Slow It Down

Tonight was an awesome night. Just...awesome. Steph blogged about most of the reasons why it was awesome, but I will reiterate.

We had three new girls and some new guys as well, which is great in and of itself. But the coolest thing to see Joyce, was one of the girls who is a regular at Fabio's, have a break through tonight. Joyce is the smallest adult in the school. By a lot. I outweigh her by at least 25 pounds. She has always been a timid person and BJJ did not come naturally to her because of her shy nature. But she stuck with it and tonight she saw the fruits of her persistence.

One of the new girls she grappled was bigger than me and quite a bit stronger too. But Joyce was able to use technique and dictate the grapple. I didn't see the whole thing, but every time I looked up she was in a dominant position.

I am so proud of her. I know that it has been a struggle for me being "smallish" and a girl, but it has been doubly so for Joyce. Lately, she has come into class with a fiery, go-get-em attitude and she is really making head way. To me, it is yet more solid proof that BJJ really works and can not only give you solid self defense but also confidence as well.

GO JOYCE!!

Fabio showed an omaplata tonight and, after he let us drill it for a while, he called us back in and gave us all some drilling advice. I guess a lot of people were trying to do the technique fast. But Fabio said that we need to drill the technique slowly. It's not only for safety reasons, but to also because we need to take time to make sure we're getting the details right. Speed comes later, after a technique is already committed to your memory, after you've done it over and over and over again. But, most of the time, speed should be unnecessary. If a technique works, it will work when you put it on slowly.

I tried to put that into practice in some of my grapples. Instead of rushing through submissions, I tried to relax and go through them smoothly, without hurrying. What I found was that, while I wasn't able to finish every submission, I was able to make transitions a lot easier and smoother. My mind wasn't so hell-bent on one thing, I guess. It was cool.

Overall, great night. Now to sleep and do it all again tomorrow. Loving life. :)

Other Way, Stupid...

Made some progress today, albeit small, in my goal to play more of a top game. Normally when I roll, I wait for the other person to move and then usually go to some form of guard.

Not today.

I refused to allow myself to go to guard at the beginning. If I was going to be in a dominant position, I needed to pass. And pass I did, for the most part. Also, I made it a point to pass the way Fabio pointed out that I wasn't passing.

Sadly, in almost every grapple, I ended up in guard again at some point. It is just freaking hard wired into my brain!! My body goes there against my will!! But I've been having more success with sweeps lately, so maybe I won't be such an anti-guard nazi.

Bad news is that in one of my grapples someone fell back for a heel hook and I accidentally rolled out the wrong way. I don't know what I was thinking. I had already rolled out twice before that day and had done it correctly. Guess I had some kind of brain glitch. Either way, I tweaked my knee a slight bit. Nothing major.

I must have had some kind of weird premonition that this was going to happen because I normally only wear a knee brace on the other knee but I went to the store yesterday and bought a second knee brace and wore it today. I was thinking that I was going to be rolling a lot harder than normal and I wanted to protect my knees. Unfortunately even knee braces can't protect against stupidity. ;)

Cloud Nine

Man, so much is going on in my little world right now I don't even know where to start. I guess, given that this is a BJJ blog, I'll contain my gleeful spoutings to only the things happening with my school and training.

Firstly, we had a belt graduation at Fabio's on Friday night and several people were promoted, including both of my Summerlin instructors, Ben and Mario. Ben got another stripe on his brown belt and Mario was promoted to Purple Belt. Go Mario!! Steph and I were humming the Super Mario theme song while he was getting his belt tied on. Then, after the end of class, we decided to congratulate him by doing a sneak attack and ambushing him at the same time. He ended up using Stephanie as a human shield against me and pinning us both to the wall. But I gave him a wet-willy in the process, so that has to count for something!! lol

Several others in the school got stripes or belts. Congrats to the Fabio Novaes BJJ team! Love you guys!!
















I have a video of the "ceremony" we do at Fabio's whenever a person is promoted to the next belt. All of the belts at their level or higher get to do three take downs of their choosing on the newly initiated. It was pretty awesome, though I will say I have no desire to become a blue belt any time soon after seeing the enormous line of excited blues, purples and browns waiting to toss the guys who got promoted! I'll put the video up soon.

Then, Saturday morning during class, I felt like the drills we did were almost tailor made for what I needed to learn. It was just one of those mornings where everything we learned instantly clicked. I think that's because we focused mainly on concepts, not on detailed, multi-step moves (though we did have a few of those). I am the type of person who learns the big picture, more than the small details. That's good in some cases. I can imitate positions and see variations during grapples when I learn something new. But it's bad because I usually forget some key detail that makes a position hard to keep or a submission difficult to finish. Oh well. Details will come with time, I hope.

I had a private lesson scheduled for after class, to work on some basic positions. I was noticing in my grappling that I could pass guard and get to side control, but I couldn't keep side control to save my life. Also, I was feeling like I needed to understand some of the basic concepts behind the North/South and Knee-on-Belly positions as well. I wrote everything down that I learned both in regular class and in the private, but I'm still absorbing it all. I'll do a post in the next few days about everything I learned. But, man! It was a great training session.

The icing on the cake was that I got a few stripes at Saturday morning's class. I was shocked. For the last month or so, I didn't feel like I was improving at all. It just goes to show how little I know about BJJ! And it inspires me to train even harder.

2009: Destroying "I Can't"

Tomorrow is New Year's Eve and, following convention, I'm thinking about everything that went on in 2009. At the beginning of 2009 there were a lot of things I thought I couldn't do. I didn't think I could get down to 135lbs. I didn't think I could run a mile without stopping. I didn't think I could successfully control a ground fight with a bigger, stronger opponent.

2009 proved me wrong. :)

Goals Met in 2009

1. Body by BJJ!! I reached my goal of 135 lbs and am still steadily losing!! This morning I weighed in at 134.0. To put that in perspective...

Before BJJ:
Weight: 144
Pants size: 9


After 4 and a half months of BJJ:
Weight: 134!!!
Pants size: 4 or a 6, depending on the brand.


2. At the beginning of 2009 I couldn't even run a mile without walking a few times during the run. And by run I mean stumbling jog. This morning I ran a 9:08 mile. Not amazing by most standards but awesome by mine!!

3. I competed in my first tournaments and placed 2nd in one and 1st in the other. Also got a good sense of where my BJJ game is and where I need to improve. Working on those goals in 2010! One of the things these tournaments proved to me was that BJJ works against bigger, stronger opponents. At De la Riva, I was the smallest girl competing and yet I still placed 2nd. That's not a testament to me, but to the techniques. They work!

4. Thanks to the fear of not making weight for the aforementioned tournaments, I broke my addiction to comfort foods!! Woohoo! Food is fuel now, not just something I eat for the taste and enjoyment. This is not to say I don't splurge every now and again but it is a rarity, not a rule like it used to be.

Other Highlights from the Non-BJJ part of my life:

1. My son started preschool and is thriving. He is a strong-willed kid if there ever was one and I was really worried that he would constantly be in trouble at school. But he has thrived. The one time I had to keep him home for being sick he cried because he wanted to go to school. I don't expect that to last but it's nice for right now!! ;)

2. I got my dream job of being a Youth Pastor and I'm loving every minute of it, even the trying ones. God has taught me through this year to let go of control and stop trying to force things to happen the way I want them to. He has challenged me to go with the flow and learn through the difficult times!

3. I finished the rough draft of a fiction novel. Not anywhere near ready to be read by anyone, but it's a solid draft I can work off of. One step closer to my goal of writing--and COMPLETING--a novel. ;)


2009 showed me that I was setting my limits too low. I am capable of more--physically and mentally--than I thought I was before. In 2010 I'm raising the bar for myself.

Goals for 2010

1. I want to be able to run a mile in 8 minutes or less. I walk four miles every morning and, for the last few days, I've been jogging the first mile. I'm going to keep that up and add interval jogging, sprinting and walking for the rest of the 3 miles. I tried it out this morning and enjoyed it.

2. My BJJ training goals are pretty non-specific. I want to be better at sweeps, at taking the back, at maintaining side control once I get it, at...oh, pretty much everything needs improvement. What do you want from me? I'm a white belt! ;)

3. I want to compete in the April NAGA in Florida. And place. This is going to be difficult because I am forced to move up a division since I placed 1st last NAGA. Hard training, here I come!

4. In my personal life I'd like to stop relying so heavily on people's approval. I need to be confident without needing other people to tell me that I'm doing a good job, whether it be in Jiu-jitsu, in my work with the Youth Group or any other area of my life.

5. I want to finish that novel. ;)

Hope all of you have a safe and happy New Years!! See you in 2010!!

Small Victories

We worked some basic scissor sweeps this morning, which was great. I haven't been shown a scissor sweep since my second or third class and I saw a lot of things today that I had been doing wrong.

It's funny because Ben (our Saturday morning instructor) was telling us that Fabio's style is to show us one or two moves with a bunch of variations each class. For example, we worked the scissor sweep all class long, but we did scissor sweep to an arm-bar, scissor sweep to taking the back, scissor sweep to inverted arm-bar, scissor sweep to arm bar to omaplata or triangle. Lots of information.

Even though our instructors know we only retain about 10% of the stuff they shows us, they keep on going, knowing that we'll see those moves again later down the road. The longer we go to class and the more times we see those moves (at different points in our BJJ development) the more we will pick up. As it is, what little we do retain gives us a bigger arsenal than would a class that focused only on teaching the basics until they we had them down.

What do you guys think about that strategy? Do your schools do it differently?

Grappling today went really well. I'm going through one of those spurts where I'm finally able to incorporate some things that I've been working on for a while. Today, my victory was something small. I was finally able to sweep a guy who outweighs me by 80 lbs. For me, that was huge. I've been trying really hard to work on not staying in guard or half-guard the whole time and I'm finally starting to see some improvement in that area. Instead of falling into guard when I'm in trouble, I get to my knees and stay neutral. Instead of sitting in half-guard, I'm aggressively looking to sweep or take the back. And when I do find myself in guard--which I still feel the most confident in--I look for sweeps and sometimes get them.

When I grapple with guys who are bigger than me (which is about 80% of the time) I still end up on my back a lot of the time. But I'm still happy to see some small sign that I'm moving forward.

Leg Over Thingy

Didn't want to go to class this afternoon. I was up until 4 a.m. last night. Couldn't sleep. But I went anyway and I'm really glad. It ended up being one of the best days of rolling that I've had in a long time. I think it's because I was so tired that it relaxed me. I was expecting to get tapped (I'm usually one of only a few white belts on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons), so I was just rolling.

The other thing is that I think I finally was able to shrug off all the pressure I was putting on myself to perform. After NAGA, my grappling turned to crap and I couldn't figure out why. I think it was because I was wanting to keep the good opinion of my fellow teammates. So I was putting all this pressure on myself. Instead of doing well, I was ruining my game by being to concerned about how good or bad I was rolling.

Finally, I realized that I just needed to relax. I'm still a crappy white belt. I will be for a while. And who cares about what other people think. I am not doing this for them. I'm doing it because I love BJJ.

Anyway, we worked a weird, leg-over choke that you get when you're sitting out in side control. Really love this choke. The cool thing about it is that if you set it up right, you also have both arms trapped. So if you lose the choke with your leg, you can still apply an armbar to either arm right from where you are. I wish I could explain what it looks like, but I fail at explaining moves. Even if the person rolls, you can still get the choke or the whichever arm bars. I am going to make this a part of my game if it kills me!

2009 NAGA Boca Raton, FL

My first NAGA. I took so much away from this tournament. I only competed two weeks ago at De la Riva, so you'd think I would have learned most of my weaknesses. Not so much. ;) Only, at this tournament, my biggest weakness was my mental game, not my physical game.

Having said that, here are the results. No-gi was first. I managed to take 1st place!! :) Here are a couple of my fights:

First no-gi fight. My camera battery runs out right at the end, but I did win this match.



Second no-gi match. Glad I dropped down to 134! This girl felt so light after rolling with the heavy guys in my class.



There were only five girls competing in gi. This is the same girl I fought in my first match in no-gi. And I lost. This is where the mental failure came in for me.



I am still kicking myself for this fight. My head was not in the right place when I walked onto the mat. It's hard to explain what happened. When I went into no-gi, I was actually not that nervous. I was excited, confident. Then, after I won, for some reason I suddenly got ridiculously nervous. It makes no sense. And then, during that fight, when she passed my guard I panicked. I might have been able to win that fight had I not freaked out and lost focus. Oh well. It happens.

Overall, I am really happy with the way things turned out. Again, learned a lot. One of the main things I need to improve on technically is taking the back when someone is pinning me in half guard. In that last fight, I remember trying to hip out, but I didn't hip out enough.

There's another NAGA coming up in February. I might sit this one out. Not sure yet. But I am going to train as if I am going to participate. My focus between now and then will be the following:

1. Take-downs. I pulled guard in every fight. It was a safe strategy, I guess. But I could get two points and start out on the top. But I could also get injured or taken down myself. Still going to work on take downs.

2. Sweeps. Did a little better with sweeps in this tournament, but still need to get better.

3. Positions!! I am seeing a little improvement with me not sitting in guard the whole time, but my game plan in class will be to pass guard and get side control or mount. I will not stay on bottom all fight long. ;)

Any other suggestions on things I really need to work on?

Here are a few photos:


I have some of the most supportive, awesome coaches on the planet. Here's me and Fabio.


And me and Ben


Here are a lot of the guys and gals from Fabio Novaes BJJ and Brotherhood BJJ, which is a combination of a few local schools.

De la Riva!!

Me, Stephanie and Phil


Me and Fabio. I love me some Fabio! He's the best!


Our other instructors, Mario (blue belt) and Ben (brown belt). And the other brown belt who trains at Fabio's, Paul. These guys are awesome. Mario and Ben are the ones that really got Stephanie and I into Jiu-jitsu.


So, I survived my first tournament!!

Man, I am so glad I went. De la Riva was small as far as tournaments go--or so I am told. I wouldn't know, considering that this is the only one I've been to--but it definitely gave me a taste for what competitions are like and what I should expect at NAGA.

I fought gi and no gi, and had very different experiences in both. Only 5 girls showed up to the competition, one being myself and another being my best friend and sister-in-law Stephanie. Our school has a policy that our students don't fight each other. Steph and I were more than happy to embrace that policy, but that left us with only 3 competetors.

None of them were in our division as far as amount of time training goes. They were all white belts, but the one with the least amount of experience had been traing for 8 months and had been trained as a kick boxer for several years. She, at least, was in our weight class. The other two outweighed Steph and I by a lot. One of them weighed 209 pounds and had been training over two years.

We fought gi first and I had the unhappy luck to go against the kick boxer girl. She was easily the best out of everyone there and the fight went like this. I pulled guard from take down and tried to get chokes, tried to get an arm bar. But she defended the arm bar and I pulled guard again. Then, evetually, she passed my guard and got side control. I got half guard back, but I could not, for the life of me, sweep her.

That was something that disappointed me in all of my matches. How many sweeps have I learned over the past week? It seems like a million. And how many was I able to pull of at the tournament? Maybe one or two. Booo! ;)

Anyway, the girl won by points. And I didn't get another fight in gi. She was really nice, so I didn't mind losing to her that much. Hopefully I'll get another chance against her in the future. She struck me as someone who would be fun to train with.

After that first fight, I was really demoralized. I almost let it ruin my whole day. But I went off by myself, gave myself a talking to about not having a pity party and came back ready to fight in no-gi. I was really intimidated considering I had already lost to one girl and had seen Steph go against one of the other girls.

But No-gi ended up going a whole lot better for me. My first fight was against a girl who had been training a little over a year and who had about 25 pounds on me. But I was able to get a lot of points for positions and ended up submitting her with an arm bar.

My next fight was against the big girl with 2 years experience. That was a tough fight. But all of my training with Phil--who weighs about the same as that girl and use to weigh more before he dropped weight for the tournament--really paid off!! I was able to breathe even when she was putting all her weight on me and I was able to move out from under her and get side control. I honestly can't remember if I won just by points or by submission. I'll have to go back and watch the video when I go to Steph's house. I know I had her arm and I refused to let go. I just kept repositioning when she moved. I think the time ran out while I was still trying to finish that arm.

My last match was against that same kick boxer girl. I did better my second time against her. Again, I pulled guard. Again she tried to pass. I can't remember if she got side control at any point. Most of the fight was spend with me holding half guard and trying to sweep and her trying to escape half guard and trying to choke me. I was so gassed at the point, it was all I could do just to hold onto half guard. I ended up taking second place in no-gi, so i wasn't that bad.

Endruance training before NAGA, anyone?

The best thing about this tournament is that I learned a lot about what I need to work on:

My takedowns are absolute crap. All I could do was pull guard!

I know sweeps, but I am not executing them correctly. I guess I just don't have the timing down right. I'll be working hard on them in the next two weeks.

As I feared, I relied too much on my guard game. I have to get more comfortable in side control and mount.

But all in all, I am really happy with how things went. Learned a lot. Had a blast seeing my teammates compete. My coahces-- Fabio, Ben and Mario--are so awesome. They were right there screaming at me during the fight, encouraging me, pushing me on. I feel extremely blessed to be a part of Fabio's school.

Stripe!

Nerd alert. I'm really excited. I got my first stripe today in Jiu-jitsu. Steph and Phil also got one. Woohoo! It felt really good. I know one stripe on a white belt doesn't make me epic or anything, but it's nice to know that I am at least making progress. They took some pics in class, but I don't have them yet. Here are a few we took at my house.

:)





Also, I hurt my knee today doing a take down. Obviously that's something I need to work on before NAGA. I'll add it to the list. ;)

Oh, and also, I'm down to 139lbs! Yay! Only 5 more to go before I reach that goal I set. The cool thing is, I haven't been insane about the dieting. I'e been watching what I eat, but I've been a doing a ton of exercise what with all the classes I've been going to and the jogging and strength training. So, even though the weight loss has been going at a glacial pace, I feel like it will be something I can maintain even after NAGA, since I'm not depriving myself of food. Yay!