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Sozopol

Sozopol, Bulgaria

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Finally, this is officially a travel blog. It only took roughly 44 hours to get from my home in Asheville, to our first BJJ travel destination in Bulgaria. All of my flight connections happened remarkably as-planned, as did our bus connection in Bucharest to get down to the Black Sea coast here in Bulgaria. My sketchy-looking passport got me through all the borders with flying colors, so I’ve naturally grown a little more confident in its powers. My trusty travel buddy had one hic-up, but luckily he wasn’t delayed too long and he’s here with me.

Black Sea coastal town of Sozopol, Bulgaria

We arrived just in time for the no-gi class this morning, fresh off an overnight 9-hour maxi-taxi ride down the Bulgarian coast. Unfortunately we weren’t able to make it for the camp headliner yesterday evening. Now it’s solely up to the Romanians to help us take our BJJ games to the next level. I had fun drilling and rolling with some new people, but honestly the jetlag and overall lack of a good night’s sleep is dragging me down, man. I can’t wait to sleep in a real bed tonight; I’m having a difficult time keeping my eyes open while writing this blog despite doing all I can to get my circadian rhythms in check, like drinking plenty of water and getting some sun exposure.

The beach in Sozopol, Bulgaria

My former student, Sandu, brought 4 of his students down from Moldova with him. I’ve had the opportunity to roll with one so far and he’s really good. It’s been over 4 years since I’ve rolled with Sandu, and he’s a lot better now too; lots of new, good stuff he’s added to his game. I’m looking forward to gi training tonight as my no-gi skills are admittedly sub-par.

Our hotel with the Bulgarian and European Union flags flying high

Our accommodations are fairly basic yet comfortable. The view out our hotel room window leaves a bit to be desired, but at least we’re only a 10-minute walk from the beach. I’ll be doing some hard-core hand washing of all my training clothes for the next week and a half. I’ll consider myself fortunate that I at least have a shower and lukewarm water to work with. I’m not sure I’ll be so lucky in Moldova, but we’ll see. More on that later. Time to put my gi on!

Back to Basics in Bulgaria

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Travelling across Asia and Europe for the past seven months and constantly switching gyms has been amazing. It’s allowed me to experience tons of variations of high-level techniques, spar with amazing training partners and even pick up a few secret moves. But, it’s also destroyed my fundamentals.

I practiced acrobatic De La Riva to X-guard sweeps in Bangkok for a week, switched to drilling single leg variations in Belgrade, and then tested my rubber guard at an MMA gym in Prague. I’ve added tons of new tricks to my bag. But over the past few months, I started to notice I was having more trouble than normal in sparring. I was screwing up basic combo setups, pulling off a simple hip heist and even escaping white belts’ loose side control. All my cool new techniques are useless If I can’t get in position to use them or even keep myself from being tapped every 30 seconds.

 

Working with White Belts at Twisted Jiu Jitsu

I needed to settle down, find a good gym with dedicated training partners and work the essentials. Luckily, I found Twisted Jiu Jitsu in Sofia, Bulgaria. Their fundamentals noon class fit perfectly with my work schedule and I came in 2-3 times a week for all of September. Back home, I’d consider that slacking but it was much more regimented than my past few months of catching flights, partying and getting over injuries.

I was usually surrounded by white belts and occasionally a blue or two would show up. It was exactly what I needed.

I was also able to meet up with a fellow BJJ Globetrotter Robert Barker at Twisted Jiu Jitsu

Working with new BJJ athletes let me focus on the things like hip control, creating the space I need to move and refresh my simple sweeps and submissions. Also, as every higher belt knows, training with and teaching a less-experienced partner really helps you focus on the small things that make simple techniques effective even against experienced grapplers.

Easy taps during sparring was a confidence booster for sure, but even more helpful was identifying the mistakes they were making and realizing I was doing the same thing. These rolls really helped me tighten up my game to were it used to be before all this travel.

At the end of the month, I felt much more secure in my abilities and felt safe reverting to more basic techniques when they were needed. Sometimes you just need to stop trying to learn Youtube worthy moves and just get back to the foundation those techniques are built on top of.