Day 6 - After the event!

Well,

The world ju jitsu champs are over for 2010 and i would be lying if i said that it was as good as i thought it would be.

The organisation of the event was a bit of a let down, there was a venue change, and problems with some logistics but once the comp got momentum it lifted spirits.

I ended up taking a bronze medal home with me, I fought my way and enjoyed myself, it was a great test and a learning experience, and il be back in 2 years to take gold medals.

I had a minor break in my little finger on day 1 of the grappling event, and it put me back a bit going into day 2, the sport ju jitsu event.

However thanks to our physio support i customized my gloves to ensure the finger wouldnt get pulled about. I had my finger taped to the other one and i had to change my fighting style and bring my right leg forward as my lead leg.

My fights were close and i gave some good shots, and took a couple too, I unfortunately got disqualified from the mens individual semi final for 3 warnings....1 excessive contact, 1 illegal target area (punch to the nuts on the floor...oops) and 1 illegal move (a kick whilst lying on my back)

we took a bronze in the team event.

Overall it was a great experience i have learned alot and being my first ever competition event i feel like i have done myself proud. Ive met some great people and had alot of laughs.

I'll be back next time stronger, faster and more experienced, I need to remind myself i have only been doing ju jitsu for a short time...i

The goal has been set...

Tommy

Day 3 - Post Weigh in

Just got back from the weigh in.

Started at 168 pounds,

Target was 165 pounds,

Weighed in at 161 pounds.

Got it!

I'll tell you more later....

Day 3 - weigh in preparation

Just woke up,

7am Thursday morning,

Going to eat a cereal bar, have a shot of coffee and then its down to the gym to dehydrate and make weight.

Weigh in is at 10am, but both myself and alexi want to make sure we make our weight, so cardio and sauna may be neccesary.

Alexi has a bit more to shift to make his weight than me, but i still want to be sure.

The lightest Ive ever weighed in at is 74.9kgs and that was after a hoody run to sweat down.

I'd like to see 74.5kgs on the scales at 10am...So i anticipate a 1.5kg decrease from dehydration...about 3 pounds.
It should be relatively straight forward.

Tommy

Day 2

The hungry day...

The plan was to wake up, train and then have a good breakfast, then go lie by the pool....
But that didnt quite happen that way...

I trained at roughly 8:30 am, just did some bosu squats and some cardio then stretching. I weighed in at 75.7kgs, Worryingly though, i twinged my lower back, it felt like it seized up. I tried to release it through stretching and it kinda worked, but i just wanted to rest it up and chill.

However, when we met the group at 10am, we found out that we were going for a training session!
So there we were in our gloves and feet protectors, out on the grass outside the flamingo, right infront of the outside wedding chapel! training some light combinations.

We drew up an audience and some people were even taking photos. The opposition came down to check us out too!
After that we all went to the pool for some team bonding by having a game of water volleyball....Still no breakfast...I'd had some nuts and some fruit though.

I chilled out by the pool for an hour or so and then i walked into the shopping mall.
I ended up finding some items of clothing that i liked and decided you only live once and im in Vegas! so i went back to the hotel to get my cash and i got them. The guy in the shop was an old guy called Raymond, he was great, and gave me some discount.

I had a smoothie at the same place as the day before, and decided not to eat because we were all meeting at 5pm for a meal.
I raced back to the hotel, got changed and went to meet the others. I was starving hungry! then found out we had to walk about 30 minutes in the heat to get to the food! I wouldnt usually mind, but i had been walking up and down for ages today and i was very hungry! When im hungry im apparently a grumpy dragon according to Kelly.

So we arrived at the restaurant and paid £9.99 for the buffet. The buffet was pretty good and after that we hit the roullette table for about 20 mins.

Then we got a taxi back to the flamingo, and got some supplies ready to chill out before the weigh in tomorrow morning at 10.

Its just gone 9pm here and im in bed! a little bit of weight cutting to do tomorrow morning, so its up early, sweat it out and make the weight.
Its exciting stuff. I have to lose about a kilo (2.2 pounds) so not much but still the pressure is on.
I'm loving the experience and the vegas vibe, but its a very expensive place, regardless if you gamble or not, its expensive.

So goodnight and hopefully next time i write here, i will have made weight and be gearing up to fight the following day!

Tommy