Long Overdue Update !

Hey everyone

well as so often happens normality of everyday life sets in and I forget to blog! Truth be told getting into a good routine overhere and I guess things that are everyday for me I don't really feel the need to write about so I decided I'd just do a quick rundown of how thing have been going in a bullet point fashion

- Since arriving in Paris I have lost 6kgs of bodyfat and gained about 1-2kgs of muscle, I've had injuries along the way (currently back/neck) however I'm honestly in the shape of my life and have improved all physiological assets immensely

- In the last two weeks my Randori has been great, when I arrived here I was getting my butt kicked by quiet a few players, now not so much. There are two big markers of my improvement. 1) A lot of the guys that use to beat me I'm now throwing 4-5x in a randori. 2) The coaches are starting to take notice of me and coach against me a lot more (i.e. they're getting annoyed that some Kiwi kid is knocking there boys over!)

- I'm not quiet there but I feel as if I'm finally starting to live up to my own expectations.. The true test of this will of course be competition, it's a good feeling and I'm starting to respect my own Judo a lot more now.

- Last week I got to fight Teddy Riner (Basically a living legend.. Multiple times +100kg world champion incase you didn't know!). Not only was his Judo very clean and technical, on top of a lot of power, but he was also a really nice guy! It's always a nice thing when the greats are good dudes.

- Paris truely is an amazing city and you can have a lot of fun just walking around/not spending any money. To this day I still think of how unbelievably lucky I am to live here. It's a very humbling thought but also a very powerufl one.

- My english is getting worse, French is getting better, Romanian and Russian about the same.. should really put more time into those two languages!

-Next week a lot of the surrounding countires are coming to town, Switzerland, Holland, Eygpt and England to go with Belguim and Tunisia who are already here. This will be my last week so it's a perfect finish/preparation.

So that's pretty much it for now I head to Tahiti in 2 weeks time for the Oceania Champs, then it's home to see family and my son! The Oceania's will be the real answer to a lot of questions about my Judo but I'm very confident at the moment and this has been the best build up I've had toward a tournament ever so I'm looking forward to it!

Anyways until next time

Jason

Nice (pronounced Niece), Random Thoughts, Looking Forward

Greetings from the South of France, I'm currently in Nice (pronounced Niece) as we had a teams event earlier on today.

We had 2x international teams entered made up of Romanian/Kyrgzstan/Australia/France and myself... BUT as we had Me and Daniel both in the +90's division I got drafted to another team. Daniel is one of the best in the world (he bet the world champ in Paris) so obviously he was the first choice fighter so I had no problems fighting for someone else because I just wanted to fight.

My first fight was against the French #3 +100's fighter and while I fought a lot tighter than I have previously he was just 'too big too strong'. It's hard to explain but I've been fighting a style to suit -100's Judo whereas in this fight I would have had to fight like a lightweight so just didn't really get into a rythm.

2nd fight was against a -100's fighter so was more in my 'comfort zone'. I started strongly was dominanting the grips/flow of the fight well and was putting heaps of pressure on. Got him rung up for a shido and dominating the grips... Then BAM got lazy on the sleeve grip and got caught with O-uchi...

Was quiet 'annoyed' about this as I felt I should/could have won this fight but just shows me I've got to keep my focus even harder!

In hindsight though it's only been 1 week since coming back from injury so I'm quiet happy with how things went and it was good just to get some mat time!

So my roomy Mark is off to disco for the night (well deserved I might add he fought AMAZING today, knocked over 2x of the top French fighters and was unlucky to lose 2x terrible decisions) so I'm left alone to my own random thoughts...

This is a common 'demon' with living the hotel lifestyle is when you stay in your room too long/left alone you start to let your mind wander and not always for the best... I've had some days where I've gone from Top of the world to miserable to uncontrollably laughing in the space of 30mins.. It's just the nature of the beast.


The thing that's mostly on my mind at the moment is my Son. It seems on the days I fight that I miss him the most and while the training here is brutally hard nothing is as hard as not seeing him grow up but that's another story.

Looking forward we have a training session here tomorrow before heading back to Paris, then it's 4weeks prep towards Oceania champs so I'm hoping to be injury free for all this time!

Well, time for me to sleep..

Life is a beautiful struggle...

I feel sorry for negative people. Because they choose not to enjoy the struggle.

At the moment in my life I'm standing on the shoulders of giants. On a daily basis this lil kid with a shaky smile from Christchurch gets to rub shoulders/fight with some of the best in the world.

It's not all 'sunshine and roses' though. There are some days where it's tough, real tough. But they're the days that you really learn to fight.

I like the way my MMA Coach Karl Webber puts it 'if you're covering up because you've been hit, you better answer back a lot harder!'

And it's true, most people get 'hit' in life and they don't answer back.. They choose to stay covered up, get beaten down and let life dictate there success and failure.

I've had A LOT of failure in my life and yup it sucks, but no matter how I feel immediately after it my response is always ends up being the same, I will just have to work harder..

Last night was my first time back sparring after my injury to my chest and in my 2nd fight I injured my back, an injury that was suppose to be better. I battled through and got 4 of the 8 rounds out but was feeling pretty rank at the end of it all..

While this might seem small, I've got the Oceania champs in less than 6weeks which is the best opportunity for me to get points towards olympic qualification.. effectively the most important tournament to date..

So I was left with a choice of how to respond to this... After some thought I decided that it was probably the best thing to happen to me. 1.) I was getting lazy in my rehab of my back and this injury was a wakeup call that I need to do my rehab work everyday. 2.) If I didn't stop when I did there's a chance I would have done too many rounds and done a more major injury to my chest.

I could  very well have chosen to look at things in a different light.. Woe is me, things are so hard etc.. etc.. But there's only so long you can cover up for before you get knocked down for good.


The point I'm trying to make is that life truely is a beautiful struggle. When I look back on hardships in my life I know that they've made me the person I am today because I chose to fight. In reflection previous problems seem trivial so there's no point stressing too much on what we're battling with now.

When People Look At My Life, They Will See The Stars That Shined Bright Throughout It. Not The Darkness Surrounding It...

Enjoy the struggle

Bionx, Quotes to live by, Christchurch

Well it's been a pretty interesting week both here and back home. The devastation of the earthquake is still the dominant thought on everyones mind no doubt but what is amazing, and I mean AMAZING, is the sense of unity and community that has come out of this all. It really is unbelievable seeing images of people of all walks of life side by side bonded by the unity and pride of our city.



On my end, I've been having my own little fight with injury. I damaged my sternoclavicular joint (SC) in Germany just over 10days ago and have been on the recovery ever since... The time of recovery is suppose to be 3-4weeks but I think I'll be back in Randori next week.

I haven't stopped training. I've just had to modify my training to suit what I can do. I force myself to watch the Randori (sparring) which I can not do so that I get hungry for it, I feel a fire burning in me when I watch the Randori! I want to be out there so bad!


In the gym I've been doing 1 Arm weights for my upper body and the last few days I've moved onto using my bad arm almost pain free! While the guys do there grip fighting I'm on the bike (Lance Armstrong Styles sans the drugs) so I'm hopefully not losing much other than Judo timing and specific conditioning.


So for me this is what I call 'Bionix'. Whenever I get injured I think of it as me 'rebuilding' myself, starting from scratch and creating a better Jason.

Sometimes it's mentally hard to stay positive, in a lot of situations it's easier to be a victim/negative and let life keep you down but I have a couple of sayings/affirmations that I use to keep me going. They might be cheesy/not make a lot of sense but they help keep me strong:

Difficult Takes A Day, Impossible Takes A Week: This is kind of my way of reminding myself that nothing is out of my reach. I like to put things in perspective, if something is difficult then then I just have to work harder at it.. If it's impossible then I just have to spend more time on it

Always be stronger than yesterday: Pretty self explanatory really but sometimes it feels like you're treading water with your progress but if I know more than I did yesterday then I'm a better fighter, slow motion is better than no motion!

Always train like the challenger: The great thing about being over here is that I am a little fish in a big sea! There's no such thing as an easy fight and most of the guys I fight are better/stronger than me.

What this means to me is that I'm the one with something to prove, I'm a proud Kiwi and I don't want people to think NZers are soft so while I'm not yet where I want to be with my Judo I always tell myself  'I won't be outworked, I want this too bad to fail'

I always train like the challanger..

When Life Gives You Lemons... Paint that shit gold! : Easily my favourite saying. Not poetic like the others but to me it says no matter what situation I face in life I can and will find a positive from it!

Well I hope this gives you some sorta idea about my mindset and why I work like I do. I'm not blessed with great Judo, nor am I naturally athletic, so I have to bring something else to the table.. Mental toughness.