The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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Three months ago I posted that I signed up for a local BJJ gym. The place opened up down the street, and I thought it would be a fun changeup to my routine of lifting, climbing, kettlebells, etc. I’d always vaguely thought it would be fun and valuable to learn a little BJJ, something I always intended to do in the same way that one day I think I might hike the Appalachian Trail or read Proust. Just one of those things that a well-rounded man ought to do. My best friend wanted to sign up at the same time, so I figured that would give me one friend in the gym. I’ve attended, with a gap of a few weeks for in-law obligations followed by the in-laws giving me COVID, an average of 3-4 times a week since the first week of December. Some overly verbose thoughts I’ve been holding in to avoid embarrassing myself in front of and/or boring the piss out of people in my real life with my infinite thoughts about my hobby I’m shitty at:
— This is the best thing I’ve done for my cardio since I was on the rowing team in undergrad. I feel like if I spent a month jogging I might have to change my name to FourAndAHalfHourMarathon. I feel better on the rowing machine, doing long kettlebell sets, and on the mat it is no question. The first month, one round in going hard I was exhausted. After gutting out one and a half more round, I would go home and be in shell shock. Now I can roll three or four decent rounds, walk off the mat, and go home like nothing really happened. Part of that is more efficient technique and calming down, but a lot of it is pure cardio. I’ve always been bad at forcing myself to do cardio, I have a tendency to go for a two mile run and give up after a mile and a half, or to set a goal or getting on the rower four times a week and half ass it for a while before I stop doing it altogether. BJJ forces me to do ten to twenty minutes of hard cardio at the end of every class, because the other guy is on top of me and there’s nothing I can do about it, I’m not forced to set my own pace because my opponent is setting it for me. My wife has commented that I’m getting a lot leaner, though I’m only down about two pounds my abs are noticeably more visible, and I know it’s happening because my wife didn’t just say I’m looking good, she’s getting self-conscious about the possibility I’m looking better than her. I suspect, looking around the gym, that this is noob gains from trying a completely different format of exercise and that they’ll probably max out by June, but there is a ton of value in changing things up entirely, and rolling BJJ is probably about as far from weightlifting as I can get in formatting.
— While I’m a lifting/climbing/fitness enthusiast always working on some goal or other, it’s amazing how going to BJJ has refocused the rest of my fitness routine. "Fight club gets to be your reason for going to the gym and keeping your hair cut short and cutting your nails.” I’m getting on the rower more, I’m stretching and doing yoga, I’m theragun-ing myself regularly, to make sure I’m in peak condition on the mat. And while climbing and lifting have taken a back seat, I’m trying to sneak them in between, because I can feel how the strength I built over ten years gives me an advantage rolling, and I don’t want to lose the few advantages I have. There’s something so satisfying about feeling the results of the numbers I hit in the weight dungeon out on the mat. This is motivating and centering for me in a way other things haven’t been.
— I finally signed up in large part because my childhood best friend, B, signed up too. We figured we would pretty much go together every time. B did martial arts from like ten years old to twenty one, a mixed-up karate studio from what I recall, and had some grappling experience from that. Beyond that, he’s in great shape, runs around ten or fifteen Spartan races every year, typically hitting the podium for three or four Supers (15+ miles) every year. At our first few classes, he was much better than me, simply knowing more and feeling more comfortable on the ground, and also having much better cardio. I’ve actually only made it to about five classes with him in the past three months. We both have responsible adult jobs, and the ability to make it to an evening class just depends how the day is going, so some of that is just B might make it Monday Thursday and Saturday while I make it Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. But a lot of it is that he keeps getting hurt. Way too often. B seems to pick up a knock every third or fourth class and then miss four or five days healing up. B seems to be really held back by injuries, most recently his back is so bad that he’s in “I have to really think about tying my shoes” mode. The first few times we rolled when we started he dominated me, the last time we rolled together last week we were close to even but I was consistently taking the offensive on position. In a lot of ways, I think his mixed grappling experience coming in hurt him, because he was able to attempt things that his body wasn’t ready to do yet, and unwilling to get beat even though he was going to get beat eventually. Ego is the cause of most injuries, a good half sports injury stories starts with “I knew I shouldn’t have done that but…” This has me thinking about injuries in two ways. First of all like when signing an NBA star, the most important skill is availability, if you’re injured you’re not training and getting better. We’ve both been signed up for three months, I’ve attended twice as many classes and rolled three times as much, so at this point I’m getting better; an illustration of how injury avoidance is your most important task in any workout. Second, sustainability of BJJ as a hobby is a tough one. Virtually all the regulars who have been there for a while have suffered injuries, many of them severe and semi-permanent. I’m questioning if this will end up being a lifelong hobby for me for that reason. I’ve had a couple of days where Big John caught me in a guillotine and I had a stiff neck afterward, but it only kept me out for a day or two until I healed up enough to roll again and just tell my partner that if he caught me in a choke put it on slow and I’ll tap early. But I’m trying extra hard right now to avoid injuries and just stay in the game.
— It’s tougher to measure progress in BJJ than other sports I’m used to. The gym I’m attending is small and casual and largely unstructured, there’s one “fundamentals” and one “advanced” class each week, but every other day is “all levels adult,” with adult running from local high school wrestling champs to fifty year old black belts who have been grappling for thirty years to thirty something moderately athletic guys like me. The black belts drop in on the fundamentals class and the advanced class is open to everyone, so even those don’t make much difference. There are probably forty or so total members, five to twenty in any given class any given night, and as near as I can tell I’m just about the last real new guy to sign up. So for me, there are a lot of nights I’m just getting beat on. Progress looks like losing slower, like getting caught in fools mate traps less often, like forcing my opponent to methodically take me down, break full guard, pass half guard, and then fight for a submission instead of just rolling over me. To a large extent setting goals has been thwarted by how variable any given night can feel. One practice I might roll with three guys who are just above my level, another I might roll with two black belts and a 260lb former state champ wrestler. Those two practices are so different that the goals I have for each can’t really be compared. The first three months my goals were things like: get one submission. Get a submission from guard. Get a submission from a dominant position. Hunting for those helped encourage me to avoid being totally passive when rolling, and being willing to accept getting subbed as long as my k/d wasn’t zero. Now I’m thinking more in terms of defense, from learning more about the fundamentals, and I want to focus on getting through twenty minutes on the mat, first without getting subbed, and then without losing guard completely. I don't know if these goals are actually achievable, as my opponents probably have been taking it easy on me and have vast reserves of physical and technical ability that they will unleash on me once I resist. But, hey, at least I'll be more fun for them to roll with.
— I didn’t realize people really did steroids. It’s weird realizing first of all that a decent number of guys are on some kind of dosing cycle or other, and second that a lot of them aren’t that strong. It’s really not the difference maker it is often made out to be. I have nothing against mild steroid use morally, it’s something I would consider in another ten years or so, but I’m just surprised to actually see it. It’s one of those things I’m always surprised when I run into people who actually do it, like hard drugs or leaving your wife for a younger woman. I understand that such things are normal, but I kind of assume they happen somewhere off camera statistically, not right in front of me.
-- I avoid rolling with the women in class like the plague. Because I truly have no idea what to do when I'm rolling with them. I don't want to just muscle them around, but I don't want to play pattycake, but I don't want to disrespect them, I don't know. There's just no winning that one.
— I’m dumping so many thoughts here because I’m embarrassed to talk about it too much to friends and family irl because, well, I suck. At what point is it even a remotely interesting hobby? When one enters a tournament? Wins one? After a year? Three? Ten? It just feels so odd to talk about a new hobby one sucks at as an adult.
-- I'm trying to resist the urge to get into BJJ culture. I don't want to read too much about BJJ, get into the debates I hear around the gym that I know are raging somewhere on the internet. I've always over-intellectualized things, this is an experiment for me in just doing the damn thing.
Since my HEMA club is two hours away by car, and the nearest other club is hardly any closer, I've barely made it to training at all in the last year, and not at all this year since me and my family have been getting sick repeatedly now that my daughter is going to Kindergarten and bringing home all the good stuff (flu, it's always the flu).
So I signed up for a nearby "grappling" (read: BJJ) school a few weeks ago. And never made it there because I'm either sick or taking care of sick people.
By the time I do make it there, I will have been out of serious training for about five years, am thoroughly out of shape and with a few permanent injuries to boot. I can only imagine that the reaction of the people there will be something in between "this guy is made of paper WTF do we do with him" and "please go to the gym first, come back next year".
I highly doubt it. Most gyms are used to people made of paper with bad cardio. I'm bottom tier in natural grace/athleticism/coordination to begin with, and no one has been anything but welcoming, the only shame or difficulty I've faced has been self-inflicted and the only annoyance has been imagined. If you've been doing HEMA, you're going to be used to the coordination of martial arts and that will help you much more than overhead pressing bodyweight in the way of not annoying the piss out of everyone by not getting how to do the thing.
And, if anything, me and the couple of guys who are about at my level (the basement) joke that we desperately want a "little brother" to join so we all move up a spot on the org chart. When I joined, I kind of thought everyone was being nice to me in a fake external way, and actually despised and mocked me in their heart of hearts because I sucked, I was a weird old guy who sucked and couldn't figure out basic stuff. Now I realize that for the other white belts, especially the other big fellas, I was a willing warm body that would let them take the offensive and feel good at BJJ.
Fair point, getting to slowboat technique on a newbie whom you don't need to go with 100% at to stand a chance actually is valuable in its own way.
My coach has said (not to me, as it would be useless advice for me) that, ideally, when prepping for a comp a few months out you should have at least two thirds of your rolls against people worse than you, because you'll be able to try new things and get better at them, where in hard rolls you'll fall back on what you are good at and play conservatively. Against a newbie you can try new things, and figure out how to do them well. Right now, I get that in 1/20 rolls, because the only guys worse than me barely show up, or don't roll that much because they get exhausted after one round.
I can't speak for every gym, but everyone at mine had been welcoming and helpful. The better guys reach out to make sure I'm making progress, keep an eye on me. When they kick my ass they're full of compliments and tips. "This was good, this was stupid, you're actually decent at abc for a second there but you need to add xyz to really pull it off."
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