My Journey Archives - Page 2 of 3

Supplement BJJ Training with Yoga

Yoga for BJJ Recently I injured my left foot, where the toes meet the pad, it feels like it pops in and out of place when I stand up, with sharp pain each time it modulates. I talked to the doctor about it and he said likely a fracture, I should have come to him sooner, not much to do about it now except wait for it to heal up. Okay.

So I’ve been off the mats for two weeks, started training this week again, but no rolling, just technique. Skipping any chaotic parts of class so that my foot can get back to normal.

It’s working. The foot is getting better. But I’m feeling anxious about not getting the same level of physical activity that I’m used to. Doing any weight lifting that requires bearing too much weight on my legs is out. So I thought I’d give some simple Yoga a try.

I’ve been thinking about trying Yoga for a while. My wife has tried dragging me to her classes. But with jiu jitsu, work, and everything else going on, there just hasn’t been time to give it a shot.

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7 Easy Protein Snack Ideas For You

Beef Jerky Dialing in nutrition is important for any athlete, and since jiu jitsu is such a physically demanding sport, your diet will determine your performance.

Protein seems to be one of those dietary sources we just can’t get enough of. I know, I’ve heard the arguments that we over-inflate the importance of protein, and that it’s likely that many of us get the necessary amount of protein in our diet without giving it any special consideration. But I find that I just feel better when I eat more animal-based protein. It boosts my energy, clears my brain fog and gives me more endurance. I also tend to recover from workouts better and grow stronger if I eat more protein.

Animal-based protein can be expensive and hard to find for a snack. Ever since experimenting with the carnivore diet, I’ve been trying to find easy snack ideas that include animal-based protein.

Protein snacks are actually relatively plentiful. Where I live, there are a few grocery stores that carry a pretty good selection of beef jerky, so that’s a good start.

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What is the BJJ Lifestyle?

You often hear people in jiu jitsu talk about living the BJJ lifestyle. But have you ever wondered what it means to live this way? Many of the pictures and articles online bring forth images of surfing in the morning, rolling all day and eating acai bowls for every meal. That sounds great, but clearly not tenable for the majority of us working stiffs.

When I think of what it means to live the jiu jitsu lifestyle the first thing that comes to mind is the “mindset” that you develop once you start training. Prior to starting jiu jitsu if you’ve never trained martial arts before, or even if you haven’t been doing much physical activity at all, you may have spent the majority of your free time chasing temporary distractions from your day-to-day grind. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the vast majority of people are stuck in a cycle of working, eating, and finding some way to be passively entertained before heading to bed on a daily basis. I was certainly that guy. But when you start doing jiu jitsu, there is a shift in this mindset.

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Teaching Kids Jiu Jitsu

I’ve been assisting with the kids jiu jitsu classes at my academy for about a year now. It’s something that I really enjoy, and has been rewarding for me. It has also been rewarding for my son who is one of the kids in the class. He seems to like it when I’m in there helping the instructors show technique to the other kids. I’m really less of an instructor and more of a glorified grappling dummy for the instructors to demo on, but it’s still a role I really enjoy.

When I first started helping out with the kids jiu jitsu classes I had a lot of questions. I needed to learn the proper balance between helping the kids learn discipline, and making class fun. I’ve taught kids music classes in the past, so I know how important it is to make learning fun. Kids learn best that way, as we all do. But allow them to have too much fun and the whole class can get away from you. Before you know it their energy level skyrockets, and it gets difficult to focus them again.

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The First 10 Months of Jiu Jitsu

NOTE: The text below was written in a journal I found recently. I’m nearly 4 years into training Jiu Jitsu at this point, but I enjoyed re-reading this journal entry from when I first started. I thought I’d share it in case others might relate to the same experiences that I went through.

I started Jiu Jitsu in May of 2015 at Hurricane Jiu Jitsu in Cleveland. It has been 10 months since I began and I have grown a lot in that time. When I first started I could barely make it through the warm up without being totally out of breath. Running in a circle around the mats, hopping, side-stepping, most of the time I could only think “I’m too old to be doing this”. After the exhausting 10 minutes or so of warm-up the lesson would begin and I would be silently grateful for the chance to rest for a few minutes while the instructor showed the first technique of the class. I remember those early lessons when I would try to grasp what was being taught, while simultaneously trying to grasp for air.

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The Value of Private Lessons

Yesterday I had a private lesson with my instructor John Lawrence. This is the 3rd or 4th private I’ve had with various instructors at the school where I train, Hurricane Jiu Jitsu, and each one of these lessons has led to epiphanies regarding my practice. I pretty much get tunnel vision when I’m rolling, so it’s hard for me to see what areas of my game I need to fix. I find it super helpful to have someone else guide me through my plateaus. In past privates I was fixated on developing my guard, both closed and open, so that I could feel more comfortable attempting submissions and knowing that I could recover back into guard from a failed submission attempt. I pretty much went into private lessons with the intention to sharpen my closed guard. This time around we did things a little differently. I still had specific questions about how to increase my attack percentage from closed guard, but my instructor suggested that we roll a bit at the beginning of the lesson so he could analyze how I moved and make suggestions from there.

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Jorge Pereira Seminar

Jorge Pereira Seminar Yesterday I attended a seminar with Jorge Pereira at GriffonRawl MMA Academy. Jorge Pereira is a coral belt under Rickson Gracie, is the subject of the TV Series “Rio Heroes” and has a long history fighting in Vale Tudo. During the seminar he told stories of how he would fight sometimes three times a day while surfing, and discussed the importance of honor in jiu jitsu. Pereira believes that when training you should find the school/person you want to train under and stick with them, as opposed to the way some fighters (in MMA in particular) move from coach to coach if they think a new coach offers something different than the current one. He also mentioned that he’s bringing back Vale Tudo in a new promotion company with a very limited ruleset so the fights are as realistic as possible. I can’t find any links related to this but I’m going to keep an eye out for it, from what Pereira said the limited ruleset should lead to some exciting fights.

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The 80/20 Principle for Jiu Jitsu – Review

I recently finished reading “The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Success by Achieving More with Less” by Richard Koch, and I’ve been giving a lot of thought to how I can apply that principle to my daily routine. In the book Koch posits that the 80/20 principle (first put forth by Vilfredo Pareto to describe the distribution of wealth in society) can actually be applied across many different domains in life. Essentially the maxim indicates that 80% of value is produced by 20% of the effort you put in. What this boils down to is that apparently we all tend to waste a lot of time on minutiae of detail but could achieve more by paying attention to the correct pieces of detail, and end up with more free time as a bonus.

As time management is one of my greatest challenges (I’m sure I’m not alone in this), I’m very interested in finding out if the 80/20 principle properly applied can bring me more free time. If I think about how this applies to jiu jitsu I can break it down by determining what techniques or principles would lead to the greatest results, in the quickest amount of time.

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Henry Akins Seminar – Columbus OH – Side Control Escapes

Yesterday I attended my third seminar with Henry Akins, this one being at Relson Gracie Jiu Jitsu in Columbus Ohio, and it was just as mind blowing as all the rest have been. If you’ve never been to a seminar with Henry Akins you need to put it on your to-do list, asap. Every time I’ve attended his seminars I’ve come away with concepts that immediately improved the efficiency of my jiu jitsu. I always find myself thinking “I can’t believe I haven’t thought of doing it this way before” when he shows a detail, because the simplicity and efficiency of the movement that he teaches makes it seem like the move was always intended to be done this particular way. Ask anybody that attends these seminars and they will tell you the same. There are many “Eureka!” moments.

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Fighting Off The Wall

Brick Wall Last night at class we spent most of the evening working on stand-up self defense tactics. In jiu jitsu we tend to spend most of our time fighting on the ground, either off our backs or with our weight distributed on our partner. Anytime I work on stand-up I’m reminded of how different the strength and cardio requirements are. It gets even harder when you’re standing up and pinned against the wall. And harder still when you get taken down, pinned against the wall, with your partners full weight on you and your trying to stand back up.

We started the class with out typical warm-up of hip escapes, and then quickly transitioned into pummeling drills. These drills switched to pummeling “sparring”. After warm-up we started our wall work. One person would stand with their back against the wall, the other would stand in front of them, with double underhooks and attempt to keep them pinned there. The person on the wall had the job of getting at least one underhook, and spinning their partner so that they were against the wall. Back and forth we went with that drill.
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