A couple of long posts planned: Mundial recap plus a historical post I’m excited about. But Toro just released a shirt I made, which is a bit of a regional in-joke, but if you’re from the south and like biscuits, maybe you think it’s funny.
It Takes A Very Steady Hand, Or Foot
If you’ve trained Brazilian jiu-jitsu for any appreciable amount of time, you’ve had injuries.
Personally, I consider myself one of the more fortunate. Sure, I’ve had the occasional malady, but I have been lucky to avoid a major injury that would require surgery. Besides the pain and expense — as much it galls me to admit this — I don’t want to take the time off from training that a major injury would require.
One of the first pieces of advice I try to tell the new guys who go too hard is that injury is the real enemy: if you want to get better at jiu-jitsu, staying on the mats is job one. Especially for a guy who weighs 138, turns 40 this year and trains regularly, I’ve been very lucky.
That’s what I keep telling myself this month. Leading up to the New York Open, I had a nagging foot injury that I trained through. At the tournament, I re-injured it during my finals match. Now, every time it gets manipulated in the wrong way — even gently — it becomes debilitating.
But there’s the Catch-22: you can’t train without risking injury, but part of the reason you want to avoid injury is so you can keep training, especially with a tournament (like, say, the Mundials) coming up. Where is the line between being tough and being stupid?
The answer I’ve come to is that you must evaluate two factors: risk of re-injury and reward of training. When you’re nicked up, which is how I’d classify my current injury, you can still train some things. For example, one of my training partners hurt his knee and spent his healing time working half-guard. You also must evaluate your ability to protect yourself while drilling and rolling, and figure out whether you’re taking too great a chance on setting yourself back.
Naturally, figuring this out depends on the severity of an injury. I’ve had back injuries that were simple stiffness and would loosen up once I got moving, and back injuries that I’d have had to be a lunatic to train through.
Given my various experiences with being nicked up, I’ve often been surprised at how easy some injuries are to train with and how hard others are. I do a lot with gi grips, for example, but finger and hand injuries are relatively simple to train with. You can wrap ’em up and hide the injured hand. (In fact, at least one person reading this has choked me using only one hand).
The opposite end of the spectrum: rib injuries. I’ve had two ribs pop out. You use your core for everything, in jiu-jitsu and in life. One of my rib injuries was extremely painful and fairly debilitating. The other one didn’t hurt much. But then I tried to sit up and couldn’t. This foot injury has shown me — again, stupid as it sounds — just how much you use your foot, both in guard and on top. It’s harder to hide than you’d think.
After musing on which of my little bumps and bruises were hardest to train with, I made this graphic rating the injuries on a scale of 0 (a cakewalk) to 10 (sweet merciful crap, maybe we’ll stay in bed and watch videos).
This is just my own experience and is not meant to be taken very seriously. The only medical advice I feel comfortable giving is “you should eat right and train jiu-jitsu.”
There shouldn’t be many surprises here. The big muscles and joints are always big problems. I also always think it’s worth noting that if you have an infection, that’s a 10 and you should stay home, period: I raise an eyebrow at how many folks don’t get this.
One notable rating, and this might be a function of the severity of the injury: I personally found it easier to train with a messed-up knee than with a messed-up foot. Obviously, my knee injury wasn’t a major thing, but I was able to change up the things I was doing fairly effectively to protect the knee.
With the foot? Can’t be on top, you’ve got to stand on it. Can’t really keep the guard closed, and with open guard, you either have to step on hips and biceps (ouch!) or try to hide that foot by putting it further away from your opponent — which means you need to shrimp off of it (also ouch).
We all have strengths and weaknesses. In terms of the old remedy of Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation, my ICE game is tight, and the rest I have a problem with. (See what I did there?)
The old saying goes, “If you wake up one morning after training and nothing hurts, you died.” My hope is we all start to prove that saying wrong. Happy and healthy training to all of you.
Happy New Year!
A Ronda Rousey Throw
I was disappointed that the Internet seemed focused only on the Ronda Rousey’s armbar against Miesha Tate (and on Anderson’s devastating leg injury). Hence, I took it upon myself to make this .gif of Ronda’s sick throw.
Hypnotic, no?
Toro Gi Preliminary Sketches
Yesterday was my birthday. As a present to myself, I spent the evening pulling together some concepts for the new Toro BJJ gi. I’ve kicked around ideas with a trusted friend or two. Before I get too far down the road, I want to put some out for people to see and talk about.
Hence: I’d love to get feedback from you, whether in the comments or on Twitter, Instagram (where I’ve posted earlier drawings) or via email.
THE CONCEPT: The gi is going to be inspired by Okinawan art and culture. Okinawa is my favorite place on earth, a beautiful area with a rich history and the kindest people I’ve ever been around. As the birthplace of karate, it also has a rich martial arts history, so this seems like a natural fit. (There’s another piece that makes the fit perfect, as you’ll see below).
Names I’m considering for the gi include the Toro Uchina (the name for Okinawa in the indigenous language, uchinaaguchi), the Toro Ryukyuan (before it was colonized by Japan, Okinawa was known as the Ryukyu Kingdom), or the Toro Haisai (“hello” in the Okinawan language). Right now, I’m leaning toward the Toro Uchina, so let’s go with that for now.
To start with, I drew a ton of artistic elements. Although I want the final gi to be simple and uncluttered, I wanted to have a lot of different options to choose from.
Here are a couple of preliminary sketches I posted to Instagram of the gi’s proposed layout:
I like the traditional look of a white gi, so that’s what we’re going with. It’s going to be a 450 gram pearl weave gi in the Toro style. That much is just about decided. But what art we use and how we situate that art is what we’re in the process of deciding.
Let me show you a few things, and tell you a little bit about what I’m thinking for each of them.
THE BACK EMBROIDERY PIECE: This is just a quick rendering for a back piece. It’s two bulls locking horns in Okinawan style bullfighting, with the kanji for Togyu, Okinawan style bloodless bullfighting.
Okinawan bullfighting is like sumo in terms of both rules, moves, and that the grand champion is called a Yokozuna, so there’s a grappling connection. More importantly, there is a “Bull” connection. Obviously, Toro means “bull,” and is reference to both the bullfighter pass and the fact that Toro is based in Durham, North Carolina — the Bull City. All of this seemed to indicate what the main piece of art should be.
Here’s a preliminary rendering, without text:
We will probably put the Toro slogan in the circle around the piece (“Live to Roll, Roll To Live”). We could also do something else specific for this gi, like the slogan in kanji or katakana.
[You might notice that the bulls locking horns forms a third bull’s-head shape as well. Could do something with that.]
I drew another bull design that was a little more abstract, but it wound up looking like Ferdinand. I’ll post it if anyone wants to see it.
THE COLORS: You might ask: why these colors? They are taken from the Kingdom of the Ryukyus’ flag, which will also have a place on the gi:
It’s also a cool flag, no? I love the iconography, so I plan on putting a treatment of the flag in at least one place on the gi, most likely the front of the skirt below the belt.
Two other notes about this: there will be grip tape around the skirt of the gi that draws on the red-and-black bottom part of the flag. I think this will give the gi a simple but elegant color scheme. And I plan on contrast stitching using the blue.
SHOULDER EMBROIDERY: All around Okinawa, you see guardian shi-sa dogs. These lion-dogs are protectors of the home. Aside from being culturally significant, they’re visually very cool.
Traditionally one of the dogs has its mouth open and another has its mouth closed. I’d like to have one shi-sa on each shoulder, facing forward. I took a common design and tweaked it a little:
I was considering doing a full-bodied shi-sa doing a horizontal pose like you see here, but I like the faces. What do you think?
THE PANTS: I do want to keep the pants simple, and there are two possibilities I’m kicking around. I’d like to do a stylized map of the Ryukyu Islands and incorporate that into either:
* A rectangular Toro logo at the top right portion of the pants; or
* Just an outline of the islands that would be placed at the bottom right shin, so it would be distinctive but still IBJJF legal.
This would be similar position to the embroidered Toro logo on the company’s “Blue Steel” pants offering. Note also the contrast stitching on this model. I’d like for the Uchina to keep some consistency with the existing design of Toro, but also break out into a few new directions.
The island outline will probably be the next drawing I do and post for reaction.
FINALLY, I WILL PROBABLY NOT GET TO DO THIS, BUT: Sublimated printing on the interior of a gi is expensive to do. However, I really like what some companies have done in this vein. Putting art pieces on the inside of a gi keeps the gi looking clean and uncluttered outside, but provide art opportunities for inside. It’s like having a secret. Plus, you get to add fun elements without having the gi look too busy.
Examples of this include the Scramble Wave, which uses an internal rash guard, and the Muae Furinkazan, which just prints on the inside of the gi. I’d prefer to do something like Muae gi, for two reasons: I personally don’t have a lot of experience with internal rash guards, and the Muae print looks very cool as the color fades (check out the pictures in that link). I think either of my ideas would look good after fading as well.
My two ideas: either a growing banyan tree (found throughout Okinawa’s forests) or a coral reef scene (the Ryukyu Islands are some of the most biodiverse in the world, and contain more than 400 types of coral and all manner of fantastic aquatic species).
Again, this stuff is pretty expensive, so I probably won’t get to do it. Unless, you know, the people demand it. If you’d like to see what the banyan tree or reef scene would look like, I could draw and post those, too.
FINALLY: Other potential ideas for design elements included drawings of some Ryukyuan castles, which are beautiful and diverse in appearance; a stylized rendering of an Okinawan proverb about food being medicine for life, but applied (of course) to jiu-jitsu; and numerous cool indigenous animal species like the Okinawa dugong, Yanbaru kuina and Iriomote yamaneko. At this point, I haven’t found a place for any of these, and probably won’t, because I want to keep the design simple. But I wanted to mention them in case they spark any ideas. (I might try to work one into a re-design of the Toro embroidered patch on the jacket lapel)
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Also, nothing is really set in stone. I really love thinking about this gi, and would love it if I could get some help from you. So let me know what you think, whether it’s in the comments, on Twitter, on Instagram or in person. Thanks for reading.
Don’t Get Staph
The headline summarizes my advice to you, the reader. After wrestling in middle school and a year in high school — and after 18 months of training BJJ — I finally zigged when staph zagged.
It’s frustrating, because I’ve been training really hard for the Pans at the end of the month, and when the infection hit I felt like I was better than ever in terms of technique, timing and conditioning. Making matters doubly vexing, I’m the guy who takes every precaution: I always wash all my gear after every use, even my belt; we mop our mats after every class; I use Athletic Body Care body wash and lotion.
Ultimately, no matter how many precautions you take, mat-borne illness can get you. It’s just part of the price of admission to this great sport of ours. (I’m particularly at risk, I must acknowledge, because I have eczema, so I have more breaks in my skin than most people on average).
I was lucky. I was also paranoid. These two factors enabled me to catch it early. I tell this story so others will know the warning signs. Hopefully you’ll never need to know these signs, but if you have the misfortune to get the illness, the sooner you get after it, the better.
Training the previous night had gone great. It was my 24th straight day training, but I didn’t feel run down or sore. But when I went to bed, my shin was sore. “Huh,” I thought. “I must’ve clashed shins with someone and not realized it.” I didn’t see a bruise, but you don’t always turn black and blue when you get whacked.
About a half-hour later, I noticed a small patch of my skin had turned red. I raised an eyebrow at this.
About a half-hour after that, a portion of my shin about 3.5 inches by one inch was red and swollen. My skin felt stretched out, and the ara felt warm to the touch. Uh oh.
I called the doctor.
Fortunately, they were able to see me just two hours later (if they had put me off, I would have gone to the emergency room). I was amazed to hear that most people my doctor sees that have staph wait until it starts to weep before they make an appointment. By this point, you’re a raging mess of contagion and it takes much more work to get the infection under control.
Since I have no illusions that I am stronger than a bunch of microbes, I eagerly accepted the powerful antibiotics she prescribed and gobbled those suckers down.
As if you needed convincing, having staph (even a mild case) is awful. There’s the pain, of course: mine felt about twice as sore as the worst bruise I’ve ever had. The antibiotics themselves mess you up, too, and take my advice: do not gobble these on an empty stomach. If you’ve been given the right medicine, you will get sick.
Far and away the worst part for me, though, was just not being able to train. I feel the same way about injuries: being off the mat drives me crazy, and retards my progress. Injuries are the enemy.
Infections are worse, though, because if you’re honest about what you’ve got (and you MUST be, unless you’re a real prick), a lot of people will balk at training with you. This is totally understandable: nobody wants this stuff, and with good reason.
So I played it safe. I was told on Thursday that I wasn’t contagious, but I waited four days after that to get back on the mat. No reason to take unnecessary risks, and even though it was driving me crazy not to train, I wanted to be certain I wasn’t putting anyone else in danger.
Needless to say, it was a big setback. I took time off from training, missed a US Grappling tournament (I’d signed up to do all eight divisions again), and generally had to sit inside and sleep a lot. And it could have been a lot worse.
So now, several days after that, I only have one more day in my antibiotic regimen. Hopefully, this will end both the staph and the “feeling like crap from antibiotics” portion of this training camp.
Fortunately, I have implemented a new anti-staph strategy in my training.
The rainbow scares away the microbes, you see.
Kurt Osiander Seminar
“Hey everybody, I’m Kurt,” he said. “I curse profusely, so if you don’t want your kids to hear it, get them the fuck out.”
These were the first words Kurt Osiander said to the 80 or so people that gathered in Southern Pines for Kurt’s first East Coast seminar.
If you know Kurt, you likely know him from his glorious Move Of The Week videos. They confirm his self-assessment as a profane individual — and also show that he is a hilarious one. That’s why he’s inspired numerous memes employing the quotes from the clips.
What sometimes gets lost due to Kurt’s charisma: the dude is a badass. He’s a third-degree Ralph Gracie black belt, which means his toughness and technique are both at legendary levels. If you’ve been around jiu-jitsu for any amount of time, chances are you’ve heard stories of how the Ralph Gracie guys go after each other in training, and Kurt’s contemporaries include beasts like Dave Camarillo and Luke Stewart.
Most important for me, Kurt’s style is similar to the style I’ve been taught: it’s fundamental, not flashy, and based on positional dominance. Some seminar material is so different from your game that you struggle to understand the concepts (or at least I do): this was more like taking an advanced class on material you’ve seen before.
And what an advanced class. The seminar was four hours long, which made it ridiculous value at $60. Although my brain was full by the end, I would’ve done another session the next day.
I’ve already talked about Kurt’s rhetorical strategy, so I have to tell the tale of the one kid who stayed. The place was packed (there must have been more than 80 people there), so Kurt had to walk around a lot. He wasn’t always near where you were. I was drilling with my partner next to the brave youngster, a guy who must have really cool parents.
He was probably 10 years old, and was drilling the S-mount armbar when Kurt walked up. At first, he didn’t notice Kurt, because he was so intent on getting the right position before falling back for the finish. When he saw the huge man with the long hair looming over him, his eyes got as big as dinner plates. He stopped drilling just for a split-second.
And Kurt looks at him and says: “Well, don’t fuck it up now, bro!”
I am happy to report that the young fella executed the technique perfectly, and seemed to be having a blast at all times. The rest of the crowd all looked like they were getting a lot out of it too, and there was a lot of talent in the room: tons of upper belts.
Despite the four hours of mainlining hardcore jiu-jitsu, one of my teammates and I wanted more, so we split a private lesson with him. I really wanted to work my guard passing, and he showed me several details I was missing on my favorite passes. I also asked Kurt for ideas on how to chain passes together, and I think his tips will really help.
At the end, I asked Kurt to pose for a picture with me where he was doing Simple Choke from Knee on Belly. The results were predictably spectacular, since Kurt isn’t shy about mugging for the camera.
I didn’t notice until afterward that we were both wearing Shoyoroll gis. Given Kurt’s famous catchphrase, how could I NOT make this parody advertisement?
Taking a private with Kurt is worth it just for the stories. The techniques are also awesome, of course — but you’ll get your money’s worth in more than one way. That’s all I’ll say about that.
Plus, afterward, we took him out for Orange Mocha Frappucinos*:
The bottom line: five hours of first-rate instruction (and even better entertainment) with a uniquely charismatic individual. It was one of the best jiu-jitsu weekends I’ve spent in a long time, and I’m looking forward to training at Kurt’s place when I make it back to the West Coast sometime.
*This may not have actually happened. Although I could see the gasoline scene happening in a different context.
The Mink Gi
Two quick facts: first, my gym shares a space with Cageside Fight Co. Second, I’m a huge gi nerd. I don’t buy many, but I covet a lot of them, especially the ones with innovative fabric.
(I buy most of my gear from Cageside — they don’t pay me to say this, but they have great products at great prices with terrific service. Plus, their Genesis gi is right up there with my Moya as my favorite kimono, and it’s much less expensive.)
Bamboo is one of the fabrics of the future. It grows quickly, so it’s sustainable, it’s super-soft (I have bamboo sheets) and it’s also durable. But only Lucky makes a bamboo gi at this point as far as I know. Since Boomer (Cageside’s owner) makes gis, I asked if he’d ever considered adding a gi made of bamboo to his line.
“I’ve considered making a gi out of mink,” he deadpanned. A droll wit, that Boomer.
Hence, I had to do this:
Looking back at this one, there are definitely things I’d fix about this Photoshop — it’s one of the first ones I did when learning the program. But I still chuckle looking at it, and that counts for something.
For the record, I would totally buy a bamboo gi. I would jump all over a hemp gi. But no, I would not actually buy a mink gi.
At least one of my training partners would, though.
[Edit: And here’s a quick close up on the gi, which should give all you fake fur entrepreneurs out there some fashion concepts to work with.]
Off the Rails
Every school has different belt promotion traditions. For some, a simple handshake and a handoff of the belt suffice. For others, you get thrown, get choked, or have to run a gauntlet of belt-whipping. There are probably numerous other traditions I’m ignorant of.
For our school, the tradition is the belt train.
This weekend, we’re having a seminar where some of my teammates may rank up. This brought back memories of my own belt train which I bring to you now in photo and video form.
What is a belt train, you might ask? It’s a marathon rolling session where, for a certain amount of time, you stay on the mat while a new person jumps on you every minute. For a blue belt, it’s around 15 minutes; for a purple belt, 30; for a brown belt, 45; and for the coveted black belt, a full hour. In my case, there were 18 people in class, so my train was 18 minutes.
Making matters worse, everyone ranked below you can pick the starting position: they can be on your back if they want, or they can force you to stay standing to wear you out.
Because people go in order of rank, just as you’re getting tired, you start to get jumped on by the people who can ordinarily handle you anyway. The instructor, who can handle everybody anyway, goes last.
To be honest, I really enjoyed mine. Not every minute of it, mind you: that final minute was excruciating. But there’s something about going through something like that with your training partners that’s really powerful. I feel about it the same way I feel about writing: I might not enjoy it, but I enjoy having done it.
Without further ado, let me deliver unto you the video. If you’ve come looking for the trainwreck, here it is.
The first 4:45 is banter that, while witty and effervescent, may not be interesting to you unless you know my training partners. After that it’s pure visceral ass-kickery. Enjoy!
My personal favorite parts:
7:58: Am I really getting assaulted by a dude in a tie-dyed gi?
9:26: It’s always fun to roll with someone more than twice your size. When he goes knee on belly, the audible OHHHHHH from the crowd is pretty funny.
12:50: I get jumped on from behind. Sadly, you can’t tell the deep oil check at 13:20 or so is happening, though you can hear people joking about it (“He’s a quart low!”)
14:52: The author of this blog is a good friend of mine, and is as badass as she is nice (and she is very nice!). You can hear through the whole video people telling her not to take it easy on me. “If you take it easy,” our instructor said, “you get a train of your own.” Good times!
16:27: Uh oh, I am getting Supermanned.
17:10: Uh, oh, I am getting lifted up by the pants and then dropped. Then comes the knee on belly.
17:50: My instructor tells me I have 10 seconds to re-tie the pants, and if I fail, I get two minutes with him. Yikes! At the end of the rapid-fire pants-tie, one of my training partners — a former college wrestler — double-legs me and hits a beautiful can opener. Man, I’m glad I do yoga.
18:45: I get put into a body triangle and the instructor tells my training partner not to tap me — just hold me there. The result is the best picture of the train:
… and because I’m learning Photoshop, I had to do this:
20: 15: The most dramatic moment of the train. You can see my try to sit guard a few times, and hear my training partner tell me “Get up! You aren’t robbing me of this.” Then, at 20:20 he hits a sick throw that gets the biggest pop from the crowd (and my back).
I made an animated GIF of that throw, but can’t find it right now. I’ll add it if I find it later, or make another for those of you who can’t watch video at work.
Now, the last minute of this might not look like much, but God, it is miserable. My instructor’s mount pressure is brutal under the best of circumstances, but to have it happen after 17 minutes, when he just steps right into mount, when I’m exhausted, and when he strips away my defensive frames like they’re nothing …
Yes, it was a humbling experience. A humbling experience that left me looking like this:
I actually really like this picture. It’s clear I’m exhausted, but it’s also clear that I’ve survived, and that my instructor is helping me get up. As a friend of mine told me once, I’m never down: I’m either up or getting up.
Following this weekend, I’m looking forward to helping some of my teammates get up.