Training for a Jiu-jitsu tournament while working as firefighter is challenging enough, but then you add life to it….Week one of my journey started with Quarantine.
The goal is to be ready for my first Jiu-jitsu tournament on October 31st 2020. However, like most goal in my life, I’ve had to fit them some where in the long list of my responsibilities. My life consists of working as a firefighter full-time; which means 24 hour shifts at a time. In addition, I work twice a week on my days off from the fire department as a EMT with a neighboring county’s 911 service. In between my two jobs, I also have my responsibilities as a father of a 13 year, a son of a m
other fighting her second fight with cancer, training and working out for my career as a firefighter, the responsibilities of owning and maintaining a house, our Jiu-jiterios C2C podcast, and on top of all that training Jiu-jitsu. With 24 hours in a day and 7 days in a week, two to three 24hour shifts a week at the fire department doesn’t leave much time for anything else. So to combat this compacted lifestyle, I’ve learned to adapt and workout when and where ever I can. This is how I did it.
Week One: “Quarantine”
Well week one did not go as planned. Lol I went into my first week of October pumped, motivated and ready to train hard for this upcoming tournament in Virginina Beach at the end of the month. I even sat down and planned for the month to maximize my time so I could make every jiu-jitsu class I could before the tournament. However, life said “let me see how much you want this.” First day of the month, day one of training, and second of three shifts for the week, and I wake up with a sore throat and slight runny nose. Now it wasn’t that bad and thought maybe it was allergies or the weather change; so it would go away. Unfortunately, after being at work for a few hours the symptoms continued and with todays pandemic going on, my Chief sent me home for having flu like symptoms. This also meant that I needed to be quarantined till I could get a covid test done and the results came back negative. My first thought was, there goes my first week of training because I couldn’t risk everyone at the gym getting it. My second thought was more from my medical side and thought its not covid cause I have had a covid patient in a long time and I’m only showing one of the many symptoms of covid. However, as the day and week progressed I felt worse but still didnt think it was covid. That being said I spent the next sixth days resting and trying to get better. I tried at times to do some workouts at home when I wasn’t sleeping and watching some jiu-jitsu training videos but nothing I could feel proud about accomplishing.
On early evening of the sixth day tho, I finally started feeling better and got my covid results back to find out I was right, they were negative. Now I’m getting pumped again and looking forward to making the most out of the next three weeks. The only problem now is that fact that I’ve been off for a week my shifts schedule has rotated back around so the last few days of week one were spent on shift. Staying positive though for week two.
