Project Mayhem

First Night Back

Mar 012012

Well, I did it. I returned to training after a 5 month break. Sooo many new faces and I’m happy to say some of them belong to people who are of similar size to me (a very welcome change). Overall the night was pretty rough on me. I had to go outside and puke twice as my conditioning has gotten really really poor. This is probably the number one thing I need to focus on right now which is going to be hard because I can;t stand cardio. It just plain sucks. What sucks more though is having to bow out of a roll becsue you need to puke.

I went into the class with a few things in mind for rolling. I wanted to work on getting grips first and stripping grips. I wanted to avoid getting put in side control. I was pretty successful in this. I had some trouble stripping grips, but I wasnt bad at getting the most advantageous ones and getting them first. My guard was hard to pass and I only ended up stuck in side control once. This is a huge step forward because I usually end up stuck there for the duration of the roll. None of the other white belts could submit me, but neither could I submit them. The purple belt there whipped my arse soundly though.

Overall, my technique was pretty sloppy, but my defence was effective. My cardio… shit! It is good to be back

The Return of the Prodigal Son

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Feb 252012

Gawd… it’s been ages since I trained. Like for fricken EVER. Five months to be exact. So why did I go MIA? There is no simple answer to this, but if I had to sum it in as few words as possible it would be that I just got discouraged… severely.

Let me explain how this came about. At first, work was getting in the way. I work graveyard shifts and in order to train it involves giving up most of my sleep time. The result is that I go to work with very little energy, under perform, and risk the possibility of getting the sack. In addition, with lack of sleep, getting enthused to go to training can be hard. Sooo much physical exertion when all you want to do is catch up on some shut eye. In the end, things just snowballed and I started skipping a few lessons here and there. Before you know it, my class mates are improving in leaps and bounds and I’m stagnating. Guys (much larger to be sure) are dominating me on their first night training. I spent an entire year pretty much trapped in side control under much heavier opponents. That wasn’t fun. In the end I started thinking “what’s the fucking point!”. So I quit.

I didn’t ever come out and go “That’s it I’m never going to training again. I’m over this BJJ thing”. It was more like I just couldn’t get enthused to attend a class. I always meant to return, but kept coming up with excuses not to. “I’m coming down with something”. “I’m injured”. “I’m pretty tired after work today. I’ll go next week”. “I’m out of shape, I’ll go back when I get come cardio back.” The excuses were endless.

I do miss training. I miss the guys. I miss rolling. I miss learning new stuff. So, I’m heading back. Is the work situation different? Nope. I’m just going to have to find a way to deal with it. How? No fucking idea. What I do know is that if I don’t return to training NOW, I’ll never return and I’d hate myself for that. With that in mind, I’ve created a do or die plan. I just contacted my Instructor and told him I was returning on the 29th of February. That way, there is no turning back. If I don’t turn up after telling him I AM turning up I wont ever be able to show my face there again. Here’s hoping the threat of that will kick my arse into gear.

Guard being passed. A mystery.

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Sep 092011

My guard gets passed very easily when rolling and that is the number one reason I end up stuck in side control for 95% of training time. If I have someone in my guard I can keep them there for a very long time so long as I try to do exactly that. That isn’t the problem. The problem arises when I try to do something other than that. I want an active guard. I want my guard to be threatening. As a little guy, I want to feel comfortable in my guard and confident to attack from there. It is, after all, where I am most likely to end up if fighting in a real life altercation. Almost every time, however, that I open my guard to attack or sweep, the side that gets opened gets passed. It is a huge pain in the arse, and I have no idea why. Am I too slow? Am I telegraphing things too much?

I’m starting to experiment with attacks that don’t require me to open my guard, like grabbing a Kimura. The problem with that is that it is a low percentage move for me. Kimuras are a strong man’s move. There are 12 year old girls with more muscle mass than me, so whilst I can get the kimura locked on, I can very rarely finish it. The other things I try are gi chokes, but that is obviously not good in a no-gi situation. All of this however is just a bandaid for the problem. The problem is when my guard opens, it gets passed quickly. I need to figure out why, and to correct this.

Neat 1970′s Gracie video footage

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Sep 032011

I was browsing youtube the other day and came across this little gem. I thought I’d seen most of the early Gracie videos but I had never seen this one before. As it turns out, none of my friends had seen it either so I thought I’d give it a plug here. Rorian, Relson and Rolls are all shown fighting. It’s very cool from an archival perspective. It is also cool from a self defence perspective in that it shows us the same things over and over. 1. Quickly close the distance and clinch. 2. Stay close so as to avoid taking damage. 3. Takedown from clinch. 4. Secure Mount. 5. Work from mount to secure a quick win.

Great Success!

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Sep 022011

Finally! A night training where I managed to mount some kind of effective offence! Much of this year has been spent entirely on the defensive when rolling. I always seemed to be either fending off a guard pass or submission, or stuck under some huge sweaty man whilst he pins me in side control and “rests”, before reefing my arms into position for an Americana. Between bouts of sickness, injuries, and just plain getting beaten up and failing at classes, I was starting to become discouraged. Larger, less skilled guys are able to muscle me into submission, and the smaller guys in the class are far more skilled than me. In an eight month period, I think I only managed to get about 2 submissions when rolling. I don’t mind being submitted. You learn when you get submitted, but it is nice to get a win every now and then, and it is nice to be able to train your top game and offensive techniques. Some people might enjoy being pinned under a large sweaty heaving man. I’m not one of them (what *do* ladies find attractive in that… *shakes head*)!

The other night at training I got to roll with a guy I had never rolled with before. He hasn’t been training as long as me, but he has been training long enough to not totally suck. He is also only about 10 kg (22lb) heavier than me, most of which is his height. Much more manageable than the guys who outweigh me by 40kg. In two five minute rolls I managed to tap him eight times. Seven chokes and one armbar from mount. “Big fucking deal”, I hear you say… “I tap people at training all the time”. Exactly! That’s why this is a big deal for me. I don’t! What it showed me was that I had indeed made some progress. That I had indeed learned the techniques I’d been taught and in the right circumstances could put them into practice. When you are at stage in your training where you are questioning yourself, thinking ” is this really worth the effort”, a few wins like this can help answer that question in a positive way. “Fuck yeah, it’s worth it!”

Another thing that makes this training session awesome was that I tried (and succeeded) in pulling off attacks I had never tried before, primarily due to never being in a position to be able attempt them. There’s not a lot of attacks I know that are effective whilst stuck in side control! In short, I got to train a whole different aspect of my game.

I fully expect to get beaten up and ground to a pulp again for another 8 months, but so long as I get the occasional day like this one… it will all be worth it!

Sick and tired of being sick and tired

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Jul 292011

As noted in my last post, I had returned to training after being sick for around a month or so. Since that time I’ve pretty much faced the exact same problem AGAIN! I returned only to get my shoulder ripped up by a particularly quick and nasty kimura. I took a couple of weeks off to let that heal to a standard where I could use it again (it is still sore to this day btw). I return to training. One class in and then the flu hits me again! Holy shit! My life this year just seems to be injury and sickness and it is giving me the shits. I’m missing out on training, my instructor thinks I’m not serious about training and am just making up excuses, and my class mates are pulling ahead of me in leaps and bounds.

This is Shit!

Back to Training

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Jun 072011

I’ve had pretty close to a month off of training due to illness (staph + flu), but returned last night. It is amazing how much changes in a BJJ school in 4 weeks. New students have appeared that looked at me as being “the new guy” (lol), and the old faces skills seemed to improve 10 fold. I have no idea whether my skills deteriated, my training partner’s skills improved dramatically, or a combination of the two, but I got totally dominated when rolling with them. I have never been tapped that many times in one night. It was amazing. One guy was literally tapping me every 5 seconds. This was cool to see, but was also a little disheartening. It felt like the bad old days before I go those private lessons. I was on my back, either mounted or in side control the entire night. It was a nightmare. I only managed to have someone in my guard once! Hell, the only time I was on top the whole night was when a guy pulled guard on me!

Rather than bitch about it and feel down and out though, I’m going to use that experience to try and spur me on.