Sick Days

Well, I'm sick.  I guess it was just meant for me to be off of the mats for a little while.  I had been grappling with my injured arm a little bit, this looks like God's way of telling  me, "hey slow your sh** down, before I bust your elbow up again."  Sucks not being able to train.  I stopped by the gym today and watched every one else roll.  I can't help but think about how all the guys that I will compete against next month are training right now and getting better while I stay stagnant.

This is why I don't ever take days off for any other reason but illness or injury.  I get sick relatively often, for whatever reason.  In the long run though, everyone will get sick or get injured, but not everyone can say they trained on every holiday, every birth day, and every time there was a big party that they had to miss out on.  That's how I get ahead.  If you train every day that you can train, the days that you can't train will be canceled out. 

I hope this doesn't set me back on reaching my goals that I set a couple posts back.  I think they are still reachable though. I'll just pick up the pace when I get back in a few days. 

Well!  Time to say goodbye to this little shot of NyQuil and pass the out!  I want to include this video that relates to the point I made above.  I've watched it a bunch of times; I used to play this in the beginning of my work outs when I felt super tired.  Take some truth strait from the mouth of Al Pacino!

Thanks for readin' guys,

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Nick

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Why Do I Fight

When you truly dedicate your life to something, and you put that something above all of the other things that happen in your life, people think your crazy.  You get asked a lot, "Why do you do it so much?" or "Do you really enjoy doing it that often?"  To me, those people are missing out.  They're missing out on having something that they're so passionate about that the question "what do I want to do with my life?" doesn't come into their reasoning.  Maybe I am an extremist, but name any great man or women in history that wasn't?  So when someone asks me why I do it, I tell them some of the few things that I know for sure.  I know that I want my life to have an impact on others.  I know that I don't want to settle for an average career.  I know I want to die knowing that I accomplished something, and I know that I want to live a life that is worth living.

Its always been important to me to reach others with my life.  I think, ultimately, the the thought of eternity scares me.  I want to know that when I die I will have done something that lasts longer than I do.  If I can share my passion with someone maybe I can put some passion in their life. When you have passion in your life you have happiness.  I feel that if I can share passion and happiness with people then I'll be leaving the world a slightly better place.  I hope that maybe I can do well enough that I will reach a platform high enough to truly reach a lot of people.  Most importantly, growing up I've always been in the average group when it came to athletics, I've never been terrible at them, but I have never been exceptionally good at them.  If I reach the goals that I have set by myself, then it will be from nothing but hard work and God's blessing.  I hope that in doing this I can inspire so many more people to really work hard for their goals.  Imagine what kind of world we would live in if every one strove to do something great?

Photo by: Elisa Alves

I have never been someone who could handle any mundane activities.  I feel like so many people underestimate their abilities and settle for a middle of the road job.  Now, let me make this clear, there's nothing wrong with working hard at a blue collar job to take care of your family.  There is, I think, something wrong with working a job that you never wanted to do, because you don't think you have what it takes to do what you really want to do.  I have never been able to accept being average, or to accept the statistics that people recited to me about how many people actually grow up to live their childhood dreams.  I have a need to do something that stands out.  I have a need to do something special.

When I am ready to die.  I want to sit there and think back on my life, and think, "damn, that was cool.  I really did it."  I want to know that I left my mark on the world with the things I did and the people I inspired.  Will fighting really do this for me?  I think so.  In the end, it isn't really about the fighting, its about overcoming extremely tough obstacles and getting past everything in my way to get where I want to be, and showing other people that they can do what they want to do.  All you have to do is try; really try.


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Thanks for reading,  :)

Nick

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drils drills drills, solo drills for jiu jitsu

Its always a personal goal of mine to stay in the gym longer than everyone else.  Not that I am competing with any one else in my gym, but i figure if i train more than any one in my gym, I probably train more than a alot of the other guys out there.  The problem with this is, I'm left in the gym alone with no one to practice with.  This is where solo drills come into play.  Solo drills have helped me tremendously, and when you cant train with a partner because of a cold or an infection, they can keep the rust off and help your game out.  Muscle memory is the name of the game here, and even though they don't seem to do much while your doing them, they will apply themselves to a lot of moves that you don't expect them to.  Here is a video that I found on youtube, It has helped me, hopefully it will help you guys.

Commitment

I discovered Jiu Jitsu a little later than some.  I had a brown belt in Karate and found my self in a MMA fight in Kentucky with absolutely no idea what MMA really was.  The extent of my ground game was ground n' pounding a punching bag in my garage for 6 weeks before this fight.  While the fight was close, I lost in a split decision, and it gave me the same wake up call that Royce Gracie gave the world when he won UFC 1 in 1993.  I knew then this was something that I HAD to learn.

To make a long drawn out love story into something short and sweet.  I spent more and more of my time in the gym.  Eventually realizing that this was the life path for me.  I have reached a crossroads in my life and have come to the realization that at age 21 it is time to either take a risky plunge into full time training and accomplish something great, get lost in the seemingly infinite crowd of people trying to find their way through the American education system.

I chose the former.  I had always felt my future laid outside the world of endless 8 hour days, and working simply to make a living.  I wanted something more, and in Jiu Jitsu I had found it; a way to spend my life doing what I love.  In this blog, hope to inspire others to do the same.  To go after what they want and leave behind the limitations of what they think is possible.  To forget the underestimations of themselves and just take a leap of faith.  This is the story of my leap of faith.  This is the live update of what happens to me as I decide not to believe that growing up means making compromises.  This is my journey into the alternate universe that is Jiu Jitsu.

I have quit school, working part time between my training sessions to pay for training and things related to it, and moved in to a small room in the back of the gym.  It's all or nothing.  Let's see how this works out for me.