Stalled

I am very self-critical about my performance in Martial Arts.

My many years of Karate training were great, but I never fooled myself into thinking I was anything other than mediocre. Eventually, my old knees induced me to stop training.

I am also a student of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, and although I am not brilliant at it, I would rate myself as above average. I just seem to be better able to do what is required than I ever could at Karate.

None of that is really what this blog entry is about. The topic today is a phenomenon that people usually call "a plateau."

What this refers to is a period of time where progress seems to stall, regardless of effort and hours of training. Some people actually report feeling a loss of ability. Almost everybody has experienced this situation, and typically have found it very demoralizing.

In 5 years of Jiu-Jitsu, and 30 years of Karate, I have never experienced a plateau.

Perhaps it is that I always expect progress to come at a glacial rate even at the best of times. When it goes better than that, I am pleasantly surprised and excited, and when it remains ploddingly slow, I am where I expect to be.

I am firmly convinced that plateaus are not really a lack of progress at all.

My friend, Tobias, felt he had stalled recently. He was wrong.

He is one of the guys I measure my skill against. Sometimes he is better, and sometimes it's me, but it has always close.

I am a better Jiu-Jitsu-ka than I was a year ago, and better then that I was the year before. It has been that way though each of my 5 years of training. The current version of me could easily defeat any version of myself from the past. All along, Tobias has been right there beside me.

This has changed in the last couple of months. Tobias has been taking private lessons with an excellent Black Belt instructor in Vancouver. I noticed the differences in him immediately. Now, although our rolls are exciting, and entertaining, Tobias is clearly better than me.

How could it be that I am better than ever, with Tobias now a superior mat monkey than me, and for his plateau to be real?

Another fine example is Colin's return to the mat. He's been gone for well over three years. He is a Blue Belt, as I was at that time. Although he feels rusty, he has retained a remarkable amount of his skills. He can still do all of the things that we used to know how to do. However, in those missed years, we have moved on. We have gotten better; a lot better.

There's clear evidence in Colin's return that we've all kept growing. When Colin left, Tobias was far junior to him, and likely easy for Colin to defeat. Now, I can control Colin easily, and Tobias even more easily that can I.

What I think happens is that a person can see just how much there is to improve upon. Any invested effort makes such a small impression on the huge momentum of this mass that it seems like nothing is happening.

If this happens, it would help to focus on a single, discrete unit of material, and focus just on that. Let's say it's a single guard pass. Do it a hundred times, until it starts to seem really slick, and then switch and do a hundred more with the other leg. Work on executing the movement explosively, and without warning. Do this for several training sessions. The next step is to get yourself caught up in your opponent's guard when sparring. Give your new move a full-speed try. Keep drilling it, and keep using it. You will have improved, but not a little bit spread out over everything, but rather in a small, spearpoint of focused progress.

There ain't no plateaus...

Planes, Ships, and Cars

We live in a beautiful place, in a nice community.

The climate is great once the weather starts to warm up. April is always grand. It's all good until near the end of October.

Then it gets cold. Not Canada cold. We very rarely get snow at all, or temperatures like the rest of the country. However, it certainly stops being comfortable, and it gets really, really wet. The sky is grey for days on end.

That's why Helen and I travel to warm places between the months of November and March.

I'd like to stay someplace warm for the whole time, but would miss my home greatly. For my wife, December is off the table so that we can be with family for the holidays. That means we can travel in late fall, and winter after New Years.

We usually find get away during either period, or both. Last winter, we got to LA for a couple of weeks, and to Arizona, and this fall we spent a couple of weeks in Hawaii, although that trip ended up mostly in October for assorted reasons.

I digress. Since retirement three years ago, we've been to LA a few times, and to Mesa Arizona twice, and Hawaii. We went to Florida and for a Caribbean cruise, and to Austria and Italy with another cruise in the Mediterranean.

All are clearly warm places, except perhaps for Austria and Italy, but compared to our home in November they were like summer. We did need light jackets, but were never cold, and often meltingly hot.

We have other European travels in mind, and some California, and even Singapore.

What we have during the cold, wet months is a record of lovely breaks. In that season, we've been away for over a third of the time. Doing this removes eliminates the feeling of a long haul of unpleasant weather. It also means that most of the time we're actually home, enjoying our house, and friends, and activities, and community. It does, however, feel like we're always about to take off, or that we've just gotten back, and sometimes it's both. I highly recommend it.

The funny thing is, we travel at the same kind of rate in the rest of the year, too. The difference is that we stick close to home. We visit friends and family in other cities, cruise out of Vancouver, and even go camping sometimes.

So big, warm-weather travels in the winter and late fall, and short-range trips sprinkled through the spring, summer, and early autumn.

A fine system.

Boneheads

I don't say that there are not a lot of very smart business people.

There are also many who do very bone-headed things.

Let's looks at the UFC. For years, they have been accused of underpaying and undervaluing the fighters that the sport is built on.

Let's look at a concrete example.

George St. Pierre is one of the biggest money makers that the UFC has ever had. About three years ago he decided to take some time off, and is now ready to return. In spite of all the wealth he had generated for the UFC in the past, and the potential future riches that might still come from his fights, the organization gave him a hard time about his return.

They played hardball with him, likely over the money that he wanted. He was still under contract to them, and they had to offer him a fight by a certain date, or they would be in default. They offered a nonsensical fight, with none of the conditions worked out just hours before the deadline. St. Pierre and his legal team decided the organization was in default, and declared that St. Pierre was now a free agent. Keep in mind, during his career, St. Pierre has fought everybody that the UFC asked him to, and never complained about money or treatment.

You see, fighters have a limited shelf-life. St. Pierre is 35, and can't afford to waste a year of two trying to negotiate his deal. This is what the UFC has been banking on. They pretend that they don't care about all the money that St. Pierre will bring in. It is a game of chicken, and they have proven many times that they'd rather miss out on huge paydays than to pay a penny more than they want to.

However, St. Pierre didn't fold, he left. Next the UFC said it would tie him up in the courts to prevent him from fighting for anybody else.

Then the company-man St. Pierre pushed back. He, and a number of other big-name fighters, have declared the formation of a fighters association. Dare I say union.

The UFC could have negotiated in good faith, and made a deal that would have benefitted them far more than St. Pierre, but also left him content. Instead, they have thrown their weight around, and ended up with a fighter who has gone free-agent and who is being instrumental in a potential fighters union.

Suddenly, Dana White, the UFC front man, is taking all lovey-dovey about St. Pierre, and how certain it is that a deal can be made. Strangely, for months all White ever said about St. Pierre was negative.

Not only did the behaviour of the UFC belittle one of their most loyal and successful fighters, they were willing to do so in a way that would not only have cost them huge amounts of fight revenue, but they have also managed to cut that potential revenue to zero by driving St. Pierre away, and might have been instrumental in the formation of a fighters union.

It would seem that they are now running in terror. They say that the fighters don't need or want a union. That would be true, except that due to the crappy treatment they have been getting they actually do want and need protection from the UFC's dictatorial no-protection and no-benefits system.

Can the UFC afford to support fighters more? Well, Dana White is just the front man, and receives a salary of 15-20 million bucks a year (sources vary), and made $180,000,000 from the recent sale of the UFC. His 9% ownership of the UFC ran from 2001-2016, and so he made $27,000,000 a year from that alone. Add on his salary, and he has been hauling in up to $50,000,000 a year. The major shareholders are worth billions.

The UFC has plenty of wealth that it could be sharing, and they would still be an incredibly profitable organization.

If they'd thrown perhaps an extra million bucks or two at St. Pierre, they would already be pulling in many times that due to his return, and still have him on their side, and in their stable, and not backing a union.

Well played, UFC.

Well played.

Plan Ahead

Travel plans for 2017 are shaping up nicely.

Both Helen and I like setting these things up well in advance. That way we can think about them for months and months before they actually occur. Anyhow, all the big trips for that year are on the calendar. We will be sticking to our usual pattern of two big vacations, plus a cruise-with-friends to Alaska.

The Alaska trip is always the easiest to figure out. Bernie and I pour through the offerings of our favourite Cruise lines, looking for interesting itineraries and price points. Our acceptable lines are Princess, Holland America, Celebrity, and Royal Caribbean. This year, it looks like a lean towards Holland America, as everybody's trips are pretty much the same, and they are coming in as the low bidder.

The first of the big trips on the docket involves a couple of weeks in California, and a month in Arizona. It will be our third such expedition down to retirement-community land, and might just be our last. We have enjoyed them greatly, but Helen is ready to move on to something else. She might change her mind once we're there. I am good either way.

The last of our major trips involves a lot more planning. We are heading off to a few days in Paris, followed by a few weeks in Britain, and topped off with a couple of weeks on a cruise ship out of England that pops down to the Mediterranean and back. The cruise was the first part that we committed to.

I've been watching flights, and they are just starting to fill up, so it's time to book the air travel. My rules for such a trip are to go non-stop if humanly possible, and with an airline that I trust to not make it more of an ordeal than absolutely necessary. I will run the flights past Helen, and give her a last chance to think about adding a couple more days to the trip, and then to book the flights.

The last step will be to nail down the hotel rooms. I've already decided on our London hotel. It's funny; people say that it's an expensive city, but the room rates seem just fine. Maybe that's because I am looking at small places recommended by travel writer Rick Steves. I read his descriptions, and then go online to get information about nearest underground station, precise prices, and to see hotel photos. It's a good system. I even look around the neighbourhood using Google Street-View.

Anyhow, that's the big travel stuff for 2017. We're already dreaming about going to Singapore the following year. Nothing in stone yet about that one; just wistful thinking.