Mobility

I recently travelled to America with my wife, including a cruise from Mexico to Hawaii.

I don't know if it was an American thing, or a cruise thing, but there was a much higher proportion of people, not all of them old, using those electric scooters, walkers, and walking sticks. Some in wheelchairs as well, though able to stand for short periods and walk short distances. There were no lightweights among them, and a fair proportion were morbidly obese.

In fact, I've never seen so many fat people in one place in my entire life than I saw on the cruise ship. Men who looked like they'd shoved Swiss Balls up their polo shirts, women with asses large enough to have a system of moons orbiting them.

It's unfair to accuse people who are infirm or sick as having failed morally or personally, but you have to wonder why there seem to be so many such people from what is meant to be the richest country with the most advanced healthcare in the world.

I love the fact that I can walk, run, jump, climb. Speed, strength, agility, grace, poise and similar qualities are worth fighting to hang on to. The best things in life are free. You don't use, develop and maintain them, you lose them.

When the Segway first came out, something inside me reacted with alarm. Of course there were cars, bikes, trains, skateboards, etc. but the Segway was something else If we stop walking, it seemed, we stop living. A step (no pun intended) too far.

Are we devolving into a species that in the future will only be able to move with technological assistance?

Giving less than 100%

I enjoyed the free wrestling in Peter King's class last night. Escaped Sonny's first formidable guillotine choke attempt and passed his guard, though he tapped me with a second guillotine right at the end of the round. The local teenage prodigy, Andris, got my back, somehow I escaped that to half guard and fended him off for the rest of the round.

I think I'm going to enjoy the Jiu Jitsu journey more if I ease up on the intensity. In the second half of my sixth decade, I can't beat the twenty- and thirty-somethings with speed, strength or cardio. If I try to give each round my maximum, I end up too exhausted to wrestle well next round, plus I make too many mistakes thrashing around. From now on I want to try to stay below ninety percent, really watch what's going on, make my movements strategic and deliberate, work more defence and escapes, but really work them rather than just "try whatever it takes not to get my guard passed." Tap out more. I could have resisted Sonny's second guillotine a bit longer, but what was the point? It was a great guillotine, well executed. Deserved the tap. Last time I fought my way out of a choke (actually two, an anaconda on a Wednesday followed by a Peruvian necktie on the Sunday) I had a sore neck for a week. Darko says, "I want to be doing this when I'm eighty" - me too, and I'm a lot closer to eighty than he is.

There has to be some sort of corollary of the 80/20 rule that applies here. Well executed technique shouldn't take 100% effort. Eighty and certainly, ninety percent, should be enough. One hundred percent brain, perhaps, but not one hundred percent brawn.

Refereeing

Refereeing

 I've been refereeing Jiu Jitsu for a couple of years. Several hundred matches, at least. It might look like an easy gig, but it's not.

A good BJJ referee requires:

•  Ability to concentrate and observe
• Ability to work closely with the scorer, timekeeper, and other officials
• Excellent knowledge of the rules and of jiu jitsu itself
• Ability to make FAST decisions based on knowledge if the rules
• Confidence
• A high tolerance for abuse, both in the local language and Portuguese

Depending on the size of the competition and the size of the pool of referees, you'll probably be refereeing between twenty and fifty matches in a day at a reasonable sized competition. The largest competitions I've refereed at have had about 300 competitors. Even with six mats running concurrently, that's a long day of competition. Keeping the a high level of concentration to see every point and advantage is hard, and it's taxing. There is talk of "mat madness", where it becomes too much, and it's true. By the end of the day, my brain is floating in the stratosphere. Make sure you get the occasional break, especially if you are feeling stressed.

You also need to work closely with the scorer and timekeeper. The scorer should watch the referee like a halk to ensure he picks up all the referee's hand signals; the referee needs to watch the scorer closely to ensure the scorer awards the points correctly. I had a scorer once miss six points I'd awarded during a match; but when I swapped roles with him, I only missed doing the same thing because he kept checking what I was doing. As a referee, award points verbally, "two points white - takedown", as well as using the hand signals. As a scorer, watch the referee rather than the match. If there is a separate timekeeper (the electronic scoreboards keep time themselves), they should also watch the referee and make sure the scorer misses nothing.

I've been fortunate enough to avoid the competitions that are poorly organised, schedule matches on the fly and end up running late into the night. I have been at well organised competitions and know that it doesn't have to be a dog's breakfast.

The rules aren't as complex as quantum mechanics, but they aren't always logical and consistent. There are few quirks and grey areas, especially regarding their interpretation and determining the difference between points and advantages. There are a few unwritten rules as well, things like what is required to get an advantage when passing from full to half guard, and what you can and can't do when applying straight footlocks.

Decide on points quickly, but make sure you do not award points too early. Positions normally have to be held three seconds for positional control. But make a confident decision and award points - or not - confidently.

Competitors' coaches, teammates, crew and hangers-on will get in your face about your interpretation of the rules, and yell at you when they feel their guy was treated unjustly. Knowledge of the rules is your best defence - you should know the rules better than they do, or why are you refereeing at all? Often those who argue the most have a sketchy or nonexistent knowledge of the rules.

You will make mistakes. And you will remember them. The aggrieved parties may get in your face about it. Many seasoned competitors will tell you they have benefited as often as suffered from referee's mistakes, but few complain when a bad decision goes their way (though some do, to their credit). Apologise if you feel you should (or even if you feel you're right, but the argument will end earlier if you pretend to concede), and move on. I usually tell anyone with a problem to see the contest organisers, who so far have always backed me up, should anyone bother to take it further. Move on. The next match is ready to go, the last one is done and dusted. As a referee, you must live totally in the Now.

The sport need more good referees to grow. Some instructors require their students to referee a number of matches, maybe fifty, to be eligible for promotion to the higher coloured belts. Fifty matches is probably only two or three competitions. You get to see jiu jitsu from a different perspective. It will improve your ability to coach jiu jitsu.

Put something back into the sport we love. Be a referee!

50/50 Guard

While the 50/50 guard has been out there for a while and I'm usually pretty technique-inquisitive, Anthony has been encouraging me to work various other open guards: butterfly (hooks-in), half guard, quarter guard, De La Riva, X guard and I figured that was more than enough to keep me occupied.

He introduced it to most of us in class last night. Simply put, the position is with both of you sitting up. You lock a leg triangle on his near side thigh; he can do the same to you. There is the usual plethora of video clips which are easily found via Google. Anthony said he wasn't a fan but knew he would have to learn the position because guys would be trying it on him and his students in competition.

To me it seems to run against the philosophical grain of what I have been taught that good BJJ is about. My understanding is that good BJJ involves achieving a superior position, so your opponent is put in an inferior position. With the 50/50 guard, you both end up in an identical position, and it comes down to who has the better understanding of the position and can apply it first.

Anthony showed us an entry to 50/50 from where the opponent is on his back and you are standing, and another from a failed legbar attempt, where you keep spinning and end up in 50/50. He also showed us several footlocks - heel hooks are right there, though illegal, so we looked at straight footlocks instead. We also looked at a sweep, and defense against all of those attacks, and a method to pass the guard. All of these would need a LOT of work for me to use them effectively. The guard pass in particular seemed to have large gaps.

Much of the criticism of this guard seems to be that it often ends in a one way or mutual stall on the competition mat, with both guys locked together for minutes with next to nothing going on. You can sweep the guy and then keep him locked up till the match times out. Can you really call it a sweep if the guy is already on his butt?

Love it or loathe it, this is something every competitor will have to deal with at some stage. The continual evolution is one of the things you have to love about this art.

A nice vacation, and reassessment

I'm just coming to the end of a couple of weeks vacation. During this time I only went to Jiu Jitsu once, the Monday night class with Anthony.

The first week Pat and I spent on Daydream Island in the Whitsundays. We felt a bit locked in on a small resort island and there were peculiarities like the water getting turned off between 11:30 pm and 6 am, the room aircon not always working, and one of the three main restaurants normally available for dinner being closed for renovations, but really it was pleasant and from what we saw it looked to be one of the better resorts in the Whitsundays - Long Island had a fantastic outlook but had fewer facilities than Daydream, and the buildings and facilities at Hook Island were way run down, though it had nice snorkelling right off the beach. If we ever go up there again I'd go for staying at Airlie Beach and go for day trips to the islands. Being on the mainland we could rent a car and get out of the place for a while too if necessary. Airlie had a much wider range of facilities than any of the islands. Hamilton Island has lots of facilities as well, including an airport, but I'd been there before, a business junket back in the late 80s when companies still did that sort of thing, and was looking elsewhere.

We took day trips to Airlie Beach on the mainland, Whitehaven Beach on Whitsunday Island, and Knuckle Reef, part of the outer Great Barrier Reef.

I got up early most mornings to do some training. I'd had some niggling back problems after an injudicious session of kettlebell windmills - with a permanent spondyolisthesis of L5/S1 there ARE some things it is counterproductive for me to do. I did some yoga, ROSS solo grappling drills, one arm and divebomber pushups. Felt strong and flexible.

I went into the gymnasium there to do some pulldowns on the cable machine - there were two women there running on treadmills. There's one of the more beautiful environments on this planet and a .5 kilometre track to run through it on right outside the door, but no, stay indoors on that treadmill and watch Robbie Williams music videos instead. People are strange.

I've decided to stop using my age (55 now, 56 in December) as a reason to treat myself with kid gloves as regards my training. Aging is inevitable, and your sphere of possibilities may gradually shrink, but you can still push up close to those limits rather than not even try to find out where they are. I'd cast myself as an old man who has to to go easy because of fear of injury or making a fool of himself otherwise - I'm changing my role to that of a sensible but mature athlete who still pushes himself as far as he can. Or someone who will, as George Carlin advocates, "Take a f***ing chance!"

I live about a kilometer from Pennant Hills Park, a bunch of sporting fields which back on to Lane Cove National Park, a large and pretty unspoiled stretch of Australian bushland in the middle of northern Sydney. Before I started to have knee problems and let the psychology of aging get to me, I used to run a couple of circuits on the fire trails and single tracks there - one about 6 K's the other about 8, each with a big, demanding hill either at the end or towards the end, depending on which way you go around. I resolved to run the big circuit, going from home, through the bush and back to civilisation after 6 K's through the bush at Thornleigh Oval, then another 2 K's home again via the back streets and Pennant Hills Road. It was further than I'd run in ages, and I had to slow to a walk on the final big hill through the bush to the Oval, but at the top of the hill I started running again and kept it up all the way home without dying and without knee issues. This was much more of a mental rather than physical challenge.

I reread Pavel Tsatsouline's Naked Warrior before the break and resolved to get some of the bodyweight skills back. In my early BJJ days I'd learned to do pistols (single leg, butt-to-heel squats) using a progression involving a flight of stairs and progressively lowering your butt to the third stair, then the second, then the first, and then finally going all the way down and back up without the stairs.

I had an arthroscopy on my left knee about 18 months ago, to fix a meniscus tear, and my other knee is also a bit dodgy, and thus had assumed that pistols were of necessity a thing of the past. I used Pavel's "Grease the Groove" - I got the left pistol on the second day, but my right knee didn't feel up to it. Lots of what Scott Sonnon calls "Fear-Reactivity". I was hoping I'd get the right pistol by the end of the week before I went back to work but I ended up getting it on the second day and am currently running on sets of two with alternate legs. My right knee gets a bit sore and cracks a bit, so I'm not going to push it by stacking on kettlebells or adding jumps, but regaining the pistol is hopefully part of reclaiming my potential and raising my standards.

I'm also working on standing ab wheel rollouts. Rolling out to a barrier (in my case, the doormat) and coming back up, and gradually increasing the distance between the barrier and my feet. These are a bit harder to manage than the pistols because they really fry my abs and the DOMS is a b*tch for the next day or so. I got there today, the full monty with no barrier, though my form could be improved. I did five (not one set of five, but five sets of one, or more accurately three sets of one and one set of two, which is about all I want to put on my abs at the moment, because it really does stress them to the max. Tomorrow, it's gonna hurt, and Sunday I want to roll.

Rest assured, dear reader, that you will not have to wade through microdetails of my fairly ordinary numbers and achievements. This is more about challenging my self-imposed limits and self-image, and is way more mental than physical. Challenge and living outside the comfort zone is what develops and sustains a warrior.