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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Notes -
April BJJ Notes
-- I traveled to New England see my in-laws for Easter, and I looked up a local gym with a Saturday open mat and called to ask if I could drop in. The owner said if I was just stopping by for the weekend, in lieu of payment I should just bring him a six pack of Yuengling, I brought a case. I'll be honest in this space: I was really nervous about it. I've been going to BJJ at my gym pretty consistently three to five times a week, mostly progressing from losing quickly to losing slowly, and I'm pretty comfortable with rolling with anybody at my gym, comfortable with my level of sucking. But I hadn't yet rolled outside of that community, and I was pretty nervous: that I actually sucked way worse than I thought I sucked and everyone at my gym was just being nice to me, that my gym itself actually sucked and I just didn't realize it because it was all I knew, that I was going to be missing some key element of the game or of etiquette and would look like a fool, that everyone would dislike me for whatever reason. None of that happened, it was fantastic, 99th percentile realistic outcome. I had fun flow rolling with the upper belts who were very helpful, I felt pretty strong rolling with the lower belts, and I was able to hit a lot of things I've been working on at my gym like flower sweeps, and hitting underhooks and wrestling up from bottom half guard. Actually a great experience.
-- The severe bruising that I asked about when I started has more or less totally faded and is no longer a concern. I still have a few small bruises after every class, but it's not longer very painful or large. Among other suggestions I received was a possible deficiency in Vitamin D, and I started taking supplements. That might have worked. It might have also been changes in technique, or adjusting to it (though @self_made_human indicated that was impossible and he knows more than I do).
-- I've now reached the level of relative experience where the coaches ask me to drill with and roll with new sign ups and female students, and now newly signed up female students. I generally hate working with the women and try to avoid it unless directly asked or it comes up when we're all rotating, drilling even moreso than rolling. Nothing personal, I'm happy they are there and having a good time, it just doesn't have any benefits for me personally. I'm close to 200lbs, I need to be extremely gentle to avoid just overpowering a 130lb female, especially with the concern of avoiding being inappropriate. This is even worse when drilling; the other week I had the mortifying experience of one of the girls in class asking me to drill with her, and every single drill started with "Ok, get on top of your partner and put your hands on their chest and put all your weight on them..." Rolling isn't as bad because at least I can just decide not to use techniques that would lead to positions I'm uncomfortable with. I roll with girls if I have to, but I don't seek it out. BJJ is mostly a masculine experience, and a masculine activity, but I reflected recently that it actually makes a lot more sense for women than it does for men from a self defense perspective. A lot of times, the guys (other than the cops) kind of giggle when the coach is going through "self defense" applications for techniques: we are vanishingly unlikely to face a peer fight that matters at all. To beat an untrained person, I could have quit two months ago and been pretty confident, and the odds that I run into another big strong trained guy are low; to say nothing of my being in middle age and having avoided getting into any fights in years and years. For a young woman though, the odds of finding yourself with a larger stronger man on top of you and between your legs, who you want to control and stop, probably without using overly much violence; well I'm not going to turn this into a quibble over statistics but they have a decent chance of being in that situation in their lifetime. So in some ways, I should spare a thought for their needs in class: they might actually be doing something useful here.
-- So what am I getting out of it? I ran into this quote about tennis in Infinite Jest the other day and wrote it down in my notebook:
That's ultimately the goal of all athletics, and the other guy on the mat gives me a better excuse or occasion to explore my limits every week. I've dabbled in a lot of fitness hobbies over the years, and this has me stoked in a way I haven't been in a while. Every day is a challenge, and I can feel that I'm making progress, even if progress just looks like losing slower against the same opponent week over week, or hitting one good move in a round. I still suck, I'll probably always suck I'm not a naturally gifted athlete, but that feeling of progress is addictive.
-- I think my goal going forward is to work on narrowing down the moves I'm using in matches. Work on targeting a limited number of moves, and hitting them consistently, rather than the scattershot approach I've been taking so far. I love my gym for a lot of reasons, but I don't always get the most value out of the daily lessons because sometimes we're talking about seven-step leg locks from De La Riva and I'm just not gonna get it anytime soon. If I can get to the point where I've got a toolbox of a few good sweeps and a few good subs, I'll be way better off. I don't want to say my defense is good, but I'm reasonably decent at bogging things down when I'm in a bad position, and I can often sneak back into half-guard and fight from there. Counterintuitively, I think right now one of my goals needs to be to give up my back more this month. I almost never give up my back, the better players I see often do, so I think the fact that I'm not giving up my back indicates I'm over-valuing protecting my back, and need to take more risks.
onwards and forwards. This is a good bit of progress compared to the winters. I never got to the De La Riva since my coach just wanted us to swing leather, but I am glad that you are doing more complex things. I had brusied lips and a mark from dirlling body kicks. Mostly wrist and ankle injuries though from improper landings and bad takedowns.
Half guards are a weird bjj thing wherein if you train mma, half guard can be death due to strikes, so you miss a lot of these fun tools unless you are specifically training submission wrestling. Leg locks too.
You can now start looking at instructionals too, so Craig Jones has great ones where he, as a submission guy, shows how absic wrestling can counter a lot of submissions but also vice versa in a very effective way. You should try giving your back up with time, there are plenty of times when you cannot get up without doing so. Sakuraba had a non-existent guard and always showed his back as he would be able to shrug off the Brazilians and beat them up again. Great person to see how far limited grappling can go if you are smart enough. Most of the lore around BJJ is completely fake, and the sport has a lot of marketing to make it mystical or at least did back in the day. Sakuraba kinda put a stop to this.
For women, the grappling aspect makes a lot of sense from a layered perspective. Women have piss poor grip strength, if you grab a girl and she is noteicabley strong, you will think twice before engaging with her. Most communication is nonverbal, strength is a cue that you cannot miss even when drunk. If a girl is out and she has rolled with guys who are big, trained and scary before, she will not freak out if some creep acts funny with her. The added benefit of concrete means that usually, one hip toss is enough to fend wierdos off. Submission wrestling is awesome. Do keep us posted.
p.s. beware of finger injuries from using gis. Every gi competitor and many hobbyists get hand issues from gripping the gi. Many might use the gi but would never use grips to save themselves trouble. Also, if you get stacked, just open up the guard even during hard rolls, the vertebrae damage is not spoken about enough.
Again, good work, man. More people can and should pick up basic physical culture and how that allows one to prolong youth and vigor.
On the topic of grip strength, as an aging judoka, I picked up one of those rock climbing finger boards and a peg board. Those are really handy for working the same tendons and joints in a slightly different way, and I think they’ve helped protect me from sport-specific overuse injuries.
I never had a gi since rash guards have replaced them nearly completely in many places. People use a lot of handed finger extension to counter the effects of gripping, my reasons for using it is so reduce damage from using my keyboard.
How long did you practice for?
Bands probably would have been even better for me, actually.
I was a very competitive (within a few state area, not like actually competitive with genuinely good judo players) judoka for about 10 years. Most people, myself included, seem to age out of intensely competitive judo pretty young, even at the amateur level, just from wear and tear. At 30, they put you in the Master’s division for old folks. 😂
This isn't surprising, wrestling is probably even more intense. Submission grappling is the only combat sport you can do forever since even scaled down versions are pretty fun and productive.
I would have done judo had we had any combat sports here. Submission wrestling, the current strain comes out of judos lost groundwork and a lot of inputs from Anglo wrestling forms. Both those things are extinct now sadly.
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