How Bad Do You Want It?

There's a story I heard by a guy named Eric Thomas, to paraphrase the story he told:


There was a young man that wanted to be success, and one day the man went to see a guru.  The young man said, "Guru, I want to be as successful as you are.  I want to accomplish what you have done." 


The Guru said, "okay, if you want to be successful meet me at the beach tomorrow at 6:00 A.M."


The man said, "The beach?  I want to make money.  Not go for a swim."


The Guru said, "If you want to make money, meet me at the beach."


So the young man gets to the beach the next day at 5:45, wearing a suit, and he sees the Guru out in the water.  The Guru calls for him to go out to meet him.  The young man walks out into the water and walks until the water is waist high.  and he says, "okay I'm here, now what?" The Guru tells him to come further.  So the young man walks until he is chest high and says, "okay I'm here, now what?"  The Guru tells him to come further.  So the young man walks until he is up to his mouth in the water.


The Guru grabs the young man by the neck and holds him under the water.  The young man kicks and scratches and fights but the Guru holds him under.  Not until the young man is on the edge of unconsciousness does the Guru lift him from the water.  He asked the young man, "when you were under the water, what did you want to do?" 

The young man said, "breath."

The Guru told him, "When you want to succeed, as bad as you want to breath, then you will be successful."

Make a list of things that would take priority over breathing in your life.  It's pretty short.

For more on Eric Thomas, check out his site.  www.etthehiphoppreacher.com/

Thanks for reading,

Nick

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GOOOOAAALLL!!

I'm pretty stoked tonight because I was able to put a check next to one of my goals.  If you don't know what I'm talking about, last week I wrote a post about setting goals to improve your Jiu Jitsu game.  My first goal that I set was to survive 5 minutes in a leg war roll with a guy that is one the best leg lock guys at my gym.  I was actually able to "one up" that.

I rolled with this guy and not only was I able to survive and not get leg locked, I actually ended up coming out of it with a full mount on him.  I didn't counter or submit him, but my goal was to survive and I actually did more than that.  Now,  he tapped me 3 consecutive times right before that, but like I said, I learn how to defend submissions by getting tapped, analyzing, getting tapped, analyzing, getting tapped, and then analyzing. 

Also, tonight I rolled with another one of our resident leg snatchers, who is a brown belt.  He did catch me in a toe hold once buuuut.... tap, analyze, tap, analyze.... the second time around he went for a quick succession of heal hook variations and I was able to fend them all off and secure the superior position.  I'm pretty exited that I reached one of my goals.  Ze Mario was right, achieving goals does give you a confidence boost in your game. Again, if you don't understand the reference go the post that I linked above.

Another thing that I was able to prove to myself tonight was that when you suck at something, just keep doing it.  Keep showing up every day and eventually you quit sucking. 

Okay well thanks for reading everyone,

Nick

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Setting Goals for Jiu Jitsu

I read an article in Grapple Arts that talked about how it's important to set goals. Ze Mario Sperry, former three time world champ and former time ADCC champ, was talking about how he used to set goals, write them down, then post them all over his house so that he saw them every where he went. The article talked about making them reachable yet challenging. This way you can evaluate the quality and progress of your training. Also, achieving a goal of any kind will help you feel confident in your ability to accomplish things.

So, these are the goals that I'm setting for my self...


1. Survive 5 minutes in a leg-war roll with a particular guy in my gym that has an excellent leg lock game by the end of February. (Leg-wars is when you start in 50/50 guard and go only for leg leg locks)

2. submit or sweep 10 fellow blue belts using Rubber Guard by March 20th. (I can't start working on this until I'm fully heeled from my injury so hopefully that will be March 1st).

3. Get my purple belt by my 22nd birthday. My birthday is December 18th.

I think all of these are pretty reachable.  At the moment the first one is probably the most important thing to me.  Since leg locks are the weaker part of my game, achieving that would show significant improvement for me.  I challenge all of you guys to set goals of your own!  Don't take it from me, take it from Ze Mario. 


Here's the article I was reading.  It actually has a lot of other good stuff in it.

Thanks for reading guys,

Please, help this site grow and "like" the Facebook page or share this article on Facebook or Twitter.

Nick

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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Winning is a State of Mind. Not a Score on the Scoreboard

First off, let me say that in any of my posts, if i share an opinion or a claim, I am not in any way trying to pretend to be some Jiu Jitsu guru with this huge store of boundless information.  I am student of this game, absolutely nothing more.  This blog is simply a sharing of lessons that I learn, as I learn them.  That being said, I would like to share what I learned today.

I arrived early to class today, so I thought I would watch the kids wrestling class.  I heard the wrestling coach tell the kids something that was interesting.  He said, "Winning is a state of mind. Not a score on the scoreboard."  At first it didn't make sense to me.  I thought, winning a match in its definition is scoring more points than the other guy. 

But the phrase resonated in me, and I began to think bigger.  I don't think he was referring to one single match.  I believe he was referring to true winning; winning the title or the championship; consistent winning.  I think he was right, because sure scoring more points will win you a match, but to truly win, to be a champion, you need the state of mind.  It reminds of me of a quote I once read.  The quote was, "success comes from a state of mind knowing that you did everything that you possibly could to prepare."  This was my mantra for many of my tournaments when I thought I might face people who were more experienced than myself.

What I concluded from this lesson was that in order to succeed, you must have the right state of mind, and in order to get that state of mind, you must do everything in your power to make sure you are the best you can possibly be.  Work hard for your goals and you will reach them.

I hope this post will help some of you.  Thanks for reading.

Nick

Go for it

I had a discussion with a friend of mine from work about how so many kids grow up being told that they need to be more realistic with their dreams and about how the odds of them being a rock star or an astronaut are very slim.  It got me thinking about how so many people give up on their dreams.  Almost every single person that I know is in a job that the settled for or stumbled into.  Growing up we are told, to a certain extent, that the odds of us achieving our dreams were slim, and that hundreds of thousands of people try for that goal but very few make it.  Well I think very few make it, because very few try.

So many people give up on what they want and settle for something that will just get them by.  They may say that they tried, but they didn't put their heart and soul into achieving their goal, for hours, days, and years, ignoring everything in their way.  The just bought into the statistics and gave in.  I want to share my belief that if you want something bad enough, and if you work hard enough, there is nothing that can stop you from what you want.  I want more than anything to be a world champion, and I will get there.

Forget what you were told by society, don't believe in them, believe in your self.  Find something that you want to do and go for it, and never let go.  If you put in the work, and you never give up, than you can't fail.  One of the biggest things that Jiu Jitsu taught me is that the person who trained more, almost always wins.  And I'm not just talking about who trained more for that particular match, I mean in their entire life.  If I put more hours on the mat than the guy across from me, I'll beat him. 

I want to challenge anyone reading this to go for something big.  If you a Jiu Jitsu player, then I challenge you to put in the work and win the next World Championships.  You can do it.  You can win.  Dream big, think big, win big.

Thanks for reading guys,

Nick