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.

Hips

it's now 1:30am i have thirty minutes before I can take my meds and go to sleep then up for 10am practice. I've been doing a lot of research on hip strength, hip flexibility, and hip explosion. After all, the hips are, along with the core the most important tools in movement. Not just grappling but general movement getting out of bed without using your hips is harder than you think. Try it then hit me up on twitter or leave a comment and tell me how it went and you can't log roll because that's way too easy. The thing is in BJJ your hips are EVERYTHING. Your hips give that explosion for your takedowns, that pop needed for your hip bump sweep and triangles from guard. Interesting thing is the hips themselves have nothing to do with any of those aforementioned actions. The muscles in the posterior chain do all the real work, those are the muscles that run alongside your through the buttocks and down the back of the knee including your abductors and hamstrings. When coach says use your hips he means use the muscles in your posterior chain proactively. Strengthen this region of the body and everything becomes better it's that simple.

I find it crazy that it's taken me this long to actually learn about conditioning. I guess since track was upper body specificI really didn't need conditioning, I just needed technical refining since I use my upper body all the time or I didn't realize I was doing a conditioning workout.

Until next time.

Try the challenge if you dare: Get out of bed without use of your hips. The log roll is not allowed.

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

Goals and Fights

Well one goal for 2010 has been accomplished, that's making purple belt. I got promoted Monday night. All that's left is publish Emotions Volume 2: Better Days, which is another blog post all it's own and win Mundials. Sadly, there's no way I can make the trip(medical bills+no sponsors=No Worlds). I'm having surgery soon(September) and I want to compete before I go under the knife for what has be 1,000th time. So I signed up for the GrapplersQuest US Nationals. I placed last year at this event taking 3rd place, having said that, last year was blue belt level, and purple is considered the lowest rank of the upper-class. A bishop with a black belt being king(for my chess players). What that means is this will be a whole different beast. I really wish I could compete on the IBJJF stage especially since I'm trying make a run for ADCC and ADCC Pro in 2011.(Someday I will) However, due to circumstances beyond my control GQ will have to be my IBJJF Worlds. I may do IBJ