With the World Championships on the horizon, Team Third Law’s advanced Combat Gold classes intensified in recent weeks, getting competitors mentally and physically ready for the challenge ahead.
Five competitors from the team will be flying to California on Wednesday to compete in the biggest event in Jiu Jitsu representing Team Lloyd Irvin: brown belt Master Roberto Torralbas, blue belts Joseph Ruggiero, Joseph Formica and Katy Torralbas, and white belt Jeffrey Lucas.
The pyramid awaits the Third Law BJJ competitors who will represent Team Lloyd Irvin at the 2011 World Jiu Jitsu Championship June 2-5 in Long Beach.
Combat Gold classes, the school’s invite-only advanced classes, run in the mornings and evenings, and include both technique and grappling, depending on the day. Usually Master Roberto has the students work on adding a specific set of new techniques to their game with drilling, positional grappling and hard training. For example, one month they might work on new attacks from the deep half guard and another month on single-leg attacks from sitting guard.
But recent classes have had a different focus: the Worlds. Third Law’s Combat Gold students have been grappling hard, focusing on techniques that Master Roberto specifically selected as important for the competitors and troubleshooting the students’ game plans.
Master Roberto Torralbas troubleshoots a technique with Jeff Lucas as Christopher Marrie and Zach Straub look on. Torralbas, Lucas and three other Third Law competitors will be representing Team Lloyd Irvin in Long Beach, CA at the World Jiu Jitsu Championships this week.
Combat Gold class was still in full swing at 10:20 p.m. last Wednesday night. Competitors are getting ready for the World Championships with extra-long advanced classes and lots of technique and grappling.
While not all the Combat Gold students are going to the Worlds, they’ve all stepped up their training to help the international competitors get ready. Many of the students are also planning to compete in upcoming local tournaments.
Last week’s evening Combat Gold classes all included hard grappling training, with students getting an hour to two hours of straight grappling in each night. Sometimes Master Roberto had the class do long, 8-minute matches and other times he chose to do quick 2-minute matches switching partners each time.
Each type of training has its benefits for competitors, working on different parts of their game as well as their strength, cardio and endurance.
Then, after grappling, students asked specific questions about their games or worked on drilling essential techniques.
Usually, classes are an hour or two, but it wasn’t uncommon last week to see students still on the mats at 11 p.m. or later.
If you’re a current student and you’re not in the advanced classes but you’d like to find out more about training in Combat Gold, be sure to ask Master Roberto or one of the coaches about the class.
Master Roberto answers questions about the spider guard in Combat Gold class last Wednesday, one of many classes where the advanced BJJ students focused on tournament-specific techniques.
With just two days until they head to the airport, Third Law’s competitors are focused and ready. Registration has been closed for the tournament and division lists are already posted, so the competitors know about how many people will be in their divisions. The schedule comes out Wednesday, as do the brackets, so look for another post with updates on brackets for each competitor.
So far, Master Roberto has 32 competitors in his bracket at Brown Middle-Heavy. For the blue belts, Joseph Ruggiero is one of 115 competitors at Blue Leve, along with fellow Lloyd Irvin teammate Matthew Rihani from Crazy 88. Joseph Formica has 101 in his division Blue Medio, also competing alongside a teammate from Crazy 88, Tye Murphy. Katy Torralbas is one of 30 women in the Blue Female Leve. And white belt Jeff Lucas is one of 35 competitors at White Leve, along with Crazy 88 teammate Nathan Allen.
The Naples Lloyd Irvin competitors are focused and ready to compete in Long Beach
