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Showing posts from 2012

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.

Youtube

As you know(if you've followed this blog) I have a YouTube channel. Every discussion video will be posted here just as the previous two have been. However, competition videos will not. Currently, there are no competition videos up, but to be the first to view them when they do go up you need to subscribe to my YouTube. You can do that here:

Hero Complex and Disabilities

Gay in BJJ

Truthfully, this would probably go over better as a YouTube video, but I figured that I haven't actually written on this blog in a while, so this is a good excuse to do just that. As the title states, I'm going to talk about being gay in the sport of BJJ. The thing that stopped me from posting this in the past was I didn't want to beat a dead horse. After all, this topic has been done talked about many times over in the BJJ community, but never from perspective(to my knowledge) of someone who was openly gay and active in the BJJ community. I'm that guy. So I will list questions I get both inside and outside the BJJ community as the answers are for the most part exactly the same. 1) What do I do if I suspect my training partner is gay? Answer: Ask him/her. It really is that easy. However, the manner in which this question is asked is really important. You know your training partner, so handle the situation accordingly(privately is always best regardless of the method o

Cerebral Palsy in BJJ

Underrated Classic 2: Roleta x Wallid

Two of my favorite fighters of all-time are featured in this fight from the very first BJJ World Championship back in 1996. Check out Roleta using inverted guard and turtle guard almost in an interchangeable manner through the fight.

US Grappling Report

I had my first black belt match at the US Grappling tournament on Saturday. There was only one other competitor signed up for the Gi. My cardio just hasn't been good enough for multiple divisions since I came back from my surgery. :-( It was pretty short. I start on all as always. I made lapel grip and before I could push to get in on his legs, he was able to get a deep cross collar grip as I went to up break it he was able to drive me down and score 2 points for the take down and eventually secure a solid side control after about a minute of using grips on my sleeves to prevent me from getting to turtle. Since he kept his collar grip that he used to get the take down I was defending X-chokes from various positions the entire time. He was eventually able to secure mount and finish the X-choke about 4 minutes in. His grips and control were perfect the entire time there was really nothing I could do. I must Big ups to Russ Helm for actually fighting me and not pulling the score fro

Underrated Classic

This is one of the greatest Jiu-Jitsu matches of all-time. Demian Maia vs Jacare put on a clinic. This match took place at the now defunct World Cup Jiu-Jitsu tournament back in 2005 as a result few within the BJJ community have seen it, most of those who have are BJJ super nerds like me. Every time I watch this match I learn something. Enjoy and see what you can learn.

New availability & titles

Emotions Volume 1: The Beginning of Turmoil & Emotions Volume 2: Better Days are now both available for purchase on all Amazon.com's European sites for any international readers. Emotions Volume 3 has yet to be subtitled but is currently in the works.

One Year

Yesterday 2/21/12 marked a marked a year since I've been training post-surgery. I wanted to post just to mark this moment down just so I never forget it. I made a vow to myself not to look for taps and just work position for a year. I wanted to make sure my technique was perfect. Now that has been done so I can start harder training begin my road to my World Championship.

Books, Books, and more Books

I'm taking a break from writing for a month with 3 books in progress I'm feeling burnt out and on top of that it's tournament time. There's no way I can focus on my black belt debut and write good compelling books. I'll be back in the literary world on April 25th. I will have a new book out by the end of the year.

Aggression

One thing I've always been is a coach's athlete. Even back in my track and field days, whatever my coach said I did. When I first came to Maguilla's back in November 2008 as a white belt I rolled super aggressively. This is the way I was trained by my first coach Lloyd Irvin who I was with from August 2005 until February 2006. Who always teaches get off first or you will lose because speed kills. So after my year and 8 month long hiatus I immediately fell back into the speed kills mindset. In April 2009, Maguilla and I had a conversation he said to me something I'll never forget. He said "Every round with you is like the 1st round of ADCC, slow down it's a journey not a sprint." This was way of making sure I didn't hurt myself or someone else. A month after this I got my blue belt. During this time, I would give taps to anyone who obtained and held a dominate position. A year after I got my blue belt I received my purple belt(May 2010) I was ready to t

Train like an animal

"Find your animality." One of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite movies of all time, Mortal Kombat, Night Wolf said that to Liu Kang when he was helping prepare to fight Shao Kahn. Now what does this have to do with us as bjj guys and gals? Well, everything after all we are animals. When I say train like an animal I don't mean do an hour long conditioning circuit and then go to technique class and spar on full blast for 2 hours after class is over. What I mean is to literally train like an animal. When you spar pick a wild animal and spar like that animal would if it knew BJJ. Some greats have been compared to animals. Jacare literally means Alligator(although it speaks of a particular type of alligator) in Portuguese. Eduardo Telles says on his DVD that he's kind of lazy guy so that's part of the reason he fights from turtle guard. Next time you go roll pick an animal and mimic the way it moves you can be slow and tight like a Boa or fast like a cheetah.