http://olympics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/23/one-way-of-protesting-a-referees-decision/
Ángel Valodia Matos, 31, charged at the referee, Chakir Chelbat of Sweden, after Chelbat disqualified him for taking too long in an injury timeout. Matos angrily pushed another judge, ran at Chelbat and kicked him, and spit on the mat as he was grabbed and ushered out of the arena by security.
I’m still trying to figure out if I’ve attained some level of competency in these two and a half years, or if I’m destined to be a spaz forever. In reality both of these statements are true. I feel like my positional jiu jitsu is coming along, but I don’t have slick submissions like I should have at this point.
My shoulder is still bugging me. These AC joint separations take forever to get to 100%. I’ve been at the point where I can roll no problem for months now, but I still can’t do more than 15 or 20 pushups and I really miss doing wall-balls in my crossfits.
We did flow drills and start-to-finish drills in advanced BJJ class today. Despite all my experience on the mat, I still feel awkward and weird when I do these. This is something that I definately need to do more often. It’s painful because you feel awkward doing it at first, but it is an avenue to filling in all those holes you’ve got in your game. In this post, I talk about how you should do them, and how I only have the patience to do them for warmups, but that’s not true. I don’t have the patience to do them at all. I plan to find a partner I can do this with in preparation for the tournament here in Portland in October.
That’s a recurring problem: I can’t find a partner who is willing to drill for a good solid hour without getting bored and wandering off or talking my ear off. I need to find someone who really wants to work. A good training partner is an essential asset in this sport - and in other sports, I’m sure.
In advanced BJJ, we also covered the X-guard and connected it to the leglocks and tanglefoot we’ve all been working on. The x-guard is cool and interesting, but it’s totally useless in MMA, so I’m loath to spend a lot of time on it. As much sport jiu jitsu as I do, I should probably at least learn the sweeps well enough that I don’t have to run back to my notes when I want to remember how to do them.
Filmed a few years ago, when he’d just become the heavyweight champion in the UFC. This is the weirdest theing I’ve seen all week.
Tim has a reputation for being a shithead but he comes off as a fairly nice guy in this clip. I think I’m going to have to try a grasshopper. Sounds pretty tasty!
Also, observe how awkward it is when he tries to explain a “submission hold” to his date. Fighting isn’t good first-date conversation material, and I’ve noticed most girls (at least where I live) don’t seem to find it sexy at all. At least not as a subject of conversation.
Here is your Moist Towelette - a strong napkin-size towelette, moistened with a lemon-scented cleansing lotion.
Cleans and refreshes when soap and water are not available.
Directions: Tear open packet and use. Dries in seconds, leaving skin soft and smooth.
I remember this food being such a godsend. My father would come home with it in that bucket, and I knew the sweet, crunchy coleslaw, and the perfectly rendered mashed potatoes and gravy were not far off. And the crunchy, greasy chicken? Delicious!
The people at the restaurant were exceedingly friendly and prompt. I’m used to eating fast food at Subway, where I’m pretty sure employees suffer the same instruments normally reserved for cattle (whip, electric prodding device) in the break room, so as not to alarm the customers. Subway’s food might be healthier, but the service is slow and so morose that I’ve actually started to avoid eating there.
I went around a corner to the dining area of this popular fried chicken eatery, and sat at one of the booths. I got about three bites into my coleslaw (just as awesome as I remember it) when I noticed that hard-to-describe odor that you get when people don’t wash themselves properly for more than a day or two, and they sit in one place for a while, leaving behind what I assume to be some kind of puddle, slurry, amalgamate, solution, or sedimentary deposit. That metallic, almost-urine butt-sweat smell. Did you ever go head first on your belly down a slide as a kid? At the playground? I moved to a different table, and the smell wasn’t as bad.
The chicken was just as greasy and crunchy as I remember it being, but I have no taste for it anymore. It’s too salty and it’s alarmingly tender, sloughing off the bones with almost no effort at all. An elderly person could gum this chicken from its bones, were it not for the frialated exoskeleton, easily the most firm part of the entire entree.
There was also a tube of “buttery spread,” probably meant for the biscuit, but the biscuit, unadorned, contained probably an entire stick of butter already. I wondered at the kind of person who would want to add more lard to this already sodden confection. At some point, you might as well just put it into a cup and spoon it out, like a milkshake.
On his way out to a smoke break, an employee asked me “how is everything?” I’m telling you, the service at this place was great. I told him good, and sporked mashed potatoes into my waiting maw. These had appeared on my plastic serving tray, plopped neatly in their divider, still spherical, the way ice cream scoops are in cartoons, with a surfeit of gravy cascading down the sides of it. These, also, were as delicious as I remember them.
After I finished, I tried to read a book for a while, but the girl who’d sold me my dinner was busy pushing chairs around on the tiled floor as she cleaned, producing an uneven clatter at intervals just long enough where I’d relax and settle in before she started with the next chair. I got up and made for the door. She beamed at me.
“You can stay and read if you want, it’s no problem!” she said. I told her it’s okay, and she thanked me and told me to have a good night.
Okay, I’m going to tell you a story about softball. Don’t roll your eyes, this is an awesome story about softball.
It’s the last game of the season in Division II playoffs. Sara Tucholsky takes the bat for the last time in her college career. She’s a senior, a perennial bench-warmer who in her four years has never hit a home run. In fact, she’s only hit the ball 3 times in her last thirty-four times at bat. Against all odds, she slams it over the fence with two runners on the bases, earning a three-run homerun!
As Tucholsky rounds the first base, though, it all goes to hell. Her right ACL gives out and she collapses in agony, unable even to drag herself to the next base. The umpires rule that if she can’t round the bases, they’ll have to put a replacement on first and record her only homerun as a two-run single instead. And her teammates can’t help her.
This is where it gets awesome: The other team’s star slugger, Mallory Holtman, offers to help Tucholsky around the bases. It turns out there’s no rule against getting help from the opposite team, so Holtman and one of her teammates literally carry Tucholsky around the infield, dipping her so she can touch each base and then the home plate with her tippy toes. And this isn’t just a token of pity toward an opponent bound to lose: Tucholsky’s team ends up winning by two runs.
Reading this story, I got a lump in my throat. While I like to think of myself as a good sportsman, I don’t think I am anywhere near this generous to my opponents. I like to win. This story made me feel like a punk.
What about you? Is this the mentality you bring to competition? Are you even this selfless toward your own teammates during circuit training? Does this story at all reflect or resemble the frame of mind you are in when you compete?
As this story shows, the quality of your character is way more important than your competitive record. This isn’t some corny Disney parable where I’m asking you to lose the real battle and win the spiritual one. Even a selfish competitor must realize: history celebrates the honorable fighter, not the cutthroat.
There’s a lot of bad sportsmanship in competitive jiu jitsu and in MMA. The Tito Ortiz “You ain’t trying if you ain’t cheating” philosophy would demand the competitor celebrate Tucholsky’s fall, or maybe even try to drop bricks on her. If Tito were the coach of the opposing team, he would have been jumping for joy in the dugout, cheering his opponent’s misfortune. That’s why Tito is a clown. No matter how well he fights, he’s a poor ambassador for our sport. He won’t be remembered as a great fighter, even if he is a successful one.
Also, he is dating an orange woman who looks almost exactly like a rubber ducky.
(Read the ESPN Story here. Via his awesomeness himself, Ze Frank)
This segment aired on the supposedly enlightened NPR last week, including my local NPR station. I would summarize the infuriating displays of ignorance into a couple of bullet points, but there’s not a sentence in this article that’s free of arrogance, glib assumption, or just plain misinformation. The author even tries to imply that boxing is less violent because “the idea in boxing, which has always styled itself as “the sweet science,” is not to get hit.”
Feel free to hit up the “questions and comments” link in the top-right of that page.
I heard about this segment because my boss brought it up at lunch, and found myself checking off the same old checklist: MMA is less dangerous than boxing and pro football, there’s never been a death in a sanctioned event, etc. The difference between MMA as practiced today and its image in the eyes the public at large is pretty shocking.
On one hand, lots of us complain about what a yahoo the average MMA fan is. But what if more evolved people understood how complex the sport is, and how honorable most of its fighters are? MMA needs better evangelism.
(Bonus: See Dana White verbally jiu-jitsu Bill O’Reilley in a similar segment last year)
Training:
Tonight in our MMA class, we put on our gis and did some sparring under Kyokushin rules. This was a lot of fun. The rules go something like this: No hand strikes to the head, knees and kicks allowed to the face. The fight stops when it goes to the ground. This is pretty sweet because you can bang on each other as hard as you want and, while you might get bruised, you won’t get injured.
The idea here was that MMA fighters are obsessed with strikes to the face, to the point that, while attempting to pass the guard, they’ll get stymied when they could be pounding on their opponent’s legs, stomach, and any number of other targets. Cross-training is rightly seen as a valuable pursuit in other sports, and we profit in the martial arts from checking out other styles. That especially includes MMA and BJJ, which both become more like sports every day, with their own rules and conceits that take them a little further from the “street.”
I really got my ass handed to me. I’ve fallen hopelessly into the trap of becoming a grappling geek, and not even an especially talented one at that. Those Kyokushin guys are tough bastards, I’m sure.
It was good at least to find that I’ve at least gotten more accustomed to getting hit in the months since I first started cross-training in MMA. I’m not sure the term “tougher” applies here so much as “less pathetically fragile.”
On The Ultimate Fighter:
Tapout is everywhere on this fucking show! Every guy is wearing a Tapout hoodie, and not only that, every guy is wearing a different design of Tapout hoodie.
And it’s not just shirts. There’s board shorts, rash guards and gloves. The mats have Tapout logos on them. There are Tapout gloves, and Tapout baseball hats (immaculately white, and worn high and sideways by Matthew Riddle, my first favorite to get ousted) and the same substance-free commercial shown in the prime first half of each commercial break (My goodness, he’s an animal inside! Note that this commercial’s premise could work for any sport, including raquetball and other sports that prominently feature the letters “q” and “u”). I’m looking forward to Tapout Toothpaste.
Tapout is is one of those companies built, like Nike, on the disposable income of fanboys, not so much founded as accreted around the last slide of some voracious young venture capitalist’s PowerPoint presentation. This brand’s prominence on TUF speaks to the relationship between this glamorous young sport and the high precision marketing blitz that sustains it. This is a fraught relationship, the kind which greasy eels like Dana White lubricate so well.
I don’t mean to be a hater, but look at it this way: Tapout is first and foremost a brand, which is penetrating that most delicate of sphincters, your retina, with its purchasing power. The Tapout gear was clearly foisted on these eager beavers who, beleive me, showed up displaying the logo of their home gyms, where patient and stern men have taught them more about themselves than any other school or sport ever did. Notice how that’s swept under the rug: Exclusivity demands that these guys adorn themselves only with the raiments of some soulless corporation, signifying absolutely fucking nothing.
This Upper Decker brought to you by the Tapout Brand Pooper Scooper. God, I can’t wait.
Oh, and speaking of God:
One final thing:
Thanks to James Jon for the heads-up on the image.
In a recent study, some scientists strapped jazz pianists into an MRI and found that the brain suppresses its self-criticism during improvisation and kicks the part that does creativity into overdrive.
The study suggests that the region of the brain that does rational thought (the prefrontal cortex) is an angry little fascist that regulates - or more to the point, inhibits - the rest of the brain. I imagine the prefrontal cortex as a stony-faced little nun who is always sad and angry with you no matter how hard you try (I went to a Catholic school for three years). That’s why alcohol makes you feel more relaxed and less self-conscious before it turns you into a drooling idiot; the first part of your brain that gets shut down is that mean little nun.
Last week I watched Choke, the 1995 documentary about the Vale Tudo Fighting Championship from the same year. In the opening scenes of the movie, Rickson Gracie says this about jiu jitsu:
The most interesting aspect of jiu jitsu is the sensibility of the opponent, the sense of touch, the weight, the momentum, the transition from one movement to another. That’s the amazing thing about it.
You must allow yourself to go as like an automatic pilot. You don’t know exactly where you’re going until the movement happens. Because you cannot anticipate what’s going to happen. You must allow yourself to be in a zero point, in a neutral point and be relaxed and connected with the variations. You pretty much flow with the go. This is a point beyond the knowledge. It’s years and years of playing around, giving this kind of sensibility.
This short passage cuts to the essence of what’s unique about jiu jitsu among other martial arts, including other grappling arts.
I’m not a spiritual person. What most people see as the spiritual or mystical side of martial arts is, for me, a matter of getting in touch with the part of yourself that lies beyond the oppressive little nun, which is to say, to tap 99% of your true potential. The ability to do this is what results in the “point beyond the knowledge” - the ability to flow, to zen out, to find the center, to go on autopilot.
Improvisation and the hard path to zen
Think about it: When you learn a new technique, you’ll follow its alien movement one step at a time. If you keep drilling it after class, you’ll eventually perform the move without having to think too much about the details at all. Then, one day, you might even be able to perform the technique live, against a resisting partner! Still later, you’ll find yourself performing technique after technique before you even knew you were going to do them. An experienced athlete performs the most complicated techniques as a matter of habit, or as Rickson would say, on automatic pilot. The whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts.
By itself, this isn’t all that interesting: you already do it in your everyday life. Say, when you come home with a bag full of groceries and you have to unlock your front door. You might hold the screen door open with your foot while you find the key with one hand, switch the groceries over, and unlock the other door with the other hand. The balance and precision required to do this everyday task are no more demanding than those required, say, for an arm bar from the guard.
The only substantial difference between unlocking your front door and doing an arm bar is that the arm bar is new and unfamiliar. Making it familiar is just a matter of practice.
Dismissing the Inner Fascist
But for most of us, that mean little nun is a huge obstacle to getting that work done. It’s not so much that we’re lazy (although that’s obviously a factor as well) as that we’re afraid of looking awkward, of messing up. The good news is you’re expected to mess up when you start out. The only way to get over the hump is to keep trying new stuff until you get it right. No one should ever be embarrassed to try something new and fall on their face. I have fallen on my face, literally, time and time again in training. It’s all part of the journey.
You should never be embarrassed to try a new technique and fail, or to repeatedly drill even the simplest techniques over and over again. These are the hallmarks of a future black belt in training. When I watch new guys train, I’m not interested in how naturally talented they are. We’ve all seen a million talented guys get frustrated the first time they can’t do something right away and eventually quit. What’s way more inspiring is the guy who sucked at something to start with, but kept at it, and can now do it effortlessly. He’s learned to unlock the front door.
I believe this extends to life outside the gym. Most of us are so terrified of looking awkward that we never try new and difficult things. But there’s the minority that’s willing to get out there and fall down trying. It’s not even a matter of talent. Those who are willing to fall down are the ones that end up getting really good. That’s the difference between the artist and the poseur.
Once you’ve got enough jiu jitsu down deep in that reptile part of you, you will find yourself at that zero point, that flow, that eye in the center of the hurricane. And that is the unique reward of practicing jiu jitsu.
I found out that one of the new guys took Judo when he was a teenager. After class I grabbed him by the collar and started trying to trip him up, and he responded in kind. The scattering class stayed and cheered us on. I’m not sure why this was interesting to anyone else, but it was tons af fun. Our instructor also remained, calling out points as our match progressed. Jay was a black belt in Judo before he took up BJJ. This went on for a couple of throws. Unfortunately the guy was exhausted and ducked out pretty much right away. It definitely brought back memories for him - at one point he disputed my instructor’s refereeing with delight: “All you’re gonna give me for that throw is koka?!I don’t even know what these Japanese words mean. I just love the game. For this guy, it was a flashback to the halcyon days of his teenage chop socky . Those exotic Nipponese polysyllables are magical in the first place. Imagine that on top of the nostalgia of a 31 year old dude getting down with the sport he loved as a kid. He must be so pumped.
Afterward, the guy was glowing. He told me he’d be willing to work on judo whenever I like. (”Any time you want, let’s pull out the crash pad,” he said about eight times.) He left the gym with a huge smile on his face.
A lot of people start training with a friend and end up as training partners. This is super helpful. Lacking this, any new BJJ player should work hard to train with like-minded people. I sharpened my Judo by finding out out who would give into my pleas to practice stand up with me, and keep practicing for an hour or more. When it’s clicking between you and a partner, you’ll go through drills, which are usually a lot more boring than live practice, with zeal. It’s hard to find a partner like that, though. I’ve noticed half of the people I drill with get bored too fast and just want to roll, and the other half chat and joke around instead of focusing on the training. It’s worth the effort to find someone who will geek out with you over the techniques you want to play with.
Bronson