PAN AM TRAINING CAMP WITH ATOS JIU JITSU

Kit Dale is one of Australia’s most exciting jiu jitsu talents, having gained a number of prestigious accolades in his brief three year career, including Brazilian national and WPJJC titles as a purple belt.

Now a brown belt, Kit has kindly agreed to pen a blog depicting his experiences, starting with this post about his Pan Am training camp trip to Atos Jiu Jitsu in San Diego, where he is training alongside the likes of Andre Galvao and the Mendes Bros.

By Kit Dale

Dustin Brown and I have just wrapped up our first week of training in San Diego and we are sure glad we get this weekend off due to the San Diego Trials being held just a few days ago. This is our first weekend of rest before training again on Monday and it is well needed and well deserved.

We arrived in LA on Monday 5th of April, and it was only a few hours after that we had our kimonos on and were training with CIA Paulista co-founder and 7th Degree Black belt Professor Waldomiro Perez Junior (Rampage Jackson’s BJJ Coach) and 3rd Degree Black belt professor Paulo Gaezze Junior at Geazze Academy in Huntington Beach, California.

We trained in the morning and then again in the brown/black belt only class at night. It was good to get our sweat going after sitting on the plane for 13 hours. After class, we drove out to our hotel in San Diego to sleep and get ready for training in the morning with Atos Jiu Jitsu.

We have trained all week, morning and night in the competition classes. It has been a fantastic opportunity to roll with the likes of 8x World Champion Andre Galvao and multiple time World Champions, the Mendes brothers. Training here also is purple belt World champion (now brown belt) Chris Visentin from New York, Marcos Souza (black belt) from Japan, and Mike Fowler also World Champion and now Black belt - so there are some world class training partner’s right there. These guys are the type of people we would pay thousands of dollars to hold seminars in Australia but here we have them all together in one room - for 6 hours a day!

The biggest thing I noticed is how unfit I am. At home, most would get the impression that I’m very fit, but the fact of the matter is that it is easy to look fit when training with an inexperienced opponent. But here in San Diego at Atos there is nowhere to hide and everybody is here to train and to train hard. We start our morning with a good warm up consisting of many movements and stretching. Then we get straight into high intensity drilling. Most of this week we have worked passing and sweeps, we would run through a whole sequence of events in high intensity for 30 minutes, then we have a drink of water and start specific training. This usually consists of one person starting in a position (usually guard) and the other passing, and the first one who can submit the opponent or gets points, wins. We do this for 30 minutes at a very high intensity then we start our comp rounds. 10 x 6 minute rounds starting from standing, with high intensity, with one minute breaks in between. This doesn’t sound too bad, but when you consider the opponent you are training with you soon realise how hard this type of training is.

After training we warm down and stretch then discuss positions and answer questions as a group. It is fantastic to have the insights of who many consider the best in the world right there in front of you. And to better that they are very welcoming and enjoy a laugh, so it is not only great training here but enjoyable as well.

We do this twice a day with strength and conditioning classes in between. It’s really opened up my eyes to what I thought was hard training. I have a lot to work on back in Australia if I want to keep up with the best in the world. Unfortunately we don’t have enough people who take there jiu jitsu seriously which makes it hard to find training partners to take it to the next level.

I am lucky to have acquired a gi sponsor in SUB Apparel which is fully covering the costs of this trip and supporting me on my journey to become a Black Belt World Champion. Without sponsors like them I would not be able to make my dreams a reality.

Also on another positive note - fellow SUB Apparel Fighter Dustin Brown won his division at the Abu Dhabi San Diego trials, winning all his fights via submission. Awesome work to see an Australian winning another international competition.

Now we rest over the weekend and gear up for another week of hard training. Stay tuned for next week’s blog.

Osssss

Kit Dale

My Background

I have been training in Brazilian jiu jitsu for three and a half years. Originally I played Australian rules football in the state that I grew up, in Melbourne, Australia.
I got into jiu jitsu after watching the UFC and I remember thinking I need to learn this to be able to protect myself.

After finding an MMA school I realised that I much preferred the grappling aspects of it, and eventually found a jiu jitsu school. It was about the size of a large car and situated next to a train station. I was working full time and playing football also at the time, so I could only attend 2 sessions a week for the first half year. I then went to watch a local competition and I was hooked! I knew then I wanted to be a black belt world champion. Within the next year I was able to skip football training and train jiu jitsu during the week. I went from doing two classes a week to five classes. After training jiu jitsu for 10 months I received my blue belt. I was very excited because I had worked hard for this.

After receiving my blue belt I felt I needed to look for a bigger school, one with higher level fighters. I found it at Peter de Been’s academy in St Kilda. It is roughly 1 hour and twenty minutes from my house. Here I trained five times a week for 1 year until finally I quit my job and started teaching privates to keep me from being broke. My father lets me live with him for free and I teach a butcher so he helps me out with food. My girlfriend Taryn also helps me with money if I need. I received my purple and brown belt in between that time. I was able to receive my brown belt in 3 years due to my dedication and unwavering work ethic. I have also won a number of big competitions which have helped my cause.

I have had 153 jiu jitsu matches and have lost only three times. Here are some of my credentials:

2X World Pro Champion
2011 Brazilian National Champion
10X Pan Pacific Champion
8X Australian champion

2011
2x Melbourne International Open under 85kg and Absolute Champion (Brown)
2x Pan Pacific Brown belt under 85kg and Absolute Champion (Brown)
1x Brasileiro under 85kg purple belt champion
1x Abu Dhabi Pro Jiu Jitsu GI world cup champion under 83kg (Purple)
1x Abu Dhabi Pro Jiu Jitsu No GI world cup silver under 86kg (Purple)
1x Abu Dhabi Pro jiu jitsu trials winner over 74kg (Purple)
1x Most Technical Male Award
4x Victorian State Jiu Jitsu Champion under 85kg and open weight (Purple)
3x QLD State jiu jitsu Champion under 85kg and open weight (Purple)

2010
2x Pan Pacific Champion purple divisions
1x Australian Elite Super Fight Champion
1x Abu Dhabi pro jiu jitsu world cup champion under 83kg (Blue)
4x Victorian state BJJ Champion (Blue)
1x Most Technical Male Award
4x Australian Cup champion (Blue)
1x NSW State BJJ champion (Blue)

2009
1x Abu Dhabi Pro Jiu Jitsu world cup trials champion open weight (Blue)
3x Pan Pacific champion (Blue)
1x Victorian State BJJ championships champion (Blue)