bjjfights

I don’t talk too much about my Muay Thai training.   She’s more like a good friend, while jiu jitsu is my true love.   But, I have to say that after a good solid year of training under Vincent Serrano I do know that I have made progress.   I never was hoping for huge improvement, I do Muay Thai for fun.   Well, because let’s face it, it is fun to punch and kick and knee and elbow people.   It’s a lot of fun.   I was really nervous about a full on Muay Thai class.   I’d only done cardio kickboxing before.   Very safe, impersonal even.   But Muay Thai, it’s face to face, in your face, in your space, people kicking you and coming very near close to punching you in the face, and actually punching you in the body.   Way outside my comfort zone.   But, I love Vincent’s teaching style, and I decided from day one that if anyone could help me improve it would be him.   He’s got the patience of ten thousand teachers!   So last night...

My coach Roy Davis said something to me once.   It was a fairly innocent comment during training, when I was second guessing whether I could ever do something.   He said, “Anything is possible”.   I don’t think he realized the impact that tiny little statement had on me.   Anything is possible.   Three little words.   I took those words to heart.   Those words became a catalyst, a spark.   Three tiny little words that I needed to hear at that exact moment in my jiu jitsu journey to keep me moving forward on my path.   Recently I dropped in on a class at one of our affiliate schools.   I’ve been working late a lot lately and I couldn’t make it to my school.   I had the pleasure of working with the instructor.   At one point he said, “Why do things harder, when you can do them smarter”.   I almost laughed out loud when he said it.   Why?   My husband has been telling me and my kids that for as long as I can remembe...

I thought I had pretty good posture.  Hey, I spent my childhood being told by teachers and adults to "sit up straight".  So, I thought I was doing a halfway decent job of it.  Just recently though, I had one of those moment on the mats, I realized that my posture was terrible.  Actually, it kind of sucks.  So, I'm working on my posture - back straight as an arrow and head up.  For me, it's the little things that eventually add up to create a tiny step forward in my jiu jitsu.  That's all I have for today folks.  Wishing you all peace, love and great jiu jitsu!  :)

Lots of cool things going on.  My affiliate school, Solis Martial Arts Academy, launched a new women's only jiu jitsu class yesterday.  It's going to be every Tuesday and Thursday.  Might pop in a couple times a month (or more, it was really fun).  There were about 17 women there last night.  I had the pleasure of working with someone who was trying jiu jitsu for the very first time.  That was extremely cool.  Our school, Dirty Bay MMA,  is having a women's only Jiu Jitsu and Muay Thai seminar on Saturday.  Our hope is to expose women to these two martial arts and show them that there's nothing scary or intimidating about training, and that it can be great fun and a great workout.  Sunday is Girls in Gis in San Antonio.  I can't wait to train and visit with all my jiu jitsu sisters.  So what's going on with all of you?  Wishing you peace, love and great jiu jitsu! :)

JIU JITSU IS FOR EVERYONE!   I’ve been seeing some wonderful stories about the diverse group of people we’ve got training the gentle art.   It makes me so freaking happy.   You can be 45 or 61 or 16 or 6.   You can be short or tall or thin as a rail or a chunky monkey.   You can suffer from a mental illness or you can be challenged mentally or physically.   You can be deaf or even blind.   You can be slow as a turtle or quick as lightning.   Those things do not decide whether or not you get to train this beautiful art.   That is the beauty of jiu jitsu.   That is what I love about jiu jitsu.   JIU JITSU IS FOR EVERYONE!

Usually I celebrate my age.   Age is just a number.  In fact, I really enjoy being able to hang with the youngsters in my jiu jitsu class, and even in my Muay Thai class.   If I can make it through the entire class, no injuries, still standing, no worse for the wear, I count that as a victory!   For all the older grapplers out there, check out this cool t-shirt.   You can get one at bjjtees.com for a limited time…I ordered mine today.   You can also follow this guy on Facebook at Old Man Jiu Jitsu .     Last night I did have a moment though.   One too many people took my back, got on top of my back and smashed the crap out of me.   It was just too much for my old lady body.   I had to tap and sit out the last few minutes of class.   The old back was just not having it last night.   But, I’m not going to let that get me down.   I will get back up and go back to class and hopefully this time I will grapple smarter an...

I started writing this almost a year ago.   I just could not bring myself to post it.   It is very personal.   Then the rape of the young woman on New Year’s Eve happened…and it rocked the jiu jitsu community.   I still waited.   Today I decided I needed to release this burden.   Here goes…this is for my sister. I share a lot about myself and my family on this blog, but something that most of you probably don’t know is that I had an older sister.   Her name was Melissa.   She was four years older than me.   When I was little I would follow her around and hang on to her every word, and if she asked me to do something (even if I knew it probably wasn’t a good idea) I did it anyway, she was my big sister after all.   We rocked along like this for a while until the little sisters came along and she didn’t really want to play with me anymore, she was four years older than me after all.   But, I have really good memories of her and me as ...