Goal is Down

 

Today is a very small big day. I just completed a goal.

I have been a runner since 1990. When the calendar flipped over to 2024 I set myself a wee goal for how far I would average during the year.

My goal wasn’t set to be unrealistically high, nor too low The idea behind doing this it to help me keep motivated. I’ve done this for many years.

For 2024, I decided I would shoot for 7 kilometres per day. Although that is well below the farthest I’ve run in one day, it also wouldn’t leave me crazy exhausted. There are also days when no distance can be racked up at all.

Injury and illness are obvious obstacles, as are extreme weather days. I don’t run at all when there is ice or snow, or during heavy rain. What about when we have guests staying with us, or we are off on a trip someplace exotic?

My goal was set with these kinds of things in mind.

Entire year would total 2,562 kilometres if successful.

I also decided that as was already pretty old, I would accept distance if it was in a self-designated “run” and also in a “walk.”

My most common run-preventing injuries involve my ankles or knees. Often I’m quite able to walk when it would be stupid to run.

As of 9:22am today, my total stands at 2,572.81 kilometres. That means that even if I should stop and not add a single step for the next couple of months, my average per day for the year 2024 would stand at 7.00221 kilometres. I am 221 millimetres over my original objective.

I plan on celebrating by NOT adding any more distance for the rest of the day, drinking a frou-frou coffee, and eating an almond pastry.

Tomorrow I’ll be back at it.

Maybe for 2025 I’ll shoot for 7.25 km per day. I really have no idea.

Google Says

 

I am a long-time student of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu (13 years), and have noticed a recent upswell of people putting the art down.

I used the good-old Google to help me understand. I asked “What are the downsides of Jiu-Jitsu?”

It instantly came back with a lovely little list. Google said;

Cons

• The lack of striking techniques means that jiu-jitsu cannot be regarded as a complete fighting system.
• Jiu-jitsu is often taught as a sport for competition as opposed to self-defence which can result in injury if applied in a real-life altercation.
• Jiu-jitsu typically requires a partner.

I found this a very interesting set of responses, as Google normally just gives a list of web sites that refer to things people ask. My guess is that it is a common question that people want answered.

It is actually a pretty smart list of questions.

The first cites the lack of striking done in Jiu-Jitsu. Typically, this is very true. In sport-based schools they don’t have anything to do with hitting and are totally focused on grappling within the rules of Jiu-Jitsu competition. This, however, is not the complete picture.

In schools that focus more on self-defence students will learn how to handle strikers from day one. It is a huge part of the curriculum. However, even here the focus is not on how to become a striker.

Let’s look at the first well-known public display of a Jiu-Jitsu student going up against an accomplished striker in North America. It happened at the very first UFC event in 1993. A top-ten ranked boxer named Art Jimmerson faced off against Royce Gracie. Jimmerson’s record at the time was 29-5 and he would eventually go on to compete for the WBF world title.

For a little while the two circled each other. Gracie then blitzed in and took Jimmerson down to the mat, and climbed on top. Royce took his time, and just controlled the fight from the top. After about a minute of this, Jimmerson surrendered by tapping out. He later stated that he felt totally helpless, and couldn’t do anything about the situation. The total match lasted 2 minutes and 18 seconds.

In modern MMA this would no longer be the case. All the competitors are well versed in punching, kicking, wrestling, and grappling submissions.

The type of Jiu-Jitsu that Royce Gracie was an expert in had nothing to do with any kind of sport Jiu-Jitsu. He was all about self-defence fighting. He was very well prepared for some guy trying to punch him in the head.

This leads us to Google’s second answer about the weaknesses of Jiu-Jitsu. It is, “often taught as a sport for competition as opposed to self-defence which can result in injury if applied in a real-life altercation.”

Most Jiu-Jitsu schools are focused on sports techniques. While there is a significant overlap between sport fighting and self-defence, they are certainly NOT the same thing.

Let’s say you lock up one of Jiu-Jitsu’s signature moves on a sport partner; a triangle choke. Your partner stands up, lifting you up to his shoulder height. The sport answer to this will be to keep choking, as it is illegal to slam an opponent on the floor. In self-defence you NEVER let an opponent pick you up. Imagine being smashed down with all your and your opponent’s weight hitting concrete pavement.

Sometimes this happens in UFC fights. Although the mat is somewhat forgiving, the slammed competitor is often rendered unable to continue.

This is only one example. What will happen if you are trying to grapple with somebody who is trying to punch your face in at the same time? It is no big deal if you’ve trained and practiced for this eventuality, but horrendous if you have not.

At a school like mine, the entire focus for beginners is self-defence. They never free roll with anybody until they have a good, understanding of techniques that focus on the most likely real-world threats. The absolute minimum time spent on this is 8 months of training. After completing a comprehensive test they are then welcome to join our advanced group which focuses on sport as well as on self-defence. This not only gives students the skills they say they want when they first join up, it also reduces the chance of injury greatly.

The final Google Con to Jiu-Jitsu is one that I can’t argue against at all. It does require at least one training partner. Personally, I’ve tried working with dummy partners, but they are of extremely limited use. Some martial arts are full of drills and katas that work very well solo. Jiu-Jitsu does not. I’d say the most useful thing that can be done solo is watching instruction videos.

Anyhow, that’s what Google says is wrong with Jiu-Jitsu.

Why Anger?

 

Why do electric cars get so much hate?

It makes no sense to me. Why would you care if somebody else wanted to have one?

We have an electric, and our other car is a plug-in hybrid. This really shouldn’t bother you.

Let’s say you are a huge fan of gas-powered cars. Doesn’t our use of mostly electric transportation mean that there will be more gasoline available for other people. There is only so much petroleum out there. You should be happy that I’m not using my “share”.

People site limited vehicle range, and slow charging time as drawbacks to electrics. They also complain about the poor performance in extreme cold.

These are very real limitations. My wife is the principal driver of our electric. It is a Chevy Bolt, and has an official EPA rated range of 417 km with a full charge. Our plug-in hybrid is a Prius Prime. It gets 40 km running electric only. When that runs out it turns into an ordinary, extremely-efficient gas fueled car.

My wife’s car’s range is certainly more than enough for any driving we could do around home. Even my car’s tiny 40 km electric range is normally plenty for me.

On occasion it falls short. Even so, I very rarely buy gas. When 2024 started I had about a half tank of gas. My first fuel purchase happened in July as we were going to be putting on a lot of miles going to visit friends who live far away. When our summer travelling was all done, I again had about a half tank. That will easily last until around Christmas when we go travelling again.

My biggest issue about gas is making sure that I don’t have any that is too old in the tank.

But what about charging?

This can be a real drawback for a lot of people. For us it isn’t. We have a double garage with plenty of electrical outlets. My car takes about 7 hours to do a full recharge.

My wife’s car has a much, much bigger battery. Let’s say we pull into the garage with no juice left in it, and plugged it into a 110 volt outlet with the intention of fully charging it. It would take 80 to 90 hours.

We had a Level Two charger installed. This is similar to getting an outlet put in to handle an electric stove, or a clothes dryer. This reduces the time for a full charge to about 9.5 hours.

If we didn’t have access to our garage, we would not have gotten a fully electric vehicle.

Without easy access to power, the only option would be to use public charging stations. That would be awful. Even at a Level Three charger a full battery takes maybe 3 hours. It’s hard to find accurate numbers for this, as the sources usually only quote getting 160 km in one hour of charging.

Our electric car has never been hooked to a Level Three charger, or to any other pay charging stations at all. We do plug in if a free charging spot is available, but that is certainly not a priority. Let’s say a grocery store has one that is available and we plug in. We’ll be out again within 30 minutes. That would gain us maybe a handful of kilometres. Nice, but not a big deal. Likely the longest we’ve ever sat in such a spot was about an hour.

The latest anti-electric schtick is people who don’t drive such cars complaining that electrics don’t function well in extremely cold weather.

This should come as no surprise to anyone, but electric car batteries are just like all other chemical batteries and don’t function well in 20 degrees below zero. The cars still function, and charge, and drive around but they just don’t have anything like the range they have when temperatures are warmer. A typical Canadian cold snap will reduce an electric cars range by about 50%.

Strangely, even with cold-weather lessened range, electrics do some winter driving tasks better than gas vehicle.

Let’s say you have a prairie house with a lovely garage. Winter hits, and you want to drive to town and have a nice dinner out. If you are electric, you will drive there fine, and back. With a gas car, an hour or so parked at the restaurant will mean starting up to return home might be tricky. You’ll need to warm up your gas engine for a while before you actually head home. An electric doesn’t need warming up. Neither vehicle works as well in the cold as they do when it’s warm.

Might make sense to figure these things into which type of automobile to purchase, but why would any such things make somebody angry that the other type of vehicle exists.

For fun, let me list some cool and fun things about driving electric

The acceleration is insane. My wife’s car is the fastest accelerating car we’ve ever owned. It is nothing like a sports car, just an undersized SUV shaped kinda thing. The fast acceleration is simply a by product of it being electrically powered.

That car also has pretty much nothing to do in terms of servicing. It doesn’t ever get an oil change. There is lubricant, that never needs replacing. It is the heat of gas engines that make the oil go all crappy. Think of your kitchen blender. How often does it need an oil change?

Turns out that most of what goes wrong with gas cars is due the them running full of constant explosions, and volcano-like heat. Electrics don’t have any of that. To keep our new-car warranty fresh, we do have to do a few periodic service visits. The list of what they really do are mostly checks to cabin-air filters, and rotating of tires.

So are electrics for everybody? Of course not. They are best for folks that don’t need them for long range driving. We are a two car family, and head out sometimes on long-drive vacations. Our car that drinks gas handles all of that. We never need our electric car to go anyplace where charging might be tricky, and we fill her up in our garage.

I also hear people talk about how afraid they are about electrics bursting into flames. Really? They drive gas cars that are effectively filled with napalm, and are worried about a battery overheating. Statistically, the chance of having a fire in an electric car is between is about 25 fires for every 100,000 EV vehicles sold. In gas cars it is 1,530 fires per 100,000 petro vehicles sold. That is more than 60 times worse. (Kelly Blue Book figures)

The media tends to focus on electric car fires as that is news, as gas car fires are petty old hat. Interestingly, hybrid cars are the most fire-prone of any. That makes sense, as they have both gas and electric systems built in. For some reason, that doesn’t make the news either.

Collectively, my wife and I have owned six gas cars, one hybrid, one plug-in hybrid, and one electric. All have served our needs well.

Choose Wisely

A lot of people would like to do some sort of physical activity to improve their health, and have trouble deciding what kind of thing to take up

There are million of opinions out there held by people who are already physically active who want to encourage participation in their own favourite activity. They list benefits  of all the good things, but they aren’t really doing the best thing to help you out.

Let me explain.

For a physical activity to provide maximum benefit it has to be done for a very long term. A day won’t do it, nor will a week or a month. A year is a start, but a decade is far better. Life-long participation is the best.

Take me, for example. I have tried going to Yoga classes. I went with friends, some of whom absolutely love it and told me all sorts of great things about it. I found that I hated Yoga. I even managed to hurt myself, which everybody said was impossible, but it turned out it wasn’t.

I didn’t like anything about it. Don’t get me wrong, I can understand what makes it appealing to many, but I’d rather go to the dentist.

I had a pretty good idea that it wasn’t my thing before I tried, but decided to give it a whirl under the subtle pressure of some friends. I even went a bunch of times just to make sure. It never got any better.

So how should somebody choose an activity that will work for them for a very long time?

It’s simple. Find something that you will enjoy. If you enjoy it, you will be much more likely to keep doing it.

I have tried lifting heavy objects, and found it to be absolutely awful. I can’t imagine enjoying going to a gym full of machines and weights, and lifting things for fun. Many swear by it, but it certainly isn’t for me.

Other things hold much more appeal. When we moved to a place in a rural setting, I wondered if I should try running. I had liked it somewhat way back when I was a teen. I wondered if I could make it a mile. I measured one off with the car’s odometer along a very scenic and interesting route. I gave it a shot.

Not only did I make it to the one mile point, but also ran all the way back home. I was hooked. Soon I was running daily, and my distances grew.

Eventually, I stopped improving, due to the stupid aging process. Now, I am extremely happy being able to keep running at all. A good day might hit 10 kilometres, and my average is about 7. I am still running 30 years later. How much good has that done to my bone structure, cardio, and muscle tone compared to the few minutes I’ve spent trying out Yoga, or playing with gym machines, or doing Tai Chi, or playing tennis, or golf?

Maybe for you, tennis sound fun, or maybe swimming is your thing. The plan should be to find something that you will do because you want to. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you will be able to use self-discipline to force yourself into something you that will be a drag.

I have been a student of Jiu-Jitsu for the last 13 years. I love it to bits, and am on the mat every chance that I get.

Let’s say you find bike riding to be your thing. You should do that.  It doesn’t matter what anybody says about some other activity being somewhat more beneficial. Let’s say that you read somewhere that bowling burns more calories per hour (it doesn’t) and you’d rather do that for the greater benefit. That’s great if you like bowling more than biking, or even if it’s exactly the same. Maybe, try them both and pick the one you like the most. That will be the one you’ll do for more hours per week, and for more years of your life. In the long run that will do you far more good than choosing the other. It will also be more enjoyable by far.

People often ask me how I manage to drag myself to Jiu-Jitsu four times a week. The answer is easy. I go because I enjoy it more than staying home watching TV, or fiddling on the internet, or reading, or pretty much anything else.

My strategy works pretty well for me. I trained in Karate from 1982 until 2013. I started running about 34 years ago, and Jiu-Jitsu 13 years back, and am still doing both of those at the age of 68.

Add those three together, and it totals well over 80 years of activity. I’ve been very lucky in finding things that I like to do that also carry strong health benefits.

Good luck with your search.

It's Not a Break

I’m an old guy who has been long-retired from a very-rewarding career teaching high school students.

It’s funny how everybody thinks they have a pretty good understanding about teaching. This is probably because everybody has spent many years in the school system as students.

It’s both amusing and annoying how wrong they are.

I concede that they probably do know how to recognize strong direct teaching.

Let’s look at a very specific example of direct teaching.

You are attending an evening Jiu-Jitsu class. The instructor calls the group together, and explain what will be covered in the lesson. He then demonstrates the first part of the material with a partner. He does this several times, from different angles, and points out all of the non-obvious movements.

He then sends the group off to partner up and work on that first slice of the material.

After a while, he calls the group back in and explains and demonstrates the next slice. The class goes off to work and drill again.

This is repeated until the material has all been covered, and practiced. Typically, a Jiu-Jitsu class lasts an hour. After that the group breaks apart into those who are heading directly home, and those that want to free-roll, or to work with a partner.

Probably half of the class-time hour is direct instruction and the other half of the time the students are trying to master the material in pairs.

I contend that it is the job of the teacher to have as many of his students as possible learning as much as is they can for every moment of the class. To do this he needs to be working during the practice time.

Let’s assume that the instructor is absolutely wonderful at direct teaching, and that while they are explaining and demonstrating every student is fully engaged and paying complete attention to every second. Full marks for that teacher for half of the class time. What about the other half?

During practice time students display a lot of different styles.

Some want to chat for a while with their partner before getting to work; perhaps about the move, but often about something else altogether.

Others get right down to work, but never seem to do more than a two or three repetitions of the move. They then sit about waiting for the call back for the next demonstration.

Others get promptly down to work, and keep doing repetitions right up until the callback.

It is the teacher’s responsibility to get students of type one or two to work more like those of type three.

The practice segments are usually each around five minutes long. It isn’t like anybody will be getting really tired drilling the technique. Even if they are, they will be resting during next demonstration very soon.

So what should the instructor be doing?

The first thing is that they should not be acting as if it is a time for the teacher to be on a break. They should not leave the training area, or hanging off on the side chatting with cronies.

They should find a pair who is getting promptly to work, and intently watch them from just a few feet away. If they are doing OK, the shouldn’t do anything to interfere. Likely there are a dozen things the students could be doing somewhat better, but this is not a time for interfering. If they are not “getting” it at all or if they ask for help then certainly the instructor should jump in. As long as they are good enough, he should watch for a short time, and then move on to another pair.

If he intently watches you practice, and then moves on without interfering, it can be the greatest morale boost ever. I’ve seen students high-five each other when an instructor who supervises this way has wordlessly moved on.

This kind of teaching method also gets students to work. If the teacher hits a group that isn’t practicing, he stares at them for a short time. Under the instructor's gaze, almost every group rapidly gets going on serous practice. If they don’t, he watches then for maybe 20 seconds, and then moves on to the next student pair. It’s like he has just said that they wasted his time and that they also wasted their own.

When using this tactic an entire class is soon in a pattern of getting starting quickly, and continuing right up until they get called back for the next demo. Nobody starts slow or slacks off early.

It’s like the instructor is silently saying that every student's progress is of great importance. He gets more work out of them without making any kind of verbal direction.

This type of instructor movement through the practice segments also makes him extremely accessible to the students for help. He isn’t off at the side chatting. He is giving this class every minute of the hour that he promised, not just the part where he is up at the front directly teaching.

Not every instructor does this kind of thing. In fact, most do not. In fact, most have never considered it part of teaching at all.