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“Where are you from? Australia! Wow you’ve come a long way to camp!”

“Yeah but no actually, I live in France, not quite as far..” I had this conversation on repeat during day 1 of BJJ Globetrotters Summer Camp in Leuven, but I didn’t mind much.

The speed dating part of the welcome session was a great opportunity to try to start putting names to faces, and learn where in the world everyone is from. However with 200+ people at camp, Christian told us not to feel bad about needing to introduce ourselves to the same people multiple times this week!

Germany, Malaysia, UK, Iceland, Belgium, Netherlands, Norway, USA.. the international atmosphere here is awesome.

I was really happy to see a good bunch of people I’d met at the 2014 Copenhagen Fall Camp, including a guy I had given one of my ‘gypsy girl’ patches to – he’d sewn it onto his gi – so cool!

Keeping with tradition, Christian taught the first class of camp – “Bellybutton touching contest + attacking made easy.” I really like Christian’s teaching style and the way he encourages us to look at things simply: fundamentally jiu jitsu is all about defending the space between your chest and your knees. Open up when you have control of the space, and close when you don’t have control.

“Imagine you’re in a castle and you run out to attack, but run back in when the enemy advances.”

Christian believes that approaching rolls like this allows you to be more creative; you’re worried less about executing particular moves and instead just focus on putting/keeping something in that chest-to-knee space to control it – and it can be anything – an arm, a knee, your head, how about a finger? He encouraged us to experiment and see what worked and what didn’t.

“If your first focus is to take the space, everything else (passing etc) is going to be easier.”

“Just fucking shoot and hope they don’t get past your cannons” – common mistake.

Christian also got us to try rolling while one of us commentated out loud, to show how we should work on that flow chart in our heads.

It certainly took a lot of the usual stress out of the roll for me. Instead of thinking ahead and trying to remember set ups, I kept focused on just getting into that space and staying there – and I found myself naturally turning to moves that made sense for the position I was in.

Selfie from the start of the journey… I'm on my way to Nancy to meet up with a fellow BJJ Globetrotter, to hitch a ride with him to Summer Camp in Leuven, Belgium.

We've never met before but, minor detail. I've done a thorough Facebook-stalk, and am 99% sure he's not an axe murderer.

I'm so excited for camp! It's my first BJJ Globetrotters camp since Copenhagen in 2014. A few people I met at that camp are on the participant list for this one, so I'm looking forward to catching up with them, and throwing myself into a week of training.. maybe a bit of partying too.

BJJ has certainly taken a back seat since I moved to Strasbourg – part life excuses, part lazy me. It's going to be such a treat to spend the next seven days away from my laptop and focused on jiu jitsu. And – little wins – all the instruction will be in English. 😉

We all have one – the gi that, despite a few hot washes, hasn’t shrunk to be a perfect fit. The sleeves are still a bit long, the pants baggy, the jacket shrugs too easily off your shoulders during warmups and rolls. It’s the gi that usually languishes at the mid-to-bottom-end of your weekly rotation.

For me, this is a white (blargh) Fuji Sekai women’s gi, and right now it’s my go-to. Why? Because life is busy, I’m not training regularly or doing much interval running, so I’m in chunky-girl mode. In reality, I’m only a few kilos heavier than usual, but it’s enough to make my two favourite 93 Brand gis a bit tight: “Sorry, can’t do spider guard tonight, might split my pants/can’t get my legs high enough..”

How do you keep active when life gets busy?

I need to do more than this, but here’s how I’m trying to keep the calorie creep at bay while I’m not training much:

• I jog to the tram stop really, because I always forget to check when exactly the next tram is arriving, and usually it’s on the approach just as I’m rounding the corner. But there’s nothing like a frantic little jog to get your heart pounding in the morning.
• I get off a stop early and walk a few extra hundred metres to the office. But not if it’s raining. Because meh to that.
• I do workout videos in my living room. My favourites at the moment are Sophia Drysdale’s 5 Day Workout Challenge – booty,  abs,  full body cardio .. at 8-9 minutes they’re the perfect length for my attention span when I have a lot on my mind. I usually choose two or three, then cycle through them a few times so I’ve had a solid-feeling workout.

I also went on a bit of a fitness app downloading spree… I haven’t even opened up all of them yet but I have stumbled onto some fun, short-but-tough video routines I keep revisiting.

• I hula hoop. Sometimes I’ll do a hooping workout and other times I’ll just pick it up and muck around for 5 or 10 minutes in my work day, when I need to get away from the computer and take a break. (Pro tip: move your laptop out of the way lest you accidentally hoop it off a desk..)

None of these activities are as satisfying to me as a BJJ or cardio boxing class, but they fill the void well enough, and keep me from outgrowing my ‘fat gi.’

How do you stay active when you’re not making it to training?

I’m not the only one who celebrates my birthday for at least a week, am I?

It was pre-birthday rolls with the morning crew today so I brought cupcakes. SORRY to the guys who are supposed to be weight cutting right now for the British Open…

p.s HOW am I 31 in two days?! The past year has flown.

I bought a new Moleskine diary this weekend. But before I shelve the old one and start filling these crisp new pages with plans and appointments, I thought I’d have  a flick through and recap my 2015 highlights because, well, it’s the thing to do as you start a new year isn’t it?

• I spent some precious time with my Nanna on her last trip to Malta. ‘Last’ because as she’s in her late eighties it’s very unlikely she’ll make the long journey over from Australia again. I also got to hang out with my awesome aunty Anna – she’s always so much fun and we have the best talks.

• I landed my first full-time job in PR. This has been a goal ever since I quit my radio career and moved to the UK, and a casual conversation at a bar for a friend’s birthday a good 12 months ago actually led me to this role. The next time I consider bailing on social plans, I’m going to remind myself of this wonderful encounter, and reconsider.

• I flexed the talky – i.e. I did some voiceover work and had a weekly UK/Europe news chat with Justin on i98fm.  It was really fun to get back behind a microphone! I hope to do more of it this year.

• I went back to Australia for the first time in almost two years. Time truly has flown – how have I been in London for now approaching THREE years?! What struck me when I visited Oz back in May though was how so much hadn’t changed. I mean, friends have rings on their fingers where they didn’t have them before and some girlfriends now have bumps and others babies but, there was something really comforting about slipping back into old conversations with them, visiting the BJJ clubs I used to frequent and feeling like it was just another training session, seeing my dad in his usual chair in front of the TV at home and chatting through the day’s events with mum and my sisters. I was a complete noob on the train and in shopping centres though: if I stood on the right side of the escalator instead of the left once, I did it a thousand times! I was happy to find that while I thoroughly enjoyed my trip home and could have extended it for another week or two, the visit didn’t leave me pining for a move back for good.

• I turned 30. I’m totally still scratching my head at this, to be honest. How did 30 happen? When did I make it here? Why do I not feel like I should be 30 yet? Is it a total cliche to say that? Maybe it’s societal – and my own – expectations of where I should be and what I should have/own at 30 that I’m clearly not at/possessing, maybe I just really don’t feel “my age.” I have read a lot of comments/articles about how secure people tend to feel in themselves in their thirties. I certainly feel like I have some catching up to do.

• I went to another BJJ Bonanza. Yes! The super fun women’s BJJ camp in Copenhagen that I did in 2013 is still going strong, and I was able to make it back in October. This time the camp featured Mackenzie Dern and she is seriously the nicest, most grounded 22 year-old I have ever met. Along with teaching us some great moves over the course of the weekend, what sticks out for me about Mackenzie is just how chilled she is. Between sessions she would sit around with a group of girls, happily sharing stories of her notable fights and telling us the ‘real stories’ behind some of the headlines. And if she wasn’t doing that, Mackenzie was taking charge of the gym’s speakers, flipping through her favourite tracks on her phone and generally just being rad. I also got to catch up with a bunch of ladies that I met at the BJJ Globetrotters camp in 2014.

• I ended the year with the same guy I started it with and in the same place, Strasbourg, where I spent the Christmas and New Year break. My relationship is totally a highlight and continues to be. I’m looking forward to whatever’s up next in this long distance adventure of ours.