Ah, the noble shoulder: integral part of brawny tasks.
Atlas used his to hold up the (mythical) world, Leonardo drew the (real) joint in detail, and modern English users have metaphor-ed and verb-ed what was originally a noun. We shoulder burdens and put our shoulders to the wheel: you wouldn’t do that with a pinky toe or a navel. When Carl Sandburg wanted to tell you how burly the city of Chicago was, he talked about the town’s shoulders.
And mine hurt, especially the right one.
Mine look like this on the inside, too. I hope. I also have more hair than the model. But not on my shoulders. I hope.
Important disclaimer: getting nicked up is a part of training. Everyone knows this. Call it “The Gentle art” all you want (and that’s really a misleading translation, but that’s a topic for another day), you’ll still be icing something every once in a while.
Why write about this now? Again, injuries are a part of training, and I want to be honest with myself about what jiu-jitsu does to my body — the good and the bad.
Apart from that, there seems to be a good deal of soreness and much less range of motion. I decided at the start of the vacation that I was only going to train a little bit, substituting yoga and deep-tissue massage for shoulder activities.
I’ll be frank: I’m disappointed that my six-week strategy for recovery hasn’t succeeded to the level I expected. It has improved, but it’s far from fixed.
Granted, that six-week strategy of rest, relaxation, and massage took a bit of a diversion into training judo with the Palau team, but hey, let’s not nitpick.
I’d like to say that I’m going to take it easy for another couple of weeks. But training camp for the no-gi Pans is starting, and, well, you know how it is.
My shoulders might be half as brawny as normal, but they’ll do. I’m not from Chicago anyway.
I travel a lot. Between work, school, jiu-jitsu tournaments and pleasure travel, I often have a difficult time remembering what day it is or what time zone I’m in.
Actually, check that: I have a hard time remembering those details anyway. It’s probably all the concussions.
A cool side-effect of all this travel, besides the ubiquitous frequent flyer miles and delicious airline food, is getting to visit other academies. Thankfully, my instructor is of the Dave Camarillo school of thought that says train with everybody you can, learn from them and bring those insights back to your home mat. I try to visit other Royce Gracie affiliates wherever I can, but sometimes there isn’t one. And sometimes it’s just nice to check out folks from other affiliations to see what they’re up to.
I just got back from China, where I had one of my two favorite academy visits ever: Shanghai BJJ.
Shanghai BJJ is a Rilion Gracie school, and Rilion’s guard work is legendary, so it was cool to get some of that perspective. We worked a lot of basics – you can never get enough basics – but the instructor, Stan, showed me a slick variation on the classic armbar from guard that I’m going to work once I get home. Stan also has a strong self-defense focus, which he has in common with my home academy, so we worked a bunch of that too.
Stupidly, I didn’t get a picture with the Shanghai guys – things wrapped up fast – but I did get a sick shirt. This is the Shanghai BJJ logo, which is pretty cool:
The full shirt is even better.
Great guys, great instruction and great training. I feel really privileged to be able to get around as much as I do and train with as many cool folks as I do.
… but that starts at home. And to be real, it’s going to be great to be home. First class back in Durham: Friday. Tournament the next day, and I can’t wait.
On the topic of data visualization, the folks at Bishop BJJ have put together a first-of-its-kind breakdown of statistics from the Mundials. You can see from my last post why this type of information would fascinate me — all the more so because I competed at the tournament this year.
My next big graphic project is compiling data from US Grappling tournaments and making infographics. If I think the results are interesting, maybe I’ll do a post comparing the US Grappling events to the Mundials in terms of data results.
… OK, done with the data nerd stuff for a while. We now return you to your regularly-scheduled grappling stories and whatnot.
… or a graphic, actually. I’ve been taking a data visualization class, and I thought I’d try to represent the results from US Grappling’s latest tournament in image form. It’s the from the State Line Grappling Championships in Bristol, TN.
If you click here to get the full-size version, it should be pretty intuitive, but I’ll explain anyhow. Each bubble represents a match: the bigger the bubble, the longer the match went. Each bubble is color-coded by how the match finished.
I’m going to be trying to produce more of these after each tournament, so if you have comments — including suggestions for how to represent the data better — please offer ’em up. These are fun projects that allow me to combine BJJ with my inherent data nerdhood.
Every match from SLGC in one graphic. Click it for the big version!
Just got back from 10 days in China! Got some great training in, and was excited to post about it — but turns out China blocks WordPress, and I didn’t have the foresight to set up a proxy. But more to come soon.
For the 4th of July, I’m in Palau training judo, which was invented in Japan, then flying to China to practice an art invented by Brazilians. Like Tom Paine said: “My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.”
The bad thing about a vacation: you miss class. The good thing about a vacation: you get to spend more time with instructional DVDs that you neglected when you were training regularly.
(Also, you are on vacation. That’s also a good thing about a vacation. But never mind that for now.)
I own a lot of instructionals, and one of my favorites is Caio Terra’s Modern Jiu-Jitsu. It’s a four DVD set of more than 140 techniques, all of which I had watched before this trip. Since repetition is key to my learning style, though, it’s really helpful for me to revisit stuff I’ve watched before.
And the Caio DVDs are a pleasure to revisit. Let’s get the two most obvious points out of the way: first, Caio’s technique is spectacular; and second, this DVD is beautifully filmed.
Just check out this screenshot from Modern Jiu-Jitsu:
The soft light of this DVD takes me on gossamer wings to BJJ Valhalla.
Compared to this screenshot from Caio’s 111 Half-Guard Techniques DVD:
Great DVD content that looks pretty good.
111 Half-Guard Techniques is a great DVD, too, and it doesn’t look bad. But compared to Modern Jiu-Jitsu, it’s no contest. I think the next step in BJJ instructionals involves improving production values. There are a lot of amazing instructors out there, but very few of them are producing materials that look this good.
As good as the product looks, the actual instruction is even better. Modern Jiu-Jitsu is aimed at beginning- to intermediate-level BJJ players, which makes it perfect for me, but I’ve heard higher-level guys say they learned a lot of details from this material, too. That’s not surprising, because Caio does some very fundamental techniques in a slightly different way from the standard method.
Sometimes, this will leave you wondering “I wonder if that will work for me.” Many times, it will leave you saying “Wow, I can’t wait to try that out in rolling.”
You can see an example of the techniques on the DVD here.
If you pay any attention to competition jiu-jitsu, you know you can’t argue with Caio’s results. For a guy like me — a smaller person who tries to be detail-oriented — his DVDs are top-notch.
Plus, Mobile Black Belt has the product on sale, so you can get it for cheaper than I did! Run, don’t walk to your Internet browser, buy it, watch it again and again, and come back leaving a comment thanking me later.
Also, if anybody from Mobile Black Belt winds up reading this: when are Caio’s iPhone and iPad apps coming out? If they’re anything like Modern Jiu-Jitsu, they’ll quickly become a part of my collection as well.
“Hey, Jeff, would you mind reviewing my DVD? I could really use the support from some random blue belt on the Internet.” “Sure thing, Caio. Let’s be best friends.”
THE BOTTOM LINE
PRODUCT: Caio Terra, Modern Jiu-Jitsu PRICE: $129.95 for 4 DVDs, or $34-95-$44.95 for individual DVDs ON A SCALE OF 1-10: 9
Rafael Lovato Jr. is one of only two American black belts to win the worlds in the gi. So what better date for his new online instructional site to open than July 4?
He’s also a terrific instructor, as you can see from the embedded video at the link. I’m a little sad that I won’t be back in the states for another month (the Internet is too slow here to access the site), because guard passing is going to be my main training focus when I get back. The site is called “Ultimate Pressure Passing System,” and I imagine it’s relevant to my interests.
One reason I started this blog now is that I have time to do some posts. Usually, work, school and training pretty much covers all my free time, and I’d rather be training that writing about training. But now, I’m on vacation for five weeks or so.
All the training I’m going to get in is judo (there is no BJJ instructor in Palau, where I am, but there is a national judo team), and the rest of my jiu-jitsu time is going to be spent catching up on the litany of DVD instructionals I own.
This means:
* When I get back home, I intend to do some “training log” posts about what we go over in class, but for now, I’m going to post about other things I’m working on.
* Expect the occasional DVD review post in the next month or so. First one coming in the next day or two.
When I visited last, I trained with the judo team. They were kind enough to show me a few things. Unfortunately, two of my favorite training partners just left for the Olympics (Good luck, Jen!).
Fortunately, I can still get a little judo in, which I want to do so I can improve my options while standing in the gi. I did some wrestling in high school, so I’ve always had some takedowns. But the gi changes things, and can impede the kind of shot-based takedowns I’m best at. Some basic judo techniques will diversify my standing techniques.
What I’ve learned so far: short, stubby legs suck for foot sweeps; morote seio nage is my favorite throw, because it looks cool and you don’t run as much risk of getting your back taken; and tomoe nage is a terrific option for “I’m not *really* pulling guard, but yeah, I’m pulling guard.”
Got any favorite judo throws I should drill while I’m here?
A few weeks ago, my team took a small cohort to the IBJJF World Jiu-Jitsu Championships, commonly known as the Mundials. It’s no exaggeration to say it was one of my greatest life experiences so far, and I’m a late-30s hobbyist who does this for fun.
If you do Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, you seriously should go. And if you’re going, you might as well compete and be a part of it.
Not convinced? I have three reasons for you. True, these three reasons are a cleverly disguised excuse to tell some Mundials stories, but I mean them all the same. REASON ONE: IT DOESN’T MATTER HOW YOU DO: YOU WILL LEARN A TON
Any time you step on the mat, you’re going to get valuable information. At the Mundials, though, you get people gathered from all over the world — each of whom takes a slightly different approach to jiu-jitsu. Even if you only get one match, you’ll get a valuable sense of what others are doing, and how that differs from (or mimics) what you’re doing at your school or in your region.
Examples of what I took away from the Mundials are too numerous to name, but let me list a couple: most people want to pull guard, so I need to shoot faster if I want to get takedown points; and I’ve put in a lot of work on passing the open guard, but I need to put in a lot more, especially on spider guard variants.
(Oh, and one of my teammates kept saying that maybe he’d go, but only to watch. We talked him into competing. He wound up with a (well-deserved) bronze medal. No excuses!)
You also get to pose like this in front of Walter Pyramid.
Besides competing, you can watch match after match. It was helpful for me to watch all the other people around my level. And it was beyond helpful and inspiring to watch those folks who are way, way, way, above my level. These folks are truly the best in the world.
Which leads me to reason number two you should go: REASON TWO: YOU GET TO BE A FAN
My teammate Hameed and I are admitted BJJ nerds. No shame in that game.
We fly the nerd flag high and proud. Got a DVD? We’ll watch it. Making a sweet new gi? We want it. Put out a jiu-jitsu podcast? We probably already listen to it.
Because I was competing at white belt and Hameed at blue, we got our matches done on the first day.This meant we were free to enter BJJ heaven immediately after. Almost everyone in the jiu-jitsu world that you would like to meet attends the Mundials, and almost without exception, they couldn’t possibly be nicer. Hameed and I brought our white belts to get people to sign. By the end of the tournament, both of them were covered with the signatures of top-level competitors and legends.
Now *that’s* how you dirty up a white belt.
This is one reason I love sport jiu-jitsu. Everyone is so approachable, including the best contemporary players and the best of all time. I hope jiu-jitsu continues to grow — at least, I think I do — but it’s nice that there’s such a community feeling even at a riotously competitive event like this.
When I say “community feeling,” I’m including the Gracie Barra guys who threatened to kick my ass if they saw that white belt end up on eBay. No worries, guys, I understand. Part of community is holding others accountable. But that belt’s hanging on my wall for the duration.
Then there are the matches. This year featured the Rodolfo-Buchecha match that everyone online was talking about, and let me tell you, it was even better in person.
Buchecha after winning gold.
Imagine watching 12 mats of action, and on maybe 6 of them you have at least one legend. That’s what the black belt competition day are like. I should write more about this, but just think: you look one mat, and there’s Xande Ribeiro. On another, there’s Caio Terra. On another, there’s Cobrinha, and … on and on.
Bill Cooper enthusiastically agrees that you should attend the Mundials.
It gets overwhelming. In the best possible way. If you’re fortunate enough to have your instructor with you, he or she can point out the details on what they’re trying to do, too.
Finally, the most important reason of all to attend the Mundials: REASON THREE: MIGUEL TORRES MAY DECLARE YOU A G
When my teammate Ryan got called to the bullpen before his purple belt match, I went with him. It’s important to have somebody with you in case something goes wrong — for example, a problem with your gi.
(Before next year’s Mundials, I’m going to devote an entire post to How To Make Sure You Don’t Get DQed. The gi requirements are no joke, and they’re serious about them.)
Ryan had a patch on the back of his gi that was frayed. They wanted him to remove it. Naturally, I didn’t have a knife — I’ll fix that next year. So I took a quarter and used the ridges to tear out the stitches. This worked just fine on three sides of the patch. But the fourth side was reinforced with adamantium or some shit.
Now, it’s nerve-wracking enough to be in the bullpen. You’ve put in tons of work, put out lots of money, and you’re about to put it all on the line. It doubles the nerves when it looks like they might not let you compete. I wanted to get rid of this patch problem and get the gi approved ASAP so Ryan could chill.
“Ryan,” I says, “lean back.”
I took the side of the patch between my teeth and just reared my head back. Yup, I got the patch off by tearing it out with my teeth. Sweet relief.
Then I hear from the left of me: “That’s some G shit right there!”
It’s UFC veteran and BJJ black belt Miguel Torres. “This guy’s a straight G!” he announces to the crowd, who laugh as Miguel offers me a fistbump.
If you go to the Mundials, I am sure something like this will happen to you.
This can also happen to you, but you’ve got to make sure your patch game is tight first.
IN SUMMARY
If you love BJJ, you’ll have a blast at the worlds even if you get submitted in under a minute. The sting of defeat is temporary. The experience is something you’ll value forever. Trust me.
Next tournaments: US Grappling July 28 (two days after I step off a trans-Pacific flight, yikes), and probably one more tune-up before the No-Gi Pans on September 29. Can’t wait.
