Steve's BJJ Blog

First off, congrats to Josh, who won in his professional debut with a submission: armbar in the second round. He dominated the fight and, in spite of my obvious bias, he truly looked like he was in a different league than his opponent. Josh dominated the standup, but it was clear that his opponent would rather deal with that than Josh’s jiu-jitsu. After fight his way out of a triangle and an armbar in the first round, Josh wrapped him up tight to take an armbar from mount.

I can completely empathize (but in no way endorse or condone) with guys who become addicted to painkillers. It’s a terrible thing, and I’ve seen the damage it can do, but when my back spasms were at their worst, with shooting pain down to my toes in my right leg, I would have taken anything to make the pain stop.

But that said, I am on the good side of this and am getting better. During the day, I’m still not quite fully upright, but I’m walking without much pain and am not taking anything stronger than 600 mg of ibuprofen. Nights are a little more difficult. For some reason, laying down seems to put more pressure on my hip and over the course of the night, regardless of how I try to prop myself up with pillows in weird and inventive ways, my leg starts to just ache. While it’s no longer a piercing pain, it’s enough to wake me up several times. I’ve been getting about 4 hours of quality sleep per night, resting fitfully after that.

Hopefully, I’ll be back on the mats within a week or two, even if it’s just for warmups and technique. I can’t wait. I’ve been watching Purple Belt Requirements and thinking a lot about jiu jitsu. I’ve also been thinking about how I can keep this from happening again. Truth is, I probably can’t completely. I’ve had intermittent issues with my back over the years since I was 20 and first threw out my back in the Air Force. But there are things I can do to help minimize the risk. One of those is yoga. My wife wants me to join her for yoga, and I think I’ll finally relent.

Flexibility and core strength are what I need to focus on, with the big challenge being flexibility. My core can always stand to get stronger, but I’ll say that I’m light years ahead of where I was almost 3 years ago when I first started BJJ. But flexibility-wise, my hamstrings are still strung pretty tight. I’ve known for years, but my physical therapist reinforced a few days ago, that my hamstrings are tight enough that they pull on my lower back, likely causing many of the problems that I’m having. If I can improve flexibility through my hamstrings, I’ll likely improve my back and hip issues dramatically. So, there it is. Simple enough.

Hopefully, my next post will be good news, where I can enthusiastically describe what fun I had at class.

On a completely unrelated note, next week we’re getting a new HVAC system installed at our house. We’re having an 80% efficient furnace replaced with a high efficiency furnace/heat pump system with an air cleaner. Anyone with allergies will appreciate how excited I am about that air cleaning system, which is supposed to take up to 98% of pollen, dust, bacteria and all of that out of the air. While the prospect of having AC during the Summer is good, and saving over 30% on our energy bills during the Winter is dandy, it’s the air cleaning system that really has me looking forward to Tuesday.

I think that’s just the thing for me. They’re all over the place. We have one just down the road. Applebee’s. Guys like Tyler Florence pitch their new dishes, and I’ll admit, on the commercials, their food does look good.

But we never have good luck there. The food always tastes like it came out of some combination of a toaster oven and a microwave. We’ve been to at least four different Applebee’s over the years probably all told about a dozen times. Not once have we received what I would call even decent service. We waited 15 minutes one time just to have a chance to wave to our waitress as she blew by us. Another few minutes later, we managed to stop her long enough to order drinks. In all of the times we’ve been to an Applebee’s, we’ve never received what we’ve ordered on the first try. Either our appetizer comes out after the entrees, something comes out that we didn’t order, or probably worse, we don’t get all of the food we ordered. More often than not, what we do get isn’t prepared correctly. I’ll never forget the time they tried to serve my daughter scrambled eggs that were still liquidy… not just undercooked, but like… drinkable. It was gross. It never fails that whatever I order, they don’t have. “I’ll have a beer. What do you have on tap?” Waitress lists them off. “I’ll have ‘X’.”

And the inevitable reply, “Sorry, we don’t have that.” Gah!!! Why did you list it… when… nevermind.

I can hear you asking, “Well, then, why do you go back?” Good question. It used to be because we thought it was just bad luck. We’d have a bad experience, and then without fail someone would talk about what a good time they had at Applebee’s. Really? It was that fun? The food was that good? Really? Hmm… maybe it’s just us. So we’d go back.

Now, though, Applebee’s is where I like to take the family when I’m pissed off about something, but have no outlet. I want to justify my irritation. I want to be able to let go of some portion of my ire on someone who deserves it. And Applebee’s never lets me down.

Today, I really need that. I went to the doctor this morning and the verdict is that the right side of my back has pretty well seized up. Massive back spasms that have clenched up my right side. So, he gave me a prescription for some vicodin, some 800 mg ibuprofin and sent me to physical therapy. I don’t take a lot of medicine, so the vicodin makes me a little loopy. And, as I sat around today trying to avoid thinking about my back, my thoughts kept circling around all of the things I could have done.

I could have stretched more, because I’ve been told that my hamstrings are causing a lot of problems for my back. I know that, but I haven’t done anything about it.

I could have worked as hard to strengthen my back as I have my abs. A strong back leads to a balanced core. I know that. But I’ve always told myself that I was doing enough.

I could finally lose this last 10-15 lbs that I’ve been carrying around. It doesn’t seem like much, but when I pick up a 15 lbs weight, it suddenly begins to make sense.

I certainly could have done these things and more, and I’m committed to doing them now. But tonight, I’m going to Applebee’s, and hopefully I can justify blaming some part of my bad mood on them.

Thanks to everyone who’s posted ideas and kind words in the comments. I really, really appreciate them all. There’s only one chiropractor I’d ever let near my back, and that’s Sean at chirofit. He’s a good guy, but most importantly, I trust him. I don’t trust Chiropractors, as a general rule. I’ve had multiple bad experiences, and even as I type this, even though I trust Sean, it’s hard to think about going through that again.

I’m a big fan of massage, and think that I’ll need to work that into my schedule on a regular basis. I’ve never felt better than when I was going to the local massage school for a 1 hr massage every two weeks. But in the meantime, I’ll see what the PT has to say and take it from there.

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I just watched my friend’s documentary on MMA called Walking to the Cage. It’s really terrific. While I’m definitely biased, I’ll post a review soon. I watched an early version back in late 2007, and Matt’s really addressed every aspect of the movie to make it better. Better pacing, better framing of the story and a better voice. I’m still working through the extras… right now an interview with Eddie Bravo.

Or, what I thought I knew about Jiu Jitsu competition, but really didn’t.

We go to Jiu-Jitsu ProGear, the location of the IBJJF Referee Training, at about 10:50 am. Jeff wasn’t too concerned about getting there early, because, as he reminded me, we were dealing with Brazilian Time. As I’m sure you’re all aware, there are different kinds of time. My time is usually early. If someone says to be there at 7 am, I’m usually there at 6:30am. Now, my parents are on Retired Time. If my parents say they’re going to come by at 9am for breakfast, you’d better get something to eat and plan on seeing them sometime around lunchtime.

Well, then there’s Brazilian Time, which isn’t as bad as retired time. It’s just… a little loose. So, true to form, things really got going at about 11:15am. The training was conducted by Alvaro Mansor, the CBJJ & IBJJF Referee Director. He’s a funny, funny man and, of course it goes without saying that he’s extremely knowledgeable regarding BJJ and the sport of BJJ competition.

What I thought I’d do is go through a few of my notes, outlining rules that I had pretty much gotten completely wrong. First of all, just to get some of the basics out for anyone who might not be familiar with the basics of BJJ competition, it goes something like this. Competitors start standing and are awarded points for achieving what are considered advantageous positions based upon a simple positional hierarchy.

Takedowns are potentially worth 2 points. Passing guard is worth 3 points. Knee on belly is worth 2 points, as is a sweep. Mount is 4 points, along with what is called Back Grab (where you have your hooks in). And, of course, you can win by submission, if your opponent is unconscious due to a legal technique, or if he is DQ’d whether by a technical or disciplinary foul. And that’s the basics.

So, one of the first things I didn’t understand before today is awarding points for position. I had always misunderstood the rules for passing guard. I thought that it was 3 points for basically achieving side control. Not the case. There are no points for side control. Rather, there are points for passing the guard. What this also means is that if you aren’t in a person’s guard… some form of guard… you can’t get the points for passing it. By the same token, a sweep must start from guard, so if you are in my half guard and I reverse you, I get 2 points. If you are in side control and I reverse you, I get no points.

Next thing, and this was a real surprise, was mount. If I establish mount position for 3 seconds, I’m awarded 4 points. If you then turn to your stomach and I get what is called “back mount” (not to be confused with back grab), and I stabilize for 3 seconds, I get 4 more points. Then, if you turn back over to standard mount position, I can get 4 more points. At this point, Professor Mansor said (in his Brazilian accent), “And you should be ready to geeve to heem your business card, so you can teach heem zhoo-zhitsu.”

There was a lot more, but it’s getting late. After class, we met up with the rest of the guys for dinner: Coach Foster, Bing, Jaime and Josh. Tomorrow, I’m going to spend some time watching Jaime’s matches. I’ll have to check the schedule… Bing and Josh might be rolling tomorrow, too. I think that the blue belts start pretty late in the afternoon… around 5pm or 6.