Moving house...

Is pretty much a giant pain in the back. And elsewhere.
So far my solicitor has screwed up the paperwork, the bank has screwed up the paperwork and the post office has screwed up my mail forwarding. Awesome.

The good news is that the new place is heaps closer both to work and the gym. This will mean more training! So says the plan anyway. Maybe it'll even mean more blogging!

I don't like my Gi...

... It keeps choking me.

It's a sneaky thing. The first time I tried it on it tried to choke me, but obviously it failed because I was able to grab hold of it and stop it. So now it's gotten all clever, it waits until I'm occupied trying to stop someone ripping my arm off and THEN it chokes me. Devious devious thing.

Now I know you're going to say that my training partners are probably responsible for the choking. That must be wrong though, because if they are that'd mean they're better than me. Which is totally impossible. I'm training like once every 3 weeks, I must be awesome by now.

I finally appear to be selling my house. The new living place will be far far closer to both work and the gym, so there should be much more training in the future. Hooray!

Random observations:

• Rock climbing is fantastic cross training for Jiu Jitsu.
• Jiu Jitsu university is a fantastic book.
• I am the worst blogger in the world.
  

Well that went well?

It only took two extra weeks after my 'screw that, I'm going to class' post before I actually did. Some unavoidable weekend overtime shenanigans at work got in the way, and honestly who am I to say no to getting paid four times as much to do work that I'd just have had to do during the week anyway?

So it's a Saturday class. Looks like around 6 people as we start our warmup. Ryan is in charge. He's not even wearing a gi. Good signs. Solid warmup. Pushups, situps, sprints, jogging etc. Feeling OK. Pair up for some light positional rolling. Got a guy who was around in fundamentals when I was doing that. Pulled guard and then spent most of the next couple of minutes moving between guard / half guard / side control. Feeling OK. And then I stood up after we finished and practically passed out. Ooops. Maybe not feeling so OK.

Spent the next 15 minutes or so sitting in the corner with dark / blurry vision while class did takedown drills. Very surreal. I probably would have sat out takedown drills anyway, I don't trust my back that much yet.

The next drill up was a weird posture drill while you're sitting and the other person is standing attacking your guard. I didn't get a whole lot of this, but it looked reasonably straightforward. Still sitting. Feeling better though. Next trick after this was a guillotine variation that was apparently taught at an Anthony Perosh seminar a couple of weeks back. Looked nasty tight. Will have to grab someone to learn that at some stage.

Next up was an armdrag from open guard. Not really overly complicated either. Funny moments as I joined back in for this one. The only guy without a partner was an absolutely massive Maori guy (I'm talking like 150kgs massive). So here's me practicing armdrags on a guy who is most definitely way more than twice my weight. Perhaps not ideal. The first time he tried it on me he also decided to try to choke me. I'm not sure that was part of the plan and he most definitely did it wrong, because my left cheekbone is not the ideal place to squeeze.

People paired up to roll and I most definitely wasn't rolling with the massive guy so I sat again. Second roll someone paired up with Ryan and the odd one out was the only girl in class (Megan? Pink-gi girl. Whatever, I'm horrible at names..). She asked me if I was rolling. The correct answer at this point was almost definitely no, but I said yes anyway. I really was feeling OK by this point, which is just really weird. She played nice though and didn't beat me up much at all. Spent a little while trying to pass her open guard.. and if I knew stuff I definitely would have been past a couple of times, but I don't so I wasn't. Ended up in her closed guard after a bit and promptly tried to get myself triangled but for whatever reason she didn't really get it and we spent the rest of the round there with her trying to get it tight and me just doing my best to not let her.

Tired. But feeling OK, which is good. I guess my body is over the shock of "what the hell are you making me do exercise for??" by now. People paired off for another go and I considered sitting, but the odd guy out grabbed me. Said yes again. Brain is definitely not asserting itself today. He offered to start on his back because he's far bigger than me. Messing about trying to pass his open guard didn't work so great. I don't really remember the start this roll too well, but I know I got swept plenty of times and choked once. Got kneed in the mouth... note to self, get a mouthguard already. I have a rather swollen lip, but no bleeding so it's all good. He too tried to triangle me at one point and I thing I had my other hand in the way, it wasn't even remotely tight. After about 30 seconds he asked if I was OK, I said yes and he went back to trying to choke me. After about a minute he complained that "Well this isn't working" and I pointed out that my other arm was in the way and that I thought he should probably armbar me instead of choking me. He didn't do that either though.

Some people did one more round, but everybody looked about as tired as I was feeling, and I skipped this one. Wasn't too bad apart from the nearly passing out bit. I'll try to skip that next time. Back feels... OK. I suspect I might be very sore tomorrow. We'll see.

So what's going on?

I'm not back yet. Which isn't a good thing. My back problems are much improved, to the point where an experiment with serious exercise is coming up. My physio says I can try BJJ if I'm careful and sensible and stop as soon as there's fatigue in my lower back.

So why haven't I gone yet? Last week I packed up my gear on Saturday and then didn't go. This week I had a real excuse because there was a seminar on and I'm not exactly in position to get a lot out of a seminar just at the moment.

The answer is reasonably obvious. I'm scared of BJJ at the moment. I'm not scared because I'm going to suck and get submitted by everyone and anyone. That much is obvious. I'm supposed to suck and get submitted by everyone.

So really I'm not scared of BJJ. I'm scared of my back. It's a pretty useless piece of machinery at the best of times, but I really don't want to be in the position I've just escaped where everyday life is constantly painful. Not doing exercise however is a pretty fast ticket to nowhere, because my back won't get stronger and I'll really be more likely to hurt myself again. I'm not even likely to actually hurt myself training so long as I warm up properly and ease into training sensibly until I actually have some level of fitness back.

So no more screwing around. I'm going to class on Saturday. I'm going to take it easy and see how I feel and most definitely only roll (lightly) if it's feeling OK, and I'm going to stop when my back has had enough. Then it'll be a fact finding mission to see how much it hurts the next day. Fun and games!

Frustrations

I guess I have to admit that at the moment I'm not physically able to play a contact sport, my back just isn't up to that kind of exercise. That's extremely frustrating to me as I've always been a competent (if not particularly special) athlete. Not being able to play my sport of choice sucks.

I do have a training program that should help improve my core strength which will in turn help with the back problems. I'm always going to have to look after my back but with better conditioning my physio tells me that I should be perfectly capable of doing whatever sport I like.

So BJJ is on hold. For now. Watch this space, I'll be back.

Well that's a problem..

I went along to class to watch and to check out the trains that I'd need to catch to get there. Warmed up a little but my back is still too screwy to train properly. That's not really the problem though.

The problem is the trains. Class finishes at 8:45 at which point I have to walk to the station, then catch a train for a 20 minute ride. Then I have to swap trains and take a 50 minute ride, then I have to drive 15 minutes to get home. The problem with that plan is that based on the train timetables the earliest I can get home is around 11:30 at night. Getting home at 11:30 at night just doesn't work for me when I have to catch a train at 6:30 the next day.

If I train and get home at 11:30pm there's very little chance of me being asleep before 1am, and I don't function so well on not much sleep. I can't really be a zombie at work two days a week. The good news is that I'll be moving house reasonably soon and the new place will allow me to get home to my car in time to drive to the gym.

That's going to mean a new plan for the time being. The new plan will have to work around Saturday classes. I'll also consider possibly going to fundamentals for an hour on Mondays or Wednesdays. I'm guessing that fundamentals is significantly better than no class at all, and to be honest it's never going to be a bad idea to practice all the basics that I suck at.

Two more weeks (probably)!

ow / my back!

So I haven't posted in a month or something? Me being a slack blogger? Never would have seen that coming! Unfortunately I managed to break myself in a non-BJJ fashion, blowing up my admittedly dodgy back performing the simple task of cooking dinner. Whoever put the plates on the bottom shelf is to blame.

Much time with chiropractor results and the diagnosis is that my back is screwed. That's pretty normal for my back, but at the moment it's screwed AND it hurts, which is a little more inconvenient. I'm forbidden from attending BJJ classes probably until the end of the month, and the chiropractor in question "suggests" that I find a less strenuous sport. That's no fun, and it's only a suggestion. So far my back suggests that cooking is far more dangerous than BJJ and with proper warmups and stretching I'm perfectly capable of surviving classes. I guess that I'm going to have to discuss my attendance with the people in charge, but I really don't think there's going to be a problem.

So currently I'm spending most of my free time sitting on my backside. Getting unfit. It's going to be so very very bad when I finally get to return to doing some exercise. On the up side I've been able to get loads of reading done. As in actual books. How very exciting.

UFC 110 is apparently live on free to air TV in Australia. That's quite surprising, but I won't complain at all. I guess it'll be my first time watching an actual UFC show. I'm too cheap to actually buy them, so the best I get is 'wired' which generally plays 2 or 3 older matches each week. Fun times.

First class of the year! ...

And I wasn't there. My car elected to break down. How very very annoying. I drove a '93 Hyundai Excel for like 13 years without it breaking down once, now I have a shiny new Fiesta that's supposed to be reliable and has only done around 70000 km and the clutch goes all broken! How rude!

I think the standard thing to put here is a few goals:

1. Two a week, every week:

   I'm going to be moving closer to the gym at some stage in February so that will help. I think the biggest challenges to this goal would be work and me hurting my back. Still, two isn't that many.

2. Fitness Fitness Fitness:

   It'll be much more fun when I'm capable of rolling a few round in a row without dying. It should also help with recovery, because at the moment my back is generally pretty bad the day after training.

3. Escapes:

   OK so I don't have many yet, but getting out from under side control or mount has proved very difficult for me so far. I can't compensate for being bad by being strong, so learning and applying correct escapes is essential.

4. Don't be afraid to try for things I know:

   I have a tendency to hesitate even when I correctly recognize an opportunity to attempt one of the few submissions I know. Obviously this will get better with practice, but I should be at least trying for it. What's the worst thing that can happen? If I screw it up the world doesn't end!

5. Go to a tournament:

   This will probably be a disorganized and impromptu occurrence when it happens. I'm doing this as a hobby and competition isn't really high on my list of things to achieve, but I should probably try it out at some stage!

6. Take over the world:

   Just pretend you didn't see this, it'll be easier if everyone is surprised.

I should hopefully get my car back by the end of the week. Saturday training is a possibility, but more likely Monday next week.