Victorian State Championships 2015

The Victorian state championships are held in Melbourne every year around April. Previously it was a stand alone event put on at the Melbourne Sports and Aquatics Centre but this year they have combined with the Fitness Expo to help raise the profile of the sport. Two hundred metres of blue and yellow tatami's are laid out, in between the powerlifters and female body builders. The sound of clanging weights mix with polite applauses and team chants, compounding the atmosphere and heightening excitement. Individual and team glory is now on the line in a very public way.

I have settled into South Yarra since moving from Mornington to the city, but will still represent Nova Uniao as I have been able to train regularly with both Caulf and Marc. Who to represent is becoming something that I have to mentally contend with, but for now I am registered with the Australian Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Federation under Nova Uniao and haven't had time to look or consider submitting changes. While no one is making issue of my lack of commitment, I find it difficult to be suddenly receiving so much support from the head coach at South Yarra and the usual penance is representation and shared competition results. However, I'm lucky that everyone is so relaxed, which is very unusual in the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu world.

I competed in two divisions today, the purple belt No-Gi and Gi event, u76kg. I haven't had a lot of time to implement the learnings garnered from the last competition but I have started looking at my approach and adding a few new techniques into my game, specifically top pressure passing to counter the highly popular open guard game. Ironic considering I left a club full of heavy pressure passers and it's only now, seventy six kilometres away from them that I begin adopting their game.

I had around six fights in total and took gold in both divisions. I am lucky to be coming off a strong few weeks of training and will put my head down to implement the next progression and see where that takes me. I won't be heading to the world championships this year because of         a wedding I have to attend but the big goal will be the Pan Pacs here in September.