Taking it easy

179 lbs!

I took three days off from the gym and today, by the end of work, I was looking forward to going in to train. I realized how I’ve been forcing myself into it for a few weeks at least. Once I got there, I got about halfway through class and I was getting impatient for it to end. This wasn’t even a class with live training. I’m definitely burnt out.

Anyway, so more about what I’ve been doing. I trained for two fights that I didn’t end up having. The first time, as I said in my last post, was just to see if I could hack it. The second time, I was on the list to fight in a local MMA production as an amateur. This means the gloves are a little bigger, you wear shin pads, and the rounds are shorter (three minute rounds instead of five). I was looking for a catch weight of 175 and didn’t end up getting a fight. So that’s two times I’ve gone through the fight training.

I’ll talk in more detail in a later post about what fight training is like. What it comes down to in the end is, no matter how dedicated someone is, at the end of the day you’re there for fun and/or your own edification, and you train accordingly. If your foot hurts or you’re tired, you’ll skip a class. It’s no problem. But when you’re training for a fight, it’s literally another part time job. You show up six times a week, whether you want to or not, and you train hard.

I met my goals, though! My conditioning is awesome – I don’t get tired nearly as quickly as I used to in stress situations like high-intensity kickboxing. And the weight loss was really significant. It was the most drastic change I’ve seen in my body since I first started taking martial arts and took off all the baby fat. My weight has stabilized at about 180 lbs, from a starting high of about 194 and a low of 172. That means I lost about 14 lbs, and was able to cut 8 lbs of water weight on top of that. MASSIVE JUSTICE !! I’ll talk more about how I did that in a later post too.

Anyway. For now that is all.

chronically overtrained

I have been training my ass off for the last few months. I’ve gone through two training cycles for two different fights. The first time my instructor had me go through the training to see whether I could hack it, and the second time I was on the list, but the promoter didn’t find a match for me. I’ve cut my weight from 195 lbs down to 182 in the first fight cycle, then down to 172 in the second.

I felt really good at the end of the second fight cycle, but now I’m starting to feel broken down. Obviously I’ve been overtraining and I need to give myself a break. Speaking of overtraining and recovery, I ordered another copy of The New Toughness Training for Sports by James E Loehr. I’m going to review this book in detail in a later post; It’s been a major inspiration for me, and a road map for getting my head in the game before competition. But I haven’t followed it very deeply and I think I have a lot to learn from a second reading.

I’ve learned some cool new jiu jitsu, which I’ll also talk about later, but I’ve mostly been kickboxing. I’ve been working on kicking into punch combinations, the thai clinch, and on body conditioning. It’s insane how tough a good kickboxer’s shins are. They can kick metal posts pretty hard without flinching.

An Elite Competitor Prepares for Battle

(My school competed in a local tournament on Sunday. I won both my divisions and got promoted to purple belt! More about that later. This post is reprinted from my school’s private ning site.)

Think you can roll with the big doggs? Think again.

After a day of watching over us at the Academy, Eager brought some of us along to one of his pre-tournament rituals. It’s not often you get to see a master like Shawn Eager endure one of the ordeals that make him so superior as an athlete and, quite frankly, as a person.

We all have routines we go through before a tournament. Some people like to soak their hands in water and herbs. Others refrain from earthly things, fasting and abstaining from sex. My ritual includes a lot of finger biting, shallow breathing, and talking to my mother on the phone for an hour or more. Pretty average stuff. Shawn Eager is no average man, however, and his pre-tournament ritual is no average event.

You see, Herb’s Gully has a promotion where, if you eat three burritos within an hour, you eat them for free. No going to the bathroom, no puking. Just you, 60 minutes, and two full kilograms of burrito. This is hardcore burrito destruction from the streets, like how it used to be. Welcome to the big leagues, baby. You can leave your little bib at the door.

Some would call this madness.

Rollin’ large

I agreed to come along, but only after Eager assured me that there would be no danger to my person. “What I do may seem crazy to the average guy,” he said. “But as crazy as things get, I will never let a teammate come to harm.” That’s the kind of man that Eager is.

So was he successful? In a word, yes. Yes, Eager ate three huge burritos the day before the Freestyle Grappling Open. I only ate one. You might say that I’m a third the man that he is. I would say that’s being pretty generous to me.

He is a champion. Our champion. The tournament hasn’t even been held yet, and Shawn is already a winner.

MAN.

How it all went down

He started strong. I didn’t even see the first burrito go into his mouth. But I did manage to stap a photo of him here, charging headlong into the second burrito.

When you’ve attained mastery, your form is as beautiful as it is effective. Is Eager merely thinking about his next move, or has he attained a state of zen in which the next move flows freely from within? I don’t need to tell you what I think.

Just look at the form on this attack. The economy of movement. The grace. The power.

Witness, as I did, the moment of victory. I felt a primordial desire to leap to my feet and salute. And I did, but I not before snapping this photo.

Boxing, Weaving, Crossfitting

Inoculating the new guys against our furious technique

Every now and then, our instructor will teach an advanced class that all of the experienced guys pick right up and start using all at once. For a week or two, you’ll suddenly see that move every time people roll. Then, even the guys who didn’t learn the technique catch on and learn how to defend against it. It’s interesting how a technique blows through the gym like that, and how the new guys indirectly benefit: Add that technique to the growing list of moves they don’t know yet, but that they can defend against. It’s like a virus that takes over for a while, and then the organism develops antibodies. When our new guys go to tournaments, they will be ready against advanced techniques that they haven’t even learned yet.

Tanglefoot and The open guard weave

The latest fad at my gym was the leglock and tanglefoot game that I’ve <a href=”http://sevenbreaths.wordpress.com/2008/08/04/21/”>talked about before.</a> One of the instructors has gotten good at stepping back directly to the tanglefoot instead of attacking the kneebar first. It’s a slick setup, and I wasn’t able to squirm out of it even though I knew exactly what he was doing. I’m also working on getting better at the weave, an open guard technique where you thread one leg behind one of his legs and put the top of that foot against the hip on the opposite side. The sweeps from this position are a lot like those in the x-guard. In fact, this position is like a reverse version of the x-guard.

Boxing!

I’ve been working hard on my striking. I’m trying to tamp down my flinch reflex, which is keeping me from being able to relax and throw back. Yesterday I boxed for the better part of an hour with my boy Casey and he said I did a good job throwing three and four punch combos rather than the jabs and two-punch combos that are all newbies can usually dish out. Boxing is a lot of fun! It’s like a twitchy video game, played at warp speed compared to the slow churning of a grappling match.

Casey did a really good job of keeping the pace and the power he was using at a level I could handle. He did rock me with a hook to the temple at one point, though. The lights went out for a split second and I had to catch my balance. Fun stuff!

Working out!

I did a crossfit, too, for the first time in weeks. I’m looking to get my fitness back on track. Since I got a desk job it’s been a lot harder not to go soft in my habits out of the gym. I eat too much, I drink too much coffee, I drink too much booze.

Boom Headshot!

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.

Tomoe Nage!

Personal BJJ update

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.

Tim Silvia on Blind Date (!?)

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.

I ate out today

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.

---

These were comforting words to my bleary eyes this Tuesday night. I found them printed on the back of a small square tab I found in a plastic sleeve, along with the spork and napkin that came with my three-piece leg-and-thigh meal at a popular fried chicken establishment.

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.

Are you a sportsman or a punk?

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)