After a good weekend of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu i thought i would make you all a little envious by telling you all about the Number 1 World Champion that visited Checkmat BJJ gym, Scooby Jiu Jitsu in Blackpool.
We had the pleasure of having Michelle Nicolini come join us and teach a nice 3 hour seminar for us.
Jelous now?? if not you should be...
The Seminar started off with some simple passing guard drills, even though you would normally drill this simple technique numerous times and think you got it, you never really do, Michelle showed us some tiny little adjustments to make when passing the opponents legs into side control to make the weight pressure that little bit more unbearable. so the saying you can never drill a technique to much!, no matter how simple it may be or how ever many times you might have done it.
After the passing guard we moved on to defending someone passing guard. once the opponent coome to the side, you push away their head towards the floor and away from you hopefully leaving their arm on the inside of your hip. by doing this they leave thenselves open to arm bars, triangles omaplatas all kinds of stuff as well as plenty of space to escape and possible take their back. very simplet but very very effective.
Moving on from the passing guard drills to get warmed up, we went on to sneaky sweeps from Butterfly Guard. I really like this guard but I find it very hard to pull off the sweeps, specially if my opponent is bigger than me, I suppose its just a case of aimming to try and go for the position in sparring as much as possible until it finally clicks i think., after which it should just become second nature like the rest.
When i try the Butterfly guard on people and they manager to get to their feet, i panick a little as i never really had much of a game plan from there, but we were show a really effective sweep if they manage to get to their feet and it has stuck in my head since, i think i have only managed to pull it off in sparring once since the seminar the other times i dont think ive been quick enough.
Michelle went on to show a few different variations of the sweep for different senarios which helps, its always good to have a back up plan if the first one fails.
The last few positions we were show were a few different variations of the leg lock with so many sneaky tips and tweeks to mention. showing us tiny little things like changing the position of your arms, your knees, hips, shoulder, just to make the submission tighter & more effective than the usual leglock.
Coming towards the end of the seminar Michelle set up some positional sparring and joined in herself staying on the mats and sparring with nearly everyone who was there. i was lucky enough to roll twice. first time lasting about 1 minute before she swept me with the sweep she had just shown. off i went to the back of the que! Gutted haha.
Ssecond time around i had my fingers crossed that when i got to the front i would be paired up again, lucky enough i was. this time was a little more successful going for longer than the 1 minute of my last round. whilst rolling michelle pointed out little changes i should make to some of the positions i was going for, or explaing that i should just adjust and control certain parts of my opponent to make the pass or what ever i was doing become more succesful.
I just wish someone had recorded it for me. :(
The seminar was great and i took alot away from it especially the small changes that were made to the basic positions to make them more effective. it definatly all went in what Michelle was explaining to the point of writing this blog post nearly 1 week later i can still remember every technique thatbwas shown, which normally isnt the case.
It was an absolute peasre to meet Michelle and get the chance to do some sparring with her. the seminar was brilliant, really good fun and taught by a great teacher.
Hopefully we will have her back in the next few months before she starts training for the next Europeans in January. fingers crossed if i make it there would be good to have the extra corner coaching:)
Just a little bit of History....
Michelle Nicolini began her martial art training with Capoeira at the age of 14., then at the age of 17 michelle switched to Jiu Jitsu where she would ultimately make her mark as one of jiu-jitsu’s finest fighters.
What makes Michelle Nicoline such an outstanding jiu jitsu fighter is that she continues to compete and challenge herself as a young jiu jitsu practitioner and competitor.
Today Michelle Nicolini trains and coaches at the “Cavaca Fight Trainer;” and is known as an international jiu-jitsu competitor, teacher, and practitioner.
Michelle Nicolini is a multiple World Champion with numberous other titles under her belt, Michelle has consistanly placed top spot on all the Major Elite Competitions around the World. recently taking part in Metamoris II against Gracie Humaita's Makenzie Dern with both fighters taking the Draw
Michelle Nicolini's most recent victory was at the 2013 Mundials, once again taking the top spot and taking the title for the 7th year in a row.
Michelle faced Fernanda Mazzelli of Gracie Elite Team in what could have been the final of the open weight division. Walking at featherweight, Michelle decided to sign up for a heavier division and was able to submit Fernanda in the final to gain her 7th black belt world title. Michelle pulled guard then ended the match with a toehold with 7:18 left in the match.
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