Cruise123

It's little before 6am. I'm sitting 13 decks up on a pleasure ship that's literally twice the size of the Titanic.

It is the first morning out of Vancouver. Lots of folks are up and about watching the rocky BC coastline slide by. It's a lazy trip so far. The ship is running at only about 14 knots, likely until we clear the northern tip of Vancouver island.

My knee is acting stupid. I have an MRI scheduled for the day we get back, and on board I'm one of the elevator people. Our folding bikes stayed home.

The knee is a bit annoying, but it would be so wherever we would be, so why not be on a cruise ship. Thats my philosophy.

As always, we are travelling with our three, dear cruise buddies. We're getting to know the Alaska cruise-stop towns like the backs of our hands.

As much as I adore these northern cruises, I am greatly looking forward to one someplace more exotic and warm. I suspect both the Caribbean and Mediterranean are not very far off.

Am am missing out on my usual on-board maniac use of the exercise facilities.

Maybe I can compensate with extra eating.

........

What do you do on a ship? You've got to be kidding me.

I'm a early riser. At home, I set up in front of the TV with a big mug of coffee, and with my ipad and laptop. That's good until Helen is up a couple of hours later.

At sea, I went and searched out coffee, and sat with my ipad for a couple of hours watching the sea, and the shore, and the other early risers.

It was breakfast in the formal dining room, then a bit of wandering about. I ignored the myriad opportunities for exercise, lessons, games, and lectures. I watched the sea a bit, but not like the crazed whale spotters. Had to ice my knee for a bit back in the room, then had a wee nap.

Lunchtime, then an afternoon much like the morning with the addition of an hour in the spa's thermal suite.

In there are an assortment of hot, cold, and scented showers, and a couple of different intensity steam rooms. I ignored all of these in favour of lounging on the heated ceramic chairs. Imagine a continuous and inexhaustible heat slowly infusing every muscle down your back, butt, and legs.

Then it's suppertime, followed by a Vegas/Broadway quality show of singing and dancing. I usually collapse into my bed shortly after that, but many do the bar thing as well.

Tomorrow is a port day. Those are much the same, but with a quaint little town tied up next door to explore if one wishes. We usually go in for a couple of touristy hours before getting homesick for our ship.

........

On board ship, my knee is better than I'd feared, but worse than I'd hoped.

The poor thing is getting pushed much harder than it was at home. Cruise ships are very large beasts, and there is a lot of walking involved. The knee needs ice every so often.

Today we will be in Ketchikan. It's a cute little place which gets swamped with cruise ship people the season. They get between two and four ships each day. Somehow, it still manages to feel like a real town as soon as you get a block or two away from the piers. I won't be going in to town. Might get just off the ship to a place with wifi, but maybe not. Could be a good recovery day.

It is later now. I'm set up with ice packs and such in a spot with a lovely view towards town. Helen and Lola and Bernie are down below getting ready to head ashore to wander and shop. My next move other than the restroom will be at lunch. There they go now, on foot,heading to downtown. It's nice being 11 stories up in a non-vertically-built town.

We are all too cheap to pay cruise ship rates for wifi, so I'm listening to previously downloaded audiobooks and podcasts.

Pace

I am really impressed with the newer half of our Blue Belts. They are learning at a pace that would fry my brain.

Let me explain.

We used to do the first level of Blue Belt material undistracted, and at a pace that would get us through in 21 months. Now, we complete the same material in 14 months. The curriculum is coming at them 50% faster than it did for us.

I know how intense this is. I put myself through something similar on a voluntary basis. I put in extra work every week, and took quite a number of private lessons. I found it incredibly demanding.

But that's only half of it.
 

We no longer learn material in isolation like we used to. We are completing two levels at once.

For us with stripes on our belts this means that we do a healthy review of stuff we've already done, and facing 150% more in the form of the second level material.

Of the lower Blues, they not only have to handle 150% of their own level curriculum, they also are getting hit with 150% from the level above. I doubt they'll be retaining much from the second level for very long, but they are expected to be able to handle it while we're working through each chapter.

By some miracle, they're handling it pretty well.

 

Landslide

What's with the Gracies lately?

In my first year Jiu-Jitsu they were pretty invisible to me. I knew they were out there, living in LA and doing seminars all over the world, but they've never been to the Vancouver area.

I knew they were the best people to learn from and I decided to travel to their Academy to train for an couple of months. My rank was a freshly earned Blue Belt at the time, and I decided to wait until I'd reached Blue Belt Stripe One.

I worked away at that, and reached the end of my second year. Up popped a weekend seminar in Seattle with Rener Gracie. My trip to LA was still four months away, and this became my first Gracie contact.

The seminar was great, and I discovered that another was planned in Seattle a year off. That meant that my third year, which started with a Gracie seminar, and which would contain two months of training at the Gracie Academy, would wrap up with a second Seattle seminar.

My third year is about 2/3 complete, and I've been back from LA a while. Suddenly, another seminar popped up in Washington state. This time the instructor will be Ryron Gracie.

Not only that, but yet another seminar will happen ten days later lead by Rener Gracie. This one will be the first ever in Vancouver. That's right next door.

Two years of no Gracies, and then a third with 4 seminars on top of two months of steady training in LA.

Year three is good.

GenderEquityPartZillion

I've discovered an otherwise unknown, critical problem with Jiu-Jitsu gender equity.

Take our own advanced group. We have 2 female Blue Belt students training.

With that in mind, wouldn't you suppose that we would also have 2 male students? I would.

In fact, we have eleven. Clearly something is wrong.

The questions must be, “Why are too many men being attracted to martial arts?” and “How can we discourage them?”

It is equally good exercise for both genders, so what attracts men, more? It can only be that there are too few other activities available for guys in other venues. We must be made easier for men to get accepted into baseball, hockey, and in the community's weight rooms. If this were done, less men would feel compelled to train in martial arts.

Perhaps the self-defense aspect is part of the appeal. This implies that men out there getting attacked willy-nilly all over the place. Their attempt at a solution is to raise their combat skills. We must make every effort to make our society one where men do not feel so much more at risk than women.

Maybe when these measures are taken, we will finally see a reduction in the number of men training in Jiu-Jitsu. Perhaps our own Blue Belt group will be able to attain a perfect ratio of 50/50.

Let's get those guys off of the mat.

Owen

It turns out that today was a pretty big day.

Two weeks ago, Owen started performing his Blue Belt exam. Our instructor was away, so we had to make do. Cosme acted as Owen's on-screen partner, while I ran the camera and read out the technique list.

Owen managed to perform both the Mount, and Guard segments. Nothing is ever perfect, but when the three of us decided that an attempt was good enough, we put it aside for our instructor to OK later. If things didn't go well enough, we reshot the segment.

Last week we did the same thing, except with the Side-Mount and Standing sections. This left only the Free Style Fight Sim to record.

Our instructor was back this week, and looked our efforts over. He declared all except the Guard to be acceptable for submission.

Today, Owen performed his Guard part again, and the Fight Sim. Cosme was again his partner, I was the camera guy, and our instructor read out the technique list, and oversaw the whole operation. We had to do the Guard recording a couple of times, but the Fight Sim produced a keeper on the first go.

The whole shebang will be uploaded to Gracie headquarters for actual grading. All he has to do now is wait.

Results have come in as little as a couple of days, and as long as two weeks.
It can seem a very long wait.

The good part is that we're so picky about what gets submitted that our pass rate is outstanding. In fact, no one who had graded for Blue Belt since I've been in the group has failed, and only one before that. The overall failure rate for the entire organization is about 30%.

Having completed the test there are three phases. Owen is entering the first. This one is limbo. It is full of wondering about failure or success.

The second phase starts when the news arrives about passing. The news comes instantly, but the actual belt takes a while to arrive. One becomes a Blue Belt, but is still wearing a White Belt. Wearing any old Blue Belt isn't allowed. You have to wait for your official, Gracie University one to arrive in the mail.

The third phase is when the transition is over. The student is a Blue Belt, and starts wearing a Blue Belt.

KneeBone

I don't heal very fast.

About two and a half months ago, my back decided to start twinging, and my right knee started to complain. Neither was a big problem as these things go, but they just didn't seem to be getting better.

Helen and I then went away to visit friends for about two weeks in a cute little town called Vernon. No Jiu-Jitsu for me. The result was that my back got all better, although there was no change in the knee.
 

Back for couple of weeks, and no change either way.
 

Then my knee decided to swell up and to get very stiff. No pain, but something was clearly wrong.
 

I didn't train last night, nor today, and won't tomorrow. I've been trying to keep it elevated and such, and the swelling is down.
 

This could be something real. A couple of months with a cranky knee, that decides to suddenly swell up.
 

Won't be rolling for a while. Next week I'll have to decide if I can train at all. I plan on being a baby about it.
 

After that, I will be having an enforced absence of two weeks off the mat. Lots of visiting friends and such, so I'll be walking a fair bit. Still, much less than my knee has to usually undergo.

I'm hoping for it to get better, but will be off to visit doctors if it isn't. If there is a real injury it will need to be attended to.

Three

Our Jiu-Jitsu group has 11 Blue Belt students currently active.

When it comes to rank progression, we all fit neatly into three clearly-defined categories.
 

I am in the largest and easiest group to understand. There are 5 of us who have all received promotion recently. For us, our next rank promotion is many months in the future. Promotion requires, at a minimum, a certain number of classes before one is even considered.
 

The 3 people in the next group have between 10 and 12 months at their current level. All train regularly, and have either passed the minimum-class requirements, or soon will. We have no idea when they might receive recognition through promotion. The criteria isn't particularly clear.
 

The final group of three is the most difficult to predict. Two of them have spent almost 3 years at their current rank, and the third has been a Blue Belt for almost 4 years. All surely would have been promoted long ago, except that the current system has only recently come into operation. Complicating things further, all have a major gap in their training.
 

Two moved away for well over a year and subsequently returned. That time away can not be considered when calculating their seniority. Both are working to regain the skill level that they had when they left.
 

The third went off to university 8 months ago, and won't return here and resume training for 2 more months. She has been keeping herself fresh by cross training.

It's all a big tangle, full of further complications. I assume seminar attendance helps weigh the scales towards a candidate, but by how much? Does helping out at the kids' class or women's self-defence group help? How much? Does attendance at open mat help? Similarly, is attendance at the White Belt classes a factor?

I'd hate to be the one trying to sort this all out.

Sparring

There are many ways to spar in Jiu-Jitsu.

Beginners don't roll at all. The first that a Gracie Jiu-Jitsu student experiences is called “Freestyle Fight Simulation.” It is introduced in the weekly, “Reflex Development” class. To qualify for this, a student will have already been training in the twice-weekly White Belt classes for at least five months.

“Freestyle Fight Sim” isn't really sparring at all, but it's close. One person takes the roll of the bad guy, and freely presents their partner with all the assorted attacks that the student has been learning to counter. Normally, the bad guy is a higher-belt student. The goal is to respond appropriately to all the bad-guy moves and attacks that are presented. Things usually happen at about half speed.

Real sparring starts when the student reaches the Blue Belt, or “Master Cycle” class. We roll in various ways there.

My least favourite type is where one partner wears boxing gloves and plays the bad guy. They portray a non-Jiu-Jitsu attacker who only wants to punch. It is a useful drill, but generally repetitious, as against that type of attack there are a limited number of responses. We do this every week or two.

We do another type of sparring where both partners wear small, padded gloves that leave the fingers free. Both partners to their best to subdue their partner. They both throw light punches to keep themselves aware of the dangers of striking. Again, a useful drill. I dislike it as even these smaller gloves interfere greatly with technique.

My favourite type is the kind we do the most often. No gloves; no punching; all grappling. This is when the full range of technique is used, without the annoying gloves to get in the way. This is what most people think of when they thing of Jiu-Jitsu people rolling. There are two versions of this type of roll.

One has the label of, “Keep it Real.” When we go this way, we do our best to control and subdue our partner.

I prefer the other, called, “Keep it Playful.” This is when we roll, but let stuff happen that wouldn't if we were trying to win. If things get locked down, you give up the impasse. It's more an exchange of technique than a competition. An example would be allowing an armbar to happen even if you could have prevented it, and then seeing if you can escape. I learn the most when I roll this way, and it's more like a game.

All the variants are a lot of fun.

The down side is the potential for bumps and bruises.