Jonatas Gurgel Brabo Variation

Here is a cool brabo choke variation that fits in well with the passing sequence we have been using!

Brian With His Blue Belt After The Gauntlet

On Thursday night, Brian finally earned his long awaited blue belt! Brian has been with us(on and off) for almost 2.5 years and has been so close to his blue many times. I finally decided Thursday would be the night and surprised him. He rolled with 24 people straight for 3 mins each; awesome job B-Squared!

Stronghold Kids Treat Night: Caramel Apples!

Today we had another Stronghold Kids Treat Night! Every couple weeks or so we like to reward our kids for all their hard work. Out of all the treat nights we've had, Caramel Apples have been one of our favorites! Thanks to all the moms who helped out. Roman really enjoyed this treat night, that's his 4th refill!

Espinoza Family at CIF State Wrestling Championships

Last night I was invited to Tommy Espinoza's high school wrestling banquet. For those of you who didn't know, Tommy placed 7th in the state as a sophomore; a huge accomplishment! Only 9 people from his district have placed in the top 8 in 80 years and Tommy also was the first person from Olympian High School to win CIF and CIF Masters! We are so proud of Tommy's accomplishments and look forward to seeing him do big things both in wrestling and jiu jitsu.

Upgrading!

Hey everyone, we are working on a few upgrades for the gym. We added some new plywood for your olympic lifts, a new squat rack and some new floor mats. Next up: more mat space to the BJJ area. Rome was not built in a day!

Baseball Choke

This week we are continuing with attacks using your opponents tail. Here is a great example of using this control from the top position for passing and finishing the choke. Guilherme starts opening the tail for the brabo choke at about 3:30 into the match. In the end he switches his grip and finishes with the baseball choke. Pay attention to the grips he uses for each of these techniques; these will be the ones we practice the most during class!

Brabo Attacks

Last week we worked on Brabo combinations from the closed guard. Watch this video of Mike Fowler working the Brabo to armbar. He starts opening the lapel around 6:15 into the video, unfortunately he is slammed and loses the position!

Stronghold TV Coming Soon!

We have a new media section on our website in development. The media section will contain techniques, matches, drilling and CrossFit WODs!

Tan Gold Medal at World Pro!

This past weekend we had a number of people competing at the World Pro at Point Loma High School. The event was run very professionally and the venue was right across the street! Everyone looked great and Stronghold took home 20 medals! I was very proud of everyone that competed, we gained some valuable experience from this event.

Ramon Lemos!

Ramon Lemos, the co-founder of Atos was in town the other week for a class. He showed us some great guard attacks, passes and great training methods. Awesome training!