martin
Martin, I was wondering if you are training any fighters for the upcoming ADCC Grappling World Championships for this year. I know they are being held in New Jersey this edition and that you train there. Roger Gracie's 8 submissions at the last ADCC was unreal and I saw him on your dvd training there. Now with Jacare out and Lister out too, should be an interesting year. My question is about training for this event. What do you see as most important to work on and how do you do it? Thanks in advance, John Boll
Pictured is arguably the best grappler on the planet Roger Gracie busting out some forearm and back work on the rope here in New Jersey last week. Roger is fighting in the Super Fight at the World Championships at the beginning of next month and training is right on schedule.
John,
Thanks for writing in and yes, Roger, as well as 8 other athletes (Rolles Gracie, Kyra Gracie, Celita Schutz, Delson Heleno, Braulio Estima, Flavio Almeida, Marcio Feitosa, Jamal Patterson) have been in training for the event. In addition to this, 3 other athletes that have spent time training here in the past (Alexandre Soca, Nelson Montiero and Renzo Gracie) are also in the Worlds as well and we have a few other athletes that are waiting to hear if they are in too (Romulo Barreto and Leonardo "Tunicu"). So that is a large portion of the athletes that will be competing overall and we have had some real exciting and killer sessions here over the last few weeks as the athletes are getting ramped up.
In terms of most important aspects of training to work on, every athlete is different and has different needs and injuries to work around, but if I had to nail down one characteristic for this event, it would be endurance. Since you may have as many as 8 matches over 2 days (like in the case of all the wars Roger had at the last event) you need to be able to work hard, recover and do it again.
When you ask what is the best way to address this, it is obviously grappling itself that is the best training, but if you can build strength endurance and cardiovascular endurance in the gym to complement this training, it is a must. All too often I see people making the mistake of trying too hard to simulate a fight in the gym at the expense of real training. Then you are not really fighting in the gym and not really training in the dojo, so you are then really never nowhere. Moral: Fight in the dojo, train in the gym and make sure that there is enough recovery and that they are both helping to improve each other.
Below are some great shots of some of the training over the last few weeks. The key for these weeks has been to improve heart rate recovery with cycles of training that we are doing. Each athlete is monitoring heart rate and we are tracking this every session. The improvement are amazing in that recovery is improved, strength is up, and no one is injured. In the end, that is what training is all about.
Romulo and Roger cranking out 5 sets of Bar Complexes for time
Rolles Gracie banging out 60 yard sets of Farmer's Walks
Delson Heleno "Pe de Chumbo" ripping off sets of ten with the sandbag lift
Kyra and Gregor Gracie working sets of forward and backward resisted sprints for time
Roger, Igor Gracie, Rolles and Romulo hitting another 5 minute round of ladder drills.
I hope this helps give a small view into just the training that these warriors are doing.
Martin Rooney
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