JimFormation

On this day, put it all aside.

If you believe that Christmas celebrates the birth of Christ, celebrate.

If you do not believe that Jesus is the Christ, meditate on his teachings. If you don’t know his teachings, I’ll help –

Love your neighbors, your enemies and those you may think “beneath” you;
Tolerate the actions of others;
Forgive those who have wronged you and forgive yourself;
Consider the hypocrisy of the religious elite;
Teach others and touch others;
Heal.

If you believe that Christmas has been spoiled by commercialism, consider the smiling children.

Have a very happy and meaningful Christmas. Much love.

I have a friend from Kenya.

He was born and raised in a very rural village just outside the savanna. The scariest thing, he said, was the sound of lions at night. Monkeys threw fruit at the girls (not the boys, because the boys had slingshots). Young boys became expert in packing t-shirts into tight balls that the older kids would use as soccer balls.

He was educated as Occupational Therapist in Nairobi City. Soon after graduation he told his family that he wanted to move to the United States. This was a scary idea. Even scarier when you consider what he thought the United States was all about.

“There are no trees in America,” Godrick once told me. “And everything was made of metal. Robots, my mother told me, did everything.”

“This is what you thought?”

“This isn’t what we thought. This is what we knew.”

Other than that, Godrick knew very little.

About ten years ago, he landed in the United States. Tired, he hobbled to his hotel room and slept until afternoon.

“I went down into the lobby when I woke up, you know, to see America. I was amazed. The people all dressed in wonderful, elaborate clothes. Costumes. And some had masks! And all handed me candy! Mother was right about America!”

Godrick had arrived in America on the eve of and awoken on the day of Hallowe’en.

I teach students of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu a lot. I always talk about tapping (submitting) before they roll.

Tapping is the beauty of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Tapping is the only reason we can do what we do — fight to the death with other Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu students. To the death.

We tap indicating, “If you don’t stop, you might kill me. Or, at least, break me.” I tap, I live; I don’t tap, I die.

Okay, I probably won’t literally die. But we’ve had our share of people “go to sleep” on the mat because s/he (okay, it’s always been a “he”) didn’t tap. Hell, in the past couple of weeks, I broke two white belts who didn’t tap.

Neither was my fault, as far as I’m concerned.

Let me set the scenario: I am small (usually a pound or two under 145) and I am old (47 as I write this). Most white belts are brutish, rugged, young animals whose motto is “Tap or be tapped at any cost.” Tapping to them is a weakness. A sign of failure.

White Belt No. 1 had 20 years and 100 lbs on me. He’s been around a while. Maybe a year. He’s knocking at the door of his blue belt. He knows stuff.

I got him in an armbar from the guard. His arm was bent as I was applying steady pressure, it wasn’t locked out. He was trying to use the single biceps muscle of his arm curl against the entire force of my back and shoulder muscles. He was at the point where he needed to use brute strength to survive; he doesn’t yet have the technical skills to counter where I had him.

He didn’t have enough strength. His elbow popped while it was still bent. I broke a white belt.

Tap. Motherfucker, tap.

White Belt No. 2 is a raw noob. He’s been at the school a couple of months. He has that personality where he thinks he know more than he does and isn’t progressing quickly enough. I have about 15 years on him and he’s about 50-60 pounds heavier than me.

He rolled strong and fast with all the grace of charging bull moose with a broken leg. I rode him for a little while from under guard. Just staying a beat or two in front of him. Never letting him get  close enough to apply any pressure.

And then I swept him.

When I was on top of him, he pushed at me and allowed his upper arm to get away from his body. I filled the gap between his arm and body with parts of me and soon armbarred him.

Again, I applied steady pressure. He was holding on by a palm-to-palm grip and then, eventually, only his finger tips. I felt no need to use a technical grip break. As a matter of fact, I knew that he was already beaten — all I had to do was fall toward his head and rotate back around. But I wanted to attack his other arm, for my practice. I was enticing him to roll toward me so that I could spin to his other arm.

Oops! Too late, his fingers slipped and the armbar was applied. Not too strongly, but strong enough to hurt his elbow. Even then, it took him a moment to tap.

He came up rubbing his elbow. I broke another white belt.

Tap. Motherfucker, tap.

I tell these guys,

“Listen. Senior students are not impressed when you don’t tap. We’re laughing at the guys who don’t tap when they should. We’re happy for the guys that tap when they’re beat. We’ll roll with them any day.

“There is no shame in tapping. If you’re not tapping, you’re not learning. Learn to tap when you’re beat. If you’re beat and you’re not using technique to escape, then you’re not using jiu-jitsu. In that case, tap and start over and use jiu-jitsu again.

“I tap almost every day. And no one here has tapped more than our Professor.

“The tap allows us to fight at full strength and speed. But if I don’t trust you to tap when you’re beat, I’m not going to roll with the intensity that we both need (I may not even roll with you at all) — it’s a disservice to both of us. And that’s best case scenario; if you get to the wrong guy and you don’t tap, he might hurt you. There are some guys on the mat that don’t even care.

“Tapping also allows us to get out of our comfort zones and do things we wouldn’t ordinarily do. It allows us to try techniques, submissions, and transitions that are new to us. We are going to fail at these in the beginning and get ourselves into bad places. We might even get to the point where we have to submit. So be it! Good for us; we tried!

“So tap. Tap a lot. Tap early. Tap often. Especially as white belts.”

Okay. You might not believe me. I’m a lowly purple belt. Listen to Professor Ricardo Almeida, Renzo Gracie’s first black belt:

In many martial arts school, the instructor is the guy who is above everyone else and no one has ever seen him actually train.

In most Jiu Jitsu schools the instructor has earned the right to teach only because he has been tapped out more then anybody in class. Wether he would openly admit it or not …

I have no doubt that Grand Masters Carlos and Helio Gracie (the founders of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu) tapped more than any living practitioner.

 And that is why I love Jiu Jitsu.

Tap, motherfucker. Tap.

For those that don’t know, I’m a purple belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I started studying in the late 1980′s or early 1990′s (I’m old; I don’t remember). I stopped taking formal classes for about 15 years in order to start a family and make a career. I’ve been back for the last three years and train four to six days per week.

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu teaches you how to fight efficiently — using technique and leverage.

Comedian, television personality, UFC commentator, and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu brown belt, Joe Rogan tells us why Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is good for you. I agree with Joe on every  point. (A link to the audio on youtube at the bottom.)

“Jiu-Jitsu is good for you … It’s good to get your ass-kicked. It’s good for you to know how easy it is for a man to kick your ass too. It’s good for you to get destroyed. It’s good for you to get mounted and triangle choked.

“It’s good because you realize how easy it is for someone to do that to you. Because most people have no idea.

“They walk through this world having no idea of how some Marcelo Garcia character can just fuckin’ take your life any time he wanted to. And not just take your life, how about this? Take my life.

“How about that I’ve been doing jiu-jitsu since ’96 and that little dude from Brazil can strangle the fuck out of me any day he wants. That’s reality. And I’m almost a black belt. Like, high level.

“There are a lot of dudes I’ve choked out. I’ve choked out some good people, man. That guy can just tap me any time he wants. So for me to be almost a black belt, I may as well have never done jiu-jitsu — I’ll be able to hold him off for a little; he’s going to be able to get me. It’s inevitable. That’s the kind of reality that exists for most people that know jiu-jitsu.

“For most people, if you’re in some sort of street altercation with someone and you get a hold of him, that’s all you have to do is hang on. Hang on.

“Because you know what? In class you’re going 100%. Do you know why? Because you don’t hit each other. You’re trying to choke …

“In grappling you’re allowed to go 100%. It doesn’t mean you hurt your partners. If you have a lock or if you have a choke, you put it to a certain position and you can just hold it and let it go.

“But the point is it takes 100% of your to get to that position, and that’s exactly what’s going to come up in a fight. In a fight it’s going to be a 100% effort, except that you’re used to doing a 100% effort three or four nights per week.

“Three or four nights per week, I go and there are grown men and they are going to try and kill me with their bare hands. And I’m going to try to kill them. And then we are going to slap hands, and we’re going to hug, and I say, ‘Thanks, Brother’, and I move on to the next guy.

“You go to the next one. And you tap hands, you slap hands (that’s what everyone does) and you lock up!

“And this is the goal: I’m going to try to get you to tap. And what you’re saying when you tap is, ‘You could’ve just killed me.’ And you’re going to do the same thing to me.

“If you get me in something, I’m going to have to tap. I’m not going to want to, but I’m going to have to. Because it’s very important; you don’t want to die.

“It’s a game. And the game is using your body to dominate another person’s body with technique and leverage.”

…

Meow.

I’ve tried to read .pdf books; I almost always print parts of them out.

I’ve tried to read books on my smart phone; almost impossible. I don’t have an Amazon Kindle or Barnes & Noble Nook; I’d like to have one. But …

I really don’t think I’d be satisfied. There’s a visceral feel to a book. Tangible qualities that machines and binary code just don’t give me.

I feel like one of the last guys to use film, because digital photography “doesn’t have the same feel” of film. For the record, I bought a digital camera as soon as I could afford one. And I used it exclusively.

But I can’t rummage through an attic for an old e-book. I can’t scan titles at a garage sale looking for paged gold. An antique shop isn’t going to carry an old Kindle section — what am I going to do while my wife is rummaging around for tchotchkes?

Misplacing an e-book reader is like misplacing a whole library! Oh, the pain!

And I can sit on a book. Or leave it in the car in the summer while it roasts and in deep winter’s freezing cold. I can still read a book if I spill iced tea on it.

I’m not a Luddite, I swear.

It’s just. Well, I like books.

Those (e-books, Kindles, Nooks) aren’t books. You can’t hold a computer in your hand like you can a book. A computer does not smell.

There are two perfumes to a book. If a book is new, it smells great. If a book is old, it smells even better. It smells like ancient Egypt. A book has got to smell.

You have to hold it in your hands and pray to it. You put it in your pocket and you walk with it.

And it stays with your forever. But the computer doesn’t do that for you. I’m sorry.

~ Ray Bradbury

And you can lie on your back with a book, close your eyes, and open it as a blindfold. It’s seam fits your nose perfectly and keeps most of the light out.

A Kindle can’t do that.

Not so long ago, I was the guest in the home of a gay man. I don’t think he knows that I know that he’s gay. I hardly think he cares. And, other than the amusing fact that he still has occasional sex with his ex-wife, I don’t care either.

He left his wife and took on a male partner. His wife and his partner don’t like each other. In light of the amusing fact above, I’m not surprised.

I used to work with a gay gentleman. His name was Carl. From time-to-time we’d have lunch together. One afternoon, at a pizzeria, Carl recognized the guy making the pizzas. He knew him from one of the gay bars he frequented.

Carl started flirting with this guy like a girl looking for a prom date. I was surprised that I got a little uncomfortable and excused myself to the parking lot.

When Carl returned I said, “Don’t do that. That made me feel weird.”

“Don’t do what?”

“Start batting your eyes at guys like that and acting like a school girl. That was just a little too gay,” I said.

“Why, are you jealous?”

“Jealous? Of what? Do you think I want to get in your pants?”

“Well, from the way you’re acting, yes.”

Carl really thought I was gay. When I told him that I was married, that my wife was expecting our first child, he was shocked.

“I thought for sure you were gay. I mean, you’re a nurse. And you’re slight. And you hang out with a gay guy.”

Several months after that, he did come on to me. I reiterated that I was married. “Jim, I’ve had more married men than gay men.”

I believe him.

…

Human beings are social animals. We have evolved societies beyond the family unit and small regional bands. We have political and religious societies; work and hobby societies; game and support societies. And on and on.

We have a need, a yearning, an instinct to be in a group.

Similarly, the human animal has a strong desire to pair-bond with his/her sexual partner. This strong desire, this biological instinct, evolved because the man-woman pair can more successfully raise children, and pass on the coupled genes, than one person (woman) alone.

Eventually some of our societies formalized this pair-bond, this mating-couple, this marriage. Our religious societies sanctified the marriage. Our governmental societies legalized and heaped benefits on the marriage. The two became one.

What started as instinctual pair-bonding for the process of successfully bringing genes through to the next generation has become a religious and governmental institution that is not bound to raising children.

People who have a sexual attraction to the same gender still have this strong desire to pair-bond with his/her sexual partner. A governmental society that gives benefits and rights to pair-bonded sexual couples and states in its founding document that laws need to treat all citizens equally, ought to be blind to the gender of that couple.

It just makes sense to me that all pair-bonded couples have the same benefits and rights. The pair-bonded homosexual couples ought to legally be married.

Religious organizations, especially Christian ones where Jesus has already given us an example of staying out of governmental affairs, ought not have a say in the government’s role in gay marriage. It has nothing to do with them. Give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.

Poetry, I believe, has less to do with the poet and more to do with the reader. It is his/her experience that breathes life into the poet’s words.

My wife wrote this. I stole it from her notebook.

“You don’t know what it means,” she protested.

I don’t have to.

night wish

a chance thought did dream you

come escape sweet thought

take soul
             heart
                   skin

A Welsh couple reading in the dimly lit library of their home. In their eighties, no doubt. Married fifty, maybe sixty years. Sharing bits and pieces from the books in their hands.

SHE: It says here that the libraries of Welsh literature are among the oldest in Europe.

HE: Four-fifths of the oceans’ floors are deep, dark and cold. They thought it was lifeless. Now they figure that there’s more life down there than any we’ve yet catalogued on the surface.

These are their evenings now, as they wind up their lives. Still very much in love.

HE: I make sure that the last thing I say to her at night is “I love you”. At our age, you never know if you’ll wake in the morning. I want her to know, always and forever, that I love her.

It was truly touching. Beautifully heart-felt.

Looking down in the books in our hands, my wife and I felt camaraderie with the Old Ones. We thought this a wonderful tradition and meant to carry it on.

The light went out. I feel her face pull close.

SHE: (whispers) I love you, James.

ME: I love you, Sandra.

There is a pause of moments.

SHE: Move your feet.

ME: Shut yer cake-hole.

Another pause.

ME: We’ll never pull this off. Will we?

SHE: No, damn you.

Good night, Sandi. I love you.

I often say, “Jiu-jitsu is hard.”

The Guard

The guard position and passing the guard are fundamental to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

The guard is a control and attack position with the person being on his/her back. Most of the control is done with the feet and legs.

The person not in the guard must deal with the guard player’s  legs and feet before s/he can do much anything else. The passer must get past the guard. The guard is passed by going around, under, or over the other person’s legs.

This is often easier said or taught than done live against a fully resisting opponent that understands what you are doing.

[An aside, passing the guard of someone who doesn't understand the guard position is easy. Hot knife through butter.]

King of the Hills

Last week I had an hour of passing guard practice against high level competitors in a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu game called King of the Hills. In King of the Hill, one man starts on his knees with the other man’s legs wrapped around him and his feet locked (closed guard). If the guy in guard gets passed the other guy’s guard, he wins and is the new king. If the guard player sweeps, submits or stands up, he wins and remains king.

In that hour of King of the Hills, I passed one guard.

In my defense, I was playing against the highest level guys in the school and half the time was verses my instructor. Still, I passed just one guard. I’m not happy about it.

Back to Basics

Part of my problem, I think, is that I know so many ways to pass that I haven’t perfected any one.

This weekend I did a long, hard look at my guard passing game and have decided that I’m going to work on specific guard pass over and over and over again until it becomes mine. I’ve decided on one of the simplest passes there is. A classic standing pass and guard opening combination.

Now, mind you, the guard is a dynamic position. It’s difficult to take in all the variables. But, if I stick with the basics and drill out the fundamentals, I’ll do well.

My Plan

For the next month, and with any training partner that will let me, I’m going to drill out the guard opening and the pass.

I will defer live training when needed just to drill this thing out. I will warm-up with this pass. I will work open mat with this pass. I will teach this pass to the kids and, if given the opportunity, I will teach it to the Beginners Class.

A dedicated month of drilling out this single pass and it’s variations. At the end of the month, I’ll see what my labor has brought.

The Pass

Here is a simplified description of my chosen pass. It assumes my opponent has me in his/her closed guard:

1. One hand on both collars controlling sitting posture; the other hand grabs same side wrist cloth and pushes down into hip;
2. Technical stand in posture. Straight back. Looking toward ceiling.
3. Opening the guard -
• Push knee down while stepping back (shake if I have to) or
• Reach back and technically open his legs.
4. Push knee to floor.
5. Under hook other knee.
6. Step over leg.
7. Shoulder pressure to hip.
8. Pass.

I know that’s very basic. There are many technical considerations that I’ve glossed over or didn’t mention — but I didn’t mean this as an instructional.

The Point

The whole point of this post is to explain to the uninitiated that Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is hard. Passing the guard is fundamental to jiu-jitsu. At this writing, I have five years of formal study and many more of sporadic, informal practice. For the last three years, I take between three and five classes per week. I’m on the mat between two and four hours every time I get on the mats. I’m a serious student.

And, as of yet, I am completely uncomfortable with my guard passing. I have no road map. No real plan. And no true expertise on any one way to get it done.

Oh, sure, I pass plenty of guards. I’m good at it at times. But it’s more a responsive thing. I want to dictate. I want people to see me and think, “Oh, no. He’s going to pass my guard. Again.”

Back to the point, jiu-jitsu is hard. It’s reasons like this that becoming a black belt takes years and years of studying and practice. It often takes 10 years or more to get to the black belt level. And even then you’re still not comfortable with your game.

In ten years, I will be a black belt.

In ten years, I may be telling you this same story.

Jiu-jitsu is hard.