Wednesday, March 15, 2017

2017 State of the Journey

It's been six months since I last updated here because shit has been BUSY. Extremely busy. So here's a run down of the last few months.

NAGA - December 2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEmPl6DhyV4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzwYbnF9Xzg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9QIvtzpEZs

This tournament marked the final integration step for my leglock game with the rest of my game. I had some trouble implementing in the gi against the 200lb guys, but I overall felt very good about my performance here. Which led directly to the next update:



Almost ten years to the day since I first stepped into The Hardcore Gym I was awarded my Brown Belt by my current coach Chris Ruiz and Professor Roberto Traven.

Since then I've embarked on a new project, Knee Shield halfguard. I've been dabbling with knee shield for about a year, but over the last few months I've really pushed the position and started building a full game around it as a means to prevent pressure passing when my DLR/Spider combo gets compromised.

To that end I'm actually working on filming my first ever actual instructional videos based around the position. At some point this year I'll likely put them up here to get feedback once they've gone through a couple of iterations of revision.

And finally, I'm not competing at all this year. Instead I'm embarking on a south-east USA gym tour. I'll be visiting NOLA in a couple of weeks, then Dan O'brien's gym in Alabama, then hitting up gyms in Tenn, SC,NC, and Fl, before finishing the year out visiting gyms around Ga that I haven't been able to visit in a while.

Hopefully I'll be updating more here with pictures and whatnot from my gym visits.

And that's where I am right now.