Recovering in Lisbon

I’m six months in and almost halfway through my year-long trip. For the next 30 days, I’ll be living, working and training in Portugal – mostly Lisbon.

Dealing with Sickness and Injuries

I started my BJJ packed adventure six months ago in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia. I hit the ground running with training sessions 4 to 5 times a week at Monarchy MMA for the whole month. Unfortunately, that was the most consistent I have been since.

I only trained once in Vietnam because of pneumonia; then lost almost two weeks because of another cold in Bangkok; another two weeks gone in Serbia because of an arm-crush induced hyper-extended elbow. Now, I just got back on the mat at one of the Lisbon Gracie Barra locations and my knee popped. – I feel more like a human punching bag than an athlete at this point.

By far, the worst part of these setbacks is losing my flow and trying to get it back after such inconsistent training. Anyone who’s trained for a while knows the feeling of not being able to even remember moves that you used effortlessly execute a few weeks before.

These past few months have been a major reminder of the need for humility in this sport. I’m trying to stay positive and using these gaps in training as an opportunity to relearn and reaffirm more basic techniques that I took for granted before. I know that I can always rely on fundamentals when I’m out of shape and forget advanced sweeps and submissions.

For now, I’ll nurse my knee for a few more days and try to get back to rolling as soon as possible.

Downtime Adventures in Portugal

Since I’ll have to take it easy for some time, I’m planning a few non-athletic adventures. This weekend, I’m participating in a local start-up event to boost my entrepreneurial skill set. Right after, I’ll be renting a camper van with a few buddies and driving up Portugal’s coast for a few days. It even has Wifi so I can literally work on the road. After that, if my knee is feeling better, I’m hoping to become an even more stereotypical BJJ bum by learning to surf. By the time all this is done, I should be healthy enough to start training again!

Rocking my custom blazer from Vietnam and a mustache during my layover in Munich.