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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.

new outlook

I was training last night and made an astonishing discovery, I'm using not my body correctly and as a result I'm missing simple things and my game is suffering, especially my game on the bottom. The thing is in BJJ your hips are everything if they aren't chances are you are losing. When you have been dependant on your arms all your life as I have, you sometimes forget your hips are required to move in BJJ. My hips have gotten so tight over the years it's best to them as a unit and not individually. No instructor will tell you to sweep your opponent then hold him as you transition and settle in to top position, it goes against the point of sweeping as we know it the whole point of sweeping is to disrupt the opponent's balance and use the mometum from him falling to come up. However, that has never worked for me, but I guess that's the nature of sweeping from turtle when you don't have mobile hips, since I don't have the best hips I often end up on my back, slowly rotating and working my way up. So everytime I sweep I essentially lose position. I'm learning turtle sweeps are a lot like sacrfice throws in Judo and that it is ok to give up position as long as you control scramble that will follow. It's not like I don't know my body, I just never knew how to fully apply its strengths in terms of BJJ. I can now say I'm finally learning how to apply my body to BJJ.

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