Unfortunately, the show was delayed due to some legal complications that we address very early in the show.

Lessons have been learned, and I promise all of the listeners that it won't happen again.

It's the week before heading off to Las Vegas, but just after that is Christmas, where training is going to slow down a little bit, and you (yes, you) need to take a long hard look at yourself.

The shops that you give your money to have made a decision for what and why stuff gets put in the shop window, and what you see online is the shop window. You want to be the thing in there, not the pan de-greaser.

What you’re doing, who you’re doing it with, and if your week is really a reflection of the person who is trying to get to the place they want to get to.

HYDROX Dublin 2025 is here, one of the biggest events on the sporting calendar. Over 15,000 hybrid rockstar athletes are taking to the turf in the hollowed halls of the RDS Arena in Ballsbridge DUBLIN 4.

Finishers patches, event t-shirts, medals and podium photos all up for grabs this weekend, either in the singles, doubles, mixed doubles and elite divisions.

Huge early controversy is brewing online from a number of Hydrox athletes who think there are too many slow pace runners, hogging the fast lane at the RDS Arena...but all eyes point to this weekend so we can find out, who's going to be HOGGING the top spot at the end of the day.

There's also a rounding up, closing discussion about the news of another cringe worthy niche sport, Brazilian JiuJitsu closing in on receiving government recognition as a sport through IMAC (Irish Martial Arts Council) so we take a quick look at who they are, and what this might mean for the sport.

Thank you for tuning in, you rockstars!

This is such a terrible time to be writing a podcast bio when your alarm is going off in 5 hours to drive to Dublin for the IBJJF Dublin Open but here I am.

I'm not even going to ask ChatGPT to correct the spelling and grammar on this one either.

It's a debrief episode on my experience competing in the NoGi Europeans last week, as well as the announcement you've all been waiting for...when are Andrew and Jean hosting another cross training session...

The Answer is actually a lot sooner than we expected, Sunday the 16th November and we hope to see as many listeners there as possible too. More information in the episode!

A lot of my training partners competed very well during the week and Team Torres has a new European Champion.

We had put a lot of good work leading up to this tournament.

I just felt like it was important, for me in some capacity to record and release this episode before I competed today.

I turn 33 today, quite a lot of the positive things that have formed in my adult life have formed from being involved in JiuJitsu.

Competing is a very freeing experience that one day I will not be able to do. I just felt like i said that it was important to think and put that out into the planet, on this day of all days.

I don't think there's a description that's gonna make someone listen or not either way, but this was my stream of thoughts the night before this years NoGi European Championships. How I hope that releasing this will help me with something else in the longer term.

See you on the other side.

So, Episode 44 of the Consistently Above Average podcast is here.

There's a big No-Gi Europeans next week that everybody is very excited for, I think, just under 3,000 people competing in Ostia in Rome next week and weekend. I believe across all divisions this is going to be a breakout tournament for people, and there are a few sleepers that are going to win divisions. We will talk about that more, hopefully before I fly over there.

The meat and bones of the topic on this episode, though, is returning to jiu-jitsu after a short or extended hiatus. We had a great one last week, so let's discuss some common fears or irrationalities you might have coming back and why we are always delighted to see you, as well as a quick guide on how to and how not to make your grand return.

For those interested at the very end, there’s also some great info on the origin of a chicken goujon!

Last week I closed off the podcast letting you know that I reached out to the Ireland BJJ organisation with some questions, both about the Emerald Cup and their evening event, the Irish BJJ Invitational.

We discuss the response, we go through the email I received, and we talk about the evening event — both in the promotion, the day itself, and the reaction people had.

I also think transparency is important. A friend of the podcast asked me recently why I had an issue with one athlete competing with a failed drug test, when previously I had no issue. So we chat about that too.

There's a huge desire in the world at the minute to be aggravated and annoyed at stuff, where sometimes it can be much easier to just admit maybe you were in the wrong. That's something I will always be happy to put my name to.

I promise, I genuinely thought it was called the Emerald Cup for the first six minutes. Sorry about that.

I'm holding myself to a public declaration of weekly episodes again. If I miss one, everyone who likes and reshares this podcast will win $100.*

This week’s episode is a single-topic deep dive into the Shamrock Cup, with a little side diversion about how obvious ChatGPT-generated social media posts have become, along with an announcement about the elephant in the room. We're still waiting on a comment, and we’ll follow up in next week's episode.

*may not be true

It's been 43 days since I wrote a podcast bio description after recording an episode and I do admit I missed it a little bit more than I thought I would.

Quick catch up and chat about what's been going on the last little while and why there's not been an episode, hard to act like everythings going great for your training when you're not able to do it the way you would like to.

That's probably a sign to have the back up plans ready in terms of the longer form guest interviews from the last little while but we will see how the next few months goes now after that.

We couple of thoughts on CJI as well within the debate of making it a spectator sport vs the competitors trying to win no matter what because the prize money is very lucrative. As well as why it seems like there are two (maybe more) versions of Craig Jones we should be aware of and how this could lead to what CJI 3 could (or could not) look like.