What I Learnt At Atos

Today was our last BJJ session at Andre Galvao’s Atos Academy. We opted for the competition training. Something about the way we could have a four day break afterwards made us weirdly brave (not brave enough however, to have warmed up with the 10am class beforehand).

Two hours in we were more sweaty, exhausted and sore than we had previously thought humanly possible.

I had (accidentally) sampled a competition class before, on a day when Andy was injured, so was wise to the painful practices that went on in the 12-2pm slot (13 minute same-person-stays-on rodizios anyone?) but it still hurt.

Michael Liera Jr. pushed us through movements, specific sparring and speed drills in a manner that would have made Professor Galvao proud. Put it this way, at 12.45pm I felt utterly destroyed and like the class should definitely be winding down, and then we did another hour.

But as the Convoy Street part of our adventure draws to a close, I feel kind of sad.

I can’t speak personally for Andy (though having listened to me bang on every day on the bus trip home, he could probably speak for me) but our 11 week gatecrash of the Atos environment has taught me some amazing lessons. Even if I haven’t yet mastered that darn leg drag.

1) For a relatively small club, Atos has a disproportionately high number of world champions. We’re not talking “once got an honorary bronze at a local competition here”, we’re looking at several times a year, several years running at the top of the global podium.

Having watched those people train (and sampled the rate and precision with which they rip my limbs to pieces) it is a worthy result of hours and hours of drilling, every day of the week. You might just be touching hands on the mat, but mentally they have already passed your guard and secured 7 points, because they’ve done it 40 times at speed against every person in the class. Actually, mentally is the wrong word; they’ve done it so often it’s as automatic as breathing.

If you’re training for a competition with them, it’s amazing. If you’re up against them, be afraid, very, very afraid.

2) Given that disproportionate rate of world champions, you would expect to find one or two egos in the dojo. To be honest, if I even placed in the Worlds, I’d be wearing my medal to class every day. But you’d be wrong.

You’ll be able to identify the champions by the way they slice through your legs as if they were tissue paper, but bragging is kept very much on the downlow. And regardless of my very unchampionlike performances on the mat, everyone has gone out of their way to help me improve.

I think it’s a top-down result of having an eight times world champion with an obvious love of teaching and a devotion to his students’ wellbeing at the helm, but you get the feeling any progress you make is part of an overall victory for the club.

Which, given we could have just as easily been the BJJ equivalent of live mice fed to a tank full of snakes, is rather nice.

3) On the subject of winning, Atos fully endorses the “feel safe to make the mistakes during rolling” mentality.

People here spar hard, like they’re in a competition, but there is a distinct absence of douchebaggery, and no-one is going to mock or berate you if you try something and make a mess of it. The only mistake you can make is to just lie there, under those world champions, and stop trying.

If you score points or a submission, you’ll touch hands and start again. If they do, the same thing happens.

There’s a certain freedom in knowing it doesn’t matter if you have a bad day on the mats, and over the months I’ve seen myself slowly shifting from absolutely petrified, reactive defence lockdown to more practical defence, more continuous escape efforts and a submission attempt or two. This for me is big progress.

4) Respect is a big thing at Atos. Everyone works when Professor Galvao tells them to. Noone swears at each other or messes around.

But overall it’s a family environment (in both the literal and metaphorical senses of the word).

It’s not unusual to see Sarah, Andre and Angelica’s daughter, playing by the side of the mats, or with her dad before class. Many of the club members come as a family package and there’s hanging out across all age groups.

I’m not sure whether it’s because there are two brown belt women in regular attendance, or because Andre is so obviously enamoured by his wife, but as a woman I have never found anywhere as comfortable to train. Sleazy comments, pickup efforts, or antiquated “I don’t really want to go with a girl” putdowns are noticeably absent. I felt equal, if smaller and a bit naturally weaker, to any male student on the mat.

5) Jiu Jitsu is changing, it’s a fluid, ever-morphing commodity. We’ve all seen the traditional stand up guard passes and collar chokes, but there’s a whole world of new moves that are being invented to foil the old-school repertoire.

If you train at Atos, you’ll soon notice the predilection for close-range, seated moves, and inversion.

Well this week anyway (they’ve probably devised something more devious already).

We were in town just long enough to attend the Atos yearly grading, an event which even 27 x world champion Renato Laranja chose to rock with his presence. It ran an hour or so over time, and was filled with Professor Galvao’s proud stories of his students. And (in a completely unpredicted turn of events) both me and Andy picked up a first stripe for our purple belts.

Professor Galvao, Angelica, Chelsea, Mike Carbullido, Michael Liera Jr, Manny, Rick D, Matts Langford and Smith, Y J, Carlos, Jason, Sabara, Savannah…the list goes on and on, but I want to say one big collective thank you to everyone at Atos for making us feel so welcome, and helping to restore my interest and confidence in Jiu Jitsu. I’m very proud to wear that stripe, the t-shirt, and reflect your training in any way.

We only wish we could have stayed longer, and of course, we’re already busy saving for our allgalvao.com subscription…

Blonde and Blonder

I mentioned back here how I was getting braver on the mats.

I couldn’t have predicted it, but the combination of gruelling training pace and endless supply of arse-kicking world champions is strangely liberating. Pretty soon you realise that there’s a place beyond “it’s over” (whether for hydration, exhaustion or depression reasons), a place where you carry on anyway. God knows it’s not skilled or pretty, but it definitely exists, and in a weird way I suspect it might be good for you.

And it’s an attitude that’s extended beyond the gym.

In typical chicken and egg fashion, it’s impossible to tell whether the training, or the chucking everything away and travelling across the planet to do it, kicked off the change, but I’m learning not to fall at the first hurdle. The inclination to chuck plans and schemes into the bin as soon as someone says “but wouldn’t that (insert concern here)…” is still very much ingrained, but I’m starting to take a step back, weigh up the options, and in a lot of cases, find a way around it. Or just do it anyway.

And post-tattoo, this mid-life rebellion has lead me straight to the bleach bottle.

For those that don’t know me personally, I’ve always been a dark creature. By birth brunette, I had a brief wash-in plum phase in my twenties, and have spent the last decade or so with jet black locks. Personality-wise too, I’ve proudly erred away from traditional “girly” and towards the alternative.

So, in no particular order, here are the reasons I shouldn’t go blonde:

1) I have so much black dye in my hair, it’s going to take several bleaching sessions to get it up to the colour I want it (ideally platinum, but will settle for that light “inside of a banana” colour they so rave about on hair websites.)

2) During that process, my hair could go dark red, bright orange, and dark blonde, none of which are colours that I aspire to.

3) It will totally fry the condition and my bank balance.

4) Having big, heavy boys, and smaller, technical girls, hang off my head in BJJ isn’t going to help that.

5) Nothing in my makeup/wardrobe/demeanor matches a sunny yellow-headed type.

So, those are the reasons why not to. Weighing up the “for” options:

1) Ever since I wore a light wig at a fancy dress party, and boys were especially nice to me for 15 minutes, I’ve wondered if the blonder types really do have more fun.

2) In addition, I have an instant crush on anyone rocking the punky blonde thing.

3) Whilst not cheap, it is substantially cheaper to go to the hairdressers repeatedly in California than in London.

4) Andy and an entire school-full of BJJ folk are the only people who will see me whilst I’m transitioning. No rocking up at the office with ever-changing fuzz on my barnet.

5) I’m going grey anyway, so “natural” isn’t really an option anymore.

A more sensible person would probably have seen a bit of shakiness in some of the “pros” but heck, sensible people don’t generally jet off around the world on a whim. Bring on the peroxide.

So far, I have spent about 8 hours in the hairdressers (4.5 hours the first time, 3.5 hours the second). I have had several turkeys’ worth of tinfoil layered all over my head in varying different patterns. I somehow skipped the deep red phase, but landed slap bang in carrot orange territory. And I am possibly paying for my hairdresser’s soon-to-be-born child to go through college.

The results? Well, the first time I had it done, I jumped every time I saw myself in a mirror. Despite living in the land of the blondes, I still feel like I’m subconsciously shouting “look at me, look at me” just by walking down the street. After a lifetime in the shade, the bright side is a bit of a shock to the system. And I’m now eying those neon items in my wardrobe with caution.

There’s one more bleaching session to go, next Friday. Before then, I need to get some moisture back into my frazzled hair – which means most evenings are spent plastered in goo and residing under a shower cap (lucky Andy).

Any initial shyness at unveiling a whole new hair colour twice at the gym will soon be overruled by my needing to wear a lycra swimming hat during sparring – at best, my hair ends up looking like this post-training, at worst it’s been shedding all over the mat.

Some days I love it, some days it bugs the hell out of me, but this trip is all about getting braver and breaking free of some of those “I can’t possibly…” patterns.

I’ll keep you updated.

The Halloween Grinch (aka A Very Monkey Birthday)

Being born on Halloween has its good and bad points.

The good – well it’s kind of badass to hang with the undead (legend has it Halloween babies have extra perception and the protection of the spirit world) and I can use it to explain away my teenager-like obsession with all things skull-print.

The downside is that every year, when you ask folk to come to your birthday party, they will all already be prebooked with something Halloweeny.

Rather like those who are born on Christmas, and perpetually hold a grudge against Jesus for watering down their gift potential, I have developed a Grinch-like bitterness when it comes to pumpkins, fake blood and witch costumes. Skeletons I can live with on account of the aforementioned skull-print fetish.

And whilst my silent “but it’s my birthday first of all” sulk can go relatively undercover in the UK, over in the US, Halloween is big business.

Walmart, for example, was already sporting a Halloween theme way back when we arrived in the States, at the end of September.

Every aisle boasted cobwebs, and leering cats, along with the well-known haunted outhouse.

Every aisle that is bar this one, where it was already Christmas.

Sensing (perhaps because I never stopped banging on about it) that encountering Halloween revelry on my “special day” would be a hiding to stroppiness, Andy steered me away from my original plan to go to the crabshack in Pacific Beach (an area packed to the gills with drunk students) and towards a nice, grownup restaurant for dinner.

But before that, there was the day itself to attend to, kicking off (and for this, I applaud Andy’s patience) at 6.30am with cards and presents.
I might be 39 now, but I retain the impatience of a five year old attacking Santa’s stocking.

Andy (Big Monkey, long story but stems from how we started dating) had bankrupted himself on the card front (for some reason stationery seems exorbitant over here), with four separate offerings – including one on behalf of absent friends and family, and one mocking my (Little Monkey) time-wasting ability when it comes to getting in the shower, along with a couple of smoochy numbers.

All other cards and presents (even those I was instrumental in buying) had been painstakingly guarded till the day itself, and gloriously wrapped in paper and ribbons for a full-on rip-open experience.
Having witnessed the abomination that was Andy's Christmas wrapping last December, I know how much effort this must have entailed, and once again expressed my gratitude with some “happy crying”.

After breakfast in bed (good old poached eggs again) it was time to head off to the nail salon (me, not Andy).

For some reason, I imagine the life of an American lady entails endless sessions of buffing and gelling, and given I was having a day off from grabbing hopelessly at big boys coattails and collars in BJJ, it was the ideal opportunity to hand myself over to the varnish maestros.

One manicure, pedicure and spicy sandwich later (Andy liked his so much he decided to sport it across his chops), I bedecked myself in as many birthday gifts as it’s possible to wear simultaneously, and we headed off to downtown San Diego.

The Gaslamp shopping gods were smiling on me, and Vans offered up two new pairs of sunglasses (the last ones lasted roughly two days before I sat on them).

Heading home to swank up before dinner, we made a last minute detour to the beach, to watch the sun go down and take way too many pensive “arty” shots. There are a lot of them in this blog, but trust me, it's a drop in the photo ocean when it comes to our collection. We are well on our way to becoming the proverbial "let me bore you with our holiday snaps" couple.

We ended the day by blowing the food budget (put it this way, there’ll be a lot more poached eggs this month) at Table 926.

It was a chance to ponder our first month (and a bit) of travels, and where we will head in the New Year.

As well as stuff ourselves to the point where we felt rather sick.

I’m not one for public outpourings of emotion (crying excepted) but it was quite possibly the best birthday ever. For everyone who posted, gifted and greeted, and of course the exceptional efforts of the Big Monkey, I want to say thanks, it left me feeling something like this…