Alexander Trans (middle) wining the ADCC European Trials in 2012 in Slovenia.
The excellent Swedish blog, grapplingbloggen.se recently conducted a interview with Denmark’s Alexander Trans, Last year’s European black belt Champion in IBJJF and ADCC European trial winner. Here is what he had to say about his preparartion for ADCC 2013 which takes place on October 19 & 20, 2013 at the Beijing Di Tan Gymnasium, in Beijing, China:
“How has your last grappling year been like?
I won my weight-class and got bronze in the Absolute at the European Open, got silver at the Pan, and bronze at the Worlds. I had some visa-problems in the beginning of the year, so I couldn’t travel to Brazil and train for the big championships as I usually do, so that it made it difficult to prepare properly. Then 1 week before the Pan, I hurt my lower back really bad and had problems just walking straight for a few days. After the Pan I traveled to train with my teacher Helder Medeiros ”Bob Esponja” in Abu Dhabi and the rest of the guys there, and had really good training, but my injury kept bothering me a lot the following weeks, and I was actually considering not doing the Worlds, because the pain was so severe that I could barely train. But thank God it got better, and I was able to have about a month of good training before the Worlds. After the Worlds I had some time to heal my injuries, and now I’m feeling good.
How are your preparations for ADCC 2013 going?
I started preparing last week (8 weeks out). I’m training 3 times a day Monday-Friday here in Denmark right now, doing Submission Wrestling in the morning and at night, and physical preparation in the afternoon, and then I’ll be doing the rest of my preparation in Abu Dhabi as I’ll be moving there shortly to teach in the Jiu-Jitsu project there. There I’m going to have a lot of really tough training partners, and a really good teacher as well helping me, so I’m hoping to be sharp for the ADCC.
What are your main focus in the preparations?
My main focus is adapting my game to No-Gi, and the ADCC-rules, that are different from the IBJJF-rules, and on takedowns and conditioning as there is minus-points for pulling guard and the fights often times are pretty long with the over-times and everything.
What is your thoughts of the competitor list in your weight class, any names you are missing?
It looks tough as always, every fight is going to be really difficult, so I’m looking forward to fighting.
Who do you see yourself facing in the final?
I don’t know, I don’t care about who I’m going to fight, I’ll just focus on myself and fight one fight at a time, and see how far I can make it.”
