Tag Archives: sky diving

Fearless Russians

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I have a fear of heights. From a certain cynical perspective, most of my life is just a mild form of pretending, but it’s the rare moments of intense fear that wake me up to the reality of it all.

All such fear I’ve every experience has been artificial in that I volunteered for it. Sky diving was one example. The satisfaction of overcoming fear, letting it inspire me instead of paralyze me is a great feeling.

That said, there are things that I could not volunteer for. The following video is an example:

The line between the degree of artificial fear I can and cannot overcome is well defined, but  it’s not fixed. It moves. In a way, competing often has moved that line further and further out.

Maybe one day you will see me doing something equally as stupid as these Russians. Until then I’ll remain grounded in my fear-chasing endeavors.

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.