BJJ, 12/10/15, and a Rant

I'm kind of frustrated. I've been thinking lately about the typical BJJ pedagogy. At least it's typical to every BJJ school I've ever been to: About half the class (if that) is warming up / stretching, and learning and drilling a technique or two, and the other half of the class is spent rolling. BJJ guys take some pride in the fact that it takes SO long to get a black belt (~ 10 years), but I think the same level of proficiency could be achieved in a much shorter time if more time was spent on technical work, and less on drilling, up till purple belt or so.

I'm not saying eliminate live rolling for lower ranks, just spend more time building a foundation. Rener Gracie has been a big proponent of a similar method (his students don't roll until blue belt). His reasoning is that jiu-jitsu is a martial art designed for weaker people, but the typical approach weeds out weaker people so only the tougher ones ever make it past white belt. I know that's a generalization, and people will argue, but speaking from the perspective of a weaker person, who gets frustrated when he can't do anything with higher ranks (or even other white belts, depending on their experience), I agree with him. Most people aren't going to keep taking that kind of punishment long term. Yes, sticking with it will make them stronger, but it's questionable whether they will stick with it.

There are a few reasons I think it can be so punishing. First, like I said, there isn't enough of a foundation when you first begin. You're expected to learn by experience as you go. "Oh (six months later), I see that letting my elbow get far away from my body opens me up to an attack".  Why not teach things like that on the front end instead of waiting for the universe to reveal it to them. Thankfully I've got enough experience (and had some exceptional teachers) to know enough fundamentals to at least survive for a little while against better grapplers. Secondly, I don't know what it is, but I find Judo's spirit of Jita Kyoei ("Mutual welfare and benefit", or as Pat puts it "you and me getting better together") is missing from every BJJ school I've been in. The typical student (especially white belt, but I've rolled with some blues like this too) just goes so hard in rolling, like there's money on the line. If live rolling is supposed to be a learning experience, it just doesn't strike me as the most efficient way to learn something, going pedal to the medal, all-out, out of the gate. This approach seems to be encouraged (or at least not discouraged) by the instructors. This might sound like whining, and maybe it is; I just feel like it's a shame that jiu-jitsu could be such a beautiful art, but it gets "thugged up", and a lot of the gracefulness is obscured by current training methods.

That brings me to today's class. A guy I'll call Captain Sambo was teaching the class, and had a room full of white belts doing an advanced rolling armlock (we did some basic ones first, as well as some grip breaks). Basically, the white belt I was drilling with was not being at all cooperative. He was trying to stop me from drilling every move we were working on. I don't know if he thought he was doing them better than me because I was actually letting him practice the techniques, but whatever. I just had to work a lot harder to get them to work, and they didn't look as pretty. He was much newer than me, so he probably just didn't know how to be a good drilling partner. Anyway, he was going hard even during drilling. Like he didn't get the point that there was no trophy up for grabs, and we were supposed to be learning the techniques. During the rolling armlock thing, the guy hyper-extended my elbow. Kind of badly. It didn't hurt as badly during the rest of the class as it does now, but it seems to be hurting more and more. Anyway, I was able to finish the class, but don't think I'll make it to tomorrow's class if it's not feeling much better.

To sum up the rest of the class, I rolled with the same white belt first. He was huffing and puffing, and going all out, but I survived everything he tried. I stayed safe, but couldn't work on much offense. Still valuable I guess. Good thing he didn't have a knife.  We started each round standing, and the next white belt I went against seemed like he really wanted to throw me with deashi. I countered with a fine tsubame gaeshi and dropped him soundly. Then I went with a black belt, and of course got nowhere. Next roll was with a white belt that I pressured pretty well the whole time, and submitted him once. Last roll, another white belt, strong guy, that got me with an armbar on my by-then-hurting-much-worse arm.

I'm considering not doing BJJ any more. I still enjoy the kickboxing class a couple mornings per week, so I'll probably continue doing those. I'm still doing Judo a couple nights per week at a much cooler school anyway.  I need to reevaluate whether it's worth me continuing to do BJJ there. It's a sport-oriented school, anyway, so maybe the effort I'm putting in doesn't have enough of a payoff given my personal goals and interests. I guess I was hoping getting more mat time in during the week would help my Judo. Maybe I can still drill with friends a couple times a week for lunch. We'll see.

Karate Konundrum

I love karate. A few things I like about it are:

• Solo Kata. Karate has way more in the way of solo practice methods than judo or aikido. 
• Paired kata-based drills. The stuff Iain Abernethy does with regard to kata-based sparring really helps make traditional karate work as a practical means of self-defense
• Legacy. I just really like the history and rich tradition of karate. 

But as I've said before, it's hard to get training in karate around here. I mean, there are a ton of karate dojos, but very few of them are what I'd consider legit. Of those, the schedules don't work for me, and the teachers I've reached out to aren't keen on doing private lessons. My current Shotokan teacher has been okay, but lately he hasn't been available for lessons. I't been about 3 weeks since I've been able to train with him.

Even though karate provides for solo training, when I'm not doing regular lessons, I'm finding it hard to stay motivated to practice at home regularly. That's on me. 

For all the reasons above, I chose karate for my striking discipline, but if it's increasingly difficult to train, it may not be the best choice for me. Since my main concern is self-defense, the Shotokan I'm learning has to be heavily supplemented anyway. I'm wondering if I should switch over to another striking art. It would have to be something more modern like Krav Maga/Combatives and/or kickboxing/Muay Thai. I think either of those would be easier (more efficient) to learn than karate, and there's a lot of kickboxing around here, even at my judo club. I also have some guys at work that might be interested in kickboxing with me during lunch breaks. 

Even if I stop karate lessons, I can still practice the two kata I know in my free time (heian shodan and nidan). I'm not sure what I'm gonna do yet. Just putting thoughts-to-keyboard to try to sort it out. 

New Dojo / Training Room!

After we got back from family vacation, my daughter and I switched our rooms around - her bedroom moved to my workout room and vice versa. Since we were moving, we decided to paint and put new floors down. With my wife's help, we turned the new workout room into a "convertible" training room / dojo!  She was nice enough to let me adorn the walls with lots of cool stuff too. Pictures below!


I put a small (32 inch) TV on the wall with a built-in DVD player. Then put a shelf under it with all my martial arts and workout DVDs and books.  That's a karate kanji to the right of the TV, and a krav maga symbol above it. My aikido shodan certificate hangs to the left. There's a "Keep Calm and Carry On" sign above the door.

The closet, with an aikido kanji to the left, and judo to the right.

My new weight bench & mat, and my grappling dummy punching bag. This wall was left blank because I'm thinking of putting a folding weight rack on it later in the year. For now, dumbbell workouts are fine for me.

The fourth wall, with a Gracie Jiu-Jitsu triangle to the left of the window, and "Pierson's Three Pillars" to the right, haha!

One of my favorite things about the room is how quickly and easily I can make space:

Everything fits in the closet completely, and I have a dumbbell rack in there as well. Takes about 30 seconds to go from workout room to empty space:

With the floors clear, I have enough room for karate kata and floor work, or I can put down my 8'x8' mats for throwing or grappling. The 8x8 is okay for now, but I plan on replacing it with a 10'x10' roll-out Dollamur mat when I'm able to.

Along with the new mats and weight rack, future plans include a heavy bag, and maybe a throwing dummy. Hope you enjoyed the tour! 

Aikido Buddies Gathering, April 2011

I was happy to be able to make the Saturday session for this Spring's Aikido Buddies Gathering this weekend. Pat led us in an exploration of 2-hand grabs in Koryu Dai Ichi and we had a really good time playing with it. There was some very cool stuff in there.

Some of the guys from Starkville came down; it was great getting to train with Dr. Usher, Chops, Ross, and Tony. It was nice seeing Andy again too, and training with Jason, Kel, and good to meet Kevin, a striker who's a little new to Aikido.

One of the highlights to me was getting to play almost-full-speed randori with Andy for a while... Pat and I normally practive very slowly, and Pat has probably 20+ years experience on me, so it was nice to see the effect of our normal training expressed in a more chaotic situation with someone closer to my level.

Bottom line: wow, the day was really fun. We ended with Kel's shodan demo and promotion. Big congratulations to him!

Back Again

Where do I start? My training has been very topsy-turvy the past few months. I'll try to summarize what's been happening.

Since I've been training at Pat's, I've been getting up at 5:30am most Saturdays, and driving almost an hour and a half to his dojo (one-way). That drive began to get really old. So four or five months ago, I made the difficult decision to stop training there, at least temporarily, but possibly for good. I was still training BJJ at the local Gracie Barra school at the time, and thought I would a) get out of BJJ what I loved about judo, and b) be able to just discontinue my aikido training.

I was wrong on both counts. Training at the GB school wasn't like training at Pat's. I've since stopped training there for two main reasons: First, on the nights I trained, I didn't see my lettle girl at all. I left for work before she was awake, and got home after she was asleep. That's okay for some people, but I didn't like it. I spend enough time away from my family during the day, for my taste. Secondly, I was tired of rolling with people who didn't wash their gis. It seemed like a third of the people I rolled with there smelled like sour milk.....or worse. I didn't want to learn the art that badly.

As far as thinking I'd be able to cope with not training aikido any more, that was just silly thinking. Aikido is what I consider my "main" discipline (even though I'm still pretty new), and by far my favorite.

I addition, I felt Pat's philosophy of martial arts in general lined up with my own, and that's not something that's easy to find, especially not around here.

So after much consideration, I decided it was indeed worth it to continue making the drive to Pat's every week. Maybe all I needed was a break to get a second wind. But once the decision was made to resume, for several weeks, things kept coming up that prevented me from returning. Talk about discouraging.

But the encouraging thing is I'm back. I made it back to the dojo yesterday for the first time in four or five months, and it was great. I'll return to posting regular training logs and other stuff on this new blog.

There are lots of exciting things coming up in terms of my training, our dojo, and our organization, that I'll touch on when the times are right. For now, stay tuned.

It's really good to be back.

~todd