Happy New Year!

Have a safe and happy New Year celebration everyone!

Holiday Gorge-a-thon

What is it about the holidays that awakens the primal instinct to eat everything in sight for two months straight? It begins in November, and if you are lucky, hopefully towards the end of the month, when people suddenly want to have potlucks and multiple celebrations all over the Thanksgiving weekend.

Then it’s the Christmas cookies and pies and parties and before you know it you have gained ten pounds and the extra weight feels like a sweater you can’t take off.

…Or maybe that’s just me.

While I usually work to party in moderation, it’s almost damn inevitable to gain some weight over the holidays. While this doesn’t seem like such a terrible thing now, it’s a pain in the butt when tournament training time comes and you slowly, painstakingly peel off that holiday fat sweater with sweat and sore muscles.

There is a saying that “sweat is fat crying”. Come January my fat is going to be crying like a teenage girl watching “Titanic” for the first time.

 

 

Anyone else fall into the holiday trap? Anyone else also just a little glad to get back to their regular diet and training schedule? Did you just answer yes to latter question with a Christmas cookie in your mouth? Don’t lie….I’ll know.

New Years Grappling Resolutions

In addition to regular resolutions, which I’ll write down this new years to remind myself- I have some grappling new years resolutions I would like to put into effect:

1- brabo chokes: I would like to get better at them. I can see the potential effectiveness, and now would like to work on seeing and capitalizing on opportunities

2- Mounted triangle: attacks and finishes. Pretty self-explanatory

3- Judo tournaments: At least 1, preferably a couple of judo tournaments this year.

4- butterfly guard, my arch-nemesis.

…Hm, that’s all I can think of for now. Anything you would like to work on in the new year?

Working on Your Weaknesses

Recently I have been trying to play butterfly guard. I am pretty terrible at it, and to be honest I’m not terribly surprised when it is shut down.

However, I keep trying, because it’s good to work on your weaknesses once in a while. It’s pretty certain that those techniques will never be your “A” game- but I would rather attempt to improve even slightly on my weaknesses than be limited through solely working on my strengths.

It’s human nature to want to only do the things we a re good at- we know we do them well, and the successful completion makes us feel accomplished. It’s the willingness to step out of the comfort zone that will make us better either in that technique, or even sometimes in something completely different, because there is a similar principle that can be applied.

Jiu jitsu is a sport that at its core is all about evolution: both the evolution of the sport as a whole and, in ways more importantly, the evolution of the player. Keeping an open mind to both the things you are good at, and not so good at, will promote that evolution.

You can’t get to the next chapter of a book if you just keep reading the same paragraphs over and over again. 🙂

Baking and Jiu Jitsu

So, over the weekend I did some baking for work. While I would love to say everything was a smashing success and came out perfectly, that would be a complete lie. Everything tastes delicious but the presentation…well…

But, there were some lessons learned from the experience that I feel can also be applied towards training:

– Work with smaller goals. It’s fine to be ambitious, but trying to accomplish a ton all at once rarely ever ends well.

-Be patient and give yourself plenty of time. There’s no crime in being efficient, but also realize that life doesn’t always go according to plan, and if you are dealing with new and unfamiliar territory, it will take longer to get the swing of things.

-Follow all the directions, even the ones that seem the most minor and insignificant. There’s a reason that direction was put in. You may not understand it now, but until someone much more advanced tells you differently, or until you understand what you doing a little better, follow all directions and the order in which they were given. You don’t put a cake in the oven before you mix the ingredients. Kind of the same principle.

-Always make sure your oven is pre-heated to 350? I guess we could use the analogy for stretching and warming up, but I’ll just leave it to those three.

I know my posting schedule has been kind of screwy, but things should get back to normal mid to end January. Until then, please be patient!

Until next time!

When Spammers ATTACK!!!

It’s fun sometimes to read what spambots will send you as comments.

Usually the stuff is filtered out by the whatever widget I have on here, but there is still a trickle of spam that comes in that wordpress is not sure is legit, so lets it into the party, but has a strict eye on the comments and keeps them to their own little corner.

Most of them, I have to admit, make a hell of a lot more sense if you read them in a heavy Eastern European accent:

“Most excellent post you write! Please I ask you keep writing fabulous more posts!”

Spam, it seems now however, has gotten the idea that people get riled up when you disagree with them. I have been getting these recently:

“I just wanted to let you know I think you are dead wrong. And your article doesn’t make any sense.”

Which I probably would be offended by if they weren’t posted on the Almost Wordless Wednesday posts…. Photos, guys. You are disagreeing about photos.

And finally, I don’t care how nice your comment is, sexy-bot-sex-chat-on-a-sex-cam at whoever.com, there’s a link in your comment that I can read the address to: it’s to some site related to your email and that most likely will not end well.

And last, and kind of least are the SEO guys:

“Hey, I noticed you are not optimizing you SEO- just come pay us money and we’ll take care of that for you!”

No, no thanks guys. I’m happy where I am…you know, not paying for such a service.

So, for the bloggers, any fun spam come your way?

 

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday, 12.14.2011

While I would prefer something with a higher protein content, I definitely give this shake props for not leaving a weird after taste.

The Language Of the Sport

And believe it or not, I am not talking about Portuguese…or maybe I am, but indirectly.

I was having a conversation with my stepmom about how certain activities and how if you ate heavily involved in them almost seem to have their own language. Which, upon thinking about it, we have our own little language for jiu jitsu which is how the Portuguese becomes indirectly involved.

“I trained some matches yesterday and tapped once or twice , but I got on Jimmy’s back, managed to get my hooks in but switched to the bow and arrow.”

Anyone not familiar with the lingo of the sport would only be able to follow about 1/2 that sentence and will simply nod and smile blankly, attempting to follow along.

It’s not a bad thing, it just shows heavy involvement with the sport. It’s the same with baking, needlepointing, rock climbing- when you become involved in these activities, you “learn the language” to better communicate with your peers.

And, the added bonus with jiu jitsu is you learn a couple of Portuguese and sometimes Japanese terms along the way. Hooray!

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday, 12.7.11

I learned something interesting this week from Julia’s (JiuJiu) blog: the child chess prodigy who they made a film about (Searching for Bobby Fischer) is a brown belt under Marcelo Garcia.

Huh. I had no idea.

Sometimes What You Need is Not What You Want

As I mentioned yesterday, I had my grumpy pants on all day, with only brief reprieves offered by videos of sneezing baby pandas and, oddly enough, p!nk’s music video “Stupid Girls”. But overall, my mood was primarily stuck on grumpy.

I left work fully decided that I was not going to take jiu jitsu class: I was going to sit at home, eat spoonfuls of Nutella and play video games. I ended up going to jiu jitsu anyway.

For anyone that knows me IRL, you know that my ankle is also a little swollen due to a possible light sprain, so I didn’t do too much, I did some drills, trained at my own pace with some lower belts and super technical higher belts, and I have to say it was exactly what I needed.

While life is pretty awesome, there are definitely times it can be not-so-stellar. Our personal problems pile up, and we no longer see the forest for the trees, and feel overwhelmed.

While different things work for different people, I find that going to the gym, taking jiu jitsu or judo is beneficial both physically and mentally, because for the most part it puts me back in perspective and problems don’t seem as insurmountable.

And really, what better way to get your mind off your problems than someone trying their best to choke you? 😉