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.

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.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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...

American Nationals

Normally, Nationals(excluding Brazilian Nationals, because it's part of the grand slam) events never matter. However, the IBJJF has taken the right steps towards making the Regional and National tournaments matter with the new point system introduced after this year's World Championship event. I'm not going to talk about results here, just know that you now have another reason to watch American Nationals and tournaments like it. Not only are these the tournaments where the next generation truly shines, but it's also where they earn their spot in the biggest tournament of the year.

drilling

Muscle Memory... its a term every athlete knows and has a love-hate relationship with. Muscle memory simply means your body can perform the said action with you having to think about it. Its like tieing your shoe you just do it. Drilling allows techniques to become automatic and require next to no effort, that's why we love it. But it requires drilling that's why we hate. Let's face it, no basketball player wants to do 500 suicides in defensive posture. However, if you do it it'll make sure your back pedal and side step are on point. The same applies to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu sparring is the fun part so we all want to do it. However, only sparring=bad technique i know my technique was off the first three months I was training with Maguilla; I knew it was because of my two years and eight months not training. But not drilling didnt help. I must say I'm learning to love it. In my opinion its the best way to warm up because you break a sweat and refine technique at the sa...