Hey everyone! Quick update on the direction and future plans for Work Play Obsession.

When I first started out on this journey the focus was solely on training and sharing Jiu Jitsu from the martial arts perspective “bridging the gap between traditional martial arts and defensive tactics for military and law enforcement.”. Along the way I discovered that just like most extracurricular activities, the Jiu Jitsu community has its cliques and its fair share of folks just out for profit and personal gain. The opinions are strong talking street vs sport is worse than politics at the Thanksgiving table. It was quite an eye opening and unfortunate discovery considering how small a community actually exists and it’s sad to see it eating itself from within. Trying to build collaboration I learned, is still seen in many circles as attempting to steal students (read business) or poaching and yes, the creonte poison mindset still exists in some academies. I was not deterred but needed to readjust my approach.

That led me to reevaluate what it was that I was trying to accomplish and naturally I started with “WHY”. I waived off on focus on instruction as there are numerous websites (free and subscription) dedicated to showing Jiu Jitsu / Self defense techniques and plenty of resources for tactical application of force and oh yeah, see the paragraph above. Those areas were interesting but not something that I felt I could throw my heart into. My passion has always been the people, the camaraderie, the shared experience, and the team environment that most military personnel and LEO are accustomed to in their daily lives. This is also the reason that Jiu Jitsu is continuing to draw many veterans who are looking to reconnect.

I want to take up of the charge of connecting these people in an effort to raise awareness, provide outreach, and address various issues faced by our nation’s veterans, active duty military, law enforcement officers, and first providers and this is my why.

Our posts and interviews will be focused on capturing the passions of our guests, presented in their words and deep dive how their lives have been positively impacted by these activities.

Jiu Jitsu, as my passion, will remain a key component of our site, however we will be introducing many new activities prompted by asking our quests “Whats your passion.” Hopefully, we can leverage those passions to connect with other veterans and build a chain of mutual interests that spawns a larger community for the greater good.

So that’s it. Whats your Why? Until next time, Keep Grinding