Love Hurts

Because of the mighty moving fiasco, my third week at Atos had more of a conditioning flavour.

After two days battling with the banking system, and then dragging cases and bikes across town, the idea of inviting big, strong, technically vicious, and potentially heavy world champions to sit on my ribcage proved too much. Even masochists have limits.

That’s not to say the conditioning didn’t hurt. Remember The Atos Attitude? It still stands, even when the only person beating you up is yourself.

First up, and for the benefit of every MMA fan and female BJJ obsessive in my social sphere, let’s talk about Cyborg’s Muay Thai conditioning class.

I will admit straight up that having seen Christiane Santos’ training excerpts all over YouTube, my interpretation of her “Come on ladies, let’s get fit” invite was mentally translated into “I’m going to force you to hula hoop with tractor tyres and squatthrust till your nose bleeds”.

In actual fact the class was pleasantly ego-boosting, with a great rate of pad-work interspersed with conditioning situp/punch combinations.

As luck would have it, the first session had an odd number of participants, which meant I had Cyborg herself holding the pads for me. There is something wildly satisfying, albeit completely based in fantasy, about push-kicking a Strikeforce veteran back across the room (as part of the drill, naturally) with zero chance of getting hit back. My fangirl attitude even made me work harder, mainly because I imagine Cyborg knocks these reps out one handed (or footed), whilst simultaneously sorting her inbox/walking the dog/sketching her next tattoo design.

By the time we did the “one, two, three…Atos” at the end of the class, everyone was “glowing” profusely (well, it was a ladies class) and the two Muay Thai newcomers had been converted. I can only really afford one class a week on our training budget, but for the newfound swagger, I consider it money well spent.

From a nice ladies class, to a “nice” ladies class.

Coach Nave has been off for a week, allegedly on honeymoon, but I suspect on some kind of secret camp where they plot how to bring gymgoers to the brink of tears in shorter and shorter intervals.

This meant that Maurizio Tangari, fellow Suples at Atos teacher, was in charge of the classes. Suffice to say he stepped up, over and beyond the metaphorical plate.

By Tuesday, he had somehow found himself a stick (the only reason you can’t see it clearly in the photo is because he is waving it too furiously), and had reinvented the English language to substitute the words “nice” and “love” for the kind of phrases you shouldn’t utter when young people are training in the same class as you.

It’s going to take years of therapy to untangle the terror I now feel when someone threatens to “throw my love right in your face” or “give you more love than you can handle”.

There were plenty of “nice” exercises in the Women’s Conditioning Session on Saturday, which involved 8 rounds (20 seconds on, 10 seconds off) at each station, circulating through rope beating, running against elastic, rope pulling against elastic, shrimping and bridging with a Bulgarian bag, dragging and flipping the bone dummy and then freestyling the Bulgarian bag again.

Despite my idiosyncratic 80s style pose at the end of the running rope, it was fantastically hard, or to give it a Tangari slant, “just so, so, nice”.

Those of you who want to see us in action, and hear Maurizio’s words of encouragement can watch his YouTube vid.

Friends and family, I issue this disclaimer in advance – despite the title of the video being “Motivated Mums in Action” I am not pregnant, any bulging is as a result of our recent Chicken Dinner binge.

Maurizio is of course the man behind Joint Mobility, which I promised to expand upon last week.

Joint Mobility works on the basis that as we fail to use our bodies through the full range of motion, the oily stuff that facilitates those movements sort of dries up and we get gradually stiffer.

Where we (me and Andy, and I suspect a fair few others who have enjoyed the delights of the class) set ourselves up for a fall was by imagining it to be some kind of delicate pilates/yoga/general rolling-your-ankles type affair, accompanied by low lighting and whale music.

Soothing this is not – the way to get those joints up and running again is allegedly by contorting yourself beyond the point where you want to stop, in acutely precise (down to the joint or muscle you are working on) and difficult movements.

This physical and occasionally mental process (believe me, the point where you stop is usually just the starting point for Maurizio to prod, squish or pull you further) involves a fair bit of “discomfort” and concentration.

As such, “Joint Mobility Faces” are common, and I like to think (mainly because I pull a lot of them) are a sign that someone is working hard.

It’s guaranteed that the movements will make you look at best camp and at worst like you chew your own jumper sleeves. Given the studio is right next door to the gym office and men’s changing room, it’s hard on the ego.

But whilst my BJJ training partners crudely attempt to stifle the looks of confusion and laughter, I console myself with the thought that one day I will be able to unscrew my own shoulders and escape that arm bar.

Going Backwards To Go Forwards

I started this week with the lurgy.

After the intense highs of last week, waking up on Tuesday feeling like a month-old-sock was a devastating blow. But (after a particular period of woe and introspection) it’s given me a chance to rethink my training strategy.

It takes a peculiar type of ballsiness to seek out a hobby where you invite others to attack you.

Couple that with the highly visible competition scene, and the endless flow of “I just benched 200kg, went rock-climbing and did a three-hour kettlebell workout, now I’m off to training” status updates, and it can seem like everyone is training harder, faster, heavier and more often than you.

Jiu Jitsu guilt sets in, and it is not always your friend.

Or more accurately, not my friend. If you’re 18 years old and just need a bit of competitive fire to get you out of bed in the morning, maybe it works.

For me, however, comparing myself to that 18 year old prodigy has often been a fasttrack to self-flagellation. Because as much as I might lament the merlot-fuelled decades, and envy the effortless movement and technique of those who took up BJJ in their teens, aping their training regimes isn’t necessarily the best way to go about things.

For one, a late-thirties body can’t just plough on through without rest and recovery (I’ve even noticed a decline in “springback” since my mid-thirties). And for two, beating yourself up every time you have to take a break totally wrecks your love of the sport.

Having hit a physical wall just one week into a five month trip was threatening to bury me. For my own sanity, I needed to find a BJJ lesson that I could learn from my sick bed. Here’s what I came up with.

From now on, I’m going to concentrate on the following when it comes to training:

1) First and foremost, find the fun again. Enjoy it. Go into each session looking forward to the challenge and work hard. If sickness or injury make that a less viable possibility, eschew the “but I haven’t done enough,” martyrdom, rest up and recover.

2) Put the overactive guilt complex to different use, and find smarter ways to get that RnR. Smarter training patterns, better eating habits and lots of Zzzzzs.

Right now, the sleep bit is pretty compromised, Needless to say, the California Suites Hotel doesn't boast a $40 a night rate because they've scored a discount at the custom mattress store. Our bed creaks, bounces and jettisons you floorwards every time your other half so much as stirs from their slumber - a recipe (on both sides) for a sleepless night.

We are also, thanks to a meagre bedding allowance, having to use our spare gis as pillows.

I am however hoping that our new apartment will have a less volatile sleeping platform. If not, you’ll find me on the sofabed.

3) Compare my performance just to myself. Not to the World Champion. Not to the 18 year old kid (ok, at Atos, they’re probably a World Champion too). But you know what I mean. My progress, my scores, my numbers, my game. Improve on that and sack off the comparisons.

Wednesday’s BJJ class was an excellent chance to try out some new perspective, quite literally.

Having spent the morning watching Andre’s interview with Budo Jake in which he talks about a new generation of guard pass, we spent a lot of our next mat session sitting on our backsides with our legs intertwined.

Andy is sick today, so we have recreated the move poolside for demonstration purposes (we haven’t taken up rolling on concrete).

Reminiscent of some kind of partner-based situp drill, this is actually the start position of a seated De La Riva pass. At least in theory, we have yet to master the complexities and orientation of the move. We might both be purple belts, but as Professor Galvao tactfully put it, “you guys haven’t done this move before, have you?”

Bypassing the usual “stand up, pass guard, sit back down again” rigmarole felt more like a game of 'Twister' than the patterns we were used to, and it’s hard to tell when you’re working and when you’re just tying yourself in comedic knots. Still, and here’s my evangelical sentence of the week, it’s inspiring to be learning Jiu Jitsu as techniques are developing, and not just in a “I saw this cool thing on YouTube” capacity.

Over in the Suples fitness studio, it was Tacfit time, and a definite chance to work on point 3 of the resolution.

Originally developed for military personnel, Tacfit (Commando) involves six exercises, exactly performed and mirroring fight movements, hammered out eight times each in 20 seconds on, 10 second rest bursts.

It’s kind of like Tabata in terms of timing, except in Tabata you aren’t keeping your other arm up to shield your face from punches (at least not in any class I’ve been to).

As if Front Lunges, Plank Push Knees, Sit Thru Knees, Basic Pushups, Spinal Rocks and Tripod Overheads, times 48 rounds, isn’t punishing enough, this week we were using our ten second rest breaks to note down how many reps we’d completed.Whilst Maurizio and Stephen shouted “get your butt down lower,” “stop wobbling,” “where’s the explosive energy?”and “put down that water bottle” at us.

Apparently the stress of physical exhaustion, combined with mental fatigue and overwhelming feelings of sadness and fury are also integral to the training, developing an athlete’s ability to focus under high pressure situations.

One wobby-handed, scrunched up score sheet later (it echoed my bodily state), we learned the twist.

Despite being told to maintain a steady pace throughout all eight rounds of an exercise, our egos had lead us into the usual “more is better/peak and slump” patterns. Unfortunately for us, it was our lowest scores across the drills that were being added up. The fact you knocked out 20 reps in as many seconds during round one didn’t count. The bit where you berated your very existence and scaled down to invalid pace, with a face like the orphan in 'Les Miserables', did.

Post analysis, I had some valuable insight and definite areas to improve. Overall, I hit 43, which isn’t terrible, but with aspirational scores in the 60s, I won’t be exhausting the range of Tacfit quite yet (there are also harder variations for the more experienced athlete).

I learned, from the wild discrepancy in scores between exercises, that whilst my legs and glutes are strong like a banyard ox, my arms, wrists and shoulders are weak like a farmyard chicken.

I also found out that doing three of the six exercises on a Bosu ball (to lessen the impact on those weedy wrists) had artificially jacked my scores up, and the next step would be to do them “properly” but with even less reps.

So, yup, scores are handy things, but sometimes you’ve gotta go down to go up.

We finished the session attempting to crack our own backs with Joint Mobility - as Andy is once again demonstrating beside the pool. Joint Mobility is one of those underrated arts that deserves its own post, so I'll be updating the blog with more uncomfortable looking photos later.

So, onto Week Three and a couple of crazy-ass highlights to look forward to:

1) Metamoris tomorrow. The wet dream of pretty much any BJJ fan, and of course, Andre Galvao will be competing against Ryron Gracie.

Quite often I return to the room to find Andy hunched over the laptop, making “ooh” and “aah” sounds and furtively watching the preview videos.

We’ll be there in person, wearing the t-shirt and cheering on the Professor. Excitement doesn’t really cover it.

2) Cristina Cyborg is coming to teach women’s Muay Thai conditioning classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays as of the 16th October. The Strikeforce veteran, and a woman who attacks a tractor tyre like it just walked up to Mr Cyborg and offered him a good time. Not quite sure how this is going to hit the training budget, so it's still fingers crossed for now, but if I manage to score a place I'll let you know.

Nothing left to do but concentrate on that rest and recovery resolution.

For Andy that means finessing his Berimbolo...

...whilst I focus on the more horizontal techniques.