21/06/09 5 Days in Rio

Got in to Rio on Wednesday night so this will be my fifth night staying in Rio and my first in the room in the apartment and not the hostel. The hostel was the Copa Hostel on Avenue Nossa Senhora De Copacabana which is one block back from Copacabana beach. It was a good hostel, one i’d defo recommend. Met a bunch of American students who were as part of their course, I tagged along with them when they were heading out. They were a sound enough bunch, probably thought I was a weirdo mind you. In fact I was going to be at the Football with them just now but I said I might come along and I ended up running late and missing them, ah well there’ll be other chances to go the football while I’m here.

Anyway I’ve now had 4 full days in Rio and have kept myself pretty busy, on Thursday I trained twice and went a walk down Copacabana beach. Looked to sort out a place and all that boring stuff. AT night tagged along with those American kids to a party that we never made it to. Walked about  20 blocks til we got bored looking for it and ended up just having some beers on the roof of the hostel. Friday was spent trying to get my bank card to work, sorted that problem now, went gi shopping and then went training. Good session again looking at those same quarter guard sweeps discussed in the last update and other ways to play that half guard with a high top leg, similar to the 9-3 guard that Demian Maia plays but with some different grips. Had some good rolls, tapped my first black belt which was nice. Getting to roll with BBs is rare in Scotland and the one I do get to roll with regularly is very good so I don’t get the chance to catch many of them, nice ego boost. After that I didn’t train the late class because I fancied a few beers before heading to Lapa with the Americans discussed earlier.

Lapa gets a full paragraph because it’s mental. It was stupid busy, people everywhere, stalls selling booze and scran at every turn and bars/clubs blaring music everywhere. Ended up having a grand and exciting night, one of the yank girls was wearing a chain that got snatched by one of the many favela kids there on the rob. Unlike some people I wasn’t being a hero and took nothing to do with it, but fair play to those girls they got all argumentative and ended up buying it back for 5 reals. A few more beers and my decision making obviously became questionable  because I decided I would have some meat on a stick barbecued on a grill on the street. It was amazing so I had another. The fact I survived and didn’t even have to spend the next day in the toilet was a miracle. Aye anyway I’ve never seen a place as wild as Lapa for a party. It was like a major music festival except without the bands, overpriced shit and space. I’ll go back before I leave for sure. Got back from Lapa and there was some party/disco effort in the hostel, everyone went to bed except me and one of the Americans (he was a big fucker, like 6’7”). It was his birthday so we went into that party and knocked back as much as we could before it closed. Good times, some local girls wanted us to go to MacDonalds with them, it was closed though.

Next morning with a raging hangover I went to pick up the keys to the flat and pay my rent for a month.  Got my keys then back to the hostel to pack my bag and then took my stuff to the new place, I forgot which door it was so I tried several to no luck, phoned the guy up and got no response. Ah! At that point it was about 26 degrees, I had a massive bag on my back and a raging hangover. I took the smart option and went back to the hostel, booked in for one more night and went back to sleep. “Mais um noite por favor!”  Saturday was low key until I hit a fight show at night with David5 from the CageWarriors Forums and a few guys he trains with at BTT, it was 11 amateur fights and 5 pro fights. The amateur fights were under UK semi-pro rules but with big as gloves, pure enter the dragon efforts, shin guards and head guards. It was a pure swap from the UK with the fighters having excellent BJJ but generally pretty poor striking while in the UK they generally have solid striking but dire BJJ. Good fun but it became obvious the almost all had problems with gas. It got me thinking that what we’re doing at Fightzone isn’t a good workout, it’s very technical BJJ and good rolling but if that’s all I do over here I’m gonna go back with absolutely no gas tank. So I need a work out plan for MMA conditioning while I’m here.

PAUL McVEIGH! Hook me up.  Or anyone else with some good ideas. I think blasting some tabata circuits 2-3 times a week on top of the constant BJJ training should be plenty. I have access to nothing more than a chin and dip bar on the beach. I could really do with a medicine ball, I might buy a cheap football and fill it with sand and use that as a med ball so I can more stuff like slams and throws. Gonna have a think about a program and post it later in the week, give me comments on that and ideas for now. I’m thinking 8 tabata sets; burpees, chins, dips, med ball slams on the ground, med ball throws against a wall, jump squats, depth push ups and wall ball press. Get some plank work in as well and i think I should be ok. Would do some hill sprints but all the hills here are covered in favelas and I don’t want my life to be in danger every time I try and do some conditioning. I could do beach sprints like in Rocky 3 but I can’t run for shit on sand, might be the best bet though. Anyway I need to do more than just BJJ or I’ll come back with the world’s worst gas tank is the thrust of that paragraph.

Eh, where was I? Saturday night came home and was still shattered so went to bed once I came back from the show. Today I moved into the room in the flat, successfully this time. Then I went a walk along Ipanema beach. Taps aff obviously!  I tried to play a game and spot someone paler than me. That turned out to be far too hard, I think I spotted one girl paler than me and she was ginger. So I played the far easier and more fun game of spot the pretty girls. Except when I was walking past the gay section at Posto 8 then I looked at the pretty boys. When in Rome and all that. Had a wee swim and played in the waves, wish I knew how to surf.  

Came in from the beach and was talking to some of my new flatmates, Stewart is from Liverpool he’s doing some teaching English while he’s here. He’s been travelling for like 3 years solid and has been in Rio for about 10 months so has pretty boss Portuguese and Rafael is one of the black belts at Check Mat (fight zone, whatever you want to call it) got chatting to them for a while and lost track of time and missed the hostel kids who I was going to head to the football with, shame as I fancied seeing a game at the Maracana. Plenty of time though. Another 6 weeks.

Next entry will have pictures for sure. I doubt anyone will have bothered reading these two walls of texts except Dean and that’s only because he’s offshore with fuck all else to do.

Bit of a wild one with lyrics but since I just walked past it yesterday here’s some Barry Manilow.

“At the Copa (CO!), Copacabana (Copacabana)
The hottest spot north of Havana (here)
At the Copa (CO!), Copacabana
Music and passion were always the fashion
At the Copa….they fell in love”

What I don’t get is Copa is south of Havana.

Anyway better lyrics from Public Enemy,

“I’m ready and hyped plus I’m amped
Most of my heroes don’t appear on no stamps
Sample a look back you look and find
Nothing but rednecks for 400 years if you check
Don’t worry be happy
Was a number one jam
Damn if I say it you can slap me right here
(Get it) lets get this party started right
Right on, c’mon
What we got to say
Power to the people no delay
To make everybody see
In order to fight the powers that be!”

That’s plenty for now, I’ll fire up another update later in the week.

 

Peace

3 Comments

Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI