Skip to main content

About Me

My photo
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.

Reflection

Earlier this week it was announced that I will be promoted to Blue Belt as of Saturday.The announcement made me reflect upon the realization of my current stage in life. When I first went to Maguilla BJJ my previous training had my head big I went from training with one of the top teams in the Mid-Alantic region to a much lesser-known team as far as names and publicity go. So didn't attempt to submit other white belts in sparring the way I should have. Instead, I chose to teach them what I know. This led to really bad sparring session in which I learned nothing. I have only had 1 full year of mat time. Due to having to find a new school I took two years and eight months off and pretty much lived on Youtube watching big tournaments and scences from instructionals to decide which ones I actually wanted to purchase. The point is you can prepare mentally as much as you want but nothing beats doing it, and more importantly, doing it whole-heartedly. That said, I have a new mindset that will last the rest of my Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu competition career: "TAP EVERYONE". I have to prove that I deserve what I have been awarded.

On the other side of the fence, my book's been available since April 24th. Sales seem to be moving really slow if at all. I would've expected at least one review(good or bad) from my inner circle by now but it hasn't happened as they don't seem to be purchasing the book. I just received my press release today I hope to get it into The Washington Post along with a review of my book. With regional exposure things can only go up.

Thats all for now folks. GrapplersQuest is June 27th-28th I really need to focus. Morristown,NJ Come out support me, the event, and the sport.

http://www.grapplers.com/ for more info

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

top vs. bottom

This is post that has been in my head since Georgette blogged her time at the Pan back in April over at her blog georgette's world . I don't quite remember the name of the post(just search her April posts) but in it she stated that sweep+submissions is better than takedown+pass therefore she implied unintentionally or not that playing the bottom is better than playing the top. Her reasoning being there are more options on the bottom which is completely true but thats only because you can transition to a different guard should the one you're using currently not be working not because the top player doesn't have submissions. Therefore, I must disagree with her statement. Firstly, if you pull guard and I knee-cut/step over into your half and flatten I get an advantage meaning all I have to do is stay there until time is up and I win. All leglocks can come from the top and in fact do especially the ankle lock. The toe hold and Heel Hook are the most common leg attacks from
4 comments
Read more

Why Physical Therapy sucks

Years ago, maybe 2010 I don't actually remember, I posted a short post here called "Why." That post was about why I prefer to fight able-bodied opponents as opposed to fighting opponents with disabilities. To sum the post up, I do it to prove a point. In that post I mentioned that Physical Therapy(which will be referenced as PT for this post) sucks. This post will explain why. Let me preface by saying PT isn't bad and is in fact a necessary medical service as it's great for pre-surgery, post-surgery, and injury situations. That doesn't change the fact that PT is grossly misused. That's because PTs attempt to make your body work "normally"; what they should do is enhance the way your body already functions. Let's assume you're a cerebral palsy patient who has never walked on your own power and you use a wheelchair for mobility. Instead of putting you in a walker or on crutches and "going walking" around the room. They should p
2 comments
Read more

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
3 comments
Read more