No Surprises

The test is long over, and it went pretty much as expected.

Being old, the biggest difficulty happened when I woke up. My left knee decided to act hard done by, with no hint of a cause.

Parked at the ferry terminal, and caught the first boat. Met up with the other test candidate and our instructor in the cafeteria. We rode together in Shawn’s car.

At the school, we were met by the evaluator and a helper, and got down to work.

Things went on for between and hour-and-a-half, and two hours. There was a lot of technique demonstration, and a bunch of sparring, and some rolling with punching.

Nothing unexpected, and all within reason.

Both of us who were being tested passed, and received our belts and promotion certificates.

By the time we headed for the change room, my knee was making me limp around. It didn’t enjoy the test. I also had a black eye, and my face looked as if a truck had backed over it a few times.

As we left, the womens self-defence class was starting to arrive. I considered returning for the later mixed classes, but felt beat-up and tired enough to abort that idea and head for my bus stop headed home.

By the time I reached my bus transfer stop at Park Royal Mall, things were just starting to open up. I interrupted my travels to celebrate with a pizza at a favourite spot. Limped back to my bus to head home.

I ended up on the 2:20pm boat back home, picked up my car from the parking lot on the other side, and was home just a little after 3pm.

My wife wanted all the details, which I recounted while ensconced comfortably in my lazy boy recliner. This was followed by a shower, and I packed up a clean uniform.

Headed off to train at the local school’s evening classes.

People were very congratulatory, and said nice things about me.

I slept very well.

Merry Maniac

Today, there will be a class at our local Jiu-Jitsu school, and tomorrow there are none. The day after that I go into Vancouver and get evaluated to see if I am good enough to receive a Brown Belt.

That happens early in the morning. If I fail, likely I’d just waddle home straight away in a bit of a funk.

Passing, however, would see my compulsive behaviors kick in. As a brand new Brown Belt, I already be collecting attendance towards adding the first of four possible stripes onto my freshly unwrapped new belt.

With a new belt to wear, I think I’d go for coffee, and then return to attend the Vancouver school’s midday class.

That would put me rushing to get to the ferry terminal to get home in time to train at the Gibsons school in the evening.

The day after that is my normal day to travel into the city to train so I’d be back on the first ferry about an hour before dawn again.

Then both schools shut down to have Christmas breaks. Crazy me will already have 3 classes tallied on his attendance record.

The weird thing is that people are always saying to chase technique, or chase skill, but never to chase rank.

I humbly disagree, but only because they are wrong.

After receiving a promotion right before Christmas most people would take things a little easier. Few would train that very day in the city, and then rush like a crazy person to get home to train again, and then catch the stupidly early ferry again the next morning to train again in the city.

A dedicated person, just might go once, but it would be unlikely that all the rushing about to make it to a second class would hold much appeal, and certainly getting to three would seem like madness.

Doing so for me is a bit of a game. The fastest that it is permitted to earn a belt stripe is 8 months. There are no exceptions.

In that time, it is necessary to have attended 90 or more appropriate advanced sessions ( the actual goal is for 100, but ten of these are so easy to collect that I don’t even bother thinking about them at all).

With the amount that I travel, there is no way I can finish the attendance in 8 months if I train like a normal person. Assuming I can manage absolutely perfect attendance (never sick, nor injured, and no conflicts of any kind) whenever I’m home, I will only have managed 67 classes by the time that warm August day has rolled along.

Collecting 90 classes would take me 11 months and 2 weeks. That sounds like a year to me.

However, I go into the city to train every Saturday. Doing this means that my attendance goal will be reached in exactly 8 months.

But I don’t leave it at that.

On one of our yearly big trips, we usually head out two weeks early, and stop off in LA so that I can train at Gracie University. Putting that trip into the mix, I lose classes at my home school for two weeks, and two Saturdays in Vancouver, but train a ton in LA.

Doing this means that my tally goal will actually be reached 6 weeks before the due date.

But even that isn’t enough. Rob and I will be working on BBS exams, which will require tons of extra mat work. I also run a Sunday session, and work with anybody during open mat time on anything. Factoring these shows my tally growing at an alarming rate.

About half of these sessions end up as nothing, or at least nothing that I can credit myself for. Even so, they make it so that my tally total will be finished easily 3 months before the due date.

If I train after getting promoted in a couple of days, and before the Christmas shutdown it will change all of the potential tally completion dates by one week in my favour.

There is a direct correlation between the amount of training somebody does, and how good they are, and how much they improve over time.

I like getting my tallies up as a form of motivation, and the rank promotion system directly feeds into this. I am either improving by chasing rank, or I am earning rank by chasing improvement.

The point to all this jibber-jaber is to explain why I will be on the mat between the time of my Brown Belt exam and the schools shutting downs shortly after.

If it was really just me chasing the tallies, I would stop after attaining the goal, or at least cut back a lot. I do that, but continue on at my merry, maniac pace.

Also, if I train straight away after a getting a new belt, everybody will get to admire it.

One Week Left

Today it’s Saturday, and there is precisely one week left until the scheduled day for my Brown Belt evaluation.

There is still some question as to the precise day that it will happen, but the paperwork went in naming Saturday; four days before Christmas.

It may happen on Saturday, but there seems to be some question about that. The evaluator has some reason for moving it by a day or two.

That is fine with me, but only if it is moved up, and not further away.

Helen and I always go to spend Christmas with family in Victoria, and we are committed to going over the day after the scheduled Saturday test date. That is already a couple of days later than we’d usually go, and we committed to it back when my test was first being set up, two months ago. No going back on that now.

Earlier is not an issue, at least on my end. It is always hard to coordinate a bunch of people getting together to do anything. Just try and pick a restaurant with a bunch of buddies.

The time has to fit me, and the other guy being tested, and our instructor, and the evaluator, and a couple of extra bodies to act as our bad guys. That would be at least 6 people.

If it simply cannot be done on or before the designated Saturday, then my part at least would have to be put off until sometime in January.

I don’t really think that it will be, but it is a possibility.

Anyhow, all of the preparation will soon be over. When that happens, Rob and I will jump back into the technical exams in a big way, and there will be other projects and interesting topics to be found and explored.

A pass means that for the next four levels, I can expect to progress every 8 months or so. Perhaps more slowly if some kind of injury pops up.

That would give me 32 month of stability.

The next stressful rank would come after that, and it would be the big one; for a Black Belt. The soonest I can achieve the rank before that would be something like the late summer of 2022.

Back belt exams only happen in Los Angeles at the main Gracie University school in December, and the invitations for that go out the prior January or February. So a ranker finishing in the late summer of 2022, would be followed by an invitation to Los Angeles being issued early in 2023, for a gruelling exam just before Christmas.

That all still seems pretty far away, and quite theoretical. The point is that there will be plenty of time for technical exams, helping beginners, and attending classes. It will be nice to get back to all that again.

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.