White Roller

It can be tricky rolling with the White Belts. In Gracie Jiu-Jitsu the White Belts don't do it at all. The concept is that they work on basics, and pre-planned drills. Students don't really do free grappling until they earn their Blue Belts.

Sometimes, they want to try it. We have a couple of sessions per week called Open Mat where this would not be inappropriate. Sometimes they roll with each other, but sometimes they want to try somebody with a bit more skill, and they ask Blue Belts to play with them.

This can be fun for both, but generally the higher students have enough knowledge and experience that they could dominate their White Belt partner.

This is a very bad idea. It can be really discouraging to anybody to get so heavily shut out.

Our Blue Belts let the Whites try things out. Sometimes they let things happen, and sometimes they don't. The White Belts know they have a partner that is taking it easy, but even so it is much more fun. The Blue might pull a couple of submissions on the White, and let the White get a couple, too. Everybody wins.

Tonight I was with a White Belt who really likes to push. He is good enough that he is a challenging partner. After a bit, I started using him to test my own technique.

Not the stuff I do all the time, but the things I find unnatural. I wanted to see if they would work on somebody who had never experienced them, and who would go nuts trying to escape. For example, I caught him in the high-low guard control position, and he couldn't get out until I let him.

He got a few submissions on me. I don't think I pulled any on him. The only ones I tried were ones those I've learned lately, and I couldn't get them to work. Clearly I need to work on them a lot more.

It was fun. I look forward to having some of our senior White Belts getting into the Blue Belt class.

More people to regularly roll around with.
 

Leisure

I've been retired for a while now. It hasn't been exactly what I expected.

Today will be the 17^th day that would have been a workday if I hadn't retired.

I thought there would be days for my hobbies, and even days to just do nothing.

My first two days were spend cleaning up our renovation-blighted house for company, and for the next two the visitors were here.

The next five days were spent moving everything in the basement off to one side, ripping up a god-awful lino floor, prepping the concrete, and laying new plank flooring. Helen then announced that “we” should paint that room before anything gets moved back in.

This week has seen me prepping and painting those walls. Today I start on the baseboard trim.

Strangely, my only days off since I retired have been weekends.

Something seems to be wrong.

Metamoris

Last October there was a new kind of Jiu-Jitsu competition.

There were plenty of safety rules, and everything like that. The idea was to move competition a bit closer to Jiu-Jitsu's roots.
 

Usually competition involves accumulation of points over a ten minute period. A successful submission causes instant victory, but otherwise the winner is the competitor with the most points when the buzzer sounds. Points are given for submission attempts, positions, and advancing position.

The October tournament, called Metamoris, had nothing like points or decisions.
 

The matches were 20 minutes long, and if there was no successful submission, then the fight was declared a draw.
 

Of the six matches, three had submissions, and three did not. In the drawn matches I was glad nobody was declared to have won. Nobody in any of those matches deserved to lose.
 

In June they are doing it again at Metamoris II. I was very excited by this recent announcement.
 

Sadly, there is a change. There are still no points, but it is no longer submission-only. At the end of each match that goes the distance, three judges will select the winner.
 

I guess it must have bugged somebody that half of the matches ended in draws.

Last time they tried to make into less of a sport, and this time they are backtracking.

Monthly Trips

As a retired man of leisure, I'd like to do something cool in the way of travel every month. It need not always be something big, but I'd like there to be something.

For the first couple of months, this just won't be possible. Helen doesn't start her year leave until July. I'll call that the start.

July and August are easy. We will be off to Victoria, and Vernon, and camping at Long Beach. At the end of summer we are off on a usual Alaska cruise.

It gets iffy after that. The first couple of months of 2014 will see us in Los Angeles, so that's covered. Christmas will be in Victoria, so that is easy.

That just leaves September, October, and November.

We have family in Victoria that we have been off to visit every Christmas, Spring Break, and Summer. Without the pressure of work, I bet we'll be off there again for a week or so in the fall. That leaves only two months needing trips.

We haven't been to Vegas in several years and are definitely overdue. I bet we'll find some super, off-season deal that we can snap up.

I'm sure something will pop up. Nature abhors a vacuum.

Of coarse, this is just an intellectual game. There is nothing magical or special about month-long slices of time. It all has to fit within the structure of our lives as well.

Helen has tons of music it will all have to fit within, and I have heaps of martial arts. I don't want any trip to mess up my progress until I reach my next level. After that, I am mister flexible.

It's a noble little goal. We shall see.

Club talk

The new Jiu-Jitsu club at the High School seems to be a success.

The numbers have settled down, and we have 16 members. Three are female, 13 are male. They all seem to be really enjoying it. There were a few more who've tried it out for a session or two before moving on.

Being associated with a new crop of beginners always makes me wonder. How far will they go?

How long will they stick with the school club? A couple are about to graduate and will not return in the fall. Will they be inspired to pursue martial arts again some time?

Will any of the kids try start the Gracie Certified Academy over in the next town? If any are really serious this would be a smart move once the high school shuts down for the summer.

Will any ever make that first jump from White Belt up to Blue? It will take a couple of years at the rate we can cover the material in the high school club.

It's fine if they are just around for a while having fun.

It would be really cool if someday there were a Black Belt or two walking around who fondly remember their start at a little high school club on the west coast of Canada.

 

Limits

No limits. Anything is possible.

Not exactly.
 

Can I earn a new level in Jiu-Jitsu and add a stripe to my belt this year? Yes I can and will.
 

Will I continue to progress in rank after that? Is a Purple Belt possible, or a Brown one, or Black?
 

If the training cycle continues at our school, and I never miss training, a second Blue-Belt stripe could happen for me in 2015, a third in 2017, and a 4^th early in 2019. A Purple Belt could be achieved late in 2019. I would be 63.
 

It sounds do-able, but it really isn't.
 

After I get my first stripe later this year, my pace will change. I will continue to train, but we plan on traveling. This will leave big gaps in my knowledge of the curriculum. These days I fix any gaps with private lessons. I will no longer be doing this. Our expenses need to be scaled back and aimed to more important life goals.
 

Big gaps will mean I'll have to repeat the entire training cycle at least once. This will effectively double the time it takes me to gain levels. If the gods of chance are against me, it could triple the time.
 

Assuming a doubling of time to earn rank, I could get to Purple Belt late in 2023. By then I'll be 67 years old. That's over 11 years after first earning my Blue Belt.
 

I might be a Purple Belt someday, but maybe not.
 

Everything is not possible. There are limits.
 

What is certainly possible is that I will continue to train to the best that my situation and body will allow.

The belts and belt stripes are ephemera.

Triple Play

This week could turn out to be huge, in terms of my scooting along through Jiu-Jitsu curriculum.

At my level there are 60 technique units to learn. In a normal week of classes, we progress through one technique.

Some weeks, I take a private lesson and make it through two techniques.

This week, my schedule makes two private lessons possible. This might make my weekly total be three techniques. This is approaching the speed of light.

This alignment of the stars might never occur again, but it's very, very motivating.

Just covering the material doesn't mean I'll have learned it. It means that I'll understand it well enough to drill in it later. It means lots and lots of practice, either alone or with a partner.

But that doesn't matter.

Three technique units in one week is huge.

 

Sport?

There is an ongoing conflict within the martial arts world. It revolves around the purpose and focus of just what a martial art is. Is it a sport, or is it not.

Do you train to get good at dominating other practitioners in the dojo, or at tournaments, or to prepare along a more self-defense line.

An example of this would be competitive Taekwondo. It started as a real-combat oriented martial art, but has now evolved strongly towards sport competition. The best get to the Olympics, and what they can do is truly spectacular. However, the rules force a move away from true combat effectiveness. No face punching allowed, so they never train in punching, and fight with their hands down by their sides. No need to practice face punch awareness. They are also not permitted to catch an opponent’s kick or to take him down.

Jiu-Jitsu also has this conflict. Most of its styles come down on one side or the other over the issue.

I experienced this first hand recently. A Blue Belt visited from another organization. His style was very clearly sport focused. He was young, and very athletic. He didn't really try and learn the techniques presented in either the White or Blue Belt classes. He seemed to just want to apply what he already knew how to do.

For part of the Blue Belt class, he and I rolled a bit. Being young and athletic and focused on sport free rolling, he handled me pretty easily. Did I mention that he's a level higher rank than me? No big deal, but what he was doing was fully sport.

He displayed no awareness at all of striking awareness. I do Gracie Jiu-Jitsu. In it we are always being made aware of real world issues. There are no rules in the real world. Grapple with somebody, and they are likely going to try and hammer your face in.

My visiting partner left massive holes in his real-world defense. I could have landed blows on him at will. It wasn't just defensive holes either. He left way too much space between himself and me, and fought constantly with his head up. This means that every habit of his being is to fight with sport goals in mind.

Don't get me wrong. There's no problem with sport Jiu-Jitsu schools, just as there is no problem with non-sport ones. The problem comes when one doesn't understand just what is going on. Because he could easily “win” when we were doing a grapple-only drill he left feeling we had nothing to offer.

If he'd come back a second time he would have run into a different reality.

It would have started with another White Belt class followed by another for the Blues. In the Blue class we would have reviewed the material from the previous training. So far, pretty identical.

After that we took turns going up against opponents who were wearing boxing gloves. The reason? The gloved enemy acts as a non-grappling, punch-oriented individual.

It is a whole different kettle of fish.

 

Eleven

When I first started Jiu-Jitsu, it was with the intention of training once per week. Very soon that plan was dropped and I attended all the classes I could. That was twice a week.

I added semi-weekly private lessons. After three months I was permitted to attend reflex development. That made it three or four sessions each week.

About then I started dreaming of training at the Gracie headquarters in LA. They have 11 classes per week available for each level. Wow! That is quite a large number of classes; very daunting. I wondered if anybody does all 11 classes.

After 9 months I earned my Blue Belt. I was no longer taking private lessons. Being Blue meant I was training 6 times a week.

The club added two open-mat training times a week. I was there 8 times weekly.

I started privates again. 9 times a week.

The Jiu-Jitsu club started twice a week at the high school. 11 times a week.

Next January we plan on being in LA for a couple of months, with me training at HQ 11 times a week. I expect the classes there to be more intense, but I won't be attending any more sessions than I am right now.

It no longer looks like such a large and daunting number of weekly classes.

It looks very do-able.

Really?

It is my third day of retirement.

So far, it feels a lot like a normal weekend. Perhaps a somewhat better than ordinary weekend. It feels like Easter, which isn't strange as it actually is Easter.

We are visiting with great friends and poking all around Vancouver. We head home Monday. Today we're off to the auto show, and later to see the Oz movie in 3d.

I love eating out, and we've taken every meal in that fashion.

Tomorrow, we head home after breakfast and I can re-establish my routines. I'll see if Shawn can give me a private Jiu-Jitsu lesson. Time to get really back on track.

I need to clean up a few things at the school, too. They haven't hired my real replacement so I have nobody to hand my marks over to. Not exactly fair for the kids, so I'll kill an hour or two and enter them into the computer.

Lots of other chores around home, too. Our yard is set up to need very little care, but it needs its wee bit of Spring work. My bike needs to head into the shop. Both wheels need to be packed with grease.

There might also be a visit from old friends from up north.

It might be a while yet before I have a day where I wake up with nothing I need to do. 

I think then I'll say, "today I am retired."