I...live...again

I'm back. And I just read the last entry. My god. How the status quo has changed. I am a creature of emotional extremes. Here is the long and short of it:

1. I broke up with G, who will now be called M.
2. I have entered into a relationship with S.
Who is S? S=the blackbelt, the Muy Thai striker.
3. I have acquired my blue belt in Judo
4. I have, finally, and with much effort, gained my blue belt in BJJ

It seems unfair, narratively speaking. For two years life was in a holding pattern of sorts. This blog represented the diary of an emotionally scarred white-belt, struggling to figure out where he stood with his girlfriend. Then when I return, everything has changed....well, I'm still emotionally scarred. I seem to be stuck with that. It's been an exhausting 6 months, and it would have made for great blog fodder! Alas, the record of that is hidden from the world, a flurry of epistolaries, texts, and posts, that is still going on today.

At one point I considered terminating this blog, ending it once and for all. I wasn't updating, and let's face it, I'm not exactly on google's top ten. But I didn't, the epistalaries represent a shared space, but this blog represents an exclusively private one, and I still need that, still want that. And with that in mind, I've come back.

I'm in an odd position, forging a new love as I mourn the loss of another. Yes, I see now that I did love M, but I FEARED not loving her, I feared lying to myself, I never lied to her the way I thought I might. How do I know I love/d her? The tears man, the tears. All the while S fills me with joy and exhiliaration. It's not a bipolar existence, but hot damn, I'm some kinda crazed pin ball machine looking for a little...equilibrium, balance. Damnit, I've got practice in an hour, and I'm fighting a headache, blech. Fear not, this represents a return to regularly scheduled blogging. (I think this helps me stay on task in respect to writing as a whole)

Starting with the tourney

I did okay. 2nd place finishes. In my "secret identity" I offered up regular updates, so I don't feel the need to really talk about it here. I was unable to pass the guard when I needed to, and I've got to work on half-guard defense and get more "live" take down practice

Measure for improvement

When BJJ is the simplest thing in your life, you ain't doin' something right! That being said, a new phenomena is taking place in my training which indicates that ever elusive and vaguely quantifiable rubric known as progress: I'm catching newbies in triangles. Yes, me with the stocky, muscular legs of a full-back fused to the body of a disney-fied fairy is catching dudes in triangles. I'm not hitting them on experienced guys--I never seem to hit much of anything on them--but it's a start.

Also, the brown belt taught me how to do a flying armbar, but more importantly, he showed me a way to SET-UP the flying armbar with the awesome power of deception.

So yeah, my personal life is a mess, and my professional life looks like the innards of a jelly fish, but my BJJ is goin' places.

Now if I could just clone myself and alter time I'd be set!

BJJ Turbo

The tournament is less than a week away, Wed. will be my last crossfit workout, thursday my last bjj workout. I'm feelin' a little nervous, having all those little doubts and fears I enjoy vanquishing with a rear naked. Guard passing and armbar escapes will take most of my energy this week. Since the tournament is in Charlotte I've recruited a friend to come with me. Very thankful for him, known him since I was 6, because as much as I hate driving up to Charlotte at the ass crack of dawn, the idea of driving back, after several sustained beatings, makes me wanna cry. Just think, I win this, I get a samurai sword.

I've been trying to war game my opponents, get some idea of whom my the unknown opposition will be. It may be under 140, but I still may be on the small side of the scale. I should expect some guys to cut weight, possibly as high as from 160. I will probably see a smattering of high school wrestling converts (I think college wrestling experience pretty much equals intermediate group in the eyes of these judges). It's also plausible I will see guys smaller than me. It has been a over a year since I've grappled someone unconditionally smaller than me. Will have to watch my base, and shouldn't be surprised if a smaller guy turns out to be stronger/faster/smellier than me.
javascript:void(0)
I need to be ready for attacks primarily from the guard and take downs. I need to use my judo throws and sweeps, and if he's a wrestler, be ready to go for a sub off a failed sweep attempt.

This the men's over 30 age bracket. I have no idea what to expect conditioning wise, and it wouldn't surprise me if the division was folded into another.

Cough/Hack

Lord God, the last week was awful, just awful. If it wasn't all the damn fighting, it was the bacteria; largely due to the blinding sunshine and humidity of psychic distress, I was a pitree (sp???) dish of coughing, pink eye, insomnia, and laryngitis. Oh what fun the last week was, I meant to examine the relationship between me and G, but reality forced my gaze elsewhere.


So what now? I don't have a lot of time tonight for writing, so just gonna throw a few things out there:

1. Am having a lot second thoughts about a job in the insurance industry
but without the money, I may never get out of here.
2. Having second thoughts about the U of Phoenix position,
but without the money, I may never get out of here.
3. My sister scares me, don't think I've ever made that clear;
something is wrong with her be it psychopathy or some other related disorder
4. G and I had a fight over my friggin sister?? I would rather G say to me
"I just can't forgive you for leaving/the rape/whatever, goodbye" than to end it
because of the goddamn baby-kicker.
5. Tournament in 2 weeks, under 140 beginner divisions. I am gonna crush the
competition. I have A LOT of stuff to work out.
6. The one benefit to everything, is it's left too emotionally exhausted to
obsess over my JKD crush, I have just enough emotional energy for one
fantasy a day.

State of the body: dumb luck (?) edition

Monday night. Grapple time. Fun time. Happy time for all. Oh yeah, and I banged up my left leg. The damn thing was a magnet for damage. I didn't have my gi pants for judo. I took a fall. The landing kinda stung, but I got over it. Later, as we did a roll warm up in grappling, I was paired with a tenth grader, a 282 lbs tenth grader. Lots of energy. New. Enthusiastic. Reckless. He is the StayPuft Marshmallow Man of newbies. He's demonstrated a disturbing habit for improv, which is good for artists, but not good for young grapplers playing with LEGLOCKS. He was locking me with...his weight, I don't know how to describe it, reminiscent of the "Brock Lock" Lesnar used during his WWE run. I tapped fast, very fast. I thought I tapped before he did real damage. Truly, Staypuft is the most dangerous guy on the floor.

Despite a nasty bump and a goofy, but unpredictable neophyte, my leg appeared to be a-okay. It was time for someone safer. I was paired with another heavyweight, a guy with several MMA fights to his credit, to work some half-guard escapes. His ankle casually bumped the large nerve running past the knee.

And that was all she wrote. It's Wednesday and I'm still limping. Could take over a week before I'm walkin' right again. By which point I'm supposed to have a large, black eye style, bruise. Thank God I know how to swim.

JKD curriculum

Had a discussion with Sifu about the path beyond yellow belt. Didn't say much I didn't expect. From a pedagogical stand point, JKD is a bitch to teach because it favors breadth of knowledge over specialization. This includes street and weapons applications; moreover, it is concerned about the interactions amongst various strategies grappling, sparring, striking, and the previously mentioned. For green this can be broken down into ratios, but the higher you go, supposedly, the trickier it gets. Personally, I think the system should have majors and minors ala academia. Sifu fears this will lead to over-specialization. I don't because the JKD base skill set is striking, as long as attendance in phase 1 is compounded by regular/semi regular attendance in phase 2, as well as the study of a third strategy there is little fear of over-specialization. Not to mention, anyone willing to do all of this in the first place is committed to the long haul.

What is problematic for me currently is juggling all the damn classes. Grappling is now 7:30 on tues/thurs This is the same time JKD 2 meets. Jumping between the 2 classes is wacky enough, but what happens come Dec and I decide to pull the trigger on MMA? --The MMA classes btw, are also tues/thurs at 7:30. Argh! And I don't even wanna think about Wing Chung. IF that stands as a JKD req I am gonna be pretty fucked. Grrr.

As an addendum to our discussion I'm gonna ask him about making the triple punch part of the 1 curriculum.

Side note: Last night we ran the gauntlet in grappling. It was strange none of the pros or more experienced guys were there, except Sihing. I was the smallest, followed by that promising wrestler in the 140s, another guy was in the 150s, Sihing is 170, and then a 282 lbs-er built like a squat version of the Stay-pufft Marshmallow Man. I went first and thought those 2 min rounds were gonna kill me (Taking the now ultra hard fitness kb class probably didn't help. It's funny, the rounds are shorter in a gauntlet, and the over all time isn't significantly different from standard rolls, but there's just something about taking on a fresh person coupled with the fact you are being watched. Yes, I think there is a strong psychological motivator involved.

Random Stuff

So this girl, the one with the chastity ring, the one that gives me the school girl crazies, the big bad butterfly fever, the puppy dog mumbles--all of which are symptoms of the hyperbolic verbosity disorder--I noticed she wears stud earrings (I think that's what they are called: simple metal rods with a silver bead at each end. This strikes me as funny, subversive, and possibly grounds for a paradox in the time space continuum. I associate such baubles with pierced lips, prince alberts, and other kinds of genital, heavy metal accessories. In short, they're tools of the bad girl trade, not a demarcation of the Fine Upstanding Evangelical (I have no idea what moral/ethical code she follows, but a chastity or promise ring usually indicates evangelical christian). I don't have much else to say about the issue, other than I hope my girlfriend NEVER EVER reads these entries. And if she does, I hope she remembers the patience and understanding I showed her when the tables were reversed 0:)
(Is that first sentence even close to being grammatically correct??)

Speaking of JKD, Tuesday, Sifu informed the class of my grappling success, praised my development, and stated that if they need help with the grappling portion of the level 2 test I was the one to ask for help. Oh, he also said my grappling was "good" I appreciated the praise and recognition, but I wouldn't call my grappling good...not yet.

Tournament

Saturday's grappling tournament went...well. Despite fears over not winning anything, I had six matches and won three. In the 149 lbs and under no-gi I won my first match in over time (standard time is 6 min) by way of superior position (5 sec rule). I lost the 2nd match to a friggin' teen who was good off his back. (I still should have won it, I got jump guarded for christ's sakes) and then I beat a team mate--a wrestler with no submission exp--for third place. I then wandered over to the Master's No-Gi and fought a couple of ogres. (They outweighed my by at least 40 lbs). I won the first by modified rear naked and lost the 2nd. Both matches were just brutal, my conditioning is good, but apparently still has a ways to go. I placed 2nd in 149 lbs and under. I was tired and made mental errors, I didn't focus, I didn't really want to be there, I was thinking about, ironically, the Master's Gi division I would miss because I was coaching kids. Oh well.

Anti-Climax

So the long winding path to this spring's submission grappling tournament seem to be lacking in momentum: no drama or melodrama because I've been busy trying to secure work, coupled with the banality of training, no that it hasn't had its moments (this is also why my return to blogging was short lived.) How anticlimactic is it? The tournament is this Saturday, and I haven't said one thing about it in weeks. I've been much more concerned with

a) Getting the aforementioned job
b) Making actual progress in JKD--we had a yellow sash (1 stripe) "progress check"
c) the judo tournament yesterday (Sunday)
d) behaving like a fickle 12 year old girl (getting its own post)

BJJ itself is going fine, I suppose. We've started implementing the Carlos Machado curriculum, and I know 3 ways to do a basic sweep, and quite frankly, I wouldn't mind knowing two more.

Not pleased

Tentative Summer teaching schedule is one ten week course that meets in the evening, finishing just late enough to completely wreck two nights of dojo training. Grrrr. Turning my request form in early apparently counted for sweet fuck all. Better start looking for an employment plan B. Excuse me while I go brood in a corner.

Practice

Lately, I've felt impervious, I mean my ego has been impervious, to the tap-outs and the fuck ups and the overwhelming weight and strength and speed of my contemporaries, just another day at the office. This isn't to say I've burned out or don't care anymore, far from it, I'm handling defeat better. I haven't needed to feed off little victories the way I used to. They are still there, a slow improvement in movement,near competency with a couple of sweeps (basic, kimora), and a sense of...flow is beginning to emerge. Now if we had a true technique class I think it would emerge faster, but hey, I'm making the best of what I've got.

Off to JKD soon.

Future Sifu?

On Friday one of the Sifus--call him Sifu Shellshock--approached me about becoming an instructor, noting my pursuit of a broad based skill set and a short handed staff (I'm sure my teaching experience also makes me an attractive candidate). I'd love to teach for the dojo, but since my current status is King of the White Belts, there's not much I'm really qualified to teach. Guess I'd be playing junior instructor for quite some time. (But I do daydream a lot about establishing a true bjj technique class. Then again, I don't see why I couldn't teach a fitness kickboxing class or get a Crossfit cert and teach a straight conditioning class.

Would I be paid? Any extra cash is good cash.

King of the Whitebelts Forever

There was a test, an actual by god test, in JKD last week. New Year, new system, actual monthly tests. I didn't feel any real pressure for most of the test (except when Sifu did the feeding, mostly because it didn't even test up to the yellow belt level, so once again I am a two striped white belt in JKD, but I'm clearly the best boxer of all the white belts. Presumably, I'll be doing a yellow belt test at the end of this month. There is a good chance, I may make green belt by end of the year.

In Judo I'm moving towards my blue belt (white>>green>>blue). I'm in no rush right now to test; I think a lack of randori has hurt my development, and only having one guy who is over 6 ft has given me a few bad habits I have to correct. The good news here is we;re now trying to get in an hour of judo on Mondays and Fridays (I have this dream where one day practice will consists of more than me and the judo brown belt). I'm going to attend a judo camp in the summer, where I should get plenty of randori experience. After that, I'll test for the blue belt (am also hoping to do a judo tournament before that too)

BJJ? Who knows? I like the incorporation of wrestling, but we need more high rep drills, stuff like armbars from the bottom. I did a few in the beginners class and my legs felt like jelly after 10 reps, unacceptable. Are there any solitary drills for practicing those armbars? Would go a long way in developing the strength of my guard too (physically and tactically).

Oh while I'm thinking of it, Monday, the BJJ brown belt had us doing some scramble drills, and really opened up how to approach the mount. If no locks are available or if the person is about to escape, switch to knee to belly, side, back to mount, hell at one point he--how do I describe this?--it was a mount but he monetarily faced the other direction, weight near the chest (not the same as reverse mount in sambo, at least it didn't appear that way)

On bowing and wrestling

This is done for a variety of reasons: entering the dojo, stepping on the mat, leaving the dojo, the beginning of class. All of which can be tied to respect, for the dojo for the instructor, for a philosophy. There are also more practical motivations at work. You bow, but you do not take your eyes off an opponent because he could be sneaky, wack you with your head down.
On occasion a Sifu will interrupt a drill between you and a partner, he corrects you, you bow. The bow in this case signals the teacher believes you are worthy of correction to not bow could be construed as a grave insult.

The Wednesday evening class is mutating into a greco-roman/bjj laboratory. More attention to stand up, take-downs, sprawl, cultivating the swim, etc. Then a bjj technique or two and then we roll.
College boy and I started rolling from a standing position. I came close to taking him down. I hit an inside the leg reap but...nothing. The energy was gone, and he got the best of me as always/ The ending though was different.
"You didn't commit. you didn't put your hips into it"
I've been training for a year; this is the first time he's ever given me constructive criticism.

Nothing Really

Biopsy came back negative. But I got drafted into helping 2 middle aged women out of the hospital tomorrow (outpatient surgery). I really hate when my mother (either parent really) oversteps boundaries like that--and how did it end up being TWO women? Have no idea how much time this will take, but looks like I have a round trip ticket upstate tomorrow. Will I be back in time for practice??

Busy Week

Had to lone mom 2,000.00. Never thought I'd be doing that. Practice is on the ropes.

Very busy week: writing/revising personal statements, helping at office, and all the other crazy ga ga I do...and I may get up tomorrow to do a Muy Thai seminar.

Oh, discovered there is a tourney in GA with an open weight white belt division, making it exactly the same as the average practice for yours truly. Will see if I can interest a few people in going.

I called it

Not just any ole run of the mill gauntlet, we did a take down gauntlet in the mode of wrestling. (before we worked on a few wrestling centric skills, something we should do more of, truthfully).

The gauntlet was unbridled ugliness. Neophytes at the mercy of college and high school wrestlers, or worse, other neophytes. I f'd-up my left big toe, broke the blood vessel under the nail, while birthing two nasty blisters. Now my left foot and both wrists are a collage of adhesive band-aids and tape. I'm Ultimate Mummy, the hip new minimalist design debuting in Marverl Comics very soon (the bandages I wear are merely a metaphor for the bandages....on my heart!!)

I don't think I hit a clean wrestling take down, but once I rocked a guy with a judo shoulder throw, everyone new exactly what to watch for.

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy I hit a judo throw in a no-gui environment. It took me a while to figure out what to go for, as my hip toss attempts were atrocious, and my double legs looked liked a one winged swan dive. I couldn't find the space or the proper set-up, but once I recognized the "insert shoulder throw here stance" I scored my little victory of the day.

My heart rate hasn't been that high in a long time, and good lord I am sore.

Soreness

Yesterday I ran 3 miles before kickboxing, which wouldn't have been a problem if I had waited 3 hours between the two instead of a paltry 90 minutes. Ugh. I am sore, a fused hunk of metal sore...and i have this sneaking suspicion that there will be another gauntlet tonight (either consciously or otherwise they always tend to happen in pairs).

In my day life, it's safe to assume I'm not getting a 14 week section. Girlfriend suggested I apply as a sub. teacher. I'll look into it, but districts may not be hiring until summer if not at all.

For one night, King of the White Belts?

We ran the gauntlet last night in bjj. Two groups split by age. I'm sure I've mentioned how the gauntlet works before, buuuuuuutttt just in case:

one man in the center, everyone else circles around. He goes 1 or 2 minutes with each person. Then a new guy steps in, wash, rinse, repeat.

This particular gauntlet was 2 minute rounds. Center guy starts from a mounted position. In other words, he is underneath the mount. It was hard to judge round lengths because we added a rule about switching guys if there was a tap, so each guy spent approximately 8 min inside, and 8 min outside, give or take an extra roll or two. I managed to submit all the other white belts at least once. And only got submitted by College Boy, Mr. Brown (as in brown belt), and a very strong teen who caught me in an armbar (need to be wiser in my choice of escape tactics for armbar).

I was tired, but it felt good scoring some wins, and not having my ass kicked EVERY SINGLE TIME I rolled.