A few months ago i received an email from Daniel Sainty. Daniel runs a BJJ, MMA and Muay Thai gym in Bondi Junction up in Sydney. Daniel emailed me looking for fighters who could come down and train at his club. At last years Royler Gracie Cup i had a tough Final against Dave Brooksbank who is one of Bondi Dojos top fighters and Daniel thought it would be beneficial if i woudl go up and teach some Judo and in turn he teach me some BJJ.
I have been pretty busy over the last few months travelling and training overseas and at home and have been way to busy to travel to Sydney and train up there. Except this week it was holidays for Uni (although i still need to do alot of catch up) so i decided that it would be a good week to head up to Bondi Dojo and train.
I ended up training 3 sessions because i had to come home to run pt's and go to church.
The Dojo is located right in the centre of Bondi Junction with a great Japanese restaurant a few doors down (Chicken Katsu-don yeah!)
The club is very Japanese based which is good to see in Australia, with rules and regulations in place to help run a smoother, nicer club. These include cleaning the mats after the end of the session, a policy of no water or food on the mat as well as aksing to go to the toilet or to leave the mat.
Each session was run really well with a good warm up, great technical instruction from Daniel, fighting with first points scored and change partners and then rolling at the end.
After talking to Daniel its good to see a coach who has already planned sessions and knows where each session is going and to what goal each participant is trying to achieve.
For the last week or so the club had been working standing guard passes, which was great for me as guard passes(among other things)are something i really need to work on.
The awesome tips i received about posture in guard, setting your hips and grip fighting were invaluable and it shows that advanced basics are a must in BJJ as well as Judo. By Advanced basics i mean basics that you are not just good at, but awesome at. For me in particular when Daniel talking about setting the hips i had absolutely no idea what he was talking about but after rolling him and Dave it really is a must in BJJ.
Besides great instruction i also copped a beating. I have finally had the opportunity to see the real difference between Judo groundwork and BJJ groundwork. When i do groundwork i have a fast attacking pace which is great for Judo, but for BJJ a more slow methodical pace is alot more efficient. As i have been doing purely Judo for the past 3 months i was constantly giving my back (or Dave was simply making me wanting to go there) and once my back was taken it is quite an effort to defend your back for 5 minutes or so. BJJ guys have great positional dominance and i really do believe that is the main difference. Judo guys will more often than not give away position in order to get a submission (due to the fact that there are no positional points in judo besides a pin) while in bjj a guy will never ever give up a position for a submission unless its a high success rate to finish.
So my back was taken and controlled for a majority of my trip to Bondi but i dont really mind too much because if i can defend my back for 1 or 2 minutes against a BJJ purple/brown or black than against a Judo guy with limited time i should be ok.
But if i want to enter some more BJJ comps in the future it is something i am definitely going to have to improve on. All in all though i had a great time i taught some Judo and got taught some BJJ and hopefully i will be training at Bondi Dojo some more in the future.
For more info on Bondi Dojo head to:
http://www.bondidojo.com.au/
or call 02 9386 4457
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