Tag Archives: martial arts

Three Years of Jiu Jitsu

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three-years-birthday-cupcakesI’ve been doing jiu jitsu for three years now. It’s humbling to think that tens if not hundreds of thousands of people are out there that have been doing it much longer than me. I am following along together and behind the crowd of a very interesting community of people. Introspection, aggression, and weird humor is all around me every time I step on the mat.

Positive Cult

I remember Joe Rogan called jiu jitsu a “positive cult”. And I think he’s onto something. It’s good to be part of a cult or two. I’m currently a member of a couple: a  local book club and a jiu jitsu / judo club. Those are two damn good choices for a cult. It helps me stay healthy, humble (relative to my usual asshole-self), and thoughtful.

Competition Goals for This Year

There’s winning and then there’s winning: I’ve been told by coaches and fellow competitors that “winning is winning”. For some reason my personality is such that the only time I remember feeling truly shitty after competing is when I won matches against tough opponents and didn’t go for submissions because I was concerned of losing. Win or lose, I want to leave every tournament this year knowing that I never “held on” to the lead, and always worked aggressively towards a submission. That’s what makes me proudest: not “winning” a jiu jitsu match, but giving everything for a submission. Too often I fail to drop my fear of failure, and pursue that sometimes-exhausting fight.

Judo: I want to put in a good full year of competition in judo. I’ve taken a few months off from regular judo training and competing, focusing exclusively on jiu jitsu and its wrestling-style stand-up game. But I love judo, both for it as a martial art and the friends I have in the judo community, so mixing it in with jiu jitsu is something that I want to do this year, and for the rest of my life,

Place of Martial Arts in My Life

As my work life grows in the breadth and number of exciting projects, I’m realizing that while jiu jitsu and judo can be a big part of my life, it will never be the main thing in my life. I enjoying my work too much to be one of the people that can’t wait to get in the gym as an escape from work. I’m lucky in that way, but also that means that I have to wrestle with the balance between work and training. I would like to find a better balance with it than last year, that I found to be too stressful too often.

Warriors and Magicians: Hard and Soft Martial Arts

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I did a few years of Isshin-ryu karate when I was younger, before realizing that the best way to challenge myself in a (safe) one-on-one combat situation in high school was wrestling (though I wish I found boxing at that age as well).

I would call the martial disciplines that involve full-on sparring “hard martial arts” and those that focus more on solo drills, kata, and light sparring “soft martial arts”. I feel like both have a lot of benefits and draw backs, but it’s important to draw that distinction.

I had to delete and rewrite the following sentences because my natural inclination is to be critical of karate and similar martial arts, at least in the way they are most commonly taught in America (as a soft martial art). I’ll focus on the positive. My karate education helped me develop confidence, self-awareness, balance, speed, discipline, etc. What it didn’t do was make me a better fighter. I think, in theory, it can, but the emphasis was just not there. I competed a lot (both sparring and kata) and when I finally got around to finding a boxing gym, I learned more from the first time working the pads and the heavy bag, than I did from all that time in karate. That solidified in my mind, rightly or wrongly, the difference between soft and hard martial arts, between kung fu and muay thai, between aikido and judo. I know many people will disagree, but I’m strictly speaking from my own experience.

I bet if I went back to karate (or similar martial arts) now, I would get a lot more from it, which is just another reminder to expand your horizons in training and in life. Karate doesn’t have to be a fighting art to be beneficial. It can be a way to improve agility, flexibility, speed, and other characteristics that can be useful for the hard martial arts like muay thai, boxing, no-gi grappling, and wrestling. I mean look at the following intense demos:

In some ways, that’s a form of dancing, because there is little hard sparring. But I’m sure there are a lot of benefits that are transferable. Unfortunately, any art that lacks sparring, suffers from the danger of potentially over-feeding the ego. One of the reason I love jiu jitsu and judo is that my ego is constantly brought back down to reality with every hard training session when someone inevitably smashes my body into the ground or chokes me into near unconsciousness.

Apparently, Chicago is for Lovers not Fighters

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Capone Chicago

The state that brought us Al Capone passed a bill (House Bill 1490) in June banning boxing and full-contact martial arts contests that are not explicitly approved “by the Department” or as it is commonly known “by the Man”.

The event organizers have to demonstrate that they conform to a strict set of rules defined by the government including the requirement that they pay %3 on the first $500,000 gross income and %4 on the rest.

This might not be a huge deal for large events, but for the smaller guys, it’s a major problem. One example is the IBJJF Chicago Open that was scheduled for August 21st and that I was planning to attend with several other people. The event is now on hold until further notice.

Will a respected IBJJF organization be willing to operate in a state that wants it to follow a complicated bureaucratic process in order to host an event that most other states give it the full freedom to do without it?

Chicago is the city where I grew up, in that I went from middle school to college there, and it saddens me to see it give so little love to those that fight. Al Capone would be sorely disappointed.