ALL ARMIES OF ONE – ONE ARMY OF ALL
Pound For Pound’s Triumph during the Munich Open 2016
by
Laurien Zurhake
Sunday the 21
st of February was to be that day. That day in TSV Unterhaching Sportarena where many of our Pound for Pound Team comrades stepped on the mats. This international Team gathered together from many corners of the world in Munich. Led by professors Sergio ‘Canudo’ Zimmermann and Fabio Fetter a Team counting more than forty combatants and supporters was ready: it was time to tackle the Munich Open.
And tackling we did! We managed to not only win the Academies’ first place trophy in gi, but also the second place in no-gi with no more than six fighters. This shows more than just winning, for these results reveal the high quality of our teachers and their dedication to teaching, our commitment, endurance, eagerness to learn, will power of body and mind, technique and above all Team spirit.
Ultimately, the moment when you step on the ‘competition mats’, fighting seems to be a lonely business. It is just different compared to sparring and training with your professors and Teammates whom you know and see several days a week. Surely, it is in your own gym, this safe environment where you spend many hours on the mats, where you learn many techniques, where you drill them endlessly, and endeavor to apply them. However, it seems to me that competition is a whole different ball game. Whereas in the gym you
learn fighting skills, it is throughout tournaments that you
acquire fighting skills. And that what you acquire is part of valuable experiences that simply cannot be learned.
For one the pressure of facing an opponent you do not know anything about: how he or she fights, which tactics he or she uses, which techniques they prefer and so on and so forth. During a match it is just you against your opponent. It is you who moves, it is you who reacts and counter reacts to particular moves your contestant makes, it is you who makes the call to applying certain techniques, setting them up and it is you to execute them.
For another, to deal with nervousness: to not get paralyzed and end up forgetting all that you have learned. To be a bit bold and to dare to take some risks and go for it. Sometimes it will work out, sometimes it will not. That is part of it, but most importantly that you know where you are at and therefore to know where you should be going.
We would like to thank our professors for always being there for us on many levels; for the impeccable trainings and preparation, their guidance and trust. We would like to thank our fellow teammates as well, without you, we would not be able to learn so much and perform so well!
Every single one of us contributed to these baffling results, as All Armies of One and as One Army of All. Osss!!!!