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.

The Atos Attitude

Three days after landing in San Diego, we took our first class at Andre Galvao’s Atos academy. We had made a visit to 4425 Convoy Street on the Saturday, but that was to mainly gawp in awe and trepidation, before scurrying back to the Suites to speculate what it would be like to train there.

My own relationship with martial arts, and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in particular, has been up and down over the years. After some hard-partying in my teens and twenties, I fell into kickboxing around 2004, during a two-week pre-holiday gym binge. I’ve always been entranced by contradictions, and relatively arsey to boot, so when the instructor seemed less than thrilled to have a girl in his class, it only made me want to prove him wrong. And at a statuesque 5’7’’, making my body stronger, fitter and athletically capable seemed more achievable (and mentally healthy) than the size-zero aesthetic championed by all the women’s classes.

Over the years I’ve felt a little chuckle every time someone asks what I do in my free time. I enjoy seeing the shock on their faces when they realise that the woman in front of them chooses to roll around on the floor, grappling with a variety of men and their sweat, for relaxation. And the day that I got my purple belt, back in 2011, was one of my proudest achievements. But with obsession comes a whole heap of heartache, and there have been some definite slumps over the past four years of BJJ training.

As anyone who does it knows, Jiu Jitsu is hard, progress is slow, and your ego and body take a pounding. On a day where you beat the odds (being female, 10 or 20kg smaller and a decade older than anyone in the class) it feels great. But after a run of weeks or months where you’ve been smashed into the mat and pinned down by complete beginners who have zero official technique to their name, it can feel pretty lousy. The black dog of “who are you kidding?” kicks in, swiftly followed by “you really should have started this when you were younger” and “everyone’s wondering why you’re wearing a purple belt”. If anything is going to mess with your flow and rolling, it’s being caught in a cycle of introspection. But, and this is where BJJ is a cruel mistress, whilst walking away will temporarily alleviate the embarrassment, long-term you will miss it. ’50 Shades of Grey’ can take a hike, this is sado-masochism at its very finest.

And this is, for better or worse, where I find myself on this trip. Since last summer my mat time has been seriously sketchy, my technique is rusty, and my body could do with an overhaul. In terms of timing, only a lunatic would decide to embark on a five-month BJJ sabbatical. Whether it’s my body or sanity, something looks likely to break before Christmas.

Here we are on the first morning of training. F*ck knows why I am smiling.

Andre Galvao is a multiple world champion. His wife, Angelica, is a world champion. A quick glimpse through the internet confirms that most of the folk on the mat are competing, and pretty much all of them seem to be winning. It’s no lucky accident.

The first class, where we focus on back control, is relentless, precise, and nearly two hours long. We do one position, over and over, flipping between drilling it (for two minutes) and specifically sparring it (for five) for six rounds. Note, I did not say flipping between drilling, sipping drinks, chatting about our weekends and sparring. It might be fiendishly hot, you will certainly be fantasising about the water cooler with the fervour of a Pattinson fan at a Twilight premiere…but until Andre decides it is time for a break, you stay on the mat, and you work. Hard and with zero excuses. We finish off with five rounds of non-specific sparring. There is a distinct lack of dickishness or egotism, but once again, the intensity is up there at competition level. Your partner will smile at you, but once you touch hands, you may as well be in the Mundials.

Our second BJJ class of the week, on Wednesday, confirms the same level of precision and relentless exertion. Format-wise we drill the same trio of De La Riva moves continuously for around 45 minutes, before dividing into groups of three, with one person on the bottom and the other two jumping in to attack for nine minutes at a time. Overall, it’s another two hours. At one point I get kneed in the eye and quickly realise that stopping to feel sorry for myself just isn’t an option. Even more so, I am embarrassed to have sworn out loud in front of the class, and manage to cap it through the next couple of eye jabs and scrapes with a bit more dignity and restraint.

A peculiar kind of ‘luxury’, I have two amazing brown belt women kicking my ass. Angelica Galvao is the Pan American Champion 2012, Abu Dabi World Pro Trials Champion 2012, Houston Open Champion 2012 and bagged third place in the 2012 World Championships brown belt division. That’s if my research skills serve me correctly, she’s way too polite to tell me directly, though her incessant pressure, aggression and strength would seem to rule out any element of doubt. Chelsea Bainbridge-Donner, the other brown belt, has, according to her blog, been training BJJ for circa 12 years. That’s about eight more than me, and in Atos years, about a lifetime. Peculiarly, these facts comfort me as I am wristlocked into oblivion.

The Atos academy is supported by a fitness studio, Suples, next door. Having sampled the delights of Joint Mobility*, Bulgarian Bag and a women’s conditioning class, I can confirm that Suples is run to the same exacting degree as the BJJ side of things.

Ex navy SEAL Stephen Nave and conditioning obsessive Maurizio Tangari are perpetually on hand to correct every last detail of your technique, all of the time, whether you want them to or not. Their nurturing brand of sadism translates quite often into ‘motivational’ shouting, which is the same as normal shouting, just with slogans on the wall.

The ceiling might read “Be someone special” but they should probably add “someone whose body burns like napalm” in brackets at the end.

The upside is that the studio has the kind of fitness toys that a martial artist dreams about – bone dummies, normal dummies, bars, bags, ropes, kettlebells, soft kettlebells, cycley-wheely things – and the drills are precisely tailored to mirror fighting movements (no running machines or wide stanced press-ups here).

The downside is that every single one of those toys will be used to torture you past limits you never imagined you had.

In the past week, I’ve regularly gone from “I’m just getting back into it, and I’ll take it at my own pace” through “how on earth do I control this bag/weight/rope whilst speeding up yet again”, “I’m not sure how much more I’ve got”, “I haven’t got the energy to control my face anymore”, “I’m gazing into the abyss of muscle failure/cardiac arrest”, and beyond, all whilst being yelled at.

On one particular occasion I wept silent tears onto the mat as my arms failed to complete a punishment push up. The shouting continued. Being good at something is cue only for a heavier weight, or increase in speed or technique. Even Andre gets shouted at.

Atos has a drinks machine, containing a range of energy-type beverages. Post workout or BJJ session, you will gaze into this machine, searching for an elixir to heal all misery. Nothing will help you enough.

One week in, and I can safely say, there is nothing comfortable about this kind of training. Mentally and physically it will break you. There is a very strong chance of Post Training Stress Disorder. But in an odd way, I console myself with the thought that what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger. And (as I sit coated in Tiger Balm and aching in more ways that I thought possible) suddenly the idea of heading back onto the mat with a big white belt seems more manageable. I’m proud of myself for surviving. And if next week I last ten minutes longer before I cry silent tears into the exercise abyss, I’ll call that progress.

(*it still hurts. Think forcing your joints into mobility with a blend of mental and physical persuasion.)