taking a little time off

So the blog has been out of date for a while now. This is due to several reasons. I had been planning on taking some time off after my grappling tournament at the end of September (which I'll get to in a minute) because I just needed some me time, and I very much needed to spend more time with my beautiful and amazing wife who graciously sacrificed many an evening to allow me to train and prepare for two months leading up to the tournament. A few days before the event, I unfortunately injured my rib cage. I thought it was no big deal, and went ahead cutting weight and planned on participating as normal.

Well I made weight (by a pound and a half, WHOO HOO!) and the following day got ready to compete. Well my rib was still bothering me, but I chalked it up to a normal nagging injury that happens when training combat sports. I won my first match pretty handily, but I wasn't able to get the submission finish. I won on points, 15-0, which if you're not familiar with grappling tournament scoring, is a pretty sound drubbing, not to toot my own horn. During the match, I could definitely feel my rib getting worse, and I also heard a pop in my left elbow defending a submission, but I wasn't pulling out. I'll be damned before I give in to injury, often to my detriment, and this was no different. In my second match I went up against my gym mate and good friend Morgan. I'll be honest, when we're both 100% healthy, I maybe beat him 40% of the time, and that's probably being generous to me. Not wanting to give up, I did my best, but succumbed to an arm bar early in the match, and heard another, albeit smaller pop in my right elbow. After this, my coach told me that he didn't want me grappling any more that day, and at this point, I couldn't keep toughing it out. I withdrew from the remainder of the tournament, and watched with a great deal of pride as Morgan went on to win first place in our division. Morgan, you did a damn good job my friend, congratulations!

The following week was full of some pretty bad pain in the ribs, and I finally went and got it looked at, ten days after the initial injury. A few x-rays and a chat with the doc later, it was determined that nothing was broken or dislocated, but I had most likely torn either muscle or cartilage in between two of my ribs. He gave me some uber anti-inflammatories which knocked the sweeling way down, and reduced the pain to a very manageable level. I'm taking the rest of the month off from grappling (maybe longer, we'll see what coach says), but I'm hoping to be back to boxing next week, and start to get back into the swing of things. Thanks to everyone for their support, friends and family. I could not have gotten even half this far without your help. Thank you to my coaches and training partners, you are all amazing people who push me and challenge me every day. Lastly, to my unbelievable wife, you are the best thing that has ever happened to me, and I plan on never letting you forget this!

One last thing. A lot of people have been curious what I look like these days, and others wanted to see photos from before I really started cutting weight, and after. Well I started on a dietary supplement about two weeks out, and was between 185 and 188, those are the first batch of pictures (with hair) When I weighed in, I was at 168.6, and the shaved head pictures are from that day. Here they are, and yes, I am a very hairy bastard.

I LOVE YOU ALL!