State of My Arts

I had a goal of 194 by Christmas.  Well, I bottomed out at 195.2 last Friday.  But then after pizza at work yesterday and some cookies too ugly for guests… 198.4 this morning.

The remainder of the year will be a lost cause for weight loss, so I’ll pick up the struggle in the new year.  I think I’ll have to start counting calories again to get to my weight goals, and that’s never fun.  Here’s hoping that I figure out how to eat without gaining weight one of these years.

Fitness

Well, I’ve been back at BJJ for nearly 2 months now — minus a couple weeks when I was out sick.  Things are actually starting to come around a bit.  I feel like I’m starting to make a bit of progress again.  I’ve learned a few new things and am slowly remembering things from past years.

The BJJ school has moved, and it is now closer to a five minute drive than a 12-15 minute drive, which is great.  The new place is owned by the BJJ black belt.  In the past, we’ve been in spaces owned by others.  Most recently, we had been in a large TKD school that always had several different classes going on at the same time and felt to me somewhat like a 3-ring circus.  The new space is smaller, and has room for only six pairs of students to spar at the same time, which is plenty on some nights, but last night a few people had to sit out each round.

I’m still one of the worst blue belts — or at least, one of the least effective in sparring, based on my size.  I’m not really particularly competitive with other blue belts my size or larger.  I enjoy sparring with the lighter weights because I get a chance to move and try more things.  Against the bigger guys, I’m in a bit of survival mode, and sometimes I’m not even surviving particularly well.

Yesterday was a pretty good class for me.  I was having some trouble with the moves of the day (a half-mount roll into turtle control, and an open guard roll into an ankle lock), but those eventually came along.  My sparring was middling — I got to work with a lightweight purple belt that I outweight by 45 pounds, and we had a fun roll without any submissions.  I sparred with a young teen orange belt, and worked the move of the day.  I also rolled with two white belts, one of whom was a relative novice, the other is closer to blue belt level.  It was fun to work moves on the novice, though I learned that my arm triangle choke from side control needs some work.

The other item of note regarding BJJ is that with the new location has come a new schedule.  There is no longer a Tuesday class I can go to.  So now I’ll be going Monday and Thursday.  I preferred Tuesday because I could go from teaching TKD to BJJ class on the same night and have Thursday as my workout day off.  But now I’ve got BJJ on Monday, Teaching TKD on Tuesday, Hapkido/Teaching/Advanced TKD on Wednesday, BJJ on Thurs, Hapkido on Friday, and TKD on Saturday.  And that is quite a lot.  We’ll see how it works out.

BJJ

Michele over at Just a Thought has kind of started a meme with a recent post about whether black belts need to teach.  A number of other blogs have chimed in a bit.

It has always been the policy at our dojang that the adult and older teen black belts help out in some way with teaching.  The beginner and intermediate classes are normally broken down into smaller groups after the entire class bows in and warms up together.  The advanced classes aren’t usually subdivided.  Each class has a primary instructor who is responsible for the planning of the class and either running it or delegating all or part of it to other instructors.  The primary instructor breaks down the class into groups and gives the group instructor their plan for the class.

It is a system that works well for us.  Prior our Grandmaster passing away, the Primary’s duties more often just involved running the warmup and then the Grandmaster would break down the class and create the plan for the day.  So perhaps now we’re less connected class-to-class; I’m not always sure what the other instructors have worked on recently, so I’m creating my plans a bit in isolation.  But quality has still remained high, so I know we’re doing lots of things right.

Back to the original point — all adults and near-adults are expected to help out either as a Primary or as an assistant instructor.  And I think that is a very important thing for black belts to do.  As a student, you are focusing on your own training.  Hopefully you are also paying attention to what others are doing, right or wrong.  But the process of teaching others really crystallizes your understanding of what you are doing.

In my mind, a black belt is defined by what they know, not necessarily how proficient they are at doing things themselves.  I’ve trained with too many black belts that I respect but have physical limitations to equate being able to beat people up with being a good martial artist.  To me, progressing in knowledge requires teaching at the black belt level.  Yes, there are still plenty of new things to learn at that point, but teaching helps give a much deeper understanding of what you are doing and why than you can get as just a student.  I can’t even count the number of times I’ve felt confident of my knowledge but then realize when I’m teaching that I’m actually confused by something.

So, I’d have to agree that in a traditional martial arts setting that teaching should be required.

Uncategorized

My workouts are feeling good again.  I still have clogged ears, but everything else has seemingly returned to normal.

Last Friday was a gup test, and I was one of five on the testing panel.  9 students tested, and they all did a great job.  It was a good 2-hour test, and even the young ones maintained focus throughout.

I finally taught the beginner adult TKD class tonight after 3 weeks away (2 weeks sick and 1 week with a family commitment).  We pulled out the mats and worked on rolling and falling.  Four students had never rolled before, so it was good to get them some experience.  We went through front rolls, back rolls, side falls, back fall, front fall.  So we ran the gamut there.  At the end, myself and two other instructors did a couple simple takedowns, and I gave each a hip throw.  Just a litle application of techniques there.

BJJ has been going pretty well.  I still stink at it, but some things are coming along.  Yesterday’s drilling focused on collar chokes, and it is kind of crazy how many variations there are.  Today’s drilling was half-guard sweeps and half-mount passes.  I’m pretty pathetic in half-guard, so it is good to drill that.  Sparring has been a bit of a struggle.  Blue and Purple belts at my size (and some of those smaller than I am) pretty much have their way with me.  Some of the stronger and more experienced white belts battle me to a standstill.  But I managed to get a gi choke on a newly-minted purple belt today (okay, I outweigh him by 45 pounds).  Then he came back with a nice armbar that opened up for him when I was defending a choke attempt.  Last night was about my toughest night: one of the bigger blue belts ran a clinic on me, probably half a dozen different submissions in 10 minutes.  But it is all fun and a good learning experience.

BJJ, TKD, Teaching

Well, the cold I mentioned the last time was a bit more serious.  I finally went to a doctor the day before Thanksgiving, and her diagnosis is that it started as a viral infection, then I got a secondary bacterial ear infection and another bronchial infection as well.  I got put on three prescriptions and am now feeling a lot better, but not back to normal yet.  When I take a deep breath, I start coughing.  Ears are still a bit clogged as well.

It turns out my health problems could be worse.  My Hapkido instructor was out sick with pneumonia, and his symptoms started the same way mine did.  And the guy I was working with at BJJ on Monday had basically the same thing as well, though he went through two separate courses of antibiotics (one of which was the same I took).  So I guess this sort of thing is going around this area.

But, not being one to allow such minor complaints stop me, I started working out again on Monday.  I went to BJJ class, which was a normally-structured class: warmup, techniques, then sparring.  One of the techniques was a half guard sweep, which I should really remember because my half guard is atrocious.  Tuesday I had a family thing to go to, so I did the P90x Chest & Back workout instead of teaching TKD and going to BJJ.  The P90x knocked me down for the count.  I had to pause it twice to catch my breath (and push the nausea down a bit), and even then I couldn’t do nearly as many reps as I normally do.

Tonight was the class trifecta: Hapkido class followed by teaching the TKD intermediates (greens and blues) followed by the red and black belt class.  The Hapkido class wasn’t too physically taxing.  But then I kept the intermediate class pretty high energy since we had two visiting teenage 2nd dans who just moved into the area and are looking for a new school.  Hopefully they had fun.  Anyway, I joined in with most things and gave myself a pretty good workout there.  Then the next class took most of the energy I had left.

Being out sick for several weeks allowed my inner glutton to surface.  My caloric intake remained about the same (until Thanksgiving), but without exercising I put on some weight.  My BJJ partner thought I felt more like 225 than my current 200.  And tonight I told one of the black belts that I put on 6 or 7 pounds in the last few weeks, and she said “Oh, is that all?”.  I’m taking that to mean that I look like I put on more like 15.  Okay, she didn’t really mean it that way, but it makes a better story that way.

Regardless, I need to lose some weight, so I’m trying to eat less without necessarily counting calories.  Trying to get from the 201 I weighed at today down to 194 by Christmas.  Then I’ll screw it up by gorging on cookies, but at least I’ll have gotten down to a better weight before I do.

BJJ, Hapkido, Health, TKD, Teaching