Can you live without the martial arts?

I haven't updated this blog in a while as most of the activity has been on my christian one (Free plug!) Thus, it is odd that I choose to update at a time when I am severely injured and will be out for a good 2 or 3 months

Therefore, no better time to ruminate and reflect on that old question: What do the martial arts mean to me? But sorry, being the academic that I think I am - there's an intellectual proposition I want to make first, from a psychological and sociological viewpoint

There is notion in current society that says that it is good to have pursuits, or hobbies. But for the first time in history, we have never had as much spare time or affluence. So, this affords us the luxury of indulging in your inane hobbies for amazing lengths of time. Your basic Maslowian needs are met. So, the rest is spent in search of what he called the journey for self-awareness. Or if not, time fillers such as watching TV...

Currently, martial arts are pursued as a hobby for most people. Because you don't work in agrarian china anymore, you have your saturday afternoons to go to open mats instead of repairing the bullock cart. There is no need to learn the martial arts for life and death situations because the mongols are not likely anymore to come galloping over the plains. So, you can do it for fun and as a recreational activity

Which comes to the question: can you give it up?

Sometimes, when I speak to certain individuals, they speak about BJJ or MMA as if it is oxygen to them. They miss one session and their whole world collapses. Depression follows and don't get me started on what they are like outside of the gym. They are never outside the gym. All they want to do is talk again about that technique, that fight, that...you get the point. It's an obsession. A way of life

What bollocks.

You will find that the majority of people who hold to this view are young males with loose social ties. If they run in a pack, they run with other of the same ilk. You are less likely to find this when the person is settled down in a relationship, married or has kids. Or they work and are involved in other activities outside. Sometimes, I hear my friend's moan when they say their wife stops them from going to training. You know what? At times, this may be a good thing.Maybe she has a sense of perspective

I think that this is a subtle distortion of the self-awareness psychobabble that is pitched through the media these days. Find your bliss. Make your self happy. Sure sounds good as a sound bite but let me know how relevant that is when you get older. When there are bills to pay. The electric company is not as concerned about you finding your self fulfilment as opposed to getting paid ontime. Time and impending mortality have a way of reinventing your personal wheel

If it's a recreational activity, you can give it up. Trust me, you won't die without it. And even if you do die, what use was it anyway if it caused your demise?

Thus, I am finding that the answer is yes. I can live without the martial arts even though I have spent many years, money and sacrificed much for it. It's not a vehicle to unlocking the secrets of the universe nor is it salvation for your soul - it's just a set of exercises. And while it was fun, it's not the alpha and omega.

Jits for Jeriatrics!

Sorry, Justin, don't mean to imply that you are. I'm actually way closer to that demographic comapred to you! :-)

This post is in response to an email that my friend sent to me about getting back into training after a really debilitating injury. And believe me, his is really bad. But I admire his incredible verve and spirit for even contemplating that. The great thing is that he is using phrases like "soul searching", the "mental game" and the like. This is a great first step

Now I know the young bucks will poo-poo all this and just believe that you should train on tank filled with 99% testosterone and 1% intelligence but I just want them to reach my age and see whether it's possible to do so without ending up on a first name basis with your Orthopaedic surgeon. (In my case, it doesn't apply - my brother is one)

When you get older, the ratio should be reversed; not because your nuts get smaller but because your body can't take at 40 what it did at 18. It's not possible. Not even with all the supplements and ginseng known to man. So, below are a few tips on how to get back into the game safely when others are saying that you should be playing golf (blech!)

1. Train more often, but less intensely

The second part sounds wrong but hear me out. It's better for you to train 20 times and progress 1 km each time then to train once and blow yourself out , and never come back. I have seen a few blue belts who have stopped training, return once to great fanfare..and drop out once again, never to be seen.

I think what you need to do is set a goal in terms of quantity of classes or sessions and reach that. At then end, you'll find that just through sheer doggedness in coming to each class - you'll achieve something. This year, my goal was to come to 20 open mat sesssions. Compared to 2007, where my attendance was sporadic and depended on whether I "felt like it"; the improvement in my game has been noticeable.

2. Don't be afraid to go back into 1st gear

As I have said before, an instructor usually concentrates on his top students and at that pace; leaving the slower ones disheartened when they can't keep up. Bugger that. He hasn't got your body, your aches and your pains. And he won't be paying for your medical bill for ibuprofen either.

If the pace is too fast and potentially damaging for you, don't be afraid to pull back and slow down.

3. Leave the memories in the Kodak box

Guys being guys, we want to believe that we will remain invincible and potent forever. It's related to a fear of death, but I'll save that for my religious blog. Consequently, we seek to relive your past glorious moments again and again. So, we kind of replay that line from Eve 6's song " Here's to the night we felt alive" ad infinitum

This sounds brutal; leave them. Save them for the occassional talk cock session when you've had a few bears at the pub. But it's over. And once over, it will never happen again. As in Ikebana, the arranged flowers are beautiful; but they are essentially dead, disconnected from their roots. Their decline is assured.

So too the past glories. Find new ones, or new vistas when you roll. Don't be punch-drunk Pauly at that rundown gym going " I coudda been a contender!". Yesterday is history, Tomorrow is a mystery, so..get drunk today! :-)

Before I go all Deepak Chopra..

4. Train with a brain

It's not a bad thing to engage your brain. It means that you have a plan, a schedule and course charted. If it fails, so what? At least you tried to go somewhere. This means asking questions like "what do i want to work on", "how long?" and "what do i want to achieve?"

Leave the romantic "mind of no mind, train like a man without a care in the world" b.s behind. Show me a guy like that , and I'll show you a guy with crippling mortgages, a neglected wife and kids and unwashed clothes

How's your Game been?

As the year draws to a close, one question any person training in combat sports should ask is: How has my game been this year?

It's important to ask this as like it or not, a combat sport is predicated on a few things, and one of those things is that there should be improvement seen over time if one if diligent, aware and mindful of what they are doing. It is not optional

If you are doing a non-competitive art like aikido or tai-chi, then this discussion doesn't apply to it. But the combat sports are inherently competitive and about dominance over your opponent; or at least control over your actions. So there are ways to gauge whether you are improving or not. Some may be valid in theory but not in practice. Take the example of performance gauging through winning compeitions

Say you won a gold medal this year in a Jits competition whereas last year, you got a silver. Sounds good, right? It is until the truth comes out that last year, you had to fight 5 opponents to get your silver while this year, you had a walkover all the way to the finals. The end doesn't always tell the whole story

If you were out with an injury last year and this year, you only started rolling or sparring again; there is improvement. It doesn't matter if everyone is kicking your ass. If next year, you are where you were this year, then your game hasn't imrpoved.

Some people object to this stress-testing. They whine "Why can't I just train without caring if I improve or not? I still like it."

Unfortunately, you train with a partner. And if he or she is improving, and likewise the others in your class; pretty soon, you won't enjoy it because everyone will be spanking you. And if you derive a certain pleasure out of that...well, there are other websites that cater for that.. :-)

Nuff said

My teacher can beat your teacher!

In one of my conversations with Rizo (or more to the point, I was boring him to death..), I related the story of one of my former Kung Fu teachers. Sifu was one heckuva nice guy, and he ran a kwoon with a great training atmosphere that was well equipped and patronised by eager students of the noble art. I used to travel an hour just to get to his place and never once to this day regretted those lessons. There was one problem though…

He couldn’t fight very well

As far as teaching was concerned, he was great. But he had a reputation for being the target of ‘dojo-storming’ back in those days by other teachers. This was back in the heyday of the infamous Wing Chun wars where so-and-so Sifu talked smacked about another sifu, so his students would go to war with the other clan over this supposed dishonour. It was all so Wah-La-Toi-ish.

Anyway, not only did my sifu get jumped on by other members of the same style; practioners from other non Gong Fu arts like karateka got their licks in. I know this because one of my other teachers claimed to be one of those guys…which was something I never told my sifu about due to the political complications, to say the least.

Which goes back to the topic at hand: Should your teacher/coach/sifu be able to fight?

These days, things are a lot more professional. If you want to prove that you are a mensch, you get into the Octagon, if you have the huevos. Should you indulge in uninvited ‘testing’ at another martial arts place, be prepared for the cops at your door and to be sued by your friendly local law firm. Bruce Lee would have been in Sungei Buloh prison by now if he tried his schickt from the movies now.

But that does mean that the teacher/coach/sifu is now off the hook?

Here’s my take on it. Whatever you are teaching, you better make sure you can do what your art says it claims to do according to how you teach it. Fair enough?

That means that if you teach MMA, you have to be able to spar all ranges with all your students because that’s what they do, and that’s what you are supposed to do. If you are a BJJ coach and don’t roll, you don’t deserve that title. You may deserve the belt due to your efforts in the past – but not the present role of ‘coach’

If you do Tai-Chi for health reasons, you shouldn’t have to take challenges from idiots who want to see whether it ‘works in self-defence’. Why? Because you never claimed to teach it for those skill sets in the first place.Those aforementioned twits should take it to an RBSD practitioner if the want to try their skills out. Why the latter? Well, they did put themselves in the position that their art is for self-defence and not sport, right? So, that means that theoretically, they are open to testing and real-life attacks 24-7.

My aim here is not to stir up shite. Okay, maybe a little. All I am contesting is that you should be accountable for what you say you do, teach and are. I have no problem telling people that I am an out of shape desk jockey that does some Jits and Judo twice a week. In no way in the known Universe does that make my Royler Gracie or Yamashiro Yamashita. So,I am a coward and am not a fighter - nor would I claim to be. There’s no point bragging about what doesn’t exist

Now, if one day I started teaching and bragged about how I could sub and throw anyone, and Mr Gracie and Yamashita-san came to the door of my school; then I’d better be prepared to back those words up or sign up for some medical insurance pretty damn quick..

Fight Quest - BJJ

Some of you may know of the show called "Fight Quest" where two hosts go around the world and spend five days learning an art and then take on two of the art's top practioners in a sparring match at the end of the five days.

Last night, 'Fight Quest' went to Brazil and trained with Rickson's team. It was quite good as both of the hosts are BJJ practioners (one is a blue and the other, a purple), so it made for some entertaining watching. What was personally interesting for me was watching how black belts rolled. The key differences that I picked up from the show were:

1) Black Belts (BBS) roll with a greater awareness of leverage and less strength
2) They also learn how to pace themselves
3) BBS seem to be calmer, but I guess that this is a function of mat time
4) Their sense of timing is superb

All in all, it was very enlightening from that viewpoint

And the blind will see..

I came up with a drill for BJJ one Saturday when I was working out Rizan, one of my BJJ training partners and one of the best people to work out with ever. It involves very simply, just rolling for 3 or 4 minutes with your eyes closed. This is done at about 50% resistance or even less if you haven't warmed up

The rationale behind this is that most times, we rely too much on our sight when we roll, and yet, unlike tennis or football where eyesight is paramount, the close proximity inherent in Jits should mean that there should likewise be a lesser dependance on the sense of sight and more on touch.

Thus, I believed that by relying what we see, we tended to take in too much information, more than what we needed to roll effectively and efficiently. Take a blind person crossing the room, he or she doesn't have the luxury of wandering around like a sighted person - the aim is to get to the other side safely and efficiently as every step taken frivolously could mean danger.

Now I am not saying that you have there is no room to play in Jits,; not at all. My point is that you don't realise how inefficient your rolling in in terms of physical exertion and breathing expanded until you are made aware of it. And I believe that purposely handicapping yourself is a good way of opening this kind of awareness

Don't take my word for it..try it!

Impossible is Nothing

Two days ago, I threw someone with Uchimata

Those of you who do Judo will know what throw I'm talking about. To the uninitiated, it's a kind of throw where you come in from the side, throw a leg between your opponent's and lift him up in the air as though he's riding on it. No wonder that the name for a similar throw in wrestling is called the 'flying mare'

It's also one of the most beautiful and spectacular throws in Judo, and also one of the most challenging to pull off properly. It's also a throw suited to bigger guys, not smaller, shorter ones like me. And this is where the story comes in.

All through my judo years till now, every instructor has told me that as someone of diminutive size; I should concentrate on throws better suited to my height and stature. Thus, they taught me ippon seionage ( the classic shoulder throw) till I knew all the variations.

But I wasn't satisfied.

I would dream incessantly of uchimats and it's closely related cousin; harai-goshi. But each time I asked my sensei's to teach it to me properley; they gently suggested that I learn some other throws suited to my stature. So, I continued doing what I was doing until sensei Junji came along. When I asked him to teach me haraigoshi and uchi mata; he didn't brush off the request but went patiently with me and broke down the technique bit by bit.

What was refreshing was that he never once made a comment about the unsuitability of the technique for my height; he just taught it to me. And over the course of a few lessons, I felt sorry for him as my clumsiness in executing the technique must have caused him some physical pain whenever I didn't quite get my throwing leg into his inner thigh. Those of you who have received some badly executed uchi matas will know what I mean :-)

Then, one day, it came. As Matt Thornton would say - it became Alive. It had timing, energy and motion, and I was as shocked as anybody when it happened. My training partner hit the ground and I replayed that throw over and over again in my head

Sensei Junji saw it. But all he said was: "Now, let's work on that some more"

And that is the essence of this post. It's not to crow about me, but to give the biggest props possible to my judo coach, sensei Junji. What he did epitomises what a great coach should be - someone who tells his charge that impossible is nothing. Who makes him believe that it can be done. And makes them work as though the seemingly improbable is just around the corner. After that, they then show you another road and another corner to go through. It's the answer to that perenial question beloved of kids in the back of car on a journey"

" Are we there yet?"

Not yet, not yet, but we'll get there soon, says a real sensei.