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.

GQ Nationals report

I just left the GrapplersQuest US Nationals and incredibly pissed off at myself. I got a bye the 1st round(my dad keeps counting it as a win which technically, I guess it makes him feel good I personally don't see it that way) so that was awesome simply because one win puts me in the medal rounds, sadly, I failed to get that win.

Here's the match(The opponent started on his knees as per my request):

I reach for his right lapel with my left hand. He beats me inside and grips my left lapel with his right hand, I break the grip dragging him to right as a result. (at this point he has one knee up and one down) I hold on to the sleeve and go for the back grab to force the turtle position and work collar chokes(instead of taking the single leg that was screaming at me), he postures and shoots for half-guard and gets it; moments later, as I'm climbing up for my passing position I get caught in a triangle and have to tap.

This makes me 0-1 at purple belt and 0-4(with a default win) overall in competition. I fucking hate losing it sucks like you wouldn't believe.

This loss taught me a few things:
1) Because my hips are slow(i was slow turning the corner) anything that requires turning corners is out.
2) People beat me with their legs. My BJJ MUST become wrestler's BJJ meaning single leg and double leg takedowns are my best friend. I will dive on them like a possessed gorilla going after bananas from this day forward.
3) I need to work on my half-guard positioning and passing.
4) I do much better with a coach cornering than w/o one.(My dad was technically my cornerman but as he doesn't practice BJJ himself he usually doesn't help much).

In retrospect, if I'd taken the single leg off the drag we would've had a completely different match but that's what your corner is for and it's up to speed you run into issues.

I'll definitely talk with my coach about putting a competition team together as we don't officially have one.

pros:
Fighting early
getting a bye
getting the first competition at purple belt level out of the way.
cons:
being the only rep for the team (AGAIN!!!)
losing

I hope I'm taking the Felipe Costa route. It sure feels like it.

Comments

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

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

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