Everything is on track

Hey everyone, hope you all are doing great! Things are going awesome for me! I won my 4 man pro division at Grapplers Quest, in Jersey. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get the submission in my matches, but I felt very relaxed and in my rhythm. Here are the videos of my matches:

I had an awesome time teaching my seminar at Savarese BJJ and hanging out with Sav and his students. Thanks to Sav and all his students for the hospitality and support. I would also like to thank Ryan Hall and Jen for making the drive out to do the seminar. If you are ever in New Jersey, I would highly recommend stopping by Savarese BJJ for some great BJJ training.

As soon as I got back home, I was right back into hard training. My good friend and training partner, Jake Mapes, arrived here last week to reinforce our Pan Am training. Jake is a black belt under Saulo from San Diego and he is very tough and about my size, so training has been great. We did some great conditioning last week, with some of my new toys (rope and tire). We had an awesome competition training session on Saturday and we did a great Crossfit work-out this afternoon. Everything is on track for Pan-Ams. I'm feeling great and my guys are looking good too. Can't wait, just one more week of hard training!

Heading to the East Coast!

I'm off to New Jersey this weekend for Grapplers Quest Beast of the East. I will be competing in a pro 4 man no-gi tournament, with some tough East Coasters. I have been hard at work since the Houston tournament. I wasn't as sharp as what I need to be at the Houston Open. I competed against Gustavo Pires from Gracie Barra. I fell behind early in the match after getting swept. From there, he played a very tight and conservative game and gave me no opportunity to come back, I lost 2-0. It was a very hard loss to accept, but sometimes these sort of things can be very good. I realized a few areas where I need to tighten up and it gave me a lot of motivation to work even harder. It is much better to lose at a smaller event like that early in the year, then too not make the proper adjustments and lose at a bigger event like the Pan-Ams. I'm very hungry for competition now and I'm very thankful that I get another chance to compete so soon. Overall, my team did very well at the Houston Open. With 25 guys we won 27 medals and took third place overall. We had a guy in each of the adult absolute finals for blue, purple, brown, and black belt. We all learned a lot and now the training has really turned up for Pan-Ams.

While I'm in New Jersey, I will be teaching a seminar at my good friend, Chris Savarese's BJJ Academy. Sav has been a good friend of mine for a few years now, taking care of me while I travel and compete on the East Coast. He just opened a new school and I'm very happy to be conducting my first East Coast seminar at his academy. The class will be on Monday night, the 22nd, at 7pm. You can get more information at www.njbjj.com.

Talk to you guys soon.

Back to Competition!

Hey everyone, hope you guys are doing great! The year is really starting to kick off for myself. This weekend I will be heading to Texas to compete at the Houston International Open tournament, held by the ibjjf. I will be taking a stacked team of 25 guys with me and I'm very excited to put on a strong performance. I am so happy to have so many of my guys competing alongside with me, it gives me a lot of strength and motivation. I will give you guys the details of the tournament when I get back.

Yesterday I did an interview with Scott Wallace for scottonthenet.com. We talked about a lot of things regarding this year and my preparations for competition, be sure to check it out here. Thanks Scott!

Also, I thought I would do something fun for you guys. You all know that I compete very regularly, but most of you probably have only seen me compete as a black or brown belt. Well, since we are starting a new decade this year, I thought I would show you guys a video of one of my Pan Am matches from 10 years ago. I have competed at every Pan Ams since 1999, making this year my 12th Pan American competition in a row. In 1999 I was 15 years old and I competed in the juvenile division. I lost my first match, but I learned a lot. In 2000, I came back very hungry and I won the gold medal in the blue belt juvenile division. It was my first gold medal at a confederation tournament and it was a day I will never forget. I was so happy! With this years Pan Ams coming up right around the corner, I thought I would give you guys a glimpse of what my jiu-jitsu looked like 10 years ago at the 2000 Pan Ams, when I was 16 years old. Here is video of my semi-final match

You can see some things in the video that I still like to do, especially the Kimura. You can see that I made a ton of mistakes too, but that is normal for blue belts. The goal is to just keep improving one day at a time and give it everything you got and you never know what the future holds for you!