for an osoto gari (major outer leg reap). According to Olympic coach Mark Earle who I trained with a while ago, osoto gari has the highest instances of knockouts. Because when properly executed with full force and momentum the uke lands on the top of his shoulders, neck and head....which would suck.

Did some drills instead of some sparring with Sid who was abit injured, always a great partner with lots of usefull advice and observations.

He then taught a arm drag manuver. In the next lesson we focused on the knee through standing pass in ALOT of detail, pressure! PRESSURE!.

We then did a fair amount of sparring.

I felt pretty good, starting to get better timing and setting up of the straight achilles. Cross choke from mount is everybodies friend.

Whenever we get a guest instructer or special visitor it always results in crazy injuries. Everyone spars harder and tries to use more muscle, as if by a show of pure gripping strength they are gonna quadruple promote you. Anyone other people notice this?

Roger was then flooded with people to take pics and sign belts, I dont know why but I can never bring myself to ask for a picture so I opted for sneaking into other peoples :P. I remember asking him if he ever got bored of all the people wanting pictures and so on and he replied very concisely "never".

And of course we had to have the big group picture.



Thats me sneaking behind Andy and Roger.

I took the oppertunity to talk to Roger about his thoughts on my pilgrimage, he seemed quite positive about it although perhaps unsure why I am doing it. The guy is so relaxed I would be interested to see him stressed. So all in all a very fun lesson and it was great to have one of the greatest grapplers alive in the world teaching at the club.

Thank you to all those that took the pictures!.