A Look back on January 2019
January was a great month to kick off the new year! One that was spent enjoying time with family, friends, and further developing my JiuJitsu game with the team. I'm going to hit just the highlights from the month in this one.
January Highlights
Training with the Team
January was an awesome month of training. The team and I have some big tournaments coming up in February and the following months, and everyone has been putting in tons of hard work to prepare. Competitors cranked up the intensity on training and the rest of the team surrounded them in order to push and help them prepare. This has made the energy at classes electric, and has really been a blast to watch and be a part of.
Because of all of the competitions coming up, I decided to take the month off from traveling, and instead focus on best preparing myself and my team. That focus made January an extremely rewarding month for me. A lot of time was spent with my instructor and teammates reviewing deficiencies revealed by previous competitions, learning new techniques and tightening up existing ones. I have seen a lot of growth from this month, and I'm excited to see the results that come from it in the upcoming tournaments.
CSG 360 comes to Washington!I've talked a lot on this page about my time at CSG 360 and what it meant to me. It was super cool then that Jesus Rodriguez (Recently promoted to Brown Belt) was able to stop in for a class at Wakizashi BJJ while traveling for work! The JiuJitsu community is a small one, and it was a great feeling to share a part of my two JiuJitsu families with each other.
Visiting Family in Chicago
Flights back home around Christmas were crazy expensive. So I decided to wait for prices to drop back to normal and made the trip back to the Chicago area this month at a fraction of the cost. Getting to visit with family and old friends meant a great deal to me, and was definitely the highlight of my month.
I love my family, and, not to reveal any favorites, but my niece and my nephews mean the world to me. As I've gotten older, I have only continued to appreciate them being a part of my life even more. I don't get to see them anywhere close to how much I want to, so. They look at Uncle Steve like he is Superman, and treat me like I'm the coolest, funniest guy to be around. Being around them recharges my soul, and getting to spend that weekend with them made me incredibly happy.
In addition to seeing my family, I also got to see some old friends that I've known for over a decade now, and are pretty much family at this point. Chicago wanted to make sure that I didn't go a winter season without a "little" snow, and provided a good training opportunity to put a shovel to work while I was there.
Chicago food:I might be a bit biased, but I think that Chicago has some of the best food in the country when it comes to variety and quality. I always have to get at least one jumbo dog from my favorite spot, Portillos. You know the food at this place is money, because every day at lunch the line of cars wraps around beyond the parking lot. My second must eat thing while at home is sushi! There are a ton of great places to go to when it comes to sushi, and I ended up joining my oldest brother at a new place with an all you can eat option. With competitions and weigh-ins coming up, we didn't do our normal "eat until you can't walk option," but I still enjoyed a healthy helping of rolls as my brother an I caught up on life.
Training in Chicago
I did have to spend one night on the mats while home and visited with my good friend and old training partner Brad Edmonson at Fusion Fitness MMA. The training session was a Friday night open mat, and people from multiple different schools showed up to get some rounds in. This was a really great time of rolling, breaking down technique and talking about living the JiuJitsu lifestyle. I had such a great time that I completely forgot to stop and snag a picture to share here.
Ground Warrior Sub League
I did get to hit one tournament in January, a round-robin, sub only one, which is also my favorite type to do. My teammate Jules and I made the 5-hour drive down to Portland to participate.
I've driven a lot of miles by myself in order to attend tournaments, and I can tell you that it is WAY better to travel with a friend, especially one like Jules. Talking in the car made the five-hour drive down to Portland pass in a flash, and I was having such a great time hanging out I actually wanted to stretch the drive out a little longer.
Portland and the tournament were a blast! Saturday was a long day at the competition, we got there at 9 A.M, and didn't have our last matches until around 7 P.M. In gi I had a draw, a submission and then a loss by referee decision to land in second place. In no-gi, I had three 6-minute matches against a brown belt. We went to a draw the first two rounds and he took first by referee decision at the end of the third. Jules had a stacked gi and no gi bracket and had something like ten total matches for the day. He had some pretty epic back and forth battles throughout the day and walked away with a bronze in no gi.
Once the competition was over, we headed out to explore Portland! This was my first time in Portland and the state of Oregon, and I came with a short list of places I couldn't wait to hit. My favorite things from Portland were eating at the multiple different food stands, Voodoo Donuts and getting to walk through Powell's City of Books. I have a huge love of books, and that 3-story bookstore was almost magical to walk through. I couldn't have explored the city with a better partner in crime than Jules and the whole trip was just a riot of laughter and good conversation.
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| Post Competition Food! |
What I'm looking forward to in February
My National Guard training Schedule is beginning to ramp up as we prepare for an extended vacation in an exotic location. As that training increases, I'll have to progressively cut back on the amount of JiuJitsu that I get to do. Because of that, I want to squeeze as much as I can out of the time I have remaining. I'm hoping to hit a bunch of tournaments over the next few months, and then dial it back and maybe do a bit of traveling again before I leave with the guard. February is full of opportunities to compete, and I'm excited to be hitting one just about every weekend of the month!
As always, thank you to everyone for reading and I hope to see ya'll on the mats soon!
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