Last month was the UAEJJF North America Continental Pro which was held at Queens College in NY.  My teammate Marc and myself both signed up for the competition and were ready to go and put in some work.  He he stayed in NY the night before so I drove down by myself the day of the event since I ended up having to work the night before.  The drive down was not without a bit of drama as the night before there was a decent sized snowstorm up by us.  This had me a bit nervous, but thankfully it turned out to be uneventful as most of the snow was cleared from the roads by the time I was driving.

Each of us ended up with only one match in our respective divisions, which I thought was a bit unusual.  UAEJJF is a prestigious organization and puts on well run and competitive tournaments, combine that with the amount of Jiu-Jitsu in the NY metro area and we both figured to have a few matches.  But shit happens and you fight who they put in front of you, be it one match or five matches.  Starting with Marc's match...He came out and dominated his opponent, right from the bell.  He controlled the action, prevented his opponent from getting into his game and dictated the pace.  His opponent either didn't appear to want to try to do to much or he couldn't get started.  Legitimately, there wasn't a moment or position where Marc looked uncomfortable as he cruised to victory 5-0 and a first-place finish.

In my match, we battled back and forth, exchanging sweeps so the score was 2-2 before settling in fighting each other for position.  The final result saw me walk off with the victory by a referee's decision.  I was much happier with this result then with my last outing back in January.  Coming into the tournament I had told myself that I wanted to fight smart, control the pace and play my game, which lately has been get underneath and elevate for the sweep and go to mount.  Mostly I did that, which made me feel pretty good although I could have been a bit more active.  On my drive home I thought of some things to change up which will hopefully lead to my progression as a martial artist.

Here we go...NoGi: train at least once a week in NoGi.  To me it's more of an active and positional game since you have nothing to grab on to.  Sometimes I'm overly reliant on my grips, and hopefully more NoGi training will fix this.  I also tend to "react" in Gi as opposed to "act", this is my biggest flaw if you will.  I'm hoping the speed of NoGi will force me to be more aggressive and, it seems it has done exactly that...Cardio: I hate cardio.  I run because it makes my jiu-jitsu better, not because I like it.  So to make cardio more fun, I am going to run at the gym and track less and join a Gaelic football team instead.  They train outside once a week, which consists of ball drills and running, lots of running.  So far it's been fun, even though I suck.  Like I remember from lacrosse back in high school, it's more fun to run if someone is chasing you.

It's important to remember, I want this to be a lifelong journey, and any on lifelong journey there are bumps in the road, there is complacency, and there are pitfalls.  Most importantly, there are the successes, successes which are built on the navigation of those aforementioned traps.