Monique Elias as a purple belt at the 2013 Pan. Photo: Erin Herle

The IBJJF has released a newer version of the pre-schedule for the 2014 Pan Jiu-Jitsu Championship on March 12-16 at the Brenn Event Center on the UC Irvine campus.

Here is the updated schedule that you can also view here:

Wednesday
White adult male and female
White masters male
Blue adult male – Rooster to Feather

Thursday
Blue adult male – Light to Ultra Heavy and Open Class
Blue adult female – Weight divisions and Open Class
Purple adult male – Weight divisions and Open Class

Friday
Blue masters male and female – Weight divisions and Open Class
Purple adult female – Weight divisions and Open Class
Purple masters male and female – Weight divisions and Open Class

Saturday
Juvenile all belts – Weight divisions and Open Class
Brown adult male and female – Weight divisions and Open Class
Brown masters male and female – Weight divisions and Open Class

Sunday
Black masters male and female – Semi finals , finals and Open Class
Black adult male and female

Full information can be found at www.ibjjf.org

To highlight some of your peers who will compete at this year’s event, here are two people who have set their eyes on the gold. One from another state, and another will travel from northern California down to the UC Irvine Brenn Event Center on March 12-16.

Nicholle placed second at the 2013 Pan Championship as a white belt. Photo: Personal Archive

Meet Nicholle Stoller, a blue belt from Nashville MMA in Nashville, Tennessee. She competes often and will be putting her blue belt rank to the test at the Pans this year. She has been training since 2012 and her dedication for Jiu-Jitsu is proof that her Asperger’s Syndrome has no bearing on her performances. The Autism Spectrum Disorder, sometimes called “high functioning Autism,” is characterized by hyper sensitivity, obsessive behaviors towards specific interests, hindered social skills, ability to recognize patterns and other various behaviors. The obsessive, pattern-finding abilities that Nicholle has actually help her in learning techniques and dedication to training. The Jiu-Jitsu community has also helped her adapt and excel tremendously in her social life as well.

We asked Nicholle some quick questions about her training and expectations for the 2014 Pans:

GRACIEMAG: How often do you compete?

NICHOLLE STOLLER: I make it a goal to compete at least once a month. We don’t have many large tournaments near Nashville, so this usually involves travel – but it’s worth it!

Have you competed at Pans before?

Last year was my first time competing at Pans as a white belt. This year I’m going as a blue belt.

How do you prepare?

I train twice a day and alternate between days focused on rolling and days focused on conditioning. If it’s a day that I’m doing conditioning, I only roll hard in one training session and drill for the other session – conditioning is first thing in the morning. If I’m not doing conditioning, I roll hard in both my morning and evening sessions.

Physical preparation is secondary to my mental preparation. It doesn’t matter how in shape, or in synch I am – if my mindset is not right, I will look like a retarded ape when the referee drops his hand. The closer I get to competition time, the more I hide myself away when I’m not training – I find a combination of meditation, and the proper soundtrack works wonders.

How often do you get to train?

I run my massage therapy business out of my school, so I usually train twice a day and see clients in between training sessions.

——

Devon and his brother. Photo: Personal Archive

Devon Martinez is a blue belt adult featherweight who trains out of the Bay Area at Guerrilla Jiu-Jitsu who will also be competing at the 2014 IBJJF Pan. A twenty-four year old personal trainer, he and his family train together. His cousins have a gym, which is where he started training. These days he spends a lot of time at his academy drilling, studying tape, brain-storming ideas, and hanging out.

Here is how his weekly training routine pans out:

Monday – drill in morning, workout in afternoon, drill at night

Tuesday – drill in morning, spar at night

Wednesday – drill in morning, strength training in afternoon

Thursday – spar in morning

Friday – go to Guerrilla Jiu-Jitsu headquarters with Dave Camarillo in Pleasanton, and spar in afternoon, spar again in evening.

Saturday – drill/light roll

Sunday – drill and depending on how I feel or how close to the tournament I am determines if I train rounds

——

Now that you’ve seen how a couple of your peers are preparing for the 2014 Pans along with their backgrounds, what do you say? Get motivated and confident to register in your division today.

Head over to www.ibjjf.org to register before Monday, March 3!

Clark Gracie celebrates his Pan American Championship title after comeback final with Marcelo Mafra of Checkmat. Photo: Ivan Trindade

During the ten-minute match, Mafra had earned a sweep against Clark and maintained his base on top. As the time winded down, Clark knew he had to move so with his signature omoplata, he locked Mafra down. But he was still down by points. He grabbed the lapel of Mafra and secured a choke from the back while still in the omoplata position. Mafra tried to hold on but eventually went to sleep and with 26 seconds left in the match, Clark won with a comeback making it one of the most exciting matches of the whole 2013 event.

And for you: Registration is open for the 2014 Pan American Championship in Irvine, CA so you too can make your mark on the competition mats. Use this match as motivation and proof that a match is never completely lost until a hand is raised. There is always a way to come back and turn the victory around.

Register now for the Pan American Championship on March 12-16 at the University of California, Irvine Brenn Event Center.

Go to www.ibjjf.org to start the process for becoming a Pan-Am champ.

And watch the match between Clark Gracie and Marcelo Mafra below:

American National Jiu-Jitsu Championship 2012. Photo: Ivan Trindade

The IBJJF American National Jiu-Jitsu Championship is a two-day event for both gi and no-gi divisions on September 7-8. Located at the California State University Dominguez Hills campus, it is a historical Jiu-Jitsu venue as the Pan American Championship ran in the gymnasium until the number of participants forced IBJJF to move the event to UC Irvine.

American Nationals has been an annual championship since 2002 with the no-gi portion added in 2008. In fact, at the first edition the brown belt adult absolute division was closed out by Rener and Ryron Gracie.

Competing in this event gives you the chance to add one more title on your resume as a national champion and the no-gi division will prepare you for the No-Gi Pan Ams and No-Gi Worlds coming up in the next two months.

CSU Dominguez Hills is located at 1000 E. Victoria Street Carson, CA 90747. Divisions are open from white to black, juvenile to senior 2. Already signed up are some black belts Oliver Geddes, Rodrigo Freitas, JT Torres, James Puopolo, Marcos Torregrosa, Brandon Mullins and more.

The lower belts have already confirmed some of the best in their ranks with athletes who have medaled at both the Worlds and the Pan Ams so the level of competition is fierce.

Registration is open until Friday, August 30 at the cost of $99 for just the gi division or $170 for both gi and no-gi.

Don’t miss the deadline by registering at www.ibjjf.org

Check out this match from 2009 between Saulo Ribeiro and Renato Tavares:

Fotos: Ivan Trindade

A mother films her son. All alone. When he wins, she raises her arm, first clenched, but doesn’t lose the frame.
A teacher shouts. A girlfriend is filming, but doesn’t quite understand what is going on. Her beloved fights and she keeps her eyes on the mat and camera in her hand. In the end, she asks the teacher about the outcome and is a little saddened to find out her loved-one lost.

Still in the warm-up area, after being called to fight, the two white belts greet each other.

– What’s your name?

– Rigo.

– It’s a pleasure; I’m Stanford. Have a good match.

– Thanks, you too.

On the mat, Stanford, who has the look of a teacher, shows he’s sharp and wins with a spot-on armbar before the first minute of the match was up.

The father shows up at the central table of the tournament irate. He curses, complains and demands an explanation. He and his son arrived at around 5pm to compete, but the division happened at 12:45 and not 6 pm. The father hunts for someone to blame for his offspring’s disappointment, other than his own lack of attention.

A mother and brother came to watch the other brother compete. Between one bout and another, they conversed sitting in the stands, while the mother zealously mends a ballet slipper, perhaps belonging to a daughter who had stayed home.

A Brazilian teacher hollers to orient his white belt student. The pupil is still crawling in the Gentle Art; the master needs to improve his fluency in the language of Shakespeare. He utters some things like:

– Agora you have to pass the guarda!

Two security officers in the gymnasium converse:

– I’ve never seen a martial art like this one.

– It’s not judo?

– No, judo is done standing.

The 15th Pan-American Jiu-Jitsu Championship kicked off this Thursday, April 8, in Bren’s Events Center, at the University of California Irvine, in Orange County.

The first day was dedicated entirely to white and blue belts. In all, there are more than 2,800 athletes and of that number around 300 black belts. To give you an idea of how significant those numbers are, the IBJJF debuted in a new location already planning to have more room to accommodate so many people.

– The trend is for the number to grow by 300 each year. – revealed Judson Borges, supervisor of the Federation.
Marcelo Siriema, director for the competition, adds:

– If you look at the schedule, you’ll see that on Sunday the Pan will be dedicated entirely to black belts. There are eight match areas. I don’t think we’ve ever had that before.

By Sunday, as the King would say, there will have been great emotions, from anonymous stars, young and old, men and women.

GRACIEMAG.com will bring you all the goings-on of the most popular championship on the annual Jiu-Jitsu calendar. Stay tuned.

Check out the gallery from the first day of Pan 2010.

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From the 8^th to the 11^th of April, a similar number of people will fill the university gymnasium, competing, cheering, and feeling the excitement. Even those who aren’t Anteaters.

That’s the mascot for the sports teams of the university, a typical American institution of learning, with fraternities like Alpha Gamma Alpha, Delta, Lambda Theta Delta and 44 others, and lodgings dubbed with the names of characters and places from “The Lord of the Rings”, J.R.R. Tolkien’s most famous book.

But on the second weekend of April the fraternities to take front and center will be Gracie Barra, Alliance, Gracie Humaitá, CheckMat, Carlson Team, Lloyd Irvin and countless others.

Around three thousand athletes, a new record, are expected to be there, and droves of spectators will fill the ample and inviting gymnasium, which already found its place in history before the Pan 2010.

Statue of UC Irvine mascot. Photo: Ally Union / Publicity.

The university’s men’s volleyball team, which trains in the gymnasium conceded to Jiu-Jitsu, is the current college champion of the USA. And you had no idea anteaters could be so popular.

Grab your gi, the whole kids, and stick some ants in your pocket, and get ready for a momentous event in the sport’s history.

After all, as one master from another university once said:

“One needs to understand that not every Jiu-Jitsu practitioner is a competitor, as not every champion is a good teacher. The only thing I recommend, though, is that every practitioner enters a championship at least once in his life. You might not like it, you might realize that’s not for you, but you’ll have tasted the adrenaline, lived the intensity of that moment and have for yourself the feeling that you were there.”

The lesson above comes from Royler Gracie, and was published in a recent issue of GRACIEMAG. Anyone who competes at the Pan, as you can see, won’t just gain a magazine and t-shirt. They’ll gain much more.

Don’t forget to send in your stories and accounts, along with a cool photo, to make yourself one of the characters from the event on GRACIEMAG.com!

Today it’s the last day to register, so sign up by clicking here.