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Showing posts from August, 2010

About Me

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my many faces
My name is Romeo Barnes. I'm an author and a BJJ black belt with cerebral palsy. This blog is about my life balancing existence in two worlds. My latest book, My World is now available Amazon.com. Glad you're here, enjoy the journey.

Time off

I am now eight days away from surgery. I'm going in to get my baclofen pump replaced as the battery runs out every seven years. This is a relatively minor surgery as it is a replacement and as a result the recover should be smooth. I had the pump installed over a decade ago now to help treat my spasticity caused by my cerebral palsy since then, it has worked wonders for my spasticity and mobility I've had one replacement before back in '03 was pretty chill, a month of absolutely nothing. The difference between then and now, BJJ wasn't part of my life. Initally, when I was told I'd be out of training for a month I was pretty sure one of two things happened, my doctor had went completely insane or my hearing was officially screwed up and then I realized he was serious. I almost cried as this essentially puts me out of competition for the rest of the year. However, in retrospect, this might actually be a good thing. I'll only miss 3 IBJJF events: American Nationals

my discovery

In the entry "Balance" I stated that I hate passing guard, especially guards that extend me or attack my balance outright. Butterfly guard is one of those guards that attacks your balance outright. When you face a guy with a good butterfly guard it's pretty horrible becuause you're flying across the room at his will. It's like being on a rollercoaster full of loops that keeps crashing. The crash being you ending up on the bottom usually in mount; so naturally, it gave me issues. Well, thursday I didn't train so I mentally review some DVDs I had seen recently, something I always do when I'm not training(I usually watch said DVD but I didn't really feel like looking so yea) and the match between Marcelo Garcia and Pablo Popavitch crossed mind as we trained butterfly sweeps in Wensday's class and Marcelo played butterfly most of the match then, I remembered something one of the Shawn's said(don't remember if it was Williams or Flannery) they w
Emotions Volume 2: Better Days available NOW!!!! purchase here: https://www.createspace.com/3465438. The Amazon.com link will be posted when it goes live

Balance

If you've been following this blog(If you haven't been you should be, go ahead click the follow button over to the right) you'd know that I have cerebral palsy. I've never really explained what that is so here we go. Cerebral Palsy: A condition caused by a blood leak and/or water on the brain, in the cerebellum(hence the name cerebral) at birth which adversely affects the nervous system, muscular systems, and motor skills (Note: Not a dictionary definition) Since the cerebellum is injured in this process the nervous system and motor skills are adversely affected. Cerebral palsy can affect multiple regions of the body; for me, it affects my lower body mobility and makes my right side weaker than my left. However, that's not what this post is about I also have a condition called scoliosis, which is a curvature of the spine. This is the condition that affects my BJJ the most why you ask? Balance. My body tilts to the right and has pulled everything out of line and my p

BJJ in MMA 4: Silva vs. Sonnen

Well UFC 117: Silva vs Sonnen, as far as the main event goes there isn't much to talk to about. That's because shonnen carried out perfectly. He got close let anderson(silva) commit to strikes and took him down with a double leg takedown and controlled from the top, he did this twenty minutes. The problem with that is championship fights are twenty-five minutes(5, 5-minute rounds). Last round, Anderson locks a triangle from guard and gets the armbar on the inside arm to finish the fight. That's right the same move that finished Fedor. Seriously, if you haven't seen this fight order the replay, check your buddy's DVR, do something this one is a MUST SEE. Glad Silva won shows the power of BJJ. In each of the five televised a Brazilian fighter fought an American fighter giving a sub-plot of USA vs. Brazil, the USA won 3-2.