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Degree of Difficulty, or Driving in Sicily

For the past week, I’ve been watching closely for motorbikes zipping around me in any direction, improbable lane changes and aggressive double parking. I’ve been honked at for stopping at a stop sign, cut off by not one but two pedestrians strolling their children, backs firmly placed to the rush hour traffic. By the time I pulled into the gas station and saw the guy smoking while pumping his gas, I almost welcomed the oncoming explosion.

Here’s a time-lapse photo series that gives you only the barest idea of what this driving experience was like:

But it got better.

Why did it get better? I flew into Catania a week ago with the plan to spend a few days here at the beginning of my driving tour through the largest Mediterranean island. During those few days, I saw all of the above multiple times, plus a guy in a full wrist-to-shoulder cast use his crippled wing to hold his phone while he screamed into the receiver — all the while weaving through traffic in full defiance of lanes, laws and common decency. For obvious reasons, I walked a lot.

Once I got out in the country, the degree of difficulty diminished considerably. Partly, this was because the rural environments were less crowded. Upon returning to Catania it occurred to me that I’d picked the deepest end of the pool to start with: flying in to a busy university town after dark and trying to find a tiny road that even locals hadn’t heard of.

I drove back to Catania in the middle of rush hour today, though, and I noticed something: I was still a tourist, but I was able to get into the flow of traffic better. Little old men were only cutting me off when I let them. I could identify a valid parking space and capture it with minimal trauma.

This made me think about jiu-jitsu. Not just because everything makes me think about jiu-jitsu, although of course that is also true.

Vacation training! A proud tradition.
Vacation training! A proud tradition.

The gym where I train has grown a lot. When I started, there were perhaps 10 serious regulars at the classes I attended. I had no idea what I was getting into, and back then we all rolled after our first class.

My first rolls were with my instructor; a very successful pro MMA fighter (he’d heard I’d wrestled a year in high school, so we started standing); a monster wrestler who was a three-stripe blue belt at the time; and a then-purple belt who has crushed tournaments ever since I’ve known him. I can’t recall if I rolled with the future blue belt world champion at my first or second class, but it was one of the two. There weren’t many other white belts, and there certainly weren’t any that I was better than.

It went how you’d expect. This was the deep end of the pool. This was driving in Sicily.

I trained a while. Got crushed every night. I was having too much fun learning things to be upset about the litany of kicking that my solitary ass took.

White belt life: I didn't know much, but hard training taught me to close that guard pretty fast.
White belt life: I didn’t know much, but hard training taught me to close that guard pretty fast. Not sure what else I’m doing here.

In the coming months, I was still at the bottom of the ladder, but the sink-or-swim situation I was in forced me to get a solid grounding in the fundamentals. First I was still getting passed easily, but I knew when to shrimp. Then I was still getting mounted but I knew to keep my elbows tight. Maybe I’d see my opponent do something that I had no idea about, but I knew to protect my neck and face.

This was real progress! When new white belts came in, even the really big and strong ones had a tough time submitting me. I had a lot of practice trying (and mostly failing) to survive against bigger, stronger, more skilled people. This was a huge help that I’m still thankful for.

Train with lions, and even if you're the runt of the litter, you'll grow.
Train with lions, and even if you’re the runt of the litter, you’ll grow.

[Note: I have mixed feelings on whether it’s good for new people to roll their first week. Generally, I think Roy Marsh has a solid philosophy on this: people wait to roll until they have some basics, and he has a standard safety spiel before each rolling session. But that’s the subject for another post. Anyway, the deep-end experience was good for me, but might not be best for most folks.]

I mention degree of difficulty, too, because it’s important to have training partners that challenge you, push you and tap you. We all know the White Belt Hunter: he’s the guy who gets his blue belt and looks around the room for less experienced, ideally smaller people, never realizing that those people are getting better at a faster rate than he is. Making progress — especially early, but at every stage of the game — requires skilled, tough partners.

The progress in my early jiu-jitsu life mirrors my return to Catania. I’m still overmatched driving here, but I know some basics I didn’t know before. It makes getting around easier, less stressful, and more fun.

The first time I successfully cut off that driver who was trying to get over on me and laughed at the guy who hesitated and was lost reminded me of my first successful escape from back control: yes, you’re better than I am, and yes, this is a small victory in the grand scheme of things. But this small victory is helping me improve — and helping me become a better training partner.

I still train with all of the people who I mentioned at the beginning of the post. They’re still all better than I am. Rolling with them is more fun than it’s ever been, though, and more productive for all of us.

Why am I writing this? Perspective. Our near-term goals don’t have to be to beat everybody, or to speak a language fluently, or to drive like a local (n fact, please don’t drive like a Sicilian local). I don’t miss getting my face smashed every night, just like I don’t miss feeling utterly lost on the roads. That time investment helped me build a foundation, and I recognize that.

Keep focusing on building that foundation, and your journey will get more enjoyable with each step. Even if you have to step into the deep end of the pool.

 

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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.

It takes a very steady hand ...
It takes a very steady hand … and believe me, the “Skill Game Where You’re The Doctor” bit from the original game applies to our community’s rampant self-diagnosis.

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.”

This is a super-scientific image from my most recent x-ray and MRI. They combined them into an MRX.
This is a super-scientific image from my most recent x-ray and MRI. They combined them into an MRX.

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.

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Letting Ego Go

When I did debate in high school, a bunch of us went to watch our best debater — a senior — compete in a final round. We were sophomores, and we watched our best guy deliver a terrific speech to win top honors. Afterward, still suffused with the glow of sweet victory, I told a teammate: “You know, I want to be that good someday.”

This particular teammate never thought much of me, so that may be why she gave me a look of scorn. It may also be that such a declaration came off as arrogant, or implausible, or some combination of all of these. Whatever it was, it was clear that she didn’t think my goal was happening, and she wanted me to know it.

Fine, I thought inside. Out loud, I said: “No, I changed my mind. I want to be better. And I’m going to be.”

***

I admit it: I’m a competitive person. I will further admit that this type of competitiveness is rooted in ego, and that this is not always my most charming trait. At 38, I certainly hope that I’m more mature about expressing these feelings than I was as a sophomore in high school. But that base impulse — You think I can’t do that? Well, we’ll you’re wrong, and I’ll prove it — remains the same.

Ego can be a mixed blessing at best — in life and in jiu-jitsu training. If your instructor is anything like mine, he or she has probably has probably told you over and over that ego is your enemy.

There are good reasons for this. Especially with something like Brazilian jiu-jitsu, where improvement is such a long-term process, conquering your ego is something you simply have to do. Humility is worth cultivating for its own sake. It also has instrumental value: being humble also allows you to be open to what your instructors — and training partners — have to teach you, in word and deed. There are lot of reasons for this, but my favorite is this: if you don’t believe you’re making mistakes, you can’t learn.

Humility is also a recipe for being much happier in life. I fundamentally believe this. As beneficial as competition can be for us, physically and mentally, an all-consuming focus on it isn’t charming. It can also undermine your long-term progress. I’ve seen a lot of people with impressive physical attributes start to rely on their strength or speed to win matches and perform well in rolls, since that’s easier at first than learning technique.

Let me make an uncomfortable admission, though. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that a tiny kernel of ego still continues to drive my training. I like getting medals. I don’t like big, strong, new guys coming into the gym and calling me out, assuming they can beat on the little old guy. I like it when they get a nasty surprise.

This isn’t a part of my personality I’m particularly happy with, but I can acknowledge that it will always be a part of me. And contrary to what the great Annie Savoy said, the world can be a better place with a little self-awareness. Knowing our own tendencies can be the best way to moderate them.

Ultimately, I think that moderation is the lesson here: you don’t want to let your ego run you, but you don’t want to completely abandon it, either. You can’t run an engine on a spark alone, but sometimes you need a spark to get started.

***

Since I’m sure everyone is anxious to know how my debate career turned out, I’ll return that to close this out. (Spoiler alert: it’s actually a pretty good parable for what I’m trying to say in the post.)

Debaters work really hard. I worked as hard as two of them. I kind of had a chip on my shoulder anyway, but I used doubters — real and imagined — to motivate me. Tournaments were most every weekend, and I lived for them.

The work paid off, such as it was: for a few years I was pretty hard to beat at debate. Then, as suddenly as I started obsessing over winning debates, I found myself burning out. I was exhausted all the time and had stopped enjoying something that had been the center of my life.

I had a lot of success, and I had a lot of fun, but I don’t think I had as much of either in the long run as I might have. Tough to admit, but true.

We’re all capable of making mistakes. One of my goals in training jiu-jitsu is to fix the mistakes in approach I made during debate. Ego is a tough opponent, but it can be defeated, too, and the more I defeat it, the happier I am.

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Everyone Likes Surprises

Once a week, I travel to my instructor’s instructor’s gym for some extra-hard training. For two-and-a-half hours or so, we lock ourselves inside his barn, turn off the fans, shut the windows, and go hard at each other in a combination of jiu-jitsu, Bikram Yoga and Thunderdome.

Yeah, it’s pretty much the most fun ever. Once you’re done, anyway.

Usually, it’s some combination of 30 minutes of drilling, 30/60 minutes of intense positional sparring, 30 minutes of shark bait/king of the hill, and a half hour of rolling. This is followed by many hours of re-hydration.

Naturally, at some point your body becomes exhausted. Your mind, too, stops operating at peak capacity. It is a tale of both of these phenomena that I wish to tell you now.

About 90 minutes in, we’re pretty gassed. Everyone’s rash guard and shorts are soaked. Because it’s super-important to drill technique properly when we’re tired, we’re drilling takedowns and guard pulls. The idea is you go quickly, but correctly, so you continue to challenge your endurance while executing technique. You do one of your best three takedowns or guard pulls, then your partner pops up super-fast and goes, and you just keep alternating.

Of course, we’re all struggling to keep up the pace. Occasionally you’ll drag yourself to your feet and your partner will have his/her hands on the knees and be doubled over. Or you will be, and your partner will have to wait.

This last happens to me. We’re working in groups of two, and my partner takes me down. As I’m slowly lifting one leg up, then the other, I hear one of my other training partners say from across the mat: “Hey, are we switching off?” Yes, the instructor says.

Now, when I’m this tired, my strategy is rest until I’m ready to explode, then rest again. I hear this and understand we’ll be switching partners. I also understand that, unless I jump guard RIGHT NOW, I will have a tough time doing anything that isn’t totally embarrassing.

So I head to where my new training partner is on the mat, leap up to jump guard …

… and think, while in the air: “wait, did he mean we were supposed to be switching up takedowns with the SAME partner?”

My new training partner’s look of shock and bewilderment seems to confirm this theory. But thankfully, she still has the presence of mind and cardiovascular righteousness to catch my guard jump and deliver me safely to the mat.

I wish there was video. I imagine it looked something like this:

It is like I am a flying kitten.

In the future I will give fair warning before jumping guard. Even in tournaments.

Mostly because I don’t pull guard in tournaments.