Monthly Archives: April 2012

Pure Technique vs Pure Guts

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Most of my formative years (high school, college) have been in the United States. It’s in the U.S. that I was introduced to wrestling. For better or for worse, wrestling coaches (at least in my experience) are warrior philosophers. There is a definite aura of introspection, wisdom, and insight about them. Every sentence they put together, no matter how cliche and it’s usually cliche as hell, somehow always rings true in a way that nothing else does (at least for me).

And what school of philosophy do wrestling coaches hail from? It’s the school of Animal Farm’s horse Boxer, whose motto in all matters of life was “I will work harder”. It’s the Gable ideal. Americans romanticize the athlete who often takes himself to the limit and pushes beyond it. One way to view that is “toughness”. I think another way to view it is passion. And in my mind a passion for a goal doesn’t have to channel itself into toughness. It can be channeled into an obsession with perfect technique, an obsession with drilling the crap out of a set of moves until all you are is that set of moves. That system is your identity. It’s what you eat, sleep, think about.

I understand this kind of existence, and hold it as an ideal, not for sports, but for my academic life. But it very much influences the way I approach grappling. It’s important to be real tough, but you don’t have to be the toughest dude out there. It all depends on your personality, and where you’re best at channeling your passion for a goal.

So, it boils down once again to a question for the wrestling coaches: are you a Cael Sanderson or are you a Dan Gable?

Don’t Watch the Clock

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When I competed at the NY Open this weekend, I was twice caught in a realization that I was winning and that there was very little time left in the match. I didn’t start stalling but I was distinctly aware of the thought that I don’t need to score any more points. “Don’t take risks” I thought. What that amounted to was “don’t do anything”.

Depending on your personality, the pressure to win can be counter-productive in the long term, and for me, it very much is. Let me explain…

Looking back at the matches I lost over the last two years, I lost because I didn’t want to “take risks” or (more clearly) I didn’t believe in my technique. That mindset leads to a lot of wins by 2 points, by 3 points, by 5 points. At the brown and black belt level, that’s a solid performance. At the blue belt level, to me, that’s an embarrassment. The good guys in my division submit everyone (including other good guys), except for the 1 or 2 people with whom they have a close war. That’s who I want to strive to be.

When I’m up by 2 points, I want to strive for 2, 3, 4 more points. I want to work for the submission, even if that means I lose the match. Because if I am content to win by 2, I will never develop into the kind of competitor I want to be on the mat.

What’s needed: A supreme confidence that my cardio and guts is tougher than my opponent’s.

How to achieve it: Push myself past the limit of exhaustion often though training, through running, through anything. In other words, refuse to quit. It’s easy to say, hard to do. But I can say that I’ve begun seriously working on it, and will be ready for Worlds.

Long Road Back to Worlds

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This is a tough one to write. I’m disappointed; just spent a few minutes looking through the screen lost in thought about life, the absurdity of pursuing goals, setting new goals, etc. I guess you can call these the dark moments after a tournament. I performed worse than I wanted, losing my last match by 2 points. I won’t say anything more about the matches except that I earned a total of 6 advantage points throughout the tournament for almost passing. That says it all to me.

The IBJJF put up a picture of my loss. I made it my computer’s desktop background to remind myself of what I was missing today.

The main reason for my disappointment is that I wanted to win gold as a confidence boost for Worlds in 5 weeks, and the reason I didn’t win is because my heart wasn’t in the match. That’s a crushing realization, and calls for a few changes in my training. It’s time to get serious. I have to build confidence in my technique and my cardio. I know exactly the things that need to be done. Given how much responsibilities I have at work, the things I know I need will be that much harder to get into my schedule. But I’ll do my best.

Thanks for everyone’s support, and congrats to the many new and old jiu jitsu friends that I ran into today. Everyone who I saw compete fought their asses off.

Videos of Your Matches for Sale

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Ever since I started competing in judo and bjj, I’ve been recording my matches on video. I put up a little 5in tripod on the score table, press record, and go fight. Watching myself compete has been very useful for identifying the holes in my game and fixing them. But it’s also cool to be able to send the videos to my friends and family that want to see them.

The question I’ve always had is why don’t tournaments record every single match on every mat? To record, organize, and upload HD content is relatively straight forward these days. Budovideos just did an amazing job of live streaming 12 mats simultaneously for the IBJJF 2012 Pans.

This could be made available for free or for a membership fee. But even more than that, I think many competitors would be willing to pay a significant amount of money for a copy of their matches. I know I would, especially for bigger IBJJF events.

When I went sky diving, lots of people were willing to pay extra ($100+ more) to be videotaped during their jump. They wanted to remember the experience, because who knows when they’ll do it again. The same goes for tournaments! For many competitors, a tournament is a relatively rare experience that they want to remember for a long time.

Anyway, it has always been puzzling to me why no tournament (that I know of) has attempted this for all their matches. Some tournaments live stream some of the matches, but they never take the next step of organizing the content. The target audience doesn’t have to be the general public. The target could just be the competitors themselves.

The Tanks of Jiu Jitsu: Andre Galvao and Xande Ribeiro

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Andre Galvao and Xande Ribeiro have fought each other twice within the last month. First at the San Diego trials for the World Pro, and then again yesterday for the finals of the World Pro.

Xande won the first match. Galvao won the second. However, I think neither match had a clear winner, and the only thing you can say is that both matches were an exhibition of HEAVY guard passing. Nothing fancy, just basics with tight heavy pressure. Here ‘s the first match from the trials:

Here’s the second match from finals:

It’s easy to say it, but I have to agree with the general consensus that for matches like these, 6 minutes seems like way too short a time. I think 6 minutes does encourage the athletes to open up and go hard, but when they are as evenly matched as these two, it would be great for everyone to see it play out for longer (say 10 minutes).

Kill Face vs Kitten Face

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This is the first time I came across “Enter the Dojo” which is an online mocumentary-style show about martial arts. I am thoroughly entertained by it. First the funny stuff and then I’ll write a couple of related but more serious comments that this video reminded me of.

“Having a good ‘kill face’ is like walking around with a loaded gun in your pocket, only it’s not in your pocket… it’s on your face.”

That pretty much says it all right there. My favorite part of the above video is the one guy who is completely unaffected by the “kill face” and the girl that says she “likes kittens”.

In all seriousness, I think facial expressions and general attitude are very important in competition. I believe there isn’t one correct way to carry yourself. What’s important is that you maximize the focus, minimize distractions.

For me, the most effective “face” is a relaxed one. No matter how tired, angry, or excited I get in competition, I try to maintain a calm expression. This isn’t so much for anyone else, but for myself to help relax and ride out the storm. I’m not sure why but it helps me to almost meditate when I’m doing something streneous like grappling, sprinting, etc. It lets me watch the “pain” and let is pass over me. That’s sounds like hippie crap, but it helps.

One problem I have is that I get too friendly before the match. I think being friendly (for me) is a distraction (if it’s right before a match). I’ll shake hands. I’ll nod. I’ll even say “good luck”. But having a conversation is just not a good idea for me, at least not at this stage. I’ve seen high level black belts that are casually joking around right before their fights, and that shows me that being ultra serious is not essential for everyone. So you have to figure out what works for you. I think ultimately you have to get serious when the match starts, and if you’re the type of person that can go from smiling and joking to serious and focused in just a few seconds, then by all means, do it! Joking around will probably make the time pass faster.

Training With Pollen Allergies

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During the months of April, May, and sometimes June, I get to experience my body’s allergic reaction to pollen which include: sneezing, nasal congestion, coughing, itchy watery eyes, runny nose, itchy throat, etc. I have trouble breathing, and because of that I also have trouble sleeping. Not surprisingly that has the added effect of fatigue and irritability.

This all makes training, work, and life in general notably less pleasant.

Whenever I train with someone in judo or jiu jitsu, I find a strange kind of comfort if they visibly are suffering from allergy symptoms as well. It’s like a brotherhood of mild suffering. We nod at each other with understanding as a stream of mucus makes its way out of our noses and down our faces.

It’s one of those things that I would never miss a tournament for, but it definitely takes me out of the competing mindset and can be a barrier to the kind of hard work required to grow as an athlete and academic.

I’m trying to figure out how to deal with it, but for the most part, just sucking it up works best. Every once in a while though, a whiny blog post like this will get out. More than anything it’s just a call to arms for the hay fever brotherhood.

A Visit to Marcelo Garcia’s Academy in New York City

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I was visiting NYC for a day, and decided to stop by Marcelo Garcia’s Academy. A day pass there is $40 and only $20 if you are a member of MGInAction.com.

Overall it was a great experience. I enjoyed the chance to train in a friendly environment with a lot of high level grapplers that I haven’t trained with before. That’s probably a good thing to do for anyone looking to expand their game.

The Butterfly System

When I started jiu jitsu two years ago, I was put on the butterfly guard (and x-guard) path right off the bat. I took a liking to the butterfly guard not because I was good at it, but because I was terrible at it. It seemed that unlike the closed guard and half guard, holding on for dear life is not an option for butterfly, so I knew I would have to learn good technique to prevent my butterfly guard from being passed.

A lot of the fundamentals (as well as the advanced details later) about butterfly and x-guard I took from Marcelo’s instructional dvds and MGInAction (his online video library). Marcelo really believes in that system, and his students do as well. So it was a surreal experience for me, because I got to train with some great technical players that all had amazing butterfly guards and more importantly had good defenses for mine.

The hardest part for me was safely passing the butterfly in no-gi. I had to be very patient and not make any mistakes. Especially the higher ranks were very quick to take advantage of any opening.

Advice for Visitors

I did 4 classes (2 gi and 2 no-gi). I was sore going into it, which was frankly a mistake. There are a lot of good technical players there and in order to really appreciate the experience I think you need to be able to go toe-to-toe with them. That takes a lot of physical and mental energy. It’s almost similar to a tournament. So my recommendation is to get a good night’s sleep and make sure you’re well rested before the visit, especially if you are looking to do multiple classes.

If you live in Philadelphia like I do, take a bus there! BoltBus or MegaBus will take you from 30th St Station in Philly to within a couple of blocks away from Marcelo’s academy. The ride takes exactly two hours, and is comfortable, especially when you’re sleep deprived as I am and spend the whole ride there and back passed out (probably snoring and/or drooling on yourself).

Do laundry in the city! Marcelo’s academy is on 36th and 5th. There’s a cheap coin laundry place on 30th and 5th: L C Laundromat. So even if you want to do multiple classes, you can still bring just one gi and it’ll be nice and clean for both training sessions.

The last piece of advice I have falls into the category of common sense: don’t over eat. Did I follow this advice? No. There was a Subway footlong. There was pizza. There were lots of apples and coffee. It wasn’t too much food, but just enough to make training less fun than it otherwise would have been ;-)

When In Doubt, Watch Dan Gable Videos

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I was always attracted to the idea of the kind of life where you give every ounce of your being to one thing. You embrace an obsession so fully that it defines everything in your life: every decision, every activity, every minute really. I never saw the “unhealthy” element of it. I always thought that “unhealthy” was something people would say about a life that they themselves don’t have the guts to lead. Crash and burn is just as healthy as anything else. I think “healthy” is an idea that it’s good to go through life peacefully, without trouble. But I think that assumption ignores the absurdity of our short little stay on this planet. So yes, to me, there is no such thing as “healthy”. It’s just a damn excuse.

That said, I’m willing to admit that I don’t have the guts to live a life like that, but I admire it, and strive to do it as much as I can (to a socially-acceptable degree). For me, mostly, my passion is my research. Sport (judo and jiu jitsu) is a “relief” from that daily grind, but I’m passionate about them as well. In fact, I call it a relief to justify doing them at all ;-) It’s the “healthy” thing to do. There is that stupid word again.

Anyway, when I’m feeling warn out by it all, by the lack of sleep, by the excessive amounts of coffee, by looking at pages and pages of math or code, I like to remind myself of Dan Gable. He is one of the rare individuals that lived exactly the kind of life I mentioned at the beginning of this post. Life is a god damn mess. Why the hell not give everything you got. I love that idea.

Alright, enough of that, here’s the man himself:

Everyone Loves to Complain About the Referees

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I competed at the Liberty Bell Judo Classic yesterday. Fought some tough black belts and had a good experience. I’ll have more to say about that when I get around to editing the video blog of that day.

I got to watch a lot of matches, and if anything was a common theme, it was that people complained about calls the referees made. It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. Just the usual amount of complaining. But that’s just it: people love to complain about referees and tournament organizers. The stress, nerves, emotions of competition need to go somewhere, and where better than to put them on the shoulders of the very people that make the event happen. That’s a sarcastic statement, by the way.

I’ve never felt that way about refs and tournament organizers. I am always filled with gratitude and genuine respect for the people that run the tournament. Perhaps I’m naive, but to me it seems that they are some of the most passionate supporters, fans, and practitioners of the sport. I’ll get a “bad” call and will be upset about it, but I won’t see it as the refs fault, but just bad luck. It’s part of the game. The ref only comes into play when your jiu jitsu and judo are not dynamic, active, and dominant. I always put it on myself if a referee was put into the position of having to decide the match.

I’m just grateful for the folks that love the competition side of the sport enough to help out. Many of the refs and organizers are current or past competitors themselves. They know what it takes to step on the mat, fight your ass off, and give everything for the chance to win gold.   They know it, they respect it, and they nurture it.

Alright enough of that. I just wanted to say that you’ll never hear me complain about the refs or tournament organizers, except jokingly over a beer or something. Because talking about the weather and complaining about the referees are the two things you can always fall back on where there is nothing to talk about at the bar.

By the way, I’m being nice in this post, so you would think I would get more good calls in my favor. On the contrary, I’ve learned over the months and years that I competed that the more I become friends with the refs, the harder they are on me when I’m competing.

PS: The picture in this post is that of Teddy Riner losing the 2010 World Judo Championships open category by a split referee decision.