Elvira Karppinen is a full time BJJ athlete from Tampere, Finland. She began training aged 25 at the 10th Planet Tampere gym and said this was down to two reasons mentioning, “I was never that interested in martial arts. My husband (and coach) Lauri Karppinen trained first. I followed his Jiu Jitsu journey for two years before I started to train myself. I remember when I was watching ADCC Finnish nationals and back then I saw female grapplers competing for the first time. I started to think that how long would it take to win ADCC Finnish nationals. Lauri promised to me that after 1 year of training I would be ADCC Finnish Champion. Then I went to a beginner’s class and I fell in love with this sport on the first day. That was one reason I started to train.”
She continues “Another reason was that I was focused on dancing for so many years and I started to get bored with the atmosphere in dancing circles. The dance world can be pretty cruel. It’s a lot of about what you look like and the world is really superficial. That was what I finally got tired of dancing.”
Speaking of dancing, she went on to list the differences in culture between the dancing scene and BJJ, mentioning “Culture differs between BJJ and dancing and I feel that people are more supportive in BJJ. You even get to make friends with your opponents in competitions in BJJ. Also BJJ is a big community and I like that I belong to a community. I never felt that in dancing. But in BJJ I have made my own Jiu Jitsu family all around the world.
Somehow I felt that in dancing everyone is competing against each other in the wrong way. Even your ‘team mates’ don’t give you support. Even if you do good work and train hard, you might often not get good feedback. But that’s only my opinion.
Also, I want to be surrounded by real people. I felt that in dancing there are more fake people. Of course not everyone, in dancing you find amazing people also, but maybe my nature just fits better with BJJ than dancing. And this superficiality just didn’t fit for me.”
Before her BJJ career she was a bright prospect on the Finnish dancing circuit and goes on to further talk about her transition from dancing into BJJ saying “Actually the funny thing is at the time when I made my decision to switch dancing to BJJ, my dance career was on the rise and I was “a rising star in dancing”. Also, I had been doing it my whole life and my father and sister were also professional dancers. At the same time, I was only a blue belt in BJJ. Somehow my heart told me to follow my BJJ dreams. Something just fascinated me with Jiu Jitsu so much that I took a big risk to start focusing more on BJJ and quit dancing. I have never regretted that I changed to focus on BJJ. That was supposed to happen.” From hearing this, it certainly does seem like this was meant to be.
Karppinen has a close bond with her husband, Lauri who is also her main teacher as well as her training partner. She lists him and Eddie Bravo as having the biggest influence on her style. Interestingly, Lauri’s ADCC promise was true, as in 2019 she achieved bronze at ADCC, proving her worth as one of the best female competitors in the world. Within 5 years of starting, Karppinen received her black belt.
We also asked her about her introduction into 10th Planet and how it is typically a bit different compared to traditional BJJ gyms, she replied with this “Actually I didn’t choose 10th Planet. My coach did. I just followed him. But fortunately, I was already very flexible because of my dancing career so 10th Planet style was a good fit for me from the beginning. Our style is mixed with 10th Planet and Viking style. We do a lot of 10th planet styles like Rubber guard, leglocks, truck, lockdown, etc, but also we use a lot of pressure especially from top and passing.“
She adds “I believe anyone can learn the 10th Planet style. For example in Rubber guard, there are different ways to do that. You don’t have to be super flexible if you play a different version of it. And yes of course some of 10th Planet moves you need to have flexibility but some not all! Lockdown is very good especially for bigger and slower people.
I would say you can choose and build your own gameplan from 10th Planet techniques.”
She has high hopes for the future of 10th Planet and also the future of Finnish grappling in general and claims “A couple of years ago there were not so many competitors in ADCC from 10th Planet, but last time in 2019 there were already many more competitors from 10th Planet. I believe that over time 10th Planet will grow and get more and more successful competitors. I believe BJJ is growing in Finland. Especially because MMA is growing and its a more popular sport. People want to start training MMA. But often people noticed that MMA is not the easiest hobby to train and they will switch training to BJJ.”
Like many 10th Planet practitioners, she enjoys playing Rubber guard as well as Butterfly but mostly prefers sweeps from the Single Leg X position. Unsurprisingly, her favourite submission is the Dead Orchard from Rubber guard. Whilst on top, she mostly uses knee slice passing methods as well as variations of the knee slice. Typically competing at under 60KG, she also lists Bianca Basilio and Ffion Davies as her toughest opponents when competing.
However, she is not finished competing yet and still has other ambitions for the future, as she adds “I thought that maybe I would like to win the Finnish championship in MMA. Also winning the ADCC gold medal is always on my mind.”
Finally, Karppinen says anyone is welcome to visit her gym at https://mmateam300.fi/ and also has a code ‘ELLU20’ if you’re interested in strength and conditioning which can be used here: https://ph-institute.com/p/grappling/?affcode=525602_usflkyhh
