Lemonade

I am going to be pessimistic, just for fun, and pretend that the worst thing possible has struck our Jiu-Jitsu school. I shall also assume that it's all about my next promotion.

Things this time of year are a little tricky promotion-wise at the best of times. I got a first stripe for my Purple Belt on the last day of November. That would make my earliest next one come 8 months later, at the end of July, but only if I will have racked up a minimum of 90 advanced classes by that date.

Perfect attendance for 8 months means 104 classes, give or take one or two. However, we have just had our usual two-week Christmas break which lowers the theoretical max to 98. That's enough with perfect attendance, and even has leeway for a cold or some such event. However, it has trouble handling all the travel that I do.

In those 8 months, there will be 11 weeks of travel. That would drop me to around 65. There is countervailing good news in that I will be training in Los Angeles for 2 weeks of that time, and in Phoenix for a full month. The net situation was going to miraculously work itself out at 99 classes, an overall improvement in my situation.

Then the disaster struck. We were supposed to move into a new facility as of January 1^st, but it fell apart. The best we can hope for if the start of February. Scrambling was done, and a small, interim solution was found. We lost the first week of January, and will be getting few classes less than normal for the remainder of the month, but is certainly could be much worse.

It always seems that by the time promotion time rolls around, everything ends up far too tight for comfort. This time it happened early.

Therefore, I re-did all the calculations with the assumption that we don't get back to our usual 3 classes per week, and continue at 2, just in case it never gets sorted out.

At that rate, there is no way I'd be anywhere near completing on time. How could I fix things?

Step one would be to take weekly private lessons with our head instructor, Shawn, whenever he is available. I think he will be around in April, June, and July. Those got entered into the spreadsheet.

Step two would be to head to Vancouver to train at a sister school. It would be possible to go three times a week, that seems excessive, so I pencilled in two such training trips weekly.

So to reiterate; a loss of 1/3 of our home-school classes, addition of a number of private lessons, and addition of training in the city. The net total has me at promotion time with 138 classes, rather than the required 90. That is a massive buffer.

What this means to me is that if I stick to the full program, I will have it all totally wrapped up easily. This is not what I'd do, as it is clearly overkill, but nice to think about.

I think I'll start strong, and then taper off. Going to Vancouver eats up a day from before dawn until a return home around suppertime. It also costs a bunch for the ferry, transit, and parking (and restaurant eating, of course). I really enjoy it, but twice a week for months on end is too much. I think doing that much would be fine for January, and then should drop to single times per week.

What all such plans ignore is the unforeseeable. Getting hurt or sick screws it up horribly. There has to be appropriate slack built-in, and my killer program will handle that. Tapering down will still give me tons of leeway.

This is all excellent practise for the following 3^rd and 4^th stripe promotion periods. They are also vacation-filled, but will include no intensive Los Angeles or Phoenix training, and will take months of extra time to complete without going full-speed-ahead on private lessons and city training. With it, they all finish on time.

Our school location blip made me think my entire situation through thoroughly.

Before that, I was looking at my coming stripe being on time, but barely, and the next two each being several months late. Now, the plan has the coming strip happening with tons to spare, and the following two each finishing easily as well.

That's a lot of lemonade from one little lemon.

Move

People typically get started in mma after having considerable experience in some other similar activity.

Wrestling, boxing, kickboxing, Muay Thai, Jiu-Jitsu, Judo, and Karate all spring to mind.

The trick is to take what you're good at, and then to strengthen up all of the weak areas. For example, if a great Karate champion enters the Octagon and tries to make a career out of it, he'd better get to work on grappling or he'll be finished pretty fast.

All of the component arts have both strengths and weaknesses. The big problem comes when somebody coaches their speciality to an mma fighter without really being able to address the weaknesses.

In the mixed fighting style environment, movement is critical. Some sports don't need it at all, and produce wonderful competitors with no idea how to do it, or even about the need.

Out of my little list of arts, Judo is one of the worst in this regard. In competition, Judoka walk towards one another, and proceed to grab each other or to beat the other person's grip. Somebody tries a throw, and perhaps they end up on the ground scrambling. They are then re-started, and do it all again.

Jiu-Jitsu can be equally stunted, usually in the case of a sport-style competitor. They walk up, grab, and both go to ground and grapple for the rest of the match. Non-sport Jiu-Jitsu is a bit better, being obsessed with being either out of striking range, or in absolutely locked-down clinches. In between these two ranges, they blitz in and out.

Greco-Roman wrestling has restricted movement as well, but Freestyle does not. Freestyle wrestlers are forever shooting in blindingly fast to secure double-leg take downs, or single-legs, or trips. Greco-Roman specialists don't do this.

Karate has the best movement of any of the striking styles, being predicated on getting in and out without taking any reciprocal damage. Mauy Thai and kickboxing both have to handle various ranges to accommodate kicking and punching and elbows and knees, and move well.

Boxing alone stands as a stunted-movement striking art. They don't have to deal with anybody shooting in to grab them in a boxing ring, or trying to stay just a bit farther away to kick. The entire game is predicated on a relatively short-range exchange, but not at elbow range or closer. Similarly, much of the punching defences are predicated on an opponent wearing big, padded gloves that are easy to block or absorb with one's own big, padded hands.

Everybody getting into mma knows they need grappling, and striking, but a lot don't think for a second about movement at all. A lot of coaches don't either.

The biggest example of failure in this area lately involves the last two fights of Ronda Rousey, although the evidence has been present much longer.

She came from Judo, and knew she needed to learn how to handle striking. To do this, she found herself a boxing coach. Not an mma striking guy at all; strictly a boxing guy. She made him her head coach.

Ever since, he's been teaching her boxing hands, and ignoring anything like movement.

For example, he holds pads that Ronda will strike in rapid patterns. This is fine in itself, but only as one activity of many. They should also do it while moving forward, and back, and sideways, both at a slow boxing-like pace, but also with rapid movements, and changes. They never do. They both stand, and she hits the pads. She also hits bags, which don't move either.

She had 3 amateur mma fights, followed by a string of 12 straight professional wins. The early ones were all won with her Judo, but this became more difficult as she climbed the ladder. The kept facing better opponents, who also had better coaches getting her ready against Ronda's style.

Nick Diaz and BJ Penn are notable examples of other fighters who moved into mma from impressive grappling-only credentials. They worked hard on their striking to prepare for the move, just as Ronda tried to do. In BJ's first 12 professional wins, he had 3 decision victories, 5 submissions, and 4 knockouts. Nick had 2 decision victories, 4 submissions, and 6 knockouts.

Ronda had no decisions, 9 submissions, and 3 knockouts, but even those few striking finishes were not really due to the boxing she'd been specializing in. One was from a knee to the chest, and another by striking an opponent while holding her down on the ground, and pounding with her free hand. Only one was from straight up striking, and that against a limited opponent who did likewise. Her striking training was not preparing her the same as Diaz's or Penn's had.

Then, a little over a year ago, she faced a real striker, Holly Holm. Holy came from a boxing and kickboxing background, and had put herself into the hands of one of the finest mma gyms in the world. They took the movement she already had, and took it to another level. They also knew that she had to be able to grapple, and worked heavily on that as well, specifically with Ronda Rousey in mind. She trained to avoid the upper-body throws of Judo.

They came out, and both wanted to hit. The difference was that when Ronda threw, Holly was gone. When Holly wanted to throw, she'd blitz in, hit-hit-hit, and be gone again. As the swifter fighter, Holly got to choose the distance. When Ronda would chase her down, she'd then stop to exchange. Holly would hit and be gone again. By the middle of the round, Holly knew she could hit Ronda at will as was demonstrated by a right cross, and then a few seconds later, buy another identical one, and a few seconds later, another, a pause, and then again. Ronda had no movement to get away, or to get in, or even to move to the side.

In the corner after the round, an exhausted and battered Ronda Rousey was told by the boxing guy who was her head coach to just keep doing what she was doing. She followed his direction and ended up unconscious about a minute into the second round.

She took over a year off and trained hard, but kept her head coach, and kept training the exact same way.

At the very end of 2016 she went in to challenge the current champion Amanda Nunes (who beat the women who beat the woman who beat Holly Holm).

They came out to punching range, both ready to exchange. Ronda started getting hit, and had no Plan B. She didn't back off for time, and move, or blitz in closer to grapple. She stood there, at punching range, and got hit with a string of increasingly devastating blasts. The fight was over in 48 seconds.

Likely she'll retire.

If she decides to keep at it, she'll have to get her head around it all, and will have to get a totally new training setup. If not, she's doomed, as the formula for her defeat has clearly been revealed.

In effect, she'll have to remove 7 years of defective, non-movement based, stand-up slugging that she's been invested in, and find somebody to get her moving properly, and dodging, and learning how to shoot in fast.

Not a simple task at all.

City School

We have a bit of a blip happening at the local Jiu-Jitsu school.

Our lease ran out, and the landlord wanted the property to expand his own business, so we were out. A new place was found, and the move planned.

Then the arrangement for the new place fell apart, and the school is scrambling. A new school facility was found for a bit into the future, and a temporary space generously shared by the Boxing Club until then.

The short news version is that we pretty much lost the first week of training after New Years, and will only be having two weekly classes until we get into the real, new replacement space. I understand that it, “might be a few weeks.” This translates in my brain to meaning February 1^st; the next rental period.

Our normal training quota is 3 advanced classes a week, and we will only be having 2 for the immediate future.

This just isn't enough for me, so I will be heading over for weekly training with our sister school in Vancouver. The instructor there is excellent, and two of my old friends train with him. They have 7 classes a week, but only the 3 daytime ones work for me.

Somehow, I am drawn to visit the Saturday classes. As a retired gentleman of leisure, there is no reason for this, but equally no reason to focus on the others either. Therefore, Saturday it is.

Doing this is a bit pricey. If I take a car over on the ferry, the fare comes to $70.15, although I use a discount deal, which drops the total to $54.15. This Saturday I'll be car-ing it.

If I leave the car at the terminal and ride as a foot passenger, the ferry bill will be only $12.65 after the discount. There would also be transit costs of $5.50, and a parking fee to leave my car behind of $2.25

So the car trip is $54.15, and the bus ride $20.40. There will also be some kind of charge for the training itself, but it will be fair.

I suppose I'll normally take the bus, unless I think of something fun to do in Vancouver that justifies the extra cost, or if I'm perhaps just feeling lazy.

In any case, this little weekly jaunt will get my training back up to an intensity I like. We have good classes at home, but working with the Black Belt in the city will make a valuable addition. He has different ideas and areas of focus.

If we do get into a new school location in a couple of weeks, or a month, I suppose I could drop the city trips, but likely won't.

Back in 1990 when we first moved here, I was a Black Belt Karate instructor. For several years I made monthly treks to the city to train at one of the top dojos. It was done sometimes by car and sometimes by transit, and was a longer trip. I am no stranger to doing this sort of thing.

I suspect that after a return to normal training at home, I'll still go city-side either weekly, or monthly, or something in between.

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.