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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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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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).
Jump in the discussion.
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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.
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.
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. 😂
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