SJJA Check In

Igor Almeida, Nathan Waters, Charles Negromonte, SJJA 25/1/20

Gem and myself had a great day on Saturday catching up with the SJJA boys and meeting Charles Negromonte for the first time.

We got to sit down with the boys and make some plans for 2020 in regards to their nutrition and strength training.

For Igor, we will be focusing on adding some muscle mass and working on increasing his strength in the gym. As many of you know he has had some big injuries in the past few years, so we will be addressing those and trying to make him as healthy as possible for when he returns to competition.

As for Charles, he has some important competitions coming up over the next few weeks, and in April will be competing in Abu Dhabi for the worlds. This week, Charles will be competing in Melbourne at the UAEJJF National Pro, so we won't be making any changes until next week where we will begin preparations for the worlds.

He already has a solid foundation so we will be making some changes to his nutrition and we will start general preparation in the gym.

Charles recently won the Abu Dhabi Grand Slam Event so we don't have to come in and make extreme changes to his preparation. We will layer in certain things so that it doesn't disrupt Charles' preparation and he can have confidence leading into the important competitions.

If you look at Charles' achievements and ranking, you will see that he is already world class. The important thing from our point of view is to work in with Charles and not just throw a whole heap of craziness into his world. Too many times I see coaches go too extreme with athletes to try and prove they know what they are doing or something like that. I would much rather take it slowly and make sure Charles feels comfortable with his training, is recovering well, and feels motivated to train, than to try and implement a perfect plan that may disrupt his performance in a negative way.

This is a very similar approach we took with Professor Bruno when we first started working together. He was already very successful so its not like he didn't already know what he was doing. We just helped identify a few areas he could work on to further improve his performance and worked with him on how to implement it in his current plan. The biggest thing I was concerned about was not coming in, changing all these things, and ruining his career. The boys put their lives into this, they only get one shot at it. Over the years though we got to a point where everything we wanted to implement, was, and the progress continued with each new preparation. We were fortunate enough to be apart of many world titles that Bruno won over recent years.

It will be a big year for the SJJA team so I will keep you updated with their progress.

Back Squat Follow Up

March 30, 2018

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Nathan Waters - Total Health Performance

About two weeks ago I posted a video of Lochlann's first ever squat session. The above video is his 4th session and 17 days later. Here he got 45kg x 8 reps and 50kg body weight. In the first session he got 27.5kg. He is learning the movement quite well which is why there is such an increase in weight lifted in such a short time period. Beginner gains are great. We still have a lot to work on so it is going to be really good to see how he comes along over the coming months. 

After just 8 weeks of training Lochlann said he already feels his speed has increased on the field. This is the end goal for us, improving performance on the field. It really doesn't matter how much you squat, deadlift, or bench if you are getting injured or if the work you are doing isn't carrying over to your sport performance. 

With a consistent year of lifting under his belt I think Lochlann will be setting himself up for a successful club season and will be giving himself the best opportunity to make the Harold Matthews team when that time comes. 

Consistent hard work. 

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Lochlann Davies

Back squat

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Bruno Alves Jiu-Jitsu World Champion

April 23, 2017

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Nathan Waters - Total Health Performance

Massive Congratulations to Bruno Alves for winning the Abu Dhabi World Professional Jiu-Jitsu Championship.

He retains his title from last year as world champion and makes this the third time he has won this competition. It was a dominant display with Bruno winning 3 fights, with 3 submissions, and not getting a single point scored against him in all 3 fights. 

He worked extremely hard leading into the competition and was very well prepared so to get the result on the day makes it all worth it. He followed his nutrition plan and trained hard in the gym on his strength which I believe helps him continue to improve each competition he goes into. He also works hard on his conditioning so that he is able to repeat his efforts on the mat. How well prepared he was for this competition was noticeable in one of his final sessions, where I watched him train against some of his students and not even break a sweat. His students are good athletes in their own right but Bruno is just at entirely different level. He is a great role model to have.

Bruno will do whatever it takes to be prepared for a comp. Our weight cut in the final day or two didn't go exactly to plan but I was never worried as I know Bruno will listen to advice and do the most extreme things to be sure he can compete. He spent 4 hours in the sauna the day before comp, which is far from ideal, but what he had to do. Not many athletes can do this. He listened to the refuelling process well and within an hour or 2 of weighing in he had his energy back and was already close to being back at his normal weight. By the next morning he was feeling really good and ready to compete.

There were a few things that messed up the weight cut slightly, the day of competition being pushed back for example. This isn't optimal but it is reality and why you have to always be prepared to adjust things as a coach. You can have the best plan in the world but things come up and you have to know how to problem solve to get the best result still.

In a documentary about Michael Jordan there is a comment made about him that said every time the hype around Michael grew, so did his performances. He always performed higher than what people talked up. I see this with Bruno and his jiu-jitsu. He is great at his sport and many people admire what he does. As they do the hype grows but so does Bruno's performance, which was shown in this display. It is because he is a very humble man who is always looking to better himself in every area and he works hard to be able to do it.

Not only did he win the world championship himself he also had 3 of his students from SJJA win gold becoming world champions as well. In total SJJA won 4 golds from 6 competitors which is an enormous effort. I know they will produce many more world champions in the coming years, this is a great start.

It is a pleasure working with Bruno and the SJJA team, and Gemma and I look forward to the next challenge.  

Here is the final in Abu Dhabi:

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world champion

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