Autumn Shmautumn

Today is the last official day of summer and in a few hours it will be fall. The season change can be noted by the temperature decreases at night, the shorter days and the dreadful traffic that congregates at any 5 mile radius of a school at 8 in the morning and 3pm in the afternoon. What does this have to do with jiu jitsu? Well usually this means that most of us students and those that use all their vacation days in the summer now have less time to train. There are days in the summer that I felt like training from 5 to well past sunset which would give me plenty of time to get some good work in but with the sun now going down much sooner than 8, it affects my drive to train. Instead of thinking about how many times I can roll and drill a technique, I'm thinking of the homework that's due tomorrow or the less and less amount of sleep I'm going to get before I wake up at the crack of dawn for work the next morning. This is no excuse to not train less or not as hard but it really is a change of pace. Goodbye to long summer days filled with jiu jitsu, beach then more jiu jitsu. Holler to 4 hour long classes, hours of studying, the stress of rushing to training from work and or fitting the class jiu jitsu schedule into yours. /Sigh. On a lighter note, American Nationals are this weekend at Cal State Dominguez Hills in Carson. This will be my first IBJJF competition at blue belt and with 18 girls so far in the absolute division I am so excited. I'm semi-shitting my pants since I've never been in a division that large and I've probably been training less than most of the girls in it but I'm stoked to play my guard. ALSO, speaking of guard, I'm currently working on a zine called Pulling Guard. It's a small DIY magazine. Small meaning about 6 pages and the size of a half sheet of letter paper. It will be xeroxed at a kinkos and handed out at competitions around here with the option of donation. I'm really really excited to get into production with interviews, articles, polls, cute fonts, techniques, product reviews and important information and insight pertaining to today's sport jiu jitsu world. As a sneak peak it will include Romulo Barral (shocker) and a little piece on my friend, coach and new brown belt Benny Dariush. If interested in getting a copy please let me know!