State of My Arts

My wife and I have just recently decided that we’re looking to buy a new house.  Wherever we buy, it will have an exercise room, though, sadly, it won’t have a dojang with 12′+ ceilings.  Heh.

That excuses my lack of posting for the last week or so, and will help explain why my posting will sporadic in the future.  Putting the current house on the market is going to take a lot of work.  But I really have no excuse for not posting for a few weeks prior to that.

Training is proceeding apace, and I do have some things in my mind that I’d like to post.  The process of getting it from my head to the computer is the problem.  Kind of a PEBKAC thing going on here.

Training

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

I’ve been out of commission for a while now.  My last full martial arts class was last Wednesday, 11 days ago.  Nine days ago, I went to Friday night’s Hapkido class.  I wasn’t feeling great at the start of class, and got progressively woozier until I decided I kind of had to leave and go home.

Spent the weekend with possibly a mild fever, an increasingly sore throat, and a great deal of lassitude.  The work week was much the same — I worked from home on Monday and Tuesday, went to work on Wednesday (a mistake, which I mitigated by leaving after less than half a day), stayed home on Thursday, then went in on Friday.  Congestion has replaced the sore throat as my primary complaint, but it is also one that screws with the inner ear such that doing martial arts would not be a good idea.

Unfortunately my hunger didn’t go away this week and the combination of eating and not exercising has left me kind of squishy.  With this week being Thanksgiving, I’ll put on some more weight and get more out of shape.  Oh, well.

Training

Before it completely disappears from my mind, I need to give a quick recap of the Portland seminar that was two weeks ago.

The alarm went off at 4:15 AM on Friday.  Quick breakfast, and was picked up for the drive to the airport.  Got there, went through security (slowly), got to the plane on time.  Uneventful flight, one connection in Salt Lake City.  We got in around 12:30 local time, having covered 3,000 or so miles.  It was around 1:15 when we made it to our hotel, which gave me just enough time to unpack my uniforms and rest a bit before being picked up to go to my Hapkido test.

Grand Master Garrison is an amazing martial artist, having trained for over 50 years with some fantastic martial artists over the years.  He’s an old-school type of teacher: if you do something wrong, he’ll let you know in no uncertain terms.  So it’s pretty intimidating when he’s got his eye on you.  The testing panel had around seven 3rd-dans-and-up observing us.  There were 4 of us testing, one for 1st dan, 2 for 2nd dan, and 1 for 3rd dan.

So, that sets the stage.  It is already becoming semi-legendary in our dojang that he took issue with how we came to attention (some of us had fists, some open hands), how we bowed (too deeply), and how we came to ready stance (hands too close to the body and not strong enough).  We went through a number of basics, from horse riding stance punches to moving punches and kicks before we got into more of the meat of the test — movement, locks, throws, falls, and various defenses against punches and grabs.  I came under fire for my 8-point-balance breathing exercise (completely stance and then extending arms), front stance (too much weight on the lead leg), and kote gaeshi (leaving my chin out).  My throws were considered pretty decent.

The four of us were kind of mentally and physically drained by the end of the test, which lasted a bit over an hour and a half.  Most of us stuck around in the parking lot afterwards, rehashed things, and had some food.  Then it was time for the evening session.  By the time that was over, I had been up for 18 hours, travelled 3,000 miles and had 4 hours of martial arts training.  We wrapped it up with dinner afterwards, and I had one of the oddest-named meals I’ve ever had (a Communications Breakdown Burger).

The following day we had a morning session and an afternoon session.  Over the three sessions, we covered a variety of things.  The main focus of the techniques were Tenkan variations, Kote Gaeshi, Osoto Gari, and Tai Otoshi.  The school has a very strong judo focus to it; Grand Master Garrison was an Olympic-caliber judo player in the 60′s, and two of his senior instructors are excellent judo guys as well.  I personally want to get as much exposure to judo as possible, because it is just fantastic stuff, and serves as a great base for just about anything you’d like to do in close-quarter combat.  And I think my new favorite technique is Harai Goshi, even though I’ve hardly ever done it.

Another highlight of the seminar was a talk by one of the instructors who is a police veteran and SWAT team leader.  I personally have never been in a physical confrontation, and it is good to get information from someone who has been there.  He talked about a couple of his favorite techniques.  He likes Kote Gaeshi; once he had the guy in the beginning of the lock and the guy reached behind his back for a gun in his waistband.  He cranked on the lock and flipped the guy up in the air.  As he was coming down, the police officer aimed the guy’s elbow right on the curb of the street.  Really messed up the guy’s arm, but the gun was no longer a problem.  He also likes inside leg kicks and a front heel kick to the chin.  He also tries to avoid any techniques that might lead to exchanging bodily fluids, which eliminates punches to the face.  Very interesting stuff.

We wrapped up the weekend with a dinner party at the Garrisons’ house.  Lots of people, lots of food.  It was a good time, though pretty exhausting.  We got up a bit before 4 AM the next day for the flight back.

We finally got the results of the promotion exam this past Friday, and all 3 of us passed.  So now I’m a 2nd dan in Hapkido.

Hapkido

Last night, I finally went back to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.  I hadn’t been there since last December, so it was great to be back.  The class was a pretty good size, something around 20 people.  Most of the blue belts were familiar, but of course there was a whole new crop of white belts.

Class started off with the normal jog around the gym, inside/outside sliding, backwards running, etc, plus ab work and pushups.  Then we did a couple of partner take down types of drills: from a lockup position, 3 steps back into a single leg takedown as well as 3 steps into a fireman’s carry type of position.  Then we drilled chokes for a while.  Ezekiel chokes from side control, mount, guard, and back control.  I felt pretty good with my progress during the drills.

Then it was time for sparring.  We normally start on our knees to save wear and tear from takedowns.  I worked with a black belt for the first match, which was a slow, semi-cooperative roll.  Felt pretty good.  Then I worked in with another blue belt for the second match.  We worked at a slightly quicker pace, and he was cautious with my shoulder.  I outweigh him by 30 pounds or so, and his preferred style is using the butterfly guard.  So I got plenty of balance work trying to avoid being swept.  No submissions in the five minutes or so we were going.

So I made it out of there without hurting myself, which (for me) is somewhat of an accomplishment.  No pain or dangerous situations with the shoulder.  I got to wear my all-blue ensemble (blue Atama gi, blue rash guard, blue belt) for the first time in quite a while — always a nice change from black and white.

BJJ

I just posted about where I was going with my training.  I thought I’d split this one off into its own post.

I’ve been thinking about what I’m up to in this blog.  When I first thought about having a martial arts-only blog, I thought it’d be great to have a place to share my martial arts thoughts.  But here’s the thing — I’m an introvert, and we introverts can just sit back and think our thoughts and not really feel a need to share them.  I’ve thought about plenty of things I haven’t put on here, which is kind of a shame in a way.  And Wife of State knows that language doesn’t necessarily come naturally to me: when I’m not taciturn, I’m usually laconic.

But that brings up another point: I’m lazy.  My martial arts aren’t lazy, but I am.  One of the goals of martial arts is to use the lesson one learns in the context of the dojang and to apply them to the rest of one’s life.  Well, if so, I’m not there yet.  If I can put things off, I do.  I’ve had things on my to-do list for years.  And I very rarely say to myself: Ooh, what I want to do now is write in my blog.  If I’m not working or at the dojang or otherwise working out, I’m playing computer games, or watching TV shows on the DVR or DVD, or reading books, or one of several other things.

Anyhow, for the next couple of months, I’m going to change up what I’m writing about.  In aggregate, whether I went jogging or lifted weights over the weekend isn’t interesting, and I’m not a fitness professional to turn it into a fitness blogs.  There are several blogs I read that can make class recaps interesting (Steve’s BJJ Blog comes to mind); I don’t have the patience for that.  I’m also not Black Belt Mama who can even make posts about her personal life interesting.  I don’t have the technical expertise of a Wim Demeere or a Patrick Parker. 

I believe that what I should be focusing on are “hot button” items that come up in teaching or in training.  Things that really strike a chord with me for some reason or another.  We’ll see how that goes.  I might be posting less frequently (though, really, is that possible?), but hopefully I’ll actually come up with some worthwhile posts along the way.

Uncategorized