End Run

So what is a compulsive trainer supposed to do?

I had exactly one month in which to complete my attendance requirement for my next promotion. The number of advanced classes needed sat at 5.

To give you some form of comparison, a normal student makes it to a dozen classes in that amount of time, and a nut job like me should manage more like 16.

Seems easy, doesn’t it?

Trouble is, it is fun time. We are with our very best friends, and I have determined not to let my usual training interfere with anybody’s enjoyment, especially my own.

What that meant training-wise is that in the first half of the month, I attended only a single, measly class.

This simply could not stand. I was well on my way to missing my self-imposed goal. Failure would only mean a short delay in promotion, but I would be rather displeased with anything of the sort.

Last night, I banged off a class locally, and today I did a Big City trip to rack up two more. That leaves me exactly 13 days to get one more class. If I can’t manage that I might as well hang up my belt altogether.

It also turns out that Helen, Lola, and Bernie are having at least as much fun without me they do when I’m there. They are off doing antique shopping and similar things that they are kind enough not to drag me to. With me gone, they go nuts.

It would be simplest to do my final required class locally in terms of time invested, but I’m enjoying my city training so much today that I would rather do the long-haul again instead.

Anyhow, all is well.

Top 5 Cruiselines

Here is my personal ranking of every cruise line we’ve ever sailed with. Alphabetically, these are; Celebrity, Holland American, Norwegian, Princess and Royal Caribbean.

Norwegian gets the lowest rating, but it’s based on a sample of only a single cruise. They are known as a budget line, except for their ship “Pride of America.” It has a total monopoly on cruises within Hawaii. Due to an old, anti-free-trade—law, only American-made and owned ships can carry passengers between US ports without stopping at least once in a non-American port. All other lines doing Hawaii have to visit places like Vancouver or Mexico. In fact, “Pride of America,” doesn’t meet the regulations either, and required an exemption be passed by both houses of Congress for permission. In any case, as the single Hawaii-only cruise ship, they totally own that market. As a result it was the most expensive cruise per day that we’ve ever done. However, nothing on board seemed fancy at all, or high quality. It was fine, about what the line’s budget reputation would suggest. Nothing was bad, other than the price.

For me, Holland America comes in 4th place. They score high in the food and service departments. Their shows and entertainment are good. It is the ships themselves that fall short. They are smaller than the industry standard, which means less in the way of amenities. Fewer pools, less spectacular dining rooms, smaller foyers, smaller stage, fewer elevators. Bigger ships have more room per person, creating a more open and spacious feeling.

To illustrate let’s look at 2 very different ships owned and designed by the same company. The first is a dandy vessel about the size of the Titanic (a dwarf by today’s standards). She is 48,563 tons (interestingly tonnage in merchant vessels have nothing whatever to do with weight, and instead measures volume. Don’t you just love the english language?), and carries 1,840 passengers. This means about 26.4 tons per person.

The other ship is currently the largest passenger ship on earth, and is 225,282 tons in size, and can hold 6,296 guests. This sounds like quite a crowd, doesn’t it? It works out to 35.8 tons each.

On the larger vessel each person gets 35% more space than guests on the smaller ship.

Larger is also more efficient. The bigger ship is over 4.6 times as large as the smaller and certainly requires larger infrastructure, but not as extreme as all that. On the smaller ship, almost half of the space is inaccessible to the guests, while on the larger that works out to being lest than a quarter. That means more room for fun.

For example, on the smaller ship, the tiniest cabins measure just 139 square feet, while on the big girl the cheap cabins are 179 square feet. A high proportion of the small ship cabins are this size, while on the large vessel, most are larger.

Bigger cabins are nice, and so are bigger dining rooms, entertainment facilities, theatres, and even wider halls. The actual mathematical calculation of accessible space means that the big ship has twice as much room per person than the smaller.

It actually gets bizarre. The crowds are LESS noticeable on the big ships, and the cruise companies actually have trouble figuring out what to do with all the room. They only need so many bars and pizza places. The last big ship we were on was only 2/3 the size of the giant in the discussion. For active folk, they not only had a more than adequate gym, there was also a full basketball court, mini golf, a climbing wall, tons of pools and hot tubs, and a flow rider (look it up), and an ice rink. For show goers there was a theatre with a full-sized stage and a company of 20 singers and dancers, several venues for movies, a dozen bars with entertainers and dance floors, and an ice show.

This all means that I don’t prefer little ships, and Holland America’s are on that end of the scale. They are starting to change this by going larger, but their ships that we’ve been on were not of the newer type. Even the new ones aren’t particularly big.

My 3rd place cruise line is Princess. They put a lot of work into their entertainment department and it shows. The food and service are good. They are also the only line that gives repeat customers a quota of complimentary internet. They also have an onboard messaging system that everybody can use.

They also treat their staff better than most lines do. They actually encourage husbands and wives to work on the same ship, rather than forbidding this as some companies do.

Their only weak area is in their quirky design philosophies. They have the worst buffet layout in the industry, and have 4 small unimpressive dining rooms rather than a single show-stopper. They also have deck sections that can’t be accessed from anywhere else on the same deck, but only by stairs or elevators.

My choice for 2nd best cruise line is hard, as both the remaining ones are wonderful. Celebrity cruises is my choice for this spot.

Their food is the most consistent, and overall the best. Their ships are modern in all aspects, and they have good shows, staff, and service. The ships are well designed, and have a few things nobody else has.

On one class of their vessels, the indoor pools are the best on the seas. The water is bubbly, and hot, and there are several waterfall downspouts. They are not scalding as hot tubs can be, but certainly hotter than any normal pool.

That means that my choice for 1st place is Royal Caribbean. Their food is excellent, and their ships laid out in logical, modern styles. They are the most beautiful of the ships. No detail gets overlooked. Nothing looks industrial, and everywhere there are examples of perfect finish work.

They have the best production shows, and are pioneers in the world of large ships. Not all of their ships are huge, but the largest 3 cruise ships on the planet all belong to them. Of the 10 largest cruise ships on earth, 7 are theirs. They use that extra space spectacularly.

This is all very subjective. We do a lot of our cruising in the company of our dear friends Lola and Bernie. Bernie likes Celebrity the best, and Lola prefers Holland America. My wife Helen says they are all equally good. Of course, my opinion is the correct one, but this shows how minor the differences between the lines really are.

Belt Stayed Home

It seems to be a truism that the belts in martial arts are meaningless.

I call BS on that idea.

Today I was training at a sister school, and my 2-stripe Purple belt seems to have decided to stay home. No matter. I peeked into their store room to find something to hold my uniform tied in place. No purple-coloured belts in there, so I borrowed a no-stripe Blue Belt. It even fit.

Before the first class I was approached by a real no-stripe Blue Belt to see if I wanted to warm up with him. He wanted to review something they’d done recently, and he proceeded to try and teach it to me. Soon, he got stuck, so I showed him how to finish the moves he was “teaching” to me. After a bit of this, I asked if I could try something.

I dumped him 3 different related ways in rapid succession. They were moves I like to keep fresh, and haven’t had a chance to do at all for at least a month. My new friend then asked me if I could show him something to counter twisting arm control. Seems he gets caught there a lot.

So what was different about me wearing the wrong belt? First off, it is rare that anybody wants to just train with me before class. They might have questions that they’ll ask. They certainly don’t try and teach me, just as I wouldn’t try and teach a Brown Belt.

As we had plenty of time, it didn’t matter, but would have been different if we’d only had 5 or 10 minutes. We never would have gotten to the part where he got a chance to be shown something that will actually impact his free-rolling ability. As it was, he got a rushed version, but at least he got a few ideas, and that would have been the best version of what would have happened if I’d had the correct belt on.

The nasty version would be that he wouldn’t have approached me, and gotten nothing at all, and I would have just sat about.

For me it was fun working with a new partner, regardless of rank, so I would have won either way, unless he had avoided me.

Then the beginner class started. My partner was one I’ve worked with before. She cheered to get me. I don’t think she cares about me wearing a Blue or Purple Belt, but knows that she gets a private tutor in either case.

In the advanced class that followed, my partner wore a Blue-and-White Combatives that means she has only recently completed the beginner program. The no-stripe Blue Belt I was wearing implied that I was a single step senior to her, rather than the 8 steps my own belt denotes.

She made all sorts of comments and suggestions about my performance, and even bullied me into trying all the moves on my weaker side. This all made her a better partner for me. She quietened significantly when somebody asked what happened to my Purple Belt.

Belts don’t matter? Today, of the 3 people that I worked with only the one who already knew me didn’t care. It did matter in the dynamic for the other two pairings.

Both were much more willing to offer opinions, to help, and even to cajole or correct me. This made them excellent partners for me. If they’d known they might have been intimidated to work with me, but to use me more like a tutor.

I don’t know if it was positive, or negative, or a mix, but each dynamic sure would have been very different.

I don’t mean to say that I hold a lofty rank, and am particularly awesome. Perhaps compare it to University students who’ve spent a similar amount of time to my partners and I. My female partner has perhaps finished her first year at university, and my Blue Belt companion has maybe got his second year finished. I would be a holder of a Master’s Degree, and be starting work on a PHD. A Black Belt in our organization in terms of time, is perhaps the same a somebody with a couple of PHDs, or maybe even three.

There is also an obligation placed upon higher belts whenever in an unequal pairing

For example, my new Blue Belt friend from the start of the session asked me for help during the advanced class when he and his partner couldn’t figure something out. I immediately dropped what I’d been up to and clarified the point for them, and then rejoined my own partner. I could have said that I was busy, but as he found it necessary to call for help it was necessary that I render assistance.

I learned something about myself in this regard. I don’t normally grab a partner at pair-up time, especially if I do not know the group well. If somebody goes for me, that’s fine, but I don’t expect it. Just before we start I always check to see if there are an odd or even number of participants, not including myself. If even, I tend to move away from the pairing up action. I then wander about helping, but also keeping an eye on the door to see if any late arrival comes in with nobody to work with. If the number is odd, I make sure to see who doesn’t get picked, and to bet there before they have time to feel left out.

I found myself doing this, even when not flagged as a high-ranking student. I didn’t conciously know that I did this at all, until I found myself thinking, “why am I not acting exactly like everybody else?” The normal action at partner time is to look to one side and take whoever is there, and then look a little farther, and then to shuffle around looking rejected.

Extinction of the Giants

The retail world has changed, and this Christmas season has illustrated this most clearly.

Gift shopping has always played a part in the holiday. It used to be done in a landscape of department stores.

In the Victoria of my childhood, the Meccas were The Bay, Eatons, Woodwards, and Woolco. A big Sears opened very near my home, followed by Zellers, and K-Mart, and finally Walmart.

Then the closures started, brought on by financial collapse. One-by-one, they fell. Woolco, Woodwards, K-Mart, Eatons, Zellers, and now Sears.

Only two of them remain.

The Bay was founded back in 1670, and has weathered many storms. In its current incarnation, it caters to a high-end market with its reputation for quality. They seem to be hanging on, but it is only a matter of time. A casual walk-through will show a clientele of older citizens. It is not a place where the young go to shop. An aging customer base is one that can only shrink.

Walmart is the other survivor, and the only one with a future that seems bright. They are known for bullying unsustainably low prices from overseas suppliers, and painfully underpaying employees. Their only redeeming feature is that they are able to provide customers with low prices.

So where has the business gone that used to support all of these varied department-store giants.

For a time, malls seemed to be the future of shopping.

They started out as mere attachments to the giants, but long ago developed serious clout of their own. They became the main shopping experience, with the department stores as mere afterthoughts. Although still called the, “anchor stores,” in a mall, the department giants became increasingly irrelevant and less frequented.

Big stores still exist at malls, but are often specialized, such as a Best Buy, or Indigo Books.

But even this isn’t written in stone. The large non-department store chains are suffering, too, as are the malls themselves.

The business is more and more going to other suppliers than department stores, or to malls.

The current big success story is with merchandise being delivered to the home, and to other non-traditional types of retail.

Let’s say you want to buy a new item, and have a tight budget. You could buy it at the cheapest price you find in a store, or you can go online to try and do better. Within a few minutes you will be able to locate a significantly lower price, and can have the item quickly delivered to your door.

Or lets say you are after something expensive, such as an iPad. They are available many places, or online, but if you live in a big city you might decide to pick one up from an actual Apple Store. The staff there are truly expert in everything that Apple handles, and if you manage to stump them, they will instantly grab one of the even more highly-qualified “Apple Geniuses.”

Apple Stores are sometimes in malls, but are also sometimes stand-alone places. There are no checkout tills, and plenty of casually uniformed staff is available. These places just feel different.

Any staff member can perform a sale of any magnitude instantly, using their phone, and your credit card. The only thing that slows this is a cash sale, where the staffer has to disappear for a moment with your money and return with the change.

It is even possible for a customer to take something off of the shelf, and perform the transaction with their own phone, and leave the store without bothering to find a staffer at all.

These places also hold training sessions, and one-on-one problem-solving dates with experts, and full-blown courses. They are as much educational facilities as they are merchants.

Perhaps the future is a mix of online buying with home delivery, mixed with educational/retail centres loosely based on the Apple model.

I am not, however, very good at predicting the future.

I can recall the past, and in my holiday travels around town, remember the department store giants that resided in this location, and on that corner, and attached to that mall.

Nothing ever stays the same. 

General Lumpishness

I like Christmas as much as the next guy, but it sure looked to be a horror show for my training.

What with all the visiting, and being visited, and travel, and travel back, and academy closure, and Vancouver academy closure, it was pretty severe.

Part of the good news was that of the 100 classes needed to qualify for promotion, I had 81 in the can before the festivities started.

It looked as if there could be as many as 20 days without even a single second of mat time. In a similar non-holiday period of training, there would normally be 15 advanced classes. I prepared myself for there to be none at all.

The first break came when both my home academy and the one in North Vancouver announced that a normal schedule classes would start after only 19 days instead of 20. That meant that with a bit of ferry and bus travel, I would get to 2 classes instead of the much less satisfactory number of zero.

Then Marc later decided to have North Vancouver classes resuming almost a week earlier than that. This was nice, but didn’t immediately make a difference, as we might still be in the thick of family festivities.

A couple of days ago, this changed a tad as some of our scheduling shifted. It could very easily and happily shift back, but it might just get me 2 more classes.

Instead of zero classes, I might get to as many as 4. Instead of my total sticking at 81 until well into January, it could just creep up to 85. For somebody who likes to get the attendance goal done as quickly as practical, that tiny difference is nice.

A very good aspect of all this relaxation is how much my body is managing to shake off my collection of little injuries. My back was wonked back before the shutdown, and working out was slowing its recovery. It feels as right as rain now, or possibly snow. I also have an arm injury that is absolutely loving the time off. It improves with every day that passes.

I have also enjoyed a fair amount of sitting about with family, including watching a nephew kill strangers from around the world on his xBox.

The only negative is a general feeling of lumpishness. A run up and around the university was considered, but then put off until just perhaps possibly tomorrow; or not.

Hurts

I would say there are five levels of physical condition when training in Jiu-Jitsu. I don't mean ability, or fitness or anything like that. There are five levels of injury or illness.

The best category to be in is when nothing is wrong at all. In this state, a student can train fully and can happily roll without any concerns. This is the state that we all like to be in. It's actually rarer than you'd think.

When things are a bit rougher, you fall into the category where you need to take more than normal care. Something has been injured, and is in danger of re-injury and could therefore become worse. This is annoying. Training when youu are like this is usually not a problem, but rolling should be modified. I can't tell you how many times I've rolled with some little thing hurt that I've brushed aside. Almost always, it gets yanked on, or crushed, or something happens to make the injury worse.

Arm or shoulder hurt, but you think you can still roll? Go ahead, but tuck that arm into your belt and DO NOT USE IT FOR ANYTHING. If your partner starts to grab at it, tap immediately.

I've found that the very best thing to to is to only roll with your absolutely most trusted partners, and only after letting them know the situation. Most will be happy to help. I could roll for hours with Tawha, or Tobias, or Elizabeth, or Rob, or a few others, and never feel in the slightest danger, and it would be just as fun as any rolling out there.

The next level is when you've managed to get yourself a real injury. The question should be, “can I at least do the lesson?” If so, go right ahead, hopefully with a trusted partner that you've spoken to ahead of time. Any use of the injury should be minimized and modified, and there should be NO ROLLING AT ALL. You need to heal, and you'd better let your body get on with it.

Level four is when you can't train at all. The injury is just too much, or perhaps you are out due to a cold or some other such contagious thing. Mustn't make the others sick.

If this is how you are, you should ask yourself the question; “would it be better to stay home and watch TV, or to do Jiu-Jitsu, and watch the lesson.”

I am not claiming that viewing from the sidelines is anything like being part of the group and actually training, but it is a lot more educational than not being present at all. This presupposes that sitting on the sideline would not be a physical problem in itself. You should not be present if you might be about to barf, or if your back can't handle sitting for very long. Would watching be worth the effort and time invested? Your instructor certainly won't be expecting you to be there, and might even think you're weird for showing up.

The crappiest level is when you are too damaged to even handle sitting and watching, or just too full of bacteria and germs. Stay home, or in the hospital, and do so without guilt. If you shouldn't be in class, then don't be. Be content in that you are doing the appropriate thing, even if it sucks.

At various times, I've been at every one of these levels. I've stayed home, and watched from the spectator seats, and trained without any rolling, sometimes had to roll with care, and even sometimes been fine-and-dandy. It seems that my usual state is somewhere between no-rolling, and rolling-with-care, with occasional forays into fine-and-dandy.

The other thing that it takes a long time to really accept is that it is better to err on the side of caution. If you don't then best you can expect is that you will be making your healing take longer than it should. Think about how bad the worst oucome could be. Just what condition could your kimura-injured arm end up in, or your knee that doesn't want to bend, or your cranked neck? A bad outcome might not merely mean an extended period of healing, but rather to permanent damage.

Don't take unnecessary risks. It is far better to miss a few rolls, or a few classes, rather than to risk your health and perhaps have a shortened Jiu-Jitsu career, which would mean thousands of classes and rolls that you will then never experience.

Dance? Fight?

There are a lot of analogies thrown out in relation to Jiu-Jitsu.

Some are trying to illustrate a point, such as one I recently heard that Jiu-Jitsu is like baking.

If you are making cookies, you can’t force things. You can’t use muscle to make the recipe better. You have to put in the appropriate amount of each ingredient. The baking itself will take time, and you shouldn’t try and rush it. You can’t decide that you want it to happen twice as fast, so you crank it up from 300 degrees up to 600, and expect things to work out.

A fun picture to ponder.

Sometimes an analogy is trying to illustrate things by finding similarities between activities, and extrapolate others. I find this type to be more enlightening.

I have my own take on the sometimes stated comparison between Jiu-Jitsu and dance. Just what similarities are there, really.

I contend that Jiu-Jitsu shares many characteristics with ballroom dance in particular.

Just how can you be a great dance partner? Do you force your partner around? If you do, then you are a truly horrible dancer. Nobody watching will want to dance like you do.

Do you decide to move whenever you want, or should you follow the rhythm that you are being presented with? If they are playing a waltz, and you insist on doing a cha-cha, you will not look good. If you do try and follow the music, and you insist on missing the timing, your dance will be absurd.

Let’s say you like to dance by picking up small partners, and physically moving them around, pushing them and sometimes just lifting them about. Perhaps you can have some ugly form of “success” with that, but what happens when you end up with a partner as large as yourself, or even bigger. Maybe they won’t like being pushed, and you might just pop out a hernia attempting to hoist them into the air.

If your dancing won’t work with every size of partner, there is something seriously wrong with it.

There is another cool secret about the ballroom/Jiu-Jitsu comparison.

The lead in dance is normally a male partner. They get to spend the entire time deciding what moves the couple will perform, and when, and where they will go, and who gets to walk backwards or forwards. That is not what a Jiu-Jitsu person should be doing.

Let’s say you want to get an arm bar to submit your opponent, his hands are not in an ideal location for you to get that move, so you struggle and strain to try and get everything to where you want it. Of course, he is resisting what you are up to, making you work even harder, but you want that arm bar and keep working. You get so focused that you missed about a million other things that presented themselves during all that effort and struggle.

The follower in ball room is usually a woman. She doesn’t get to decide on what happens in the dance at all. She has to sense her partner’s intentions, and conform to them totally. Her partner is supposed to give clear indicators, but even if he doesn’t she has to move as if he has.

We’ve been dancing for a lot longer than I’ve been doing Jiu-Jitsu, and I still have no idea how my wife does it. I pick the moves, and do my best to give her the correct signals, but it doesn’t seem to matter; she is always there...in front of me...flawlessly. She even lets her mind wander while doing this magic trick, and sometimes asks me what type of dance we’re doing, as she is perfectly performing it.

In Jiu-Jitsu, one should strive to be like the following partner in dance. You should be not the one who decides how your partner will be submitted; they are.

If they present a kimura, do that. If it’s an arm bar, fine. Collar choke, triangle, leg lock; if they present it, you will take it. Instead of picking something, and trying to make that happen, you respond, as if following in a waltz. You suspect an arm bar, and move appropriately, they counter, and rather than wasting effort to try and force things you switch to what they are currently presenting. Not only are you more likely to succeed, but will do so with far less effort and energy consumption.

If you want to see all of this executed perfectly, watch the fights of Royce Gracie in UFC 1 through UFC 4.

You will see the smallest competitor burning his way through the events doing exactly what I’ve just described, at least in the first two events. In UFC 1 there were 8 competitors, and in UFC 2 there were 16, and nobody could handle Royce Gracie.

In UFC 3, there was again a field of 8 fighters, but Royce only fought once. His opponent was bigger and stronger and fought like a crazy man. Royce broke all the rules about energy conservation and tried to take his opponent out early by forcing the action. Eventually, he caught him, but not before he totally exhausted himself. He won the match, but was unable to continue in the tournament.

Returning in UFC 4, Royce fought as a perfect Jiu-Jitsu student once more. Again there were 8 competitors. In the final match, Royce faced wrestler Dan Severn. Royce weight about 175 pounds, while Severn was up around 250. Almost immediately Royce was on his back, with Severn wrapped up in his guard. For almost 16 minutes, that’s where it stayed. Severn drove is crushing weight down on the smaller man, apparently in total control. If Royce had tried to get out from under, he would have failed, and would have exhausted himself. He held on, struggling under that power, waiting for Severn to decide how he wanted to lose. Suddenly, it was there, and Royce shot in a triangle, forcing Severn to tap out, or to pass out.

In those 4 events, Royce won every match when he moved like a female ballroom dancer, and had to retire after the single match when he dared to take the lead.

Yet another reason to want to fight like a girl. All you have to be able to do is to dance like one, too.