Guys,
Here is a link to Denis' only mma fight on my show a few years back now.
Showed a LOT of promise indeed!
D, I am a HUGE GOMI fan! If you do hook up and all please pass on that I'd love to fly him here with a young boy/novice who could fight and we can drop some seminars around the place.
Good to see some doors opening buddy! J-rock now has a MONSTER Korean over there thats 196cm 140kg if you want someone your own size to pick on :)
Justin
6'5'' 24O in Japan?
You must feel like a Giant?
And I'm sure the girls just hate you also:)
Cool stuff bro, train hard.
ttt
"6'5'' 24O in Japan? You must feel like a Giant? "
Not in the locker room ;)
Seriously though D is a big guy, hope to see him return to MMA after he gets his edumicatium sorted.
Justin
how long did it take you to learn enough Japanese to pass the entrance exam?
Hey D,
Great to hear from you, even if it is on a thread. I guess your email must be broken... :p
"it's fuckign great training! but it does come at a cost, having to be away from my friends family and girlfriend:/"
Ben will be glad to hear that you miss him... :)
Keep us updated, can't wait to hear how it all goes.
Elvis
ttt
Dude, you always have the best posts.
Does Gomi train like a mad man?
ttt!!..keep us posted!
Navin.... I havn't even bothered to try buying clothes here.
Justin I usually see Kiguchi once or twice a month.... so I will tell him about your offer next time I see him.
As for girls here..... I must be the only guy I know who doesn't have a thing for Japanese girls. I curently have a Girlfriend that I am doing a tough long distance thing with, so I am not interested.
Actually to be honest regarding the girls here.... they are slowly growing on me, and when I go out around the city I see plenty of nice ones.... but I am at my university all bloody day, training and doing classes, and any free time is spent sleeping.... and my campus is an athlete campus only. and the there would probably literaly 5 girls in my whole campus that I would consider atractive.... but yeah I get a lot of attention from the girls here. good fun to chat with and good for the ego.. but that's it.
As for how long it took me to learn enough for the entrance exam.... I tried studying with a book n tape set for a couple of months.... but I was working full time, teaching classes, and training every day...?So I was gettign nowhere! So I ended up being hooked up by a japanese guy who would give me 1h45m of tutoring a day, plus homework for 20 bucks a lesson! fucking steal! so I quit my job cos I only had three months until the exam... and I just did nothing but study like 7 hours a day and train.
3 months later I passed my entrance interview in Japanese.... and cos they wanted me to pass they gave me the writen test in English... but I probably could have done it in Japanese.
Hey Ben, I guess that's probably the same Hiro guy... and yeah the other guy's name is Obiya
Elvis.... um yeah.... that's it... My email is broken ;) Sorry to be so slack!
Man Ben would make for one cunt of a girlfriend! There's no way he would take anything but the man role in any relationship!
As for Gomi training like a mad man... to be honest he doesn't apear to be training super hard.... but I don't watch his striking training, just his wrestling.... and he is probably tring to pace himself a bit cos of how long and hard our trainings are ontop of his extra training.
My perspective might be a little out of it though, cos EVERY SINGLE JAPANESE WRESTLER HERE TRAIN LIKE MANIACHS! The work ethic of the Japanese is something else!
Now here's a cut and paste from a thread on the Wrestling forum..... it isn't the most popular forum so it barely got any reads.... this is about how the training sessions go at my university... I wrote it cos someone wanted to know about university training regimes.
here it is for anyone who is interested.... I will post about the training at the camp a little later.
OK.... I train at Kokushikan University in tokyo... under coach Toshio Asakura who is a former world champion, and also often under Wada Takahiro who took silver at the worlds in 1995 and 4th place at 96 Olympics.... he is one of two freestyle coaches for the national team, and often comes to train and teach. Both are former Kokushikan wrestlers, and Wada will most likely become our main coach in a year or so... which will be great!
we have about 60 wrestlers training in my university, and often have guys come visit and train too... like highschool wrestlers and MMA fighters.....we often have Takanori Gomi come as we are all friends with the coaches and guys from Kiguchi Dojo.
Anyways as for training
We train twice a day 6 days a week, and iether have the sunday off or train once that day.
monday to friday morning training is from 6:50 - 8:00
we usually do conditioning stuff.... a usual routine would be we run on a 400 meter track building up speed for about 15-20 mins then we get into various types of sprints.... from doing 400m, 300m, 200m 100m or 50m.... also various agility drills too. shit loads of pushups, situps, squats, burpees and rope climbing.
it is often changed up to keep it interesting
monday to friday evening training... 4:00 - 6:30 or 7:00
we again run for about 10 mins to warm up.... do forward rolls, breakfalls, backward rolls into handstands, head springs, necksprings, walking on hands and various other agility type drills and movements... all done up the mat in rows of people.
we then often do a couple of rounds of..... hmmmm dunno what you call it, partner drills I guess... where you do rolls and jumps over and under eachother at a high speed usually at like 30 seconds work 15 rest. that is always a fucking killer!
we then stretch and do neck bridges n stuff
we then get into move practice.... which is usually at our own pace with a partner, but often we have to do high paced moves... like as many as you can do as fast as you can in 1 minute... rest and repeat.
with the move practice, because most guys here have been training since they were kids, it means it isn't like a class where they are constantly learning techniques... they just drill the moves that they are already very good at..... but we all often add in the moves that we have recently learned and try to master them aswell.
whenever Wada Takahiro comes to training, he always brings allong cool new techniques and has us practice them.... as he is the national coach, he is always traveling around to other countries and bringing back great new techniques!
anyway from we do the move practice for usually about 10-15 mins and then the rest of the training is just rounds and round of sparring. at the time we have finished move practice, we are usually about an 45mins to an hour into the training.
we have 2 full sized mats in the room, and one is for the greco guys and one for freestyle. there are usually about 10 pairs of people sparring at any one time.... you usually spar 3 lots of 2 minute rounds with 15 seconds rest between rounds. take one or so rounds off and then grab another partner and just keep going like this untill training is finnishing.
there is a clock running constantly that keeps track of the 2 min on 15 seconds off rounds and beeps loudly so you know when to start stop.
the Greco guys however have someone with a stop watch timing, as the do the whole 1 minute stabding, then 30 seconds each for the greco clinch (reverse body lift from the ground)
often as we are finishing, we do some more conditioning stuff.... like burpees, chins, rope climbs etc.... or we do 3 times 2 minute rounds of something where one guy is out the front doing various movements, and is spaced out on the mats copying him.... this is done super fast... and is stuff like knee high running on the spot, sprawls as he claps, pushups, situps, knee high jumping, etc.
saturday and sunday trainings are just training sessions like the mon - fri evening session.
as for weight training.... there isn't anything very structured... allot of people don't really do weights unless they are injured and can't wrestle. often guys will do weights after a 2-3 hour wrestling training.... but thats not my style.
i'm a heavy and have always lifted weights, so it's a little more important to me... I often do weights in the morning a coupld of times a week instead of running on those days. or I will do 40 mins of weights during the first 40 mins of evening training, then go and do move practice and wrestle.
in the lead up to a comp, we often do wrestling in the morning too instead of the sprints.
we don't really have a onand off season like I think there is in America.... we just have various big comps all throughout the year... so we are pretty much training all year round. we only really get like 10 days off from training during the summer hollidays... and another 6 or so days from christmas to new years day.
the Japanese are just fucking crazy committed to training.... it is just go go go all year round. when I first got here I just couldn't cope with it all... it took me like 2-3 months till I felt like I was adjusted to the amount of training we were doing.
well there you have it.... that is pretty well what we do.
let me know if you have any questions or want anything explained further.
BTW I am not Japanese.... I am Australian, but was recruited by the coach.... I am on full schollarship with my food, school and apartments all payed for. it's a bloody good deal! I am 6 foot 5 and about 245 lbs. I am very strong, quick and agile for my weight, as oposed to the standard shorter fatter heavyweight jap guy... so they brought me over to kick some jap guys asses..... although there are some fucking absolute physical specimens here in my division too! aswell as a Russian import at another university.... who I just recently had a match with, but infortunately lost a close tough match.... he is pretty much built like me, but a tiny bit shorter and a bit heavier...the coaches here think I have a good shot at making the Olympics, so they are paying my way which I is a bloody blessing!!!
Denis
Hey Dennis, good stuff getting a scholarship to Kokushi!
Ask Asakura-sensei about Jiichiro Date, Olympic Gold Medallist and probably the greatest freestyle wrestler to come out of Japan, and who was Kokushi OB.
I won't say "train hard" as you will have no choice in that matter where you're at! Good luck for staying injujry free!!
hello..how old are you? for how long do you practise wrestling?
how long did you train in it to become good at it?
thanks in advance
Tokon... there is a big framed picture of jiichiro up in our gym of him doing the move that won him the gold medal. He was actually Asakura's sensei.
I thought the picture was Asakura sensei at first cos he looks really similar, but Jiichiro looks bigger as I think he was like 74kg or something.
Jujibre I am 25.... I started late which sux, but being a heavyweight means that I can compete untill I am older than lightweights in their prime. I started when I was 21 and trained for 4 months, then stopped for a year cos my only training partner at the time had a knee reonstructuion. I then started again in december 2003 and havn't stopped since. I have trained as hard as I could with the training available in Australia, and I think I have good natural talent and ability for the sport. but most people that I train with here have been training since they were kids.
If I could turn back time and start earlier I would :)
cool.....i am 26 and was thinking to beguin wrestling or Judo to complement my bjj....i may not become great but nice to know that i could get some nice level with dedication.
good thread
Dennis - yes, i know that Date-sensei was Asakura's coach that's why I told you to ask him about him as he is a Kokushikan and Japanese wrestling legend.
I know Asakura from my own time at Kokushi (when the campus was nr Shoin-Jinja-mae, Setagaya); he is a super-nice guy, and an excellent coach. Same with Kiguchi-sensei.
Take it easy!
Cool, so that's where Hiro Kamakozono went, I used to see him fight a few times in TX.
bigD13B - what is he doing now and who is he training with, did he happen to mention it at all?
ttt