Category Archives: Transportation

2013 IBJJF New York Open Video and Experience

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I competed at NY Open this past weekend. I got 1st place after 3 tough matches. First here are some video highlights (with the usual monotone commentary) and then some random notes on the whole experience.

Megabus awkwardness

I took Megabus up to NYC, and slept obnoxiously the whole way up, sitting next to a huge dude who kept saying sorry for touching me with his elbow. It made me realize that when two dudes have to be touching on a bus, it’s best not to acknowledge this. Also, “sorry” like “fuck” are words that are good to use in moderation. The more you use them, the more they lose their power to convey a genuine message that they originally carried.

Subway musicians

I love the New York subway. It’s a giant grab bag of characters. I took the 1 train uptown to City College of NY and it was stuffed to the gills. And remarkably, a couple of stops into my trip, a group of four musicians got on (with drums, guitar, etc) and started playing a bluesy soulful song. They got a ton of dirty looks for taking up valuable space, but I enjoyed the hell out of the show. Given how crowded it was, it felt like we were all on a sinking Titanic listening to the last band we’ll ever hear. It occurred to me that there are not many cities in the world where I could’ve experienced this. I would’ve given them money but I only had 20 dollar bills. And the show was not quite THAT good.

David Jacobs knows who I am

David Jacobs (see interview) is a well-known and respected long-time black belt competitor. I’ve encountered him only online as basically a voice of reason on the jiu jitsu forums. It so happened that he was the ref for all of my matches. The funny thing is I felt a bit of pressure because of that. I wanted to make sure I don’t stall and that I use clean technical jiu jitsu. If I ever get a stalling call, I’m always disappointed with myself, but especially if the call comes from a competitor I look up to. Anyway, after my matches, he briefly stopped me and said “I just realized that you’re Lex”. More than anything else, that seemed like an acknowledgement that I am slowly becoming one of the “regulars” on the competition scene.

Moving up a weight division

After a full breakfast, two snacks, and nonstop nervous drinking of water at the tournament, I weighed in at a remarkably low 182 lbs with my gi (just a half lbs over my usual weight class of middleweight). But I decided earlier in the week that I will move up a weight class to work on making sure that I will never let myself use “I’m not at my goal competition weight” as an excuse for not competing. My first opponent weighed in at 194. I was proud of myself for taking a step in the direction that I felt was right based on the circumstances. As many people do, I let conventional wisdom influence my thinking too much. Part of competing, is gaining the confidence to explore and figure out what works for you. Luckily I did well, but the biggest challenge is when I fail not to blame it on any one aspect or decision but to continue exploring.

Coaching and competition training

I am lucky enough to train with a lot of top-notch jiu jitsu folks. In the last few months Tim Carpenter, Josh Vogel, and Drew Vogel have been running competition training sessions that helped get everyone mentally prepared for competition. I think these sessions have also helped bring the team together. I’ve competed at many tournaments where none of my friends or teammates were there, but the NY Open was the opposite of that this time. A lot of people I train with were there to cheer each other on. It was great to see Tim watch over my matches. A few times he would gesture what I need to do technique-wise, but mostly he was a reassuring presence which is a huge advantage mentally. Dan Haney and Stefanos were screaming their heads off, all great very technical detailed instructions. Jeremy, Myles, Lollie, Charlie, Barry, Mike, Henry, Alex, and many other buddies of mine were there as well. My judo coach Ray Huxen (and Eric too) were there. Ray is the best human being ever, period.

Enjoying good conversation with good friends

This tournament, like many, allowed me to see some of my favorite people. I’m often too mentally preoccupied (aka nervous about competing) to enjoy myself, but that’s getting better. Ultimately, I want to be the guy who needs zero time to mentally prepare for a match. I want to be able to joke around one second and the next be ready to step on the mat for “battle”. Those are two different worlds, but I don’t see why switching from one to the other should require more than a couple of seconds.

Next up

I have an insane month of work with deadline on top of deadline so I’m not committing myself to anything but just enjoying regular hard training, drilling, etc. However, I am distinctly aware of the fact that I enjoy competing more when I compete more. So I hope to get in a couple of tournaments in May (both judo and bjj). I am keeping my eye on Worlds but am likely not going as it is sandwiched between two trips (Chicago and San Fran) for me. But as with a lot of big tournaments, I may just get the stupid urge to sign up one of these nights, and do it on a whim.

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 ;-)

Why Has No One Murdered Me (Yet) on Craigslist

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First, sorry to be making light of crime. It’s a serious thing and should be taken seriously, so demonstrate some caution and damn common sense!

I use Craiglist to find carpools to tournaments. There are a lot of people out there that need to travel and like to carpool because they need help driving  or are looking to save some money by sharing the cost.

Whenever people hear that I do this, the first thing that comes up is the idea of a big biker dude sexually assaulting me and then (optionally) murdering me. Neither of those things has happened yet. In fact, the people I meet through Craiglist are usually the opposite of a violent excon biker. Most people I’ve met are hippies: college students, soccer moms, and European girls that giggle a lot.

When I tell this to people, they then argue that “of course these people appear to be harmless until you get to a truck stop somewhere, at which point they surprise attack you and have their merry way with your unconscious body”. While this is of course true, I don’t see why this can’t happen in my current home of sunny Philadelphia or anywhere any time. You have to have a rational estimation of risk in life. Otherwise, you never experience anything interesting.

This blog post will be of dark comedic value if I do get murdered one of these days while carpooling with a Craigslist person.

Take The Long Way Home

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I decided to take a different way to BJJ United today (Saturday). Instead of the Market-Frankford line to Broad Street line to 55 bus, I took my bike on a regional rail train to the Jenkintown-Wyncote stop which is about a mile away from the school. The problem is that I got lost. There are a lot of roads going out from the station, so it was a little disorienting and though I took the right road at first, I began to doubt myself and decided to ask for directions.

map-with-path

First, let me say to the dear people of Jenkintown… I asked four of you for directions today. All four gave directions with outmost confidence, and all four were wrong. The worst one was the first one: a chatty couple of older ladies that told me to go in the opposite direction when I was just a minute away from the destination. This sent me on an 8 mile journey around the area, pictured above.

When I asked those ladies for directions there were about 5 minutes left before the start of practice. They asked me what brazilian jiu jitsu was and given that I still had hope of making it to practice on time, I hastily said that it was kind of like wrestling but more useful in a self-defense situation. Side note: I have no idea why I put it that way, but I was trying to relate it to their view of martial arts.

I was frustrated for having to backtrack. In fact, frustration would be the main theme for the next hour. I should say that I hate biking, and I really hate biking on hilly terrain. Jenkintown has more hills than the god damn stock market. Now, 8 miles on a bike is really not a big deal. But the combination of the fact that I was missing practice, that I was lost, that the f’ing steep hills were making me work, that I badly had to take a piss all really put me to the test mentally. I told myself that even if I have to go another hour, I will make it to the school. I did make it, exactly an hour late (just as practice was wrapping up), which was awkward, because I didn’t really think about how I would explain this. I basically came in, said hi, and went back home.

As I got home, I did a hard circuit workout to get the frustration out, and spent the rest of the day and night behind the computer happily programming.

I’m not sure this blog post has any value or meaning, but it’s an experience. I’ve been trying new ways of doing things, getting places, etc, and sometimes that means you have to take the long way home:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfApBz4_XQk