Come follow me on the road to Grappler’s Heart!

I have been invited to, and have decided to compete in the Grapplers Heart tournament. The Grapplers Heart Tournament will take place April 25-26, 2015 at Renzo Gracie’s Academy in Brooklyn, NY. I have only 6 months to train and prepare, and I am inviting all of you to follow along with me on my journey of weight loss, better health, and better Jiu Jitsu!

You can find out more about the Grapplers Heart tournament here.

I will be posting weekly video updates on my progress on my youtube channel, so go subscribe to my channel and follow me on my road to the Grapplers Heart!

[youtube=//www.youtube.com/watch?v=deKlf1gNRkU&w=560&h=315]

Weign in.. and something special coming soon!

Just stepped on the scales for the first time in months. As an ex-high school wrestler I have to make it a point to avoid the scales, because even now weighing in can become an obsession, and that just isn’t a good thing for your workout or your mind. I wanted to weigh in, though, to get a baseline for where I need to go from here for a special project. (coming soon, so stay tuned!)
What’s the verdict? with legs on I weigh 191 pounds. My legs weigh 12 pounds combined, so taking off that my actual body weight is 179 pounds!

I haven’t touched the 170’s in a healthy way since before I came home from the hospital. (I weighed 168 after my coma and limb loss. Feeding tubes will do that to ya!) Once I got home from the hospital and starting eating again my weight creeped up to the mid 190’s with legs off, but once I was able to walk again things got a little more stable for me, but I wasn’t losing weight, either.

That all changed once I got back on the mat training Gracie Jiu Jitsu! I am two years now back training, with on again and off again time due to illness and Behcet’s, and the on time has been time well spent! I feel better than I have in a long time, and losing fat and gaining muscle is just one of the many great by-products of the Jiu Jitsu lifestyle.

So to all my training buddies, my online GJJ/BJJ friends, and the wonderful mentors and legends of Jiu Jitsu that have honored me by following along with me on my GJJ journey, I say thank you! And to my friend and trainer Eric, I say…

PUSH ME HARDER! Thank you Sir, for helping me get back to me!

I will have a new project going very soon, so make sure you subscribe to my twitter, facebook, and youtube. All of which you can find links to up in the top right corner.

I’m in the healthy 170’s! Woot woot!

Neil

Never Forget… where we are now…

I wrote this on my public facebook page this morning, and thought it was worth a share on my blog:

At about this time 13 years ago I was sitting in my office in Central City, KY glued to the TV screen with several other employees. Less than an hour before I had been on the WK parkway when I heard on the radio that a plane had flown into one of the towers in NYC.
By the time I had gotten into the office talk had changed from tragic accident to possible terror attack, and that was soon confirmed by the second plane.
I watched in horror as I saw the back smoke, gray dust, and panicked people all about the landscape I had walked only 9 months before. MY wife at the time was frantic, as her father lived on Staten Island and had an office not far from the Towers, and she couldn’t get him on the phone.
The manager at the CNCY office at the time kept coming in and turning the TV off and telling everyone it was time to get to work, and we just kept turning it back on.
I saw firefighters, ladder trucks, and engines I had met in NYC and traded patches with on my trip from earlier in the year, and I would find out later that one of the stations there I spent time in swapping stories of fire and ambulance runs was nearly completely wiped off men and trucks.
As the day went on the Pentagon was hit, and a plane went down in the countryside well outside DC. I watched the two main towers fall, and later watched as the squat and wide building 7 came down, even though it had not been hit.
It was a horrible day that our country will never forget, 343 fire fighters didn’t make it home to their families, and countless other police and rescue workers put their uniforms on for the last time that day. Many sacrifices were made that day by honorable men and women who ran in when everyone else was running out. We can Never Forget what they did that day.
We can also never forget what has happened to this country after that day. Our liberties are slowly being taken from us, the news media no longer even tries to report news, only regurgitates official press releases from the government, and the foundations of this great country of ours is being eroded away, all for the sake of “safety and security.”
Since that tragedy 13 years ago I have seen many things that blur the lines as to what really happened, and what direction our country should have gone. Endless wars. The Patriot Act. the DHS. Freedom traded for perceived security.
Never forget the sacrifices made that day by the rescue workers and other heroes who sifted through the wreckage, but also never forget where we are now as the People of this once great republic.
where were you 13 years ago at this time? And more importantly, where are we now as a Country?