Team Lloyd Irvin Camp Springs’ D’Angelo Kinard came to Crazy 88 BJJ this Saturday to hold a Strength & Conditioning seminar. D’Angelo runs Advanced Sports Performance and handles the physical training for the professional fighters and grapplers. His presentation involved a short talk on his philosophies (“goals, plans, sacrifice”), and fixed up the participants’ forms on three fundamental exercises: the pushup, the squat, and the crunch. He then engaged the class with a short “warmup” and opened it up to a rather lengthy Q&A. D’Angelo will be planning out the 12-month routine for the Competition Team so everyone will be in tip-top shape for the 2011 World Championships!

Could this be the return of Devon "Demonstrator" Delbrugge?

Today was the No-Gi Submission Grappling Seminar with Rafael and Guilherme Mendes. Rafael is the 2009 Abu Dhabi Submission Wrestling Champion in the under-65 kg category. At that event, Rafael defeated two legends – Leozinho Viera and Rubens Charles aka Cobrinha. The seminar was packed again, with both Team Lloyd Irvin students and visitors who were interested in learning from the BEST (there were grapplers who drove all the way from Florida for this seminar). Everyone learned a lot – especially an important point about passing on the knees and on the toes in gi Brazilian Jiu Jitsu vs. no-gi! Can you figure out which passing style goes with which type of grappling?

It was a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu overload this Saturday in Camp Springs, Maryland where Team Lloyd Irvin hosted Rafael and Guilherme Mendes for the first day of a two-day Jiu-Jitsu extravaganza. The brothers have actually been here since Monday, training with the team 3x a day, but today would be the start of the “official” seminar.

Rafael and Guilherme are two “prodigies” of BJJ and grappling (I use quotes because they have strong beliefs regarding talent and training).  Both are World Champions at the Black Belt level.  Guilherme is the 2nd person in history to win the Worlds at every belt in consecutive years and Rafael also holds a Gold medal from the 2009 ADCC Submission Wrestling World Championships.

The mats were filled with enthusiastic students – some from Texas, some from New York, and even some from Florida!   As a coach, I am excited to begin implementing some of the new drills, positions, and philosophies that we picked up over the course of the week.

Crazy 88 BJJ was happy to bring Marcos and David Avellan to Baltimore for a three-hour No-Gi Grappling Seminar.  Marcos and David bring impeccable No Gi credentials to the mat including a recent Bronze medal at the Abu Dhabi Submission Wrestling Championship by David where he defeated Rafael Lovato (Gracie Humaita), Tarsis Humphries (Alliance), and “Cyborg” Abreu (BJJ Revolution) among others.

The session was very fast-paced due to the high technical level of the attending students and they were able to cover their favorite takedowns along with their home-grown guard passing style.  We will be posting video clips from this seminar so make sure you “LIKE” our Baltimore Martial Arts fanpage.

If you are a Martial Arts School Owner and are interested in hosting the Avellan brothers for a seminar, I would highly recommend it.  You can reach them at Marcos’ fanpage here…

Lloyd Irvin Black Belt, Mike Fowler gave a seminar at Crazy 88 Brazilian Jiu Jitsu today.  Mike is one of America’s best competing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Black Belts and has been one of mainstays for the team since he started training.  Mike covered his favorite guard positions including 3 variations of the bump sweep and lots of counters to counters to his “unstoppable sweep”.

The seminar was very well-organized with basic movements and concepts blending into more complex movements and concepts.   For example, Fowler would teach a simple mount escape at the start of the seminar and then by the end of the seminar, the simple mount escape motion would be used to finish a Brabo choke from the bottom of the half-guard.  Another great seminar at Crazy 88!

PS – We will be adding some techniques from the seminar to our facebook fanpage, so if you are not already a fan, please register!

Mike Fowler watches and corrects Evan's mount techniques

Lloyd Irvin Black Belt, Mike Fowler will be holding a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Seminar this Saturday at Crazy 88 BJJ. Mike is a Black Belt PanAm Medalist (silver) as well as a Final Four rounder at the Abu Dhabi Submission Wrestling Championships. He is still super active on the competition scene, just coming off a strong showing at the European Open where he lost a close match to Open Division champion, Guto Campos on points (I think Lloyd will be uploading the full match to his facebook page soon so make sure you are a fan).  He has victories over some of the best grapplers in the world and has fought EVERYONE! 

At this seminar, you will benefit from his immense competition experience as well as get insights into his intense training regimen that allowed him to earn his Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Black Belt in under 4 years.  He will be covering  a lot of his new attacks, including some new followup attacks to his half-guard and unstoppable sweep.  If you are interested in the seminar, make sure you reserve a spot with the front desk. 

PS – If you haven’t already, add Crazy 88 Brazilian Jiu Jitsu as fanpage on your facebook.  We post the latest events to the facebook because of the ease of the interface!

Mike Easton & Frank Camacho

Mike Demonstrates How to Properly Hold Someone's Hand as They Cross The Street

Mike Sees Some Cupcakes in the Corner

Mike Explains Intricacies of Fighting Off the Cage

Mike Easton and Frank “The Crank” Camacho visited our Baltimore MMA school to give a seminar on Mixed Martial Arts.  Even with short notice and a grappling competition on the same day, we had good turnout for the event.  The seminar covered everything from the feet to the ground, from wrestling to ground and pound.

Mike is professional fighter and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Black Belt with victories in multiple promotions.  Frank Camacho is a young fighter (under 20 years old) from Guam who moved to Maryland just to train at Lloyd Irvin MMA academy.  Between the two of them, they have close to 20 professional MMA fights so it was great to have them in the room, sharing their knowledge.

Mike has an upcoming fight in Tennessee in February and is also considering doing the Abu Dhabi Gi next weekend.  Frank, despite dominantly winning his last fight, plans to focus on his Brazilian Jiu Jitsu training (he already has great standup) this year before getting back into the cage.  They are true Mixed Martial Artists!

Are you on Facebook? Become a fan of Crazy 88 Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu!

For those of you who do not already know Jay Hayes, he trains alongside Jared Weiner and Wilson Reis at BJJ United.  Jay is also the head BJJ instructor at LA Boxing in Hoboken, New Jersey.  Jay has only been involved in Jiu Jitsu for a staggeringly short six (6) years. In said time, Jay earned his black belt from Jared and Master Lloyd. Jay has fought almost everyone who is anyone in the BJJ world.

In 2007 Jay took the prestigious Gold at the Pan American Jiu-Jitsu Championships in Carson, California (winning all five matches with no points scored against him). This year Jay won the Bronze medal at the 2009 Pan American Jiu-Jitsu Championships. He is also a 2006 and 2008 Grapplers Quest USA Trials Professional No-Gi division semi-finalist, a 7 time Grapplers Quest champion, 6 time North American Grapplers Association (NAGA) champion, and a NJ State Open (under 190 lb) champion. Again, all this is six short years.

Surprisingly, despite training together at BJJ United, Jared, Wilson, and Jay have vastly differing jiu jitsu styles. One thing, however, remains vividly constant – their techniques are simple, straightforward, and extremely effective. Jay began the seminar with smooth transitions from the mount to the back and finished the seminar with his own version of the B.J. Penn-style trapped arm rear naked choke. Statistics show that in the upper-level divisions submissions from the back are of the most common and efficient.

Jay was able to show the students in attendance how and why the position is so important. For Jay, and in theory, the back-position is purely offensive giving his opponent no real way to attack (only to defend). With Jay’s guidance it became clear that with a simple lift of the knee 45°, or an effortless turn of the wrist a “little to the right,” the back position can change from dangerous to virtually unstoppable. A position familiar to all in attendance was taken apart by Jay, and when he put it back together during the seminar we revealed that many of us were missing essential elements. But not any more thanks to Jay Hayes.

The students and staff of Crazy 88 offer our sincere thanks to Jay for making the trek from New Jersey to spend the day with us at Team Lloyd Irvin Baltimore, teaching, rolling, and sharing our respect for the sport of jiu jitsu. Aside from his impeccable instruction and techniques, Jay spend time rolling with each person in attendance offering constructive and valuable criticism. It has been said that one competition can be as valuable to a jiu jitsu practitioner as six months of training. After seminars with Jared Weiner, Wilson Reis, and now Jay Hayes I am convinced that similar strides can be made with attendance at well-crafted seminars.

Again, on behalf of the students and instructors at Crazy 88 Brazilian Jiu Jitsu,  a sincere “thank you” goes out to Jay Hayes, BJJ United, and LA Boxing. With tacticians like Jay Hayes on Team Lloyd Irvin, it is clear why we are dominating worldwide.

Pride Fighting Vet and BJJ World Champion Nino Schembri Seminar

Another world-class Brazilian Jiu Jitsu seminar at Crazy 88 – this time with Nino Schembri.  Nino was voted #2 Best Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Competitor of the 90′s by Gracie Magazine and is also an Abu Dhabi Submission Wrestling Championship Bronze medalist and a BJJ World Champion.  His seminar focused on all things UmaPlata.  Nino then rolled with everyone who wanted to train.  A very informative 2 hours!

Donnie on the mat teaching

Master Donnie works with Spike-a-Doodle

Aarae Alexander fixes up the kids' techniques

Mason training under Ryan Villogram's watchful eye

Gratuitous seminar pic

All seminar proceeds went to sending Aerae, Derek, Cedric, and Ryan to the World Championships next week!