The Pan is coming right up...

For those of you maybe a little newer to jiu jitsu, or who haven't competed much in the bigger tournaments, you may be wondering what the heck is the Pan.

I know when I first went, I called it the Pan Am or Pan Ams.  Technically it's the Pan American Jiu Jitsu Championship, and it's (I believe) the largest jiu jitsu tournament in the world- larger than Mundials (the World Championship) because it includes masters and seniors divisions whereas Mundials is just adults (the Masters and Seniors Worlds is separate.)

So yeah... after you go a time or two you may realize, as I did, that most people instead refer to it as "The Pan" or even Pans.

And... I'm going, again.  And working it, again, and not competing, again.   I haven't competed since the 2011 Pan.  I just have way too much work, work travel, and personal travel interfering to be able to devote myself to a solid competition training plan.  The Pan starts on Wednesday March 12 and finishes up with "blackbelt day" on Sunday March 16 (a misnomer since blackbelts start on Saturday; Sunday is mostly the semis and finals of most of the bb divisions.)  It's held in Irvine, CA (the closest airport is Orange County aka SNA but some people fly into LAX and drive.)

So, if you're thinking about doing the Pan (which I highly recommend, it's a lot of fun, the environment is exciting and the people watching and match watching is superb) you should start training.  The Houston Open (February 22-23) is a good warmup tournament, imho...  The IBJJF website says Pan registration is open, but I didn't see a link and I'm too busy/lazy to hunt it down at the moment.

Two oldies but goodies to read about designing your training schedule to avoid overtraining and hit your peak at the right time:

http://www.grapplearts.com/Blog/2012/04/perfect-peaking-part-1-overtraining-and-its-prevention-in-mixed-martial-arts-conditioning/

http://www.grapplearts.com/Blog/2012/04/perfect-peaking-part-2-tapering-and-peaking-for-mma-and-grappling-competition/