The Team Machado Utah BJJ Christmas party was indeed a success, and yes, I won the “best gi” category and a sushi gift card. Nice.
The moment of triumph dissipated pretty quickly, though, after Brandon commented, “We need to get more color on your belt and less on your gi.”
Touché.
Just some of the gang at Kingdom Klub
Why, jiu-jitsu of course!
Brandon has put together a pretty kickin’ party for the team this year…which is more or less a three hour seminar and throwdown on Saturday. The fun starts with “Violence High Council,” a two-hour secret technique workshop where the Machado BB’s in Salt Lake will be showing their favorite tricks.
Best. Christmas. Party. EVER.
Next will be a mini in-house tourney with prizes for the best takedown, best submission and best gi.
It goes without saying that the only one I have a shot at is the best gi…I plan to debut my yellow Tatami Estilo.
Anyway, I’m pumped – I just hope I don’t get throttled because I have a singing performance later for some company’s corporate Christmas party. And I know from experience that it’s hard to put on a vocal performance after being choked five or six times.
I’d like to say I’ll reveal all the secret techniques in a future blog post…but I’d rather not risk the wrath of black belts.
I am not a fan of diets. Eat smart, don’t overindulge in anything, and know your own body. That’s my philosophy. If I’m going to compete I’ll take my diet more seriously, sure. Otherwise it’s moderation.
Thing is, diets are popular. It seems like every news site has advice about how to stick to your diet over the Thanksgiving holiday. Every article is the same…no-brainer tips that anyone who has legitimately tried a diet already knows.
When did celebrating by eating good food become such a bad thing? Being health conscious is all well and good, but when it starts ruining the holidays, it’s time to put your foot down.
In fact, I have six pretty convincing reasons why you should just shrug off the diet and go for broke these holidays.
Last night I had an epiphany, triggered by something totally unexpected.
I was taking care of my kids all evening while my wife worked. As usual, daddy was the punching bag / jungle gym / trampoline, and we had a blast rolling around and playing on the floor (pre-jitsu, I like to call it ).
After having my nose honked for the fourteen billionth time, I decided to put on a movie for them. My three-year-old girl likes the Disney princess thing, so we streamed The Princes and the Frog on Netflix for her.
HEAD SHOT!!!!
That was a cheap ploy to keep your attention. Stay with me! Don’t leave just yet, there is a point to this and I promise it isn’t mushy!
While they watched the movie I was doing my own thing, popping in and out or passing through…but despite the fact that I wasn’t even really watching, I couldn’t help but take note of the “what you want” vs. “what you need” theme.
From my limited viewing I’d say the film was mediocre, but the wants vs. needs thing makes a lot of sense. The “moral” per se is, while the main characters are obsessed with their wants, they don’t make much progress. But when they look inside and figure out what it is they really need, their wants are suddenly taken care of; they are either fulfilled or become obsolete.
How often do we as jiu-jitsu practitioners get our wants mixed up with our needs, and pay for it?
All the time, I’d venture to say.
We WANT to be awesome at submitting people. But first we NEED to learn how to survive, relax and position ourselves.
We WANT to train our butts off, even when we’re injured, but we NEED to take time off on occasion to recover mentally and physically.
Finish Reading…
This is a follow-up on my Zero Subs experiment. If you missed my original post, you can read it here.
One of the biggest challenges in my BJJ career thus far has been dealing with nerves. In my first months of training, just driving to the gym would give me butterflies. Even at work, thinking about BJJ would get me worked up. It was a terrible feeling and I wanted to get rid of it.
I eventually owned up to the fact that my nerves were a result of my ego. I was just plain scared of being submitted – for some reason I was taking it personally. Stupid, I know…but it was really standing in the way of my progress.
When my team moved facilities, I decided to turn a new leaf and do my best to buck Mr. Ego. I devised the Zero Subs Experiment. The goal was to go on a submission “fast” and instead work for superior positioning and experiment with flow. Any time I got a potential submission hold, I would let my opponent work the escape and keep rolling.
It made a huge difference, and I’ve come away from it with some good lessons:
This principle comes up over and over and over in the jiu-jitsu sphere. But it never sunk into my white belt brain. It wasn’t until I let go of the fear of losing that the idea of “winning” in training became unimportant, and I could finally focus on learning.
Let me clarify my point. Obviously you want to learn how to submit people. But HOW you submit or are submitted is far more important than WHO. Sparring is a way of gauging your knowledge and learning. Whether you win or lose makes ZERO difference to your worth as a person or your worth as a BJJ practitioner. To treat tapping in class a way to caress your ego instead of a tool for learning is downright stupid and wrong. The only thing it does is stand in the way of you and your training partners’ progress.
Not only that, it can significantly cut into your enjoyment of the sport. Hard to be happy when your happiness depends on other people losing. But that’s what the ego demands.
As soon as I started Zero Subs, I noticed a difference during sparring. Just the simple act of removing the option to win by submission allowed me to relax significantly. My mind felt clearer and I stopped muscling the moves so much.
This was probably the area my coach noticed the most. He says there was a huge difference in my level of relaxation when rolling and consequently my technique made big strides.
In other words, let your body show you what it has learned.
Finish Reading…
I got around to dyeing my Estilo Premier this Saturday. Sure, now I can’t wear it in IBJJF competitions, but if I like the gi enough I’ll buy another one for comps.
I have a few “lessons learned” for any of you thinking about dyeing a gi yourself.
I was shooting for deep yellow. That’s this color right here:
Here’s how the gi turned out:
It turned out slightly deeper yellow than the sample indicated. It actually looked prison orange right when it came out of the tub, but luckily it washed out into this shade of “school bus” yellow you see here.
It was the correct shade of yellow about 10 minutes into the dyeing process, and you’re supposed to let it sit in the dye for 20 minutes according to instructions. Turns out, I had overestimated the amount of dye I needed to use by about two tablespoons.
You can’t tell unless you look up close, but there are swaths of lighter and darker yellow. It’s very slight, but I think I know what happened and included it in my list of lessons learned.
Don’t get me wrong, I think it looks sweet. Just not quite the shade I was going for.
That said, here are a few things I learned with my first experience dyeing:
(Note: This post is a re-worked version of my “Your Amygdala Needs Your Attention” post from earlier this year. Liam at The Part-Time Grappler inspired me with a recent post to re-work and share it again now that I have more readers.)
Beware of your lizard brain.
If you’ve read Seth Godin’s excellent business book Linchpin, you’ll know what I’m talking about. I loved this book on many levels, but I was truly surprised at how well it translates into Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
The lizard brain is Seth’s label for the amygdala, the tiny dual organ near your brain stem that is responsible for your most primal emotional reactions. It tries to protect you and make you safe and comfortable at all costs. Things like fight or flight, sex, and especially fear are all parsed by that organ.
The amygdala’s job is to shut the higher-level thinking down and keep you out of danger. Fear can keep us alive…and it has for eons…but now that man isn’t being chased by saber-toothed tigers, Seth argues that the lizard brain’s favorite pastime is to keep you from taking risks and becoming a genius and an artist. In BJJ terms, it’s to keep you wrapped in the safe arms of mediocrity where you can’t get embarrassed, exhausted, or submitted.
How does it do that? Fringe products of the lizard brain are things like excuses, rationalization, procrastination and avoiding commitment or social contact. In short, if it gives you the illusion of security at the cost of personal fulfillment, it’s the lizard brain.
This is of course a gross oversimplification of the amygdala’s role, but you get the point.
Now for a question: if Brazilian Jiu-jitsu is a martial art, does that make you and me artists?
Saying “yes” may sound audacious, but becoming an artist is the real point Seth drives home in his book. It means placing a greater emphasis on creativity and delivery than on obedience, conformity and tradition.
Brazilian jiu-jitsu is full of great artists – people who push the envelope, innovate, try new things and aren’t satisfied with mediocrity. It’s how BJJ was born, and it’s how it continues to grow. Just because we aren’t all world champions doesn’t mean we can’t be artists.
Finish Reading…
Dave approached me last night and added two stripes to my belt. He then informed me that the thing standing between me and my blue belt is relaxing even more while training and having a higher focus on technique over muscle.
Yep. The same old monkey on my back 
.
I can say in all honesty that I have made huge strides in this area. It’s been the central focus of my training since the Pans and I’ve felt a marked improvement.
Not much I could do with a strained back last night, which ironically helped me have a very relaxed, technique-focused sparring session with Jerry, a blue belt. After working the techniques, I asked Jerry if he’d be willing to help me sort through all the side control escapes I know. This is all part of my plan to become a side control escape artist. He was nice enough to oblige, and actually helped me remember a couple of escapes I had forgotten.
Here’s the list we came up with (I suck at names so give me a break):
Regular side control
Scarf Hold
Dave’s mantra is to think of moves in pairs. A failed attempt at one moves opens the window for another. I’ll be analyzing which combinations work together for me in an upcoming post.
We finished out the night with a low-key spar in which I focused on taking the back and going to mount. I had a lot of success with both. Wearing wresting shoes while having the back makes it a lot harder to protect the feet from footlocks – Jerry got me twice because I couldn’t keep my feet out of danger; they kept sticking to his gi.
I’m giving up submissions. That’s right! I’m going on a total submission diet. Between now and October 1st, I will be attempting absolutely zero submissions during training.
Introducing the….
Don’t worry…I’m not a defeatist. There is a method to my madness.
My reasoning is thus: if I am not allowed to submit my opponent, I’ll be forced to roll with only positioning, control and defense in mind.
It’s part of my new experiment to develop my positioning game, which I feel needs a lot of work. My coach knows about the project, and I’ve asked him to help me do some analysis on how my game changes during this period of time. At the end of the month, I’ll do a write-up and let you know how it turns out.
There’s an ulterior motive, too. I’m trying to buck Mr. Ego.
Finish Reading…
I’m not sure what I did to deserve this right before my first day back at class, but I put a metal spike into my foot yesterday. For pictures, scroll to the end of the post (caution – those of you with aversion to injury pictures or feet in general may want to skip the photo).
Tempting as it is to blame this injury on bad karma, I have to chalk this one up to stupidity. Never try and kickstart an ATV while wearing wet flipflops. Those foot pegs are sharp. As you can see, my foot slipped and the triangular spike on the edge of the footpeg embedded itself about 3/8″ into my heel. Needless to say, it bled like crazy and I can’t walk on it. Hopefully I’ll be able to train BJJ off my back, but anything involving footwork will be out of the question.
It probably could have used a couple of stitches, but we weren’t close to any medical facilities and in all reality, it looks a lot worse than it actually is. I pulled it tight with a butterfly bandage and hopefully that will keep it closed well enough to heal.
Not that this injury ruined my weekend – not by a long shot. I spent the weekend at a relative’s cabin at Bear Lake, ID with my family (the injury happened just before we went home). My Dad brought along his new famous toy, a Polaris RZR 4. For those of you not into the ATV scene, the RZR 4 is basically a scaled-down sand rail (dune car) or a scaled up ATV that seats 4 people.
This thing is brand new on the market and has gotten rave reviews. I’ve driven it around in the mountains but this is the first time we’ve taken it on the sand or in the water, and we weren’t disappointed. Finish Reading…
Allie The Clear Belt
Fueled By Fear
Georgette's World
John Will: BJJ Black Belt...
MEERKATSU
Rolling Uphill
Tangled Triangle
Team Machado Utah
The Gentle Art
The Jiu Jitsu Blues
The Journey of Fenix
The Part-Time Grappler
Zen Mojo
Zhoozhitzu do Graugardo
