Training for the other sport

I have written about my foray into BJJ once before.  Recently, I was asked about what I do to train for BJJ. The answer is remarkably simple--I practice the mEA (minimal effective amount) of BJJ.  The mEA is ever increasing, as I follow the gym movement protocol during the practices too.

As a caveat, I will explain a few things: I took Karate to a yellow belt when I was a kid. I don't remember jack shit about the practice, other than a front snap kick, and for some strange reason, I can do the kata that got me the yellow belt.  I have also never pursued an interest in MMA fights. I watched maybe one or two with friends, but didn't pay a lot of attention.  That said, I am not in a position to assimilate the things I see on the big time fights.

I said in the last installment that the seasoned practitioners always advise to relax.  This is good advice, and I am fairly relaxed now during the practice.  I am also more relaxed while lifting as well, which is a good thing for both practices.

At this point, if I am rolling with someone better, I do a few things to make my life easier.  A lot of guys at the school go for arm bars.  And they can all get to an arm bar from about 5 million positions.  If I noticed I fall into a certain trap, I generally tap before the arm bar (or submission) so I can start back over and not waste a lot of effort fighting to escape.  Though, if I do see the opportunity to escape sometimes I will go for it.

Ideally, I will have the chance to roll with varying skill levels (equal to or better than I) so that I can see what the margin of error on my fuck ups are.  Furthermore, if I am able to pick a partner, I try to pick the guys who won't tap me in four seconds if they are able to do so.

Worst case scenario, your shit gets broken.

If I start breathing too hard, I take a break.  It's literally no different than doing any other movement I have spoken about.  If you need to chill out, close your guard and chill out.  It's pretty simple.

As for the actual conditioning, I don't do anything extra.  In fact, I get away with less in the gym than I ever did, since BJJ involves me being in a fuckload of other positions I don't train a lot of in the gym.  Some of them are as follows:

• Thoracic and Lumbar flexion
• Plantar flexion
• Hip and neck flexion
• Rotation of the hips
• Lateral leg movement
• Twisting patterns
• And more

Currently, in the gym I practice a lot of thoracic extension with the high bar squats, I practice the extension with the deadlifts, and my bench is getting better possibly because of all the strength I am getting in similar positions, and with the added pulling movements (rows and pull ups still test well all the time). 

I haven't had to spend loads of time swinging or snatching kettlebells--I still use them as testable extension movements when deadlifts (regular or axle) don't test well, or if I have no means to deadlift.  Of late, snatching tests better, undoubtedly to counteract some of the positions I am in while rolling around.  I would go on to say that having a familiarity with the Turkish Get Up helped me figure out how to shrimp out of certain situations, and move my hips around to help facilitate escapes.  With that awareness, I can apply it to actual situations, in lieu of training it as a "gym movement," though it is not out of the realm of testing.

So, nothing ground breaking for this sort of thing.  The key is to move yourself in as many ways as you can, using the mEA.  You'll figure it out.  Darryl tipped me off to the fact that the shit you will inevitably choose to do will be contraspecific (or nonspecific) to what you already do, and this is a pretty good example.

Female readership has expressed discontent with so many pictures of the female posterior. So,  here is a picture of a guy with a nice ass.  It might not even the score, but the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

I don't give a fuck, do you?

At some point, perhaps around 2007 or 2008 I made a comment to a friend regarding our government.  I said that if a government loved its people it wouldn't allow them to have sugared cereal such as the kind we see on store shelves. 

If you read this now, you probably also know I like to eat pop tarts. So much so I may get a tattoo, like this person.

I no longer feel the way I did circa 2007 or 2008.  I think it was a logical extension of how I always felt I related to the world.  I didn't really listen to anyone.  I "didn't give a fuck," if you will.  To the point, I give less of a fuck, than ever before. I'm of the opinion that a lot of people do give a fuck about the wrong things in life.  Furthermore, nobody should give a fuck whether I eat poptarts, drink sodas above 20 ounces or wear seat belts. 

During the time I gave piano and guitar instruction full time, I was exposed to a lot of children and young adults. Many of them gave a fuck about what their parents thought.  Some of them gave a fuck about what I thought (the smarter of them all questioned what I said and found their own way).

The thing I noticed is that when given the freedom to choose, (and in turn not give a fuck about what their parents thought) the lessons went smoother.  I didn't have to teach them any boring shit that they didn't want to learn or weren't ready to learn. Like chord theory, or music reading.  In turn, the student wound up happier and progressed faster, and learned songs and skills they liked. This made me really fucking happy because the time flew by.

The overall concept I was going for was to show that you didn't have to follow a perceived norm for happiness in your craft.  The ideal paradigm perceived by others (and me to a great extent) upon entering as a beginner guitar player was as follows:

1. Start playing on an acoustic guitar.
2. Learn to read music.
3. Play Beethoven or other assorted classical pieces.

I started similarly. My first guitar was electric, instead of an acoustic though.  I learned theoretical components of music and then went on to write my own shit.

The mold I tried to teach to and am still trying to break out of today was to a form of more unconscious thought to do what I do.  Others would call it going by feel, intuition, learning by ear, or whatever.  This comes back to giving a fuck.  Had I not given a fuck back then, I would have progressed faster, developed my intuition and learned (and gained unconscious awareness of) theoretical concepts quicker.  Alas, I can concentrate only on what is next to develop those skills.

Chuck played with three fingers, though he had all five on his left hand.  He clearly gave no fucks.

Sometimes, these same students would stick with me until they were in college.  Talk about a mind fuck of a social norm.  I gave just enough fucks to buy into that one too, though I didn't listen to my parents and do anything practical.  I am happier with the choice I made simply because I know so many people who did what their parents wished and wound up miserable.  I would hear the same complaints often, and my answer was--and still is--to quit school.  They had the power to quit.  The response would be they would lose financial support, or they need school to get a job, etc.  But, they could have been better by not giving a fuck. 

The question raised is "how do we not give a fuck?"

I posit that the first step towards not giving a fuck is to question everything.  You will become knowledgeable, and a lot of people will argue that knowledge will you make you unhappy--the whole ignorance is bliss idea.  However, the more pathways you open up, the more chance of self discovery you have, and you can find out and unlock shit you didn't know about yourself.  You'll always adapt, whether you like it or not.  Religions are a great example.  We will use Christianity as an example, since most of us are familiar with it, but if you ask the right questions you can find the following to be true with any faith.

The tenets of the magus figure of Christianity (Jesus) were rooted in certain sectarian aspects of Judaism and were regarded as another group of Jews in the diaspora.  Fast forward to today, most Christians worship on Sundays, probably couldn't tell you anything about Levitic laws or the Noachide covenant.

We can see, over time, derivations from the original teachings (which many teachers love to see) but for a 2000 year old religion, we can make the argument that the rate of adaptation is slow, due to the lack of questioning.  Stop giving a fuck about your dogma, you evolve faster.

The second step is to realize that what you do to better or yourself (or destroy yourself) will affect you the most. Sure, if you give yourself a shotgun face lift your close friends and relatives will feel sad.  You'll be the dead one, they still have a chance to better themselves. 

If you find yourself adapting at a faster rate than your peer group, you will be alienated.  It's not your fault if you know how to get better, quicker, and your friends don't.  Someone said you are like the five people you hang out with the most.  Do you want to be another random fuck? Didn't think so.  Disregard what is not useful.

I don't claim to have all the answers to this.  Surely there are more things associated with not giving a fuck, but these are a few that I can think of off the top of my head. If you question these things, you can find other things to question to lead you down your own path to better.  Then you can eat your poptarts in peace.

7 March 2013

This might be one of the best things I have written to date. I also made some swell PRs today.

Hypotheses on Concurrent Sports Practices

I don't think it's an accident that a lot of people involved in The Movement take up Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. I know Darryl, Adam and perhaps others have taken it up.  I can include myself in this as well.  I think part of this is because our mentor Frankie plays BJJ as well.  I can't speak for everyone specifically, but there are a lot of correlations regarding an interest.  Frankie said it helped his movement quality, and helped him get out of pain. Adam spent years bending metal and shit and his tissue was undoubtedly more rigid than a dead nun's moral dogma.  So it made sense to develop the tissue in other ways.

I like it for the same reasons. I am not overly creative in the gym and find myself moving in the same directions a lot, and not focusing enough on contraspecific activities to other shit I do in my life. I also am a fan of puzzles.

I went in to Gracie Tampa knowing i needed to move more, and was pleasantly surprised that the movement in Jiu Jitsu was very novel, and very cerebral.

Moreover, the philosophies we invoke in The Movement are very prevalent in Jiu Jitsu.  Goals during rolling are as follows:

1. Stay relaxed
2. Don't breathe too hard
3. Use the minimal effective amount of effort (mEA).
4. Work within your limits

I think these are other main reasons why we are drawn to the sport as well.  It helps us get better at what we are already working towards getting better at.

I have also experienced some great benefits in my short time at playing BJJ--you will recall that I was busy adding 150lbs to my powerlifting total this past January, and couldnt train BJJ much during the previous two months.

Since the meet is over, I am able to play BJJ more, and my movement has taken on a different quality.  My squat form has changed to a high bar Olympic style squat with heavy (for me) with thoracic extension, and a close grip (this is not forced, this is just a matter of what is testing well).  Sumo deadlifts test well more often than conventional deadlifts, especially those done with the axle.

In BJJ, I am training a lot of the things missing from gym movements--flexion of the hips and thoracic spine, circumduction of the arms and legs and feet, and a whole bunch of other shit that is making me generally more flexible.  It has also helped alleviate any negative sensations related to my previous injury.

In short, a lot of people would like to emphasize specialization on one thing only.  I had an ex girlfriend who believed that and was generally downtrodden as a result of it (though she was remarkably talented at other things, they were of no interest).  I also had a parent and several teachers who believed in specialization.  Needless to say, I think it's a crock of shit.  I think one can become exceptional at a lot of things.  Charlie Chaplin and Robert Rodriguez have both made films that they wrote, directed and scored.  In Chaplin's case he even starred in them. Adam has placed well in his BJJ competitions and holds records in grip sport.  Long ago, Bo Jackson excelled at football and baseball.  Strongman Mariusz Pudzianowski has a small, but good fight record as well (5 and 2).  If we believe that we have these limits, we will train like we do, and not recognize what we are capable of.

My hypothesis is that taking up BJJ will help keep me in powerlifting a lot longer and reduce even more the potential to fuck myself up.  Though I am by no means as exceptional as the above, I am working towards it and will work towards it in both sports.  I decided to enter a grappling tournament this year (perhaps July) and see how I fare.

Also Brazilian

Honoring Your Mentors

I have always liked learning and asking questions, as you have guessed by reading this continual journey.  Over the years, most of my teachers were in school settings, others were indirect via music and magic (sleight of hand, not the card game) and others were my own family.

The best of my teachers didn't mind my questions and they often answered them in ways such that I would think critically and form my own opinions and ask my own questions.  Others did not like my questions or were unable to answer them in a productive way.

For instance, in the second grade.  I was seven years old, and my teacher was a sexy young Italian.  She was the type of women who if I were a teenager, and she tried to seduce me, I would never tell a soul.  She always leaned over the desk and often times her cleavage would thereby become exposed.  I always asked for help on my class work, whether it was needed or not.

Mrs. Ippolito had a friend who would always come in to the class, and they would chat.  Being somewhat of an attention whore and caring about my education at a young age, this irked the ever living shit out of me.

So, Mrs. Ippolito and Ms. Fernandez always talked.  In one such instance, they talked about a previous weekend wherein they had rented a second rate flop with Kurt Russell and Ray Liotta called Unlawful Entry.  So for about five minutes, which in seven year old kid time seems like 8,834,845 years, they talked about this interrupting the math lesson.

Shortly after Ms. Fernandez left, we resumed our math lesson and we were handed our class work. Before I started the class work, while the rest of the children were silent, I walked up to Mrs. Ippolito and said, "Mrs. Ippolito, I think you spend too much time talking to Ms. Fernandez."  Being as young as I was, I couldn't articulate how I felt--namely like I was getting ripped the fuck off, which is absurd since it was public education and you can potentially always be getting ripped--but at any rate, I did the best I could with my abilities.

Mrs. Ippolito flipped right the fuck out and said it was none of my business what they talk about or for how long.  Being seven, I left it at that.

In her class, for those of us who got to school early, we were allowed to go to stations and play games, usually math puzzles or some such stuff.  I always enjoyed that.  At one point, Mrs. Ippolito was meandering about making sure we weren't gouging our eyes out with scissors, or whatever the hell kids at seven years of age do, and I walked up to her to ask her if I could go to the particular station that had a puzzle a liked--a rectangular box, that you fill with squares that contain partial shapes, and at the end, if you did it right you made a particular shape shown on the outside of the box.

She told me no. I got pissed and asked why, and she lost it again and told me not to question her.  So, not being able to argue rationally, I let it go.

Another time, about a year later I was 8.  I had been recently baptized by my cousin, who also happens to be a priest.  He also lifts, and is insanely jacked for a 62 year old guy.

As an aside before all the jokes come in, he has never been transferred for any 'transgressions,' and he never molested any altar boys.  For a guy who has been a priest for god knows how long and is as devoted to Catholicism, he is a pretty smart guy and has his head on straight and is generally a thoughtful guy.

However, I fell from any kind of a belief in a deity because when I asked my cousin who created God, all he could recite from the Catechism was the belief that God had simply always been.  This didn't make sense to me because the Catechism states that "without the Creator, the creature vanishes."  I started a lifelong spiritual questioning that continues to this day, based on that one instance.

One of my absolute favorite albums and something to remember Tampa by.

So though his answer was unsatisfactory, it was most likely the best thing for me, since I never stopped asking questions.

Fast forward to later in my life, when the people at the Dragon Door forums got absolutely butt hurt when Adam T. Glass, and others started posting regularly about biofeedback testing and Gym Movement, I started to question how an insanely strong guy like Adam was now looking younger, leaner and getting stronger than hell.

This questioning leads to Frankie, who taught Adam the protocol.  In religious terms, Frankie would be the magus figure.  The magus decided to speak.  What I am going to include here is a ten part series (all brief, so don't get all butt hurt about the length) where Frankie talks about his questioning process.  It's my way of honoring a guy who can fish for himself and teach us how to do so.  And it will save you the trouble of waiting.  Here it goes:

One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten

There you have it.  I know the posts are collectively long, but I waited since August to read the whole series, just so I could learn more about a more recent teacher in my life, thereby saving all of you the suspense.  If you want to check out more of Frankie's writing, go here, and here. 

I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did.

More enjoyment before you go.

How the fuck do you deadlift (conventionally)?

I've never talked much about this particular subject, as I assumed it was not rocket science--you pick it up and set the goddamn thing down.  However, people do some weird shit.

First, it's not a clean. So don't bother with that shoulder blade squeezing bullshit, and dropping into a parallel squat.  The shortest distance between two points is a line, and if you drop down and deadlift as if you were doing a clean, you probably won't be able to put as much ass into it and you are making the line longer than it needs to be.  The Lift Big Eat Big folk explain it well.

In short, let your thoracic spine do whatever the hell it's going to do.  Also, you might experiment with slightly externally rotating your feet so you can put more ass into it, which I think they mention in the previous video.

Another thing most people like to stop from happening (though it occurs naturally in most of us) is dorsiflexion.  Go walk up a staircase.  When your foot ascends to the next step, your ankle joint moves.  This is called dorsiflexion and it happens all the time.  It even happens when you deadlift, because your knees go forward.  It also happens when you squat--sometimes to a great extent.

Bet his coach is super disappointed because his knees tracked over his toes.

In a deadlift (or a squat) too much of this could lead to an inefficient lift, or some stress on the knee.  So figure out how much you need to keep your deadlift as efficient as possible, but do not fear it.  We are supposed to be able to point and flex our feet.

The variables regarding how much one should are highly individual.  If you have size four feet, and a two feet long shin, your knee will go over your toes severely, and you will look like one weird sonofabitch.  How high your hips start will affect this too. 

Christine keeps her hips fairly low and has a little bit of dorsiflexion.

I am taller, my knees definitely go further and create more of an angle at the ankle joint and my hips are higher. 

And the third example is still different in terms of thoracic extension, dorsiflexion, hip height at the start and even how close the bar is to the shins at the start (which is something you'll wanna fuck around with to make the lift efficient with respect to your body).

For another nuance, pay attention to your grip if you deadlift with a staggered grip.  It is very hard to tell in my video, but my left hand (the pronated hand) is even with the knurling--index finger is right before the smooth.  However, the pinkie of my right hand is about an inch or an inch and a half away from the end of the knurling.  Not real symmetrical, I know, but I hit a 60lb PR in a year that I was injured and didn't deadlift much so I think I might be on to something. 

If I were to match it up to where my right pinkie and left index finger were both even with the end of the knurling, the bar itself wouldn't be in a straight line.  I don't know if anyone else experiences this, but it is certainly worth noting and tinkering with in your free time.

Lastly, your history might dictate an asymmetric foot positioning.  Think about your own history and figure it out.  I still can't figure out why I have to turn out one foot slightly more and keep it an inch behind the other foot, but really it only matters because I am curious.  What matters is that it doesn't fuck my body up and the deadlifts feel easy all the time as a result.

Hopefully, this will give you some ideas to play with.  If you test something and it doesn't jive with what I described, that's cool. It just means your needs are different than mine.  Maybe you do need more thoracic extension in your life.  What tests well trumps the aforementioned.  Play with it.  Nobody got good at deadlifting overnight--except maybe Ed Coan.

2013 RAW United Record Breakers Meet

After long last and many setbacks, my GF and I were finally able to do a meet.  This would be my second, her first.  I think there were over 100 lifters lifting, so they actually split it up into a two day event, with two meets each day--a morning session starting at 9am and the afternoon session starting at 3pm.

My day of lifting was on Sunday 20 January.  I had chosen 430 as my opener on the squat and succeeded in completing the lift.  460 was my next attempt, and I got red lighted for depth, and on the third attempt, I got red lighted for missing the cue.  So, practice your goddamn cues.

Bench pressing was dismal for me, and I wound up with 255 again, much like I did in my first meet.

Deadlifts were awesome.  I went three for three (480,502,520), hit some PRs, and wound up with a 1205 total at 181lbs.  No cutting of the weight involved like last time, which means I legitimately weighed about 10lbs less than my last meet, and got strong enough to add 150lbs to my total.

Here's a deadlift video:

All in all, I set two contest PRs, and on the deadlift I set an overall PR and added 60lbs to it in about a year and had a good time doing so.  RAW United runs their meets like a well oiled machine.

In other news, Saturday the 19th Arielle  captured an award for best lifter, and at 148lbs ended up with a 225lb squat, a 120lb Bench, and a 285lb DL.  Not bad for using Gym Movement only since March of 2012.