My Jiu-Jitsu is all wrong

I seem to be doing Jiu-Jitsu all wrong.

Today started with a little cruising around on Youtube, looking at Jiu-Jitsu videos. They were the kind where some old salt is telling everybody about how their training is going to be. There was a surprising consistency about what all of these high-level instructors were saying.

“It’s going to be hard,” and, “you’re going to get discouraged,” and, “you’re going to want to quit.”

The statement I can somewhat agree with is the one that says Jiu-Jitsu is hard. It is difficult, kind of, in a wimpy sort of way.

I’ve done physical stuff in the Army that was much harder, and been beaten black and blue in Karate competition, and changed careers in a manner that saw me leaving home and my wife for many long months to attend university. You know, real-life stuff. Those were all harder.

And why would I ever get discouraged. As an old fart, I can’t compete antler-to-antler with the younger crowd. My victories often come by merely managing to survive, or even by doing so for as long as possible.

And I’ve absolutely never wanted to quit Jiu-Jitsu. A few times my body has been seriously damaged, and I had to face the possibility that my time on the mat was over.

Each time, my body somehow managed to heal its way out of danger. This has happened much more than a person my age has any right to expect. Each injury could be the end of my training, but so far none has been.

I wanted to keep training, and in each case, managed to heal up enough to keep going.

So, it seems that I have the entire wrong experience of Jiu-Jitsu. It hasn’t been hard, nor discouraging at all.

And I have never, ever wanted to quit.

28 Days

Four weeks exactly until my Jiu-Jitsu test for Brown Belt.

In that time, I’ll do thirty sessions, more or less, on the mat getting ready.

It’s been going at that kind of pace for over five weeks already.

Burn out is a real possibility, but I’m not about to lighten up. This is too important to be left to half measures.

It’s a minor miracle that my 63-year-old body is taking it all. I’ve even been going for runs when the weather hasn’t been too discouraging.

I’ve had a ton of help along this road. My instructor Shawn is vital, of course. Rob and Sam have been putting in many long hours working with me as I drill the required test material over, and over, and over.

Marc Marins, the instructor from North Vancouver, will be the evaluator for my test. I train there regularly, and he has put on extra early morning sessions mostly for Shawn and me aimed at test preparation.

I’ve also recruited a group of people I trust at his school to be partner with me during training. At this time I can’t afford to work with anybody who might be high-risk, or even just unknown.

And along I grind.

That sounds strange, even to me.

I love Jiu-Jitsu, and the more of it I do the happier I am. Of course, some parts are my favourite, and some not so much.

Unfortunately, of all the different parts of the curriculum, my test all relates to my least favourite section.

The reasoning for this being the focus is impeccable. Gracie Jiu-Jitsu is at heart a self-defence system, and that is what the test is about. They want to make sure that their upper rank people are fluent in that material.

In our system, every beginning student goes through a self-defence program before they join the advanced classes. Many of us continue to pay attention to the self-defence aspect of things, but many do not. They start rolling in the advanced classes, and never look back.

I’m sure that there are people out there who started training eight years ago just like I did, but who haven’t paid any significant attention to self-defence in the seven years since they finished their beginner program.

Hence, the focus on the new advanced belt test requirements.

I get it, and I approve, and it’s interesting, but it isn’t fun.

People often ask me why I do Jiu-Jitsu, and my answer isn’t what most people respond. I always say that it’s fun.

I enjoy learning for itself, and love the body physics of Jiu-Jitsu. I like the physicality of it. However, beyond all else, it’s just plain fun.

So I’m training on the material that the Gracies selected for testing, and I understand the reasoning, and am perfectly content to comply. It just means that this is not the funnest period of Jiu-Jitsu that I’ve ever had.

Like I said; along I grind.

And it isn’t forever; it ends in 28 days. I’ll either pass, or I won’t.

Either way, my training will return to normal. The grind will vanish, and the fun will increase.

OK Boomer

“OK, Boomer.”

What a delightful phrase?

I’ve been called a Baby Boomer as far back as I can remember. For about the first half-dozen decades there was absolutely no negative connotation to the term at all. It was just a label given to describe an interesting demographic inflating of the old population pyramid.

In real terms it meant that when I was a kid, new wings kept getting added to every school that I attended, and that after my population lump passed along, those same schools never got expanded again.

When we were young, there were constant complaints about us lodged by older citizens. They hated our fashions, and music, and attitudes in general. Personally, I hated getting so derided for committing no greater sin than of being young.

Then, with shocking swiftness, we were no longer young. What were we like? The generation that I was part of constantly complained about the young. We seem to hate their fashions, and music, and attitudes in general. When did we forget how we felt about identical lumping?

Let’s take a concrete example. As a high school teacher, I had contact with young people on a regular basis. What I noticed didn’t match the general perception of adult society towards those same kids.

So, like any educated person should do, I looked up the relevant research to see who was nuts, me or the rest of my age cohort.

It turned out that I wasn’t the uninformed one. In almost every category that exists, kids have been getting better and better. Less violent, less drinking, less tobacco, less pregnancies.

One of the most unfair of the things that old people claim about the young is that they are a bunch of entitled brats. Somehow they are expected to work at their crappy, futureless jobs, with loyalty and gratitude.

I have news for all you Boomers out there; we have never, ever had futures as dismal as the young have. Our parents had it bad, what with World Wars and the Great Depression, but that was certainly not our story.

The Boomer expectation is that most people will get good paying jobs, and if they work loyally, they will be rewarded with continued employment, and eventually receive pensions.

That is the exact opposite of what the young can expect from a job.

How about life style? Can the young expect to ever own their own home?

But no matter the counter arguments, geezers insist on tearing down the young. Maybe they always have. Maybe they always will.

So up pops this new expression, and some Boomers are getting quite upset about it.

It really hit the mainstream in New Zealand of all places. An MP by the name of Chloe Swarbrick was speaking in Parliament on the subject of climate change. She happens to be 25 years of age.

She was getting heckled by a 50-year-old member of the New Zealand National Party, Todd Muller. Swarbrick had just brought up her age in relation to the issue, so it is likely he was insulting her relative youth. Nowhere is it reported just what he was yelling out. It doesn’t matter much, as she stopped him dead in his tracks by inserting into her words the response, “OK, Boomer,” before seamlessly continuing.

It doesn’t even matter that Muller doesn’t fit the description of Boomer, as he was born in 1968, and the most generous boundries of Boomerism have that group ending with people born in 1965.

When questioned on this she responded that, “Boomer is a state of mind.”

I love it all.

It is dismissive of every bit of age discrimination that the old aim at, “young people these days.”

As minor as this entire exchange really was, old people on the internet are suddenly losing their minds. Radio host Bob Lonsberry tweeted that calling somebody a Boomer is equivalent to somebody getting called the N-word.

How’s that for ridiculous? Some cry-baby old fart thinks that a word that has had no connotations whatsoever has suddenly become as demeaning as the most hateful word in the English language. Interestingly, his tweet drew over 18,000 comments, most of whom were tearing him a new one.

Dictionary dot com even weighed in with, “Boomer is an informal noun referring to a person born during a baby boom, especially one born in the U.S. between 1946 and 1965. The n-word is one of the most offensive words in the English language.”

The only bad part is that due to my birth cohort, I just might get lumped in with the anti-young crowd. A First-World problem, right?

I can’t say that I carry the label of Boomer with pride. I never did, and never will. It certainly isn’t any part of my sense of identity.

My identity is all about what I do, and what I am involved with, and the people I care about, and nothing about being part of a group defined by age.

Theme Training

For my test I’ve made some bold choices.

All are based on evidence that has slipped out of the powers-that-be, but they’ve never actually stated that these trends are actually the way things are.

The first is the belief that my Brown Belt exam will be based on the list of techniques required on the Black Belt exam. It’s somewhat bizarre that I have a pretty good idea what is on the more advanced test, but not on my own.

Anyhow, there are, if I recall correctly, 5 techniques taken directly from the beginner curriculum. The rest all comes from the Standing sections of the four levels of the advanced curriculum.

Not everything from those sections is included, but most is.

The general theme is Self-Defence, and the missing techniques are those that don’t quite match up with this.

Last week, during a test preparation session, we were working towards Shawn’s upcoming exam; training the highest level of the curriculum. We worked from the last technique on the test towards the first. We made it backwards through about 2/3 of that level. Every technique or two, Marc would say that the ones we’d just done are not needed for Brown Belt testing. Marc will be doing my test evaluation.

Every time he said that my brain shouted hurrah, and I mentally struck the technique off of my personal exam list. By the time the session ended, there were only 5 techniques left from that level that hadn’t been eliminated, as we hadn’t reached them.

I strongly suspect that even those ones are not going to be on my test, but that is more a hunch than based on what Marc actually said.

At its largest, my test will have 5 beginner curriculum techniques, and just possibly 5 from the highest level, and 28 from in between.

It is my belief that the beginner items are there to make sure that Gracie students from all over are closely following the curriculum at every level. I do this material all the time, and I do it the Gracie way. Therefore; I am focusing my attention on the more difficult material.

For now, I am working on the techniques taken from levels one, two, and three.

That doesn’t sound like much, but it is actually 72 separate variants. For example, when called on to do Guillotine Defence technique, the candidate will be required to respond to the same type of attack with four different, and unrelated counter moves.

So, 72 items. That’s a lot.

I was working away, but not really knowing what was going on, until I organized it. Instead of always going through level 1, then level 2, and finally level 3, I started going by themes

Each level starts with a variety for attacks that only relate to one another in that the attacker is coming from the front. Then it’s all rear attacks, followed by weapon defences, and finally whatever doesn’t fit neatly into the other categories.

I am now doing front attacks from all the levels, then going on to all the rear attacks, then weapons, and finally the remainder.

This is working much better for me.

Today, for example, I want to work weapons. By the time Rob and I are done, I fully expect to be able to perform any and all of them. They won’t be totally locked in, but we’ll have done them all. By sticking to the one topic, it is possible to see underlying themes that always apply.

I love it when that happens. In this section, you almost always go towards the weapon, or the weapon arm. Learn that single thing, and you’ve improved your response against all of them.

I am not one of those gifted individuals who can figure something out and then be able to do it. For me, getting it right is only the very beginning. I need repetition; lot’s of repetition.

They call it “muscle memory,” and it sure feels like it, but in reality, each repetition is actually brain work. Each time going through the movement demands that your mental pathways improve, and become more efficient.

Jiu-Jitsu Thanksgiving

I am surrounded by great people, many of whom have put their own interests aside to work with me towards my pre-Christmas exam.

There is my instructor, Shawn. He is also working towards an exam of his own, and always includes me in his prep. The actual content of my test very similar to what Shawn has to do on his.

Sometimes we meet before class, and usually work off to one side while the White Belt class is in operation. This works out to about 4-6 hours or prep per week.

Then there’s Rob. We were working about 3 times a week getting ready for an unrelated Jiu-Jitsu exam. At his suggestion we still meet, but strictly aimed at my current needs. Our other exams are on hold.

There is also a Sunday group that meets for an hour or two. It is for people who want to get my help on addressing weaknesses that they think are in their technique. They offered to be my partners as I drill what I need. They are giving me their training time.

Then there’s the big city folk. I don’t know everybody there, and can’t afford to get any overly-enthusiastic partners for either training or rolling, and I’ve recruited four who are wonderful, detail-oriented, and safe partners. They are the folk I work with while on the city mat, at least until after my exam.

The last great helper on my list is Marc. He is the instructor in North Vancouver where I get my city training, and he is also going to be the evaluator for my test.

He has set up special early-morning sessions to work on what Shawn and I need right now. Some of Marc’s folk also attend. Nothing could be more helpful than getting precise tips and correction from the guy that will be running my test.

All together, that works out to 9 people who are putting themselves out for me, and that doesn’t even include the many more who’ve said they’d also be happy to help.

In hours, that gives me about 10 hours a week on the mat working on test preparation, on top of my regular training.

The paperwork has gone in, with the date set to be December 21st. That will be 9 and a half weeks after my first learning about the exam, which in turn means I will have totalled close to a hundred mat hours getting ready.

I don’t know how things will go, but am happy with the amount of work I’m able to dedicate to getting it done. None of this would be possible without the help of a lot of people.

Maybe I’ll even pass.