JasonGines's Xanga

A New Direction

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 15:19:04 GMT

I had gotten very sick two weeks ago. Some sort of throat infection that resulted in me being unable to swallow any liquids or solids (which included antibiotics). I spent three days in the hospital recovering. I hadn’t eaten or drank anything for four days prior to being admitted to the hospital and literally began fantasizing about glasses of water. I couldn’t sleep because I began to choke and I was bordering on delirious. It is these types of experiences that change people-or at least me.

Last year I had my appendix removed. In hindsight not very serious, but still serious enough for me to reevaluate my life and what I wanted from it. It resulted in me changing a lot about my lifestyle. Since that surgery I haven’t had ANY fast food of any sort. Since January I haven’t eaten at any national chain restaurants al la Outback, Applebee’s, etc. except for a weekly breakfast I have with some friends at IHOP where I normally only get scrambled eggs and cheese on whole wheat toast rather than their usual items on their artery clogging menu.

After this latest incident (I guess I’m due a new one once a year if this holds up) I have decided to get very serious about fitness. Not the usual, oh I do Tae Kwon do, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and workout at the gym somewhat regularly – but rather go back to basics that allowed me to accomplish so much of what I did in the past. And that is basically to just sign up, commit to, and pay for things that are going to require me to perform. That means from this moment on, every Brazilian Jiu Jitsu tournament, marathon, and triathlon type of event that I can work into my schedule I will.

The first thing I’ve signed up for is the Merrell Down & Dirty Mud Run that is taking place on October 3rd (the day before my birthday) in New York at Pelham Bay Park at Orchard Beach. I’m doing the 5K since I’ve never done anything like this before don’t want to jump into a 10k just yet. Basically the description reads as follows:

The Merrell Down and Dirty National Mud Run Series features 5K and 10K off-road courses filled with:

•Military-style Obstacles

•Commanding cargo climbs

•Wild water crossings

•Mud, mud, and More Mud!

•Post-race BBQ and an awesome Tech Tee

So we’ll see what happens. If all works out this blog will be filled with plenty of new adventures, hopefully absent of me injuring myself which seems all too common.

Possible Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Tournament in March

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 07:04:47 GMT

I might be competing in a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Tournament in March. My middle finger on my right hand is still swollen and hurts from an MMA class back in early December. I thought the swelling would go down and it would heal, but now I'm actually getting a bit concerned. I am going to call the doctor tomorrow and have him look at it and get x-rays or whatever needs to be done and if he says its good and will heal on its own then I'm going to sign up and compete in the tournament in March. If they have to do anything to it then I might not be competing Will keep everyone posted.

Sunday Update

Sun, 10 Jan 2010 21:14:58 GMT

I had an EXCELLENT week in respect to working out. I have not missed a workout in the last few weeks and my body looks great as a result. I have also been dead on with my eating habits, but my weight has remained stable fluctuating between 189 and 192. I made it two Brazilian Jiu Jitsu class twice this week and Tae Kwon Do once. I should have made it to at least one more Tae Kwon Do class but to make up for the missed class I went to Bally’s to do cardio instead. As for split progress on the split machine I’m up to 130 Degrees and that pretty much sums up any progress this week in my pursuit of this year’s goals

Updates of My Goals Through Blog Postings

Sat, 02 Jan 2010 21:51:22 GMT

I have decided to post weekly and monthly updates of my progress in completing the goals listed in the prior post. Every Sunday, starting on January 10^th I will give a small progress update and the last day of the month I will post a summary of my progress for that month. I haven’t done it this way before. In the past I have only kept track of my progress on my main website, but I think this will be fun and will keep me more motivated than usual to try to complete everything on the list

2010 Goals

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 21:01:27 GMT

It’s that time of the year again where the New Year’s Resolutions are declared. I don’t care for New Year’s Resolutions. I find that many people set vague resolutions that aren’t established in a practical way to achieve success or even in a measurable way to really measure success if it was obtained. I personally go for a practical goals list for the New Year. I’ve been doing this since 2004 and have been pretty successful at it. Even though some years I don’t get everything I want done, I do get quite a few of my goals completed which is always a wonderful accomplishment Below is my 2010 goals list:

1. I plan on advancing at LEAST three belts in tae kwon do. The belts are: Blue, Purple, and Red. If I am able to maintain consistency with attending class I should advance approximately every three months. Technically if I succeed at this I might be able to advance an additional belt, but I like to give myself room for injury, illness, and just life in general.

2. I plan to obtain at least my first tip (out of four) for my blue belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. The minimum time it should take to achieve this is four months and for the second tip an additional five months. Now because advancement in BJJ is very difficult and is based upon a variety of factors and not standardized testing or set periods of time, the four month number is only a guideline. It could take me over a year to get that tip. But I’m going to try my damn hardest to improve and train enough to earn it within 2010. If I advance further than that, it will be great, but one step at a time.

3. CPR and First Aid Recertification. I could have done this in 2009 but I just didn’t get to it. I have no valid excuse for not doing it, but this year I will attempt to get it done early on.

4. Fly 10 Hours. I haven’t been up flying in awhile. I’m going to try to get rid of the rust on my wings and start going up a little. At least 10 hours, hopefully much more.

5. Be able to do a split. I’ve had this damn goal on here every year for the last few years. Hopefully I bang this one out. It just needs to get done. It is very important for martial arts.

6. Go up to 450 vocabulary words memorized. I haven’t been doing this very frequently for the past year-mostly I was focusing studying for the bar exam and finals and all that. But now that all that is behind me I’m going to start memorizing additional vocabulary words.

7. Drop weight down to 180 lbs and body fat down to 10%. This shouldn’t be a terribly hard goal actually since I’m not too far away from these numbers to begin with at this point. The second half of 2009 was a very healthy one for me where I’ve completely cut out fast food from my diet. This year I’m also aiming to drop those pesky chain restaurants such as Outback, Applebee’s, etc.

8. Read 20 books (10 fiction and 10 non-fiction). In 2009 I read 33 books, so this shouldn’t be difficult, especially since I won’t have bar prep or law school as added reading.

One thing that some of you might have noticed is that I no longer am aiming for my green belt in the Japanese Style of JuJutsu I was training in. The school is an hour away, so it takes two hours round trip to travel to the classes and a steep bridge toll so I decided to put it aside indefinitely. After I obtain my Tae Kwon Do black belt I will move on to Mauy Thai training and when I obtain my black belt in BJJ (which won’t be for many years) I will take up Judo to supplement the training. Perhaps after that I might take up a Japanese style again, but I’m not worried about it.

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is Kicking My Behind :-/

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 18:03:15 GMT

Ever since being promoted to Blue Belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) I have been training in the Advanced Class and the experience there compared to that of the Beginners Class is worlds apart.

When I first began I thought I would do fairly well considering my Japanese JuJutsu background, but I was completely off base with such thoughts and found myself struggling there. By the time I reached my fourth stripe I was actually doing very well in the Beginners Class and was submitting people regularly and was very successful with defending against submissions. The only trouble I had was against those guys who were significantly larger than me and a few guys whose skill level was just obviously beyond mine.

Fast forward to the Advanced Class. This class is filled with Blue, Purple, and Brown Belts and the occasional Black Belt. Whenever I used to train with these guys while a White Belt, in hindsight they were obviously taking it easy on me. Now, while the vast majority of the upper belt students are helpful and take the time when they don’t have to helping me and walking me through things I should be doing, I still am feeling very frustrated at how horrible I’m doing in this class. I’m getting submitted left and right and the only people I am doing decent against are those that were just promoted to Blue Belt alongside me. And on top of that after these classes I feel beyond exhausted.

I know that as time progresses I should slowly improve like I did as White Belt and will begin to more successfully avoid being submitted and begin to catch guys not far above me in submissions here and there, but at the moment it just feels like I will never get there. Perhaps I’m overreacting. The minimum time between Blue Belt and Purple Belt is two years which gives me plenty of time to grow as a BJJ practitioner and does explain why those at Purple are so good since they have all been basically training for at least three years if not longer depending on how many tips they have on their Purple Belt.

I Received My Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Blue Belt

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 17:33:36 GMT

This weekend I was promoted to Blue Belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. I had been training for almost a year, though I have had prior training for many years with the Japanese style that I also train in (not that that training has really prevented me from getting my ass handed to me more times than I can count in BJJ). I was actually surprised I was promoted when I was, but advancement is always welcome. This means that I will no longer be training in the beginners class and have now moved onto the advanced class with blue, purple, brown, and black belts. My first advanced class was last night and it was hard as hell. The advanced belts take it real easy on you when you are a white belt and now that you have some color around your waist they step it up a notch. I was utterly destroyed the entire night. It is like starting over. But with these guys you can’t cheat, you can’t use strength to win or get away with sloppiness.

One thing that was bizarre but kind of interesting was having to go through the “Gauntlet” after the promotion. Basically two lines form parallel to each other and the newly promoted student takes off his or her gi and gets down on all fours (some schools allow you to do it standing) and makes his or her way up the line and then turns around and comes back to where they started all the while being whipped pretty damn hard with belts from those students equal or higher in rank. My back was burning after that experience, and I got a bit of mat burn on my knees and feet from trying to make it up and down the line a bit quicker than I was probably capable, but I’m glad I experienced it

Featured Question: Who's your bestfriend and why? How long have you known them?

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:40:25 GMT

When I was little I went through a string of "best friends" - each one of those friendships ended on a negative note. Best Friends are similar to Romantic Relationships in that those invovled generally become emotionally entangled on some level, they share very personal information, and when things go bad, they use that very personal information and the emotional vulnerabilities of each other to hurt each other. I grew tired of this when my last friend I considered a "Best Friend" and I went our seperate ways back in Middle School. After that I decided I would not become so invested in any one person as a friend. At this point in my life I have many close friends, a good number of which I can talk to about almost anything, but I am no longer dependent on a chosen one or two friends where if things did not work out between us it would feel the equivalent of a romantic breakup between us.

New Domain for this Blog

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 03:11:24 GMT

Thanks to a new feature on Xanga I was able to give this blog its own domain name. I was thinking of just attaching it as a subdomain to my main website, but I concluded that it would be too limiting so I settled on lifesadventure.net. I will try to update this blog more regularly-a post a month just isn't very exciting

I passed the NY Bar Exam :-)

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:50:13 GMT

I know I am a bit late in reporting this, but I passed the New York Bar Exam I have now passed the largest hurdle to becoming a lawyer. What comes next is mostly paperwork and a few other requirements, but nothing significant. In addition, I had not taken the New Jersey Bar Exam like many of my friends had, but I am considering taking it over the summer.