A Championship Belt and a Tragedy

On Saturday Sep. 29, my best friend, jiu-jitsu student, and wrestling coach Paul "The Wrecking Ball" Reihner won a championship at Gladiators of the Cage in Butler, PA via triangle choke in the second round. I have been training Paul for four years now and have been in his corner for most of his fights. To be a part of his success, to have a role in his realizing one of his dreams, is a nearly indescribable feeling. It is more rewarding than anything I have accomplished personally. To see the look on his face when that mediocre ring girl strapped his belt around his waist was exhilarating.

And I hated every minute of it.

Cornering Paul is hard for me because I worry, a lot. For the two weeks preceding the fight, I was irritable and distracted. If my mind had a moment to wander, I would think about Paul's fight, about what could go right and what could go wrong, about what we needed to do the day before and the morning of and during weigh-ins and at lunch and at the rules meeting and to warm-up and what we had to do during the walkout and where I would have to sit and what I would have to yell during the fight and what we would do after the fight was over. Fight time is fairly miserable for me.

Jeff Rockwell On Training for Longevity

This past weekend, I was fortunate enough to attend a Jeff Rockwell seminar in State College, Pennsylvania at Momentum Fitness. If you have not heard of Rockwell, do not be surprised. He is one of the best kept secrets in jiu-jitsu. He may not be headlining pay per views, but he is an incredible technician and an even better instructor. Once Austin, Texas (where Rockwell is now located) figures out that they have Rockwell in town, the Texas Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu scene is going to change dramatically. [If you know of instructors like Rockwell, talented but well-kept secrets, please email me]

Rockwell spent the majority of the seminar covering his version of the sit-up escape and the system that he built around it, and he touched briefly on his take on the crucifix, which our mutual friend Matt Kirtley is a big fan of. While I wish I was good enough to show you the techniques that Rockwell taught, because they were pretty awesome, I would not be able to do them justice, so you are going to have to contact him or drop in on one of his classes to learn them the right way: directly from Rockwell. What I would like to share is what struck me more than his techniques, and that was a piece of his jiu-jitsu philosophy.

Belts, Awards, and Two Inches of Your Ass

Royce Gracie is credited with the statement "A black belt only covers two inches of your ass; you have to cover the rest."

Jiu-jiteiros everywhere take this to mean that a belt does not make the grappler.  The grappler makes the grappler.  No matter what color is around your waist, fighting and winning are on you.  Your skill, your character, and your resolve are what define you on the mat.  The belt is just a piece of fabric.

Is it though?

There is No "I" in Team, But There Are Two in Jiu-Jitsu

We often talk about our team and the unity of your gym.  Being a positive presence in the gym, being a good training partner, and representing your gym in a positive light off the mats are all an important part of the jiu-jitsu lifestyle.  In our emphasis on teamwork, we understate a part of training that is sometimes more important than supporting the group.

Jiu-jitsu is a personal journey, and your primary focus should be on you.

This likely sounds strange in a culture that promotes humbleness and has mottoes like "leave your ego at the door," but it's important.  Selfishness is negative when you put yourself above others.  Selfishness is positive when you can use it to increase your enjoyment of a hobby without hindering anyone else's enjoyment.  You chose to train jiu-jitsu.  You pay your mat fees.  You bought your equipment.  You provide your health insurance.  And you make the decision to risk injury by participating in a combat sport.  You stepped on the mat for you.  Do not forget that.

Everyone is Still a White Belt at Something

Everyone starts as a white belt.  I certainly did, as the faux tough guy picture above clearly shows (I am on the left).

More importantly though, every technique starts at white belt.

Your overall rank may be purple, but that does not mean that all of your techniques and positions have reached the purple belt level.  In fact, you are probably still a white belt in some areas, and you may have reached brown belt in other areas.  Your favorite spider guard sweep, the one you constantly hit in the gym and in competition, may be at the brown belt level while that new set up for the omoplata that you saw in class yesterday is at the white belt level.

The Kids Aren't Alright

Publishing the Cauliflower Chronicles was the culmination of five years of work, a plan that began when I was 18.  The steps in between the start and the finish changed as I grew up, adjusting for an ever-changing outlook, but the finish line remained the same: publish a book.  Make it.  Succeed where so many fail.

And I did, and it would have been a sweet victory, but the fights that I wrote about in the Cauliflower Chronicles were long over.  The cuts and bruises had faded, and I found myself writing about a version of me that was far away, that no longer existed.  Immaturity oozed from the pages, and pettiness punctuated too many of my sentences.  I was young, and I thought about life the way a young person does.

Young isn't the right word.  Untested may be more appropriate.  I think that we often count young people out because we subconsciously believe that they haven't been tested, that they haven't seen what we've seen, that they just don't know how things really are.

Be Like Marcelo Garcia (Or Don't)

Marcelo Garcia is a phenomenal grappler.  And so is BJ Penn.  And Dave Camarillo.  And Demian Maia.  And John Danaher.  And Renzo Gracie (and pretty much every Gracie for the matter).  We look up these grapplers, and we seek to emulate their often god-like abilities, but there is one thing that all of these individuals have in common that the vast majority of us normal guys and girls don't: they have a lot of time to train.

10 Rules for the Abandoned Generation

The Abandoned Generation is the generation of twenty-somethings who are about to graduate or have recently graduated from college. We grew up being fed a blueprint for success: get good grades in high school to get into a good college so that you can get good grades in college and start a career.  We heard this blueprint repeated over and over at home and in school.  We believed in the blueprint.  We graduated with degree in hand, ready to change the world, but there were no jobs.  The economy collapsed. and the blueprint became irrelevant.  Many of us were passionate and talented and driven, but any posting for any job yielded hundreds of applicants from multiple generations and multiple disciplines.   Entry level began to mean two to four years of experience, and many employers that previously demanded bachelor's degrees began to demand master's degrees simply because they could.

6 Tips for Public Speaking (Bonus 4 Week Boot Camp)

I have given book readings, guest lectures, seminars, and even a convocation speech. I have also given interviews for magazines, podcasts, and radio shows. Public speaking does not scare me, and when I told a friend of mine who was about to give a class presentation that fact, she was astonished.

“When you get up in front of a group of people, you have to know that you deserve to be there,” I told her. “When you’re up there, you have to believe that you’re a rock star. You have interesting things to say, and they want to hear you speak. In fact, they’re lucky to hear you speak.”

She later told me that my advice helped her, but in retrospect, I didn’t give her the complete set of tools for effective public speaking. I didn’t tell her that my stutter used to be so bad that I physically could not speak. The words would stick in my throat, and my lips would move noiselessly. I had to learn to rearrange sentences to find a word that I could actually say. Learning to take sentences apart and rework on them fly likely contributed to my writing ability, but having a stutter made my life an emotional nightmare. I was afraid of leaving my house for fear of encountering one of my many bullies, and I became intensely shy.

That was then. And now, I am booking speaking engagements at high schools and colleges and giving seminars on writing and publishing.

A lot of experimentation and trial and error took place between then and now, but I want you to be able to skip that and progress faster than I did. Here are 6 quick tips to becoming a public speaking master followed by a four week boot camp to jumpstart your public speaking ability.

1. Your outside affects your inside.

Confidence is the core of a successful public speaker, and developing that confidence is challenging. Changing your thought process and your perception of yourself takes time, but starting with your external self can establish outwardly what you want to be reflected inwardly. Cut your hair. Shave. Put on a nice suit or a nice pair of jeans. If you are fashion handicapped, ask a friend, preferably of the opposite sex, to take you shopping. Part of acting like a rock star is dressing like one, so look the part of someone that is confident, put together, and respected. If you are not sure what image works best for you, look to someone you admire and mimic how they dress.

Eric Speed and His Vorpal Violin

A few weeks ago, Eric Speed and his violin went viral. Speed covered the classic song Maniac and produced a music video—collaborating with a slew of other artists from his hometown of Montreal—that set the song to a Scott Pilgrim-style real-life arcade adventure. Eric Speed is already internationally known, having set a world record and having been invited to Italy to perform a private show, but Speed’s Maniac video connected him with a new audience, an audience that admires creativity and shares his fascination with video games. I was fortunate enough to talk with Speed about his career and his aspirations, which was somewhat of a challenge because English is not his first language, but he gave me an insight into the mind of a musician bent on changing his industry. If you haven't seen the video, watch it now:

Skip the Line: How I Beat the System and Got Published

Much of my writing has been on fighting. I found a niche in writing about Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and mixed martial arts, and the sport has been good to me. It’s given me a way of life, and it has supported me emotionally as well as financially. Living the sport has taught to me to view the world through a warrior lens, and I have realized that there are many fights outside of the cage worth writing about, and these are the sorts of fights we face every day.

These are the fights for rights, for business, for a better tomorrow.

An example of a fight outside of the cage: publishing a book. Thousands of people are aspiring writers, and agents and publishers are inundated with unsolicited manuscripts. This is the status quo, and this is why publishing a book is hard. When you submit a manuscript, you become just another stack of papers in an ever growing pile of papers. The trick is to get noticed. To get your one shot to prove to someone that matters that you have something worth publishing.

In my case, I sent out over 200 proposals to agents and publishers. Of 200 submitted proposals, I received zero rejection letters. Nothing. I was shoveling manuscripts into a black hole. With no feedback, I had no idea why my work was rejected. Was my writing sloppy? Was the story a bad fit for the publishers? Did I fail to clearly define the target market? I could not answer these questions, and thus, I could not intelligently readjust my strategy.

Opportunity and Regret: A One-on-One Conversation with 1500 Freshmen

California University of Pennsylvania invited me to speak at their 2011 new student convocation. Not to spoil anything, but nobody bought me a drink.