Heidelberg 2025, through the lens.
I very nearly skipped this camp, but I am fortunate enough to always have my Padawan in my ear (like the devil that she pretends not to be) telling me to YOLO it, so here we are, full send. Sometimes you have the student teach the teacher.
I’ll spare you all the soliloquy, but I will say that this city comes replete with its own magic, and its reputation as a fairy tale town is well deserved. We’ll be back someday.
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#bjjglobetrotters #bjj #jiujitsuandcoffee #jitsworldtour #jitsdayafternoon #jiujitsu #heidelberg #germany #damnwelookgood #ninjamagic #technobunker #gentlemensfightclub #hallofgame #nextstoparizona #olympiastützpunkt
Finally got to visit the famous (or infamous if you're a Las Vegan) Sim Go Academy, aka Cobra Kai Jiu Jitsu.
While we did NOT cover how to sweep the leg, we did show a couple of other ways to give someone a limp.😁 Thank you @kaiju_bjj and Professor Antenocruz for having me in to train (lord knows I needed to lol), will definitely be back out that way!🤟
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#jitsworldtour #jiujitsu #simgoacademy #lasvegas #lasvegasbjj #bjj #cobrakaibjj #cobrakai #sweeptheleg #donotsweeptheleg #oldmanjiujitsu #oldageandtreachery #holidayjits
Apologies for the tardiness,
Someone once told me that in jiujitsu, if you’re lucky, you’ll have just four days where you’ll take your belt off for the last time, and another one will take its place (most of us won’t live long enough for the fifth).
This past Saturday was my third such day.
While it will be weird seeing almost no white belts in the evening class (🤣), each of the new blue belts is also well earned. Time to start discovering your identity in jiujitsu.
And I even got to see my padawan student get her first stripes—see, you did good 😜
In the interests of not writing a novel about my time as a purple belt (and there is a looooot of material), I instead have a simple ask: Take the time to appreciate the hard work that it takes to get up each rung of the ladder, and the people who have helped you climb. It’s no fun being at the top of the ladder all by yourself.
And in my case, it’s not lost in me that I only have one more of these days left. Not sure how to feel about that just yet.
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#jitsworldtour #jiujitsu #jiujitsuandcoffee #bjj #brownbelt #jitsdayafternoon #aresbjj #aresparadisevalley #ceremony #almosttheendoftheline #levelup #padawan #ninjamagic #neverdies #10amhitsquad
Now that I at long last have a weekend without a fight coming up, I am attempting to rejoin the human race and actually leave the house. 🙏🏾
The Downtown Phoenix Urban Ale Trail marks the beginning of festival season out here in the desert, and usually comes with some fairly pleasant weather...I say usually, because this year we managed to come up with a historically bad heatwave where it's 106 degrees (41 degrees for my euro peeps) on the second weekend in October 🥵🥵🥵
As they say, this is why we drink. At least the drinking itself was as good as ever, because lord knows we need it in this town.🍻
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#dtphx #downtownphoenix #urbanaletrail #daydrinking #waytoohotoutside #festivalseason #fall #phoenix #greenwoodbrewingco #tandooriwings4tw #🥵 #heatwave #thankgodforbeer
Jiujitsu World League, Arizona III
This is quickly becoming my favorite league to fight in. Guaranteed at least two fights, said fights actually start on time (!!) and you can weigh in any time up to an hour before your scheduled fight time. Today that last part would be very important as I barely survived the weight cut and paid for it my second fight, so you can consider this my middleweight swansong as I am never doing that again.
But since this is the series finale, at least we got to go out on top. Many thanks to all of you that came out to see the show. 🥷🤟
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#jiujitsu #jiujitsuandcoffee #jitsworldtour #bjj #jiujitsuworldleague #asu #mulletarena #ninjamagic #swansong #imtired #goingtobed #everythinghurts #timeforsomerealfood
So last weekend was the 2024 IBJJF Master World Championships.
I had been once before to corner a friend of mine but this was my first time as a competitor. Leaving the fights themselves aside, this event is legitimately massive and takes some getting used to. But on the good side, there is pretty much no other sport where you will find its greatest champions and legends just walking around like the same kind of tourist that I am. Even managed to grab a photo or two before the work.
First match went as well as you'd hope, (won by submission) and the second one was a brawl but you never complain about pitching a shutout. Ended up losing in the quarterfinals to a very "augmented" individual but for a (very) undersized light heavyweight in his first time at the worlds level I can't say I did too bad.🤟
We have a *very* young team in jiujitsu years, but they all showed up and showed out. Big things ahead for this crew 🥷
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#jitsworldtour #jiujitsuandcoffee #jitsdayafternoon #jiujitsu #bjj #bjjglobetrotters #masterworlds2024 #ibjjf #ninjamagic #arespv #aresbjj #bigoss #iconv #theicon #hyperfly #teamhyperfly
This summer's IBJJF Asian Cup in Tokyo.
First IBJJF tournament I've been to that was actually well run. Figures I'd have to fly literally around the world to find one, but I digress.
This was the first time I've competed at Light Heavyweight since I was a blue belt and actually held up nicely-finished second overall in a younger age group. It was nice to not have to worry about making weight (which would've been utterly impossible coming from Rome and from Camp 100 lmao) so long term I may have to grow into this weight class. That said...there's a lot of weightlifting that needs to take place, I looked like a midget in the final 🤣
But a good time was had, even found a photographer m along the way.😁
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#jitsworldtour #jiujitsuandcoffee #longwayfromhome #willbeback #jitsdayafternoon #jiujitsu #bjj #ibjjf #asiancup2024 #tokyo #japan #chibacity #needtohitthegymagain
So Tokyo is having a heatwave, so if course it decides to rain and kick the humidity up to 100. So I figure it's worth following the geishas and going to pray for some relief. Now it didn't work off course but hey it was worth a shot. 🤷🏾♂️
Since prayers didn't work, I figured disappearing into Shibuya might be a better idea...and it was, but there's one minor issue: you gotta cross the street and this ain't no ordinary crosswalk (fun fact: Shibuya Crossing is the busiest street crossing in the world, so I was not the only one taking selfie in the middle of the road 🤣).
So after I survived the crossing and dried off, I ended up back in the Golden Gai, and after a few more wrong turns, got into a Death Match in Hell. Turns out that vintage horror and sake make a great pairing.
So a day that started in quiet religious observance, ended with a death match in Hell. Story of my life. /standard
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#jitsworldtour #sensoji #sensojitemple #asakusatemple #geisha #geishasintherain #shibuya #shibuyacrossing #playinginthestreet #tokyo #tokyojapan #japan #goldengai #deathmatchinhellbar #deathmatchinhell #wouldntbethefirsttime
Most big cities go to great lengths to manufacture some kind of green space so they don't literally become a concrete jungle, but they usually aren't very interesting--they're just....green. The greenery here is a little different. It's usually pink, but we are sadly not in cherry blossom season so green will have to do.
Gyoen National Garden and Yoyogi Park connect to the Meiji-Jingu Shrine complex and form arguably the largest cherry blossom field in the world. How did they get so big? I think it's the sake. 🍻 As a rule, when you donate a wall full of your best sake to the gods, they hook you up. 🙏🏾
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#jitsworldtour #tokyo #gyoennationalgarden #yoyogipark #meijijingu #meijishrine #harajuku #riceball #sakewall #omotesando #nezumuseum #oldstuff #moreoldstuff #japan #japanbucketlist #itshotoutside #teagarden #yaybeer
My first day in Tokyo:
One of the first things you notice about this 'hood is that the Japanese folk are obsessed with two things: 1) Giant monsters, and 2) CATS. Seriously, mutant lizards and/or giant walking cats are staring at you about every dozen feet. That's either cute or creepy depending on your predilection (I vote the latter.
Other thing you notice is the sheer size of this place. I never though I would see a place that makes New York feel small...then you get to a random crosswalk in Shinjuku and there's 10,000 people on a Wednesday afternoon. But it's the immenseness of this place that makes the Great Izakaya Hunt (underground restaurants and bars) such an expedition.
Some of these izakayas are fine, others are tourist traps, still others are haunted, and the rest Yakuza gang dens....which ones did we find? All of them.🤟🤣
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#tokyo #shinjuku #omoideyokocho #izakaya #greatizakayahunt #jitsworldtour #kabukicho #cats #godzilla #catsarecreepy #japan #japanbucketlist #goldengai #goldengaitokyo #tokyounderground
So once I finally got out of Italy (long story) I had an extra day or so before the long haul off to Tokyo. What do we do with the free day? You guessed it, we train. 🥋
Fortunately Westphalia is home to Metagame, one of the top jiujitsu schools in all of Europe. Thank you @bernd.roeske for the introduction and a special thanks to @michaelcurrierbjj for feeding me to the wolves with @rene_haen Tobias and @msawicbjj back to back to back🤣 🥷🥋. But seriously it was great to train with you again you guys have a great thing going over there.
Now of course after getting a bunch of hard rounds in its time for a pint...turns out Düsseldorf is a Euro 2024 host city and there's a match in town so here I am wandering down the longest street of bars I have ever seen getting handed glasses of some very nice Westphalian Altbier while the British contingent (yes they really are everywhere) sings 'Sweet Caroline' to the Albanians who are drowning their sorrows in still more Altbier so they don't have to listen to the Spanish and Italian fans do some dance/chant that nobody understood while the Germans laughed at everyone and poured some more Altbier 🤣🍻 Fun times. 🤟
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#jitsworldtour #bjj #jiujitsu #jiujitsuandcoffee #jiujitsuandbeer #metagame #düsseldorf #altbier #euro2024 #westphalia #beerjitsulifestyle #theenglisharecoming #bochum #nextstoptokyo
