About a month and a half ago I got an injury during training and I knew right away it felt serious. My range of motion was severely impacted and swelling was ridiculous. So right away I took off of training and started feeling down on myself. I mean it was the beginning of the summer and I was injured. All I want to do in the summer is train BJJ, and get a tan.
One of those was completely cut out of my life for the time being because I wasn’t able to grapple. So I went to my acupuncturist and good friend Paul and He recommended a chinese herb to use on the injury to help expedite the process the better.
Usually when someone get an injury the magnitude of mine, it requires surgery, but 1 month after it happened my shoulder is about 85% back to normal and the range of motion is fully there. How did I do it? It was actually very simple after you figure out what you have to do. Its a program just like any workout program but it had some key factors that could not be ignored, they had nothing to do with exercise.
All I am saying here is that its totally possible to heal up a almost fully torn ligament without surgery, using exercises and homeopathic medicines. Stay tuned, I will release a How-To-Guide for rehabbing these pesky and time consuming injuries.
My health insurance isn’t active until September 1st, so I cant get this MRI on my shoulder till then. Hopefully in a week or so I can start training, or at least teaching.
Right now I am just soaking in the rest of the summer, getting in tons of bodyweight work and all types of random activities. I am also reconnecting with the important people in my life and offering them assistance in anything that they need.
I am having this house warming party very soon probably next Friday-Sunday, and I am probably going to video tape it for this blog and for memories. Past few months of my life have been very hard but now the sun is totally shining down at my face and nothing/no one is going to stop me from reaching my goals.
I am back on track for going to sleep before 1 am, which I think caused me to be feeling physically shitty as of late. Sleep on time is so important to me, when I don’t follow my schedule my immune system starts acting up on me. So some of my short term goals include.
Going to sleep before 1 am at least 5 days a week.
Start reading med surge material during the month of August.
Start teaching before the month of August is up, and do this free seminar.
Get back into training BJJ
Get into a loving relationship
Long term goals are still the same but more in my face, now as I am getting closer to most of them.
Get my BSN in nursing
Get my Black Belt in BJJ
Open up my own school
Start working as a nurse and start schooling on my NP license
Yesterday I went to my favorite sushi place and got food poisoning. Everything was going perfect yesterday until this happened. Today is my official recovery day.
I got an IV earlier to clean the gunk out of my body and I’m just resting on my new king size Tempurpedic bed .
Drinking Ginger tea, water, and eating fruits is making me feel a lil better but my head has a feeling of being crushed.. I sat down today and started preparing what I’m going to teach at the seminar I am doing in the near future. This seminar should be a great start for this teaching position I will start in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. I will be teaching No Gi Grappling(Brazilian jiu jitsu), 2 times a week. I haven’t chosen the times or days yet, but I’m strongly considering Tuesdays and Thursdays in the evenings.
Cant wait to get this seminar going and then to get this started!
This past weekend was a bit rough for me, a lot of realizations and changes have been made to my life. Today, I woke up and got on the grind… A few great things worked out for me today.
My king size tempurpedic mattress was delivered after a 2 week long wait.
My health insurance came in, so now I can the MRI that I need for my shoulder. Which has been injured for over a month.
I also found a place to teach grappling in Brooklyn, and I plan on doing a Free 2-3 hour seminar to commemorate me teaching at this gym. Everyone is welcome!
Finally I am moving into my apartment tomorrow, after waiting for this for about a year. I realize the moment is almost here!
If you are interested in attending this seminar, then get in touch with and lets make this happen!
Living life, you never know who comes into it and leaves. Sometimes they come for a season, sometimes a reason and sometimes a lifetime. But sometimes you need to erase certain people from your life because they are bad for you and your life.
I had an occurrence this weekend that helped enlighten me on how to act towards certain people. It was a short period of enlightenment lasted only one evening but in that evening I received a wealth of knowledge that will benefit me for a lifetime.
Some people are totally oblivious about how others feel, Im not sure if its there fault because they were raised by wolves or the fact that they just simply don’t care. Either way sometimes they either need you to spell it out for them or they need a nice hard slap.
When you feel that something will go wrong, it usually does. Maybe its your intuition, maybe its the fact that you formed that reality by thinking it, but either way, try to avoid it and jump over that obstacle instead of hitting it with your face head on.
Almost no one is going to assist you with anything if you don’t ask, and the people that do assist you from their heart are the true people in your lives. I personally don’t like to ask for anyones help/assistance/etc. But when I see someone needs my assistance and I care for the person I am always there. They don’t need to ask.
Don’t try to force it if you feel that a person doesn’t belong in your life. If you think that they aren’t good for you, they probably aren’t. No matter how many “kind words” they say.
Always strive for happiness no matter what. If something makes you unhappy but makes a loved one happy, and you are willing to sacrifice then do it! But if it makes you unhappy and you don’t care about how the others feel then don’t do it! You will regret it. (I went to a party this weekend because i was there to celebrate my best friends birth, even though I knew I shouldn’t have been there.)
Thats all I can think of for now from my disturbing night. Im feeling a lot better after actually getting this down in writing. Very happy to close that chapter in my life, and begin a new book.
I havent grappled consistently in over 2 months with my school responsibilities and the injury that I got during my comeback. I realized during this time is that without grappling I am still awesome and that It does not define me as a person. Its the relationships that I uphold with the people in my life that define me. None of the titles, belts, medals matter if the people that you love most in your life don’t appreciate and love you for being you.
This past month I have started talking to some friends I haven’t talked to in a while, ended a very long relationship that I had, and not trained all month(excluding 4th of July weekend). And what I realized is that even during the rough patches in your life, there is still plenty of light that shines down on you in all shapes and forms. Life does go on even without grappling, school, a girlfriend, etc. Every mistake, and every rough patch is just a learning experience in and of itself. I have had time to train Julius Caesar and spend tons of time with my little guy and it felt very fulfilling.
I even took up a new hobby this month, Rock climbing! Its totally awesome! Hit me up if you guys ever want to try it out!
I started working with clients for private personal training sessions a few weeks back and boy is it going well. I am starting to see results in the clients and that makes me happy. Really happy. I really want to see them achieve their goals of losing weight, gaining muscle, gaining confidence, looking better in the bedroom, etc. When they achieve those goals I feel like I achieved those goals, and boy does it feel great!
A few things I noticed that would improve personal training sessions:
Everyone being on time.
Following instructions on the homework that you get.
Taking before pictures
Setting a goal(s)
Keeping a progress record
If you or someone you know wants to get in shape, contact me, and I’ll have them in the best shape of their lives. First session is free just to see if I’m the right trainer for you.
Summer school ended with a bang. Even though I missed the whole first week, I managed to rally and pull up a B+ for the final grade… Woo Hoo Go me! As soon as school was over I started training. I was going hard for 2 days and on the 3rd day in a row, I was back to my awesome cardio and great timing. Everything was going awesome until I heard a tear and I winced in pain. I partially tore my bicep, thank god it wasn’t my rotator cuff.
It has been about 3 weeks now since that happened and this weekend I was up in Bridgehampton, getting some really good rolls in with a few black belts, and purple belts. It was a great weekend! It felt so good to roll again, especially no gi, because of the heat. Hopefully I can get back to training full time in the next week or so, I would love to compete 2-3 more times this year. =]
When people walk into their first BJJ class, they realize its not as easy as it looks. There are 2 categories of guys in gyms. There are guys that get good and there are guys that don’t get good. The guys that get good are the guys that are able to check their egos at the door. Those guys get fully immersed in the process of learning BJJ. They pay attention to the moves being shown, and they ask questions if they don’t understand something.
If you cant check your ego at the door you will be on this path at learning the basics of BJJ for a LONG time. Being a white belt in a new gym is a brutal yet amazing experience. You are a new face and nobody expects anything from you. So everything that happens is fun!
As a white belt I used to get beat up a lot by the guys in the gym. Probably not as much as other white belts due, but thats simply because I was one of the first people to start training in Clockwork. Either way you take every tap exactly for what it is. Its only a tap. You tapping on the mat and starting over again. It doesn’t make you less of a person. This is the Process that I noticed the White belt progresses. This isn’t universal but I believe it is pretty accurate.
As a white belt you should be getting beat up for about 2 months by all the other guys there.
After those 2 months you will start catching other white belts and lasting longer with blues.
At about 5-6 months of consistent training you will breaking in all the new white belts and giving fits to some of the blue belts.
Somewhere in between 6 months to a year, you will be tapping blues and having an easy time with most whites.
These 4 stages aren’t set times but they are estimates from what I have encountered in my training. Some people will learn faster and some will learn slower. Stay consistent in your training and come to class everyday ready to learn. You will be a black belt in no time.
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I realized that I have been just breezing through and not determining my end game.