Enter The Danny: Final Round

"Above all, the Way of the Samurai should be in being aware that you do not know what is going to happen next, and in querying every item day and night.  Victory and defeat are matters of the temporary force of circumstances."  From The Hagakure: The Way of the Samurai

This should have been up last night, but Courtney and I had a date to celebrate her passing her CCRN exam, and I just didn't feel like interrupting a rare night together to come type this up!  By the way, the place we went for dinner was great.  If you live in Lubbock, Gilbert's Bar & Grill has a reservations-only dinner on Saturday nights.  It's served family style to your table, and you don't order, they just bring out platters of fantastic Chinese food.  Try it out.  Let us know if you're going, because we may want to join you.

Well, I made it.  A month of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu lessons, and here I am at the end of it.  If I do say so myself, the final lesson of the month might have also been the best one.

Tony started the class with an interesting lesson and exercise.  He asked us what we do once we get our opponent into a mount or control situation.  "What you do in practice is what you're going to do in a fight.  If you hold back, you're training your mind to hold back when you compete.  You should always look for the opportunity to end the fight."  To emphasize this, we worked on two things during class: arm submissions and grip.

To illustrate the importance of grip, Tony had two of his assistant instructors and three of the absolute top students from class come to the center of the room.  Then he made them each hold two tennis balls, and sent five of us out to wrestle them.  Now, none of these guys were slouches - they still held their own, but you could tell that it was much more difficult for them to find their game than usual.  I wrestled Gabe, an assistant instructor, and held out for much longer than I could have if he'd been empty handed.

We spent the rest of class working on arm submissions from the side control position (think of a classic wrestling pin, where one arm controls the head, the other is hooked beneath an armpit, and your chest is on top of theirs).  A submission is the fastest way to end a match, but you won't get one if you can't maintain your grip on your opponent's arm.  Even if they are able to maneuver their way out of the submission, as long as you hold on to them you can work them into another.

At the end of class, we repeated the exercise where we grappled against the top people in class, making sure to stay mindful of what we'd learned.  This time I was up against Chris, the other assistant instructor.  He's a pretty fast guy.  I stood in front of him, though, and it was like things just clicked.  I passed his guard and quickly got down and into the side control position.  From behind me, I heard Tony give an impressed, "Yes!  Gooood..."  That was right up there with the guys shouting encouragement to me the other night as one of the top moments of the month.

We got back with our partners, and ended with wrestling again.  I was pretty evenly matched with Rob, a Tech student, and we kind of reached a stalemate for a while where we both had the other locked down.  Then I made my move, locked him down beneath my legs, and pulled his arm through for an arm bar.  My last match of the month, and I won it by submission.

I got in the car, turned it on, and "Staying Alive" was playing on the radio.  Damn right, BeeGees.

I'll have the month-end wrap up posted in the next day or two!

Enter The Danny: Round 11

"Even if it seems certain that you will lose, retaliate.  Neither wisdom nor technique has a place in this.  A real man does not think of victory or defeat."  From The Hagakure: The Way of the Samurai

Here we go, next to last lesson!

My partner last night was Warren, a Tech student who is studying IT.  We started talking about that before class, and he asked me some really good questions about the work that I do.  When it was time to line up for the beginning of class, we both stood up and noticed that we're pretty close to the same height (although I'm guessing that I'm about 40 pounds bigger), so we decided to train together.  He's been practicing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for about three years.

"What night are we up to, mate?" Tony asked as he walked down the line at the beginning of class.

"Eleven."

"Very good," he said, with a smile.

That made me smile, too.  I think he's surprised (as am I) that I've stuck with class for the entire month.

As class began, Tony raised a good point about the nature of training.  When each class focuses on a couple of individual techniques or positions, it's easy to start thinking of each of those things in isolation.  But a fight is not a series of isolated movements, it's a fluid thing, filled with constant transitions.  To build confidence in our transitions, we worked on two main things last night: escaping when your opponent is in the mount position over you, and then quickly moving yourself back into an offensive position.

The mount position is basically the worst place you can be if you are on the bottom.  (Behave yourselves, Ali and Roy.)  You're flat on your back, and your opponent is seated on top of you, free to do whatever he wants.  If his knees are high enough under your armpits, you won't even be able to use your arms.  You can't use your strength to get out of it, because as long as he has good balance and center of gravity, he's not going anywhere.  Maybe, while reading that last sentence, you figured out what has to be done in order to escape - disrupt your opponent's balance.

Here is a thing that still amazes me about this class.  So many of the things we learn don't rely on strength at all, just  physical principles.  If you perform action X, your opponent's body will have reaction Y.  One of the escapes we learned last night started by bridging your hips into the air and pulling forward on your opponent's hamstrings.  You don't even have to pull hard, the guy will fall forward every time.  Every time!  From there, we learned different ways to attempt to open space between yourself and your opponent, so that you can either work your way out or work your way into a more advantageous position.

One more lesson, and then I'll post my wrap-up this weekend.  I also have an exclusive interview with Tony Bonello coming soon!

Enter The Danny: Round 10

"To give a person an opinion one must first judge well whether that person is of the disposition to receive it or not....  Praise his good points and use every device to encourage him, perhaps by talking about one's own faults without touching on his, but so that they will occur to him.  Have him receive this in the way that a man would drink water when his throat is dry, and it will be an opinion that will correct faults."  From The Hagakure: The Way of the Samurai

First things first - I'm pleased to tell you that Zach Haney, my classmate at Blackbelt Universe, won his fight in Arlington this weekend!  The fight went three rounds, and he won by a submission in the third round.  I'm happy for him, and also kind of amazed.  Not amazed that he won, because he's really good, but just amazed at the stones that it takes to fight in front of that many people.  I've only spoken with Zach a few times, but he's a really mild, thoughtful guy.  The dude wears glasses!  But he has the courage and the drive to put his skills to the test in that kind of venue, and that's really impressive to me.  I guess it all comes with training and experience.

I used to perform on an improv comedy troupe in college, and was often asked how we came up with ideas on the spot.  The answer was just that we spent a lot of time practicing together.  Even though there's a widely known (and just as widely attributed) quote, "Dying is easy, comedy is hard," it never really occurred to me to be nervous once we stepped onstage.  It all comes with practice.

Here is how last night's class started: Tony announced that we have focused heavily on technique for the past few weeks, and that this class was going to be much more physical.  Well, crap - I kind of felt like we'd already been pretty physical!  He demonstrated two lockdown moves to pin your opponent with, and then set us loose to practice them.  Usually that means that each partner runs the move on each other a few times before Tony shows the next thing, and we end class with sparring.  Last night, he told us just to wrestle until one of us either held the other in one of the finishing positions for three seconds, or until somebody submitted, and then he set us loose.  Ten minutes of demonstration, fifty minutes of grappling.

I started class with Clayton, who I hadn't seen before, so I thought he was a beginner like me.  Wrong.  Clayton has been doing this for a while, and just started coming again after recovering from a broken finger.  Sometimes when Tony sees that partners are too unevenly matched, he'll assign you to work with somebody else, and that's how I ended up working with Jay again.  Jay and I fight at about the same level.

For last night's practice, Tony wanted us to start with one partner standing, and the other on the ground with his legs up and on guard.  If you are the standing partner, this is actually a fairly difficult position to work your way inside of.  Jay and I rolled for a few rounds, and then on one, I quickly dived in, brought his legs up to my shoulders, locked them in, and went into what I now think of as my go-to move (that I mentioned on night 8), where I flip my opponent over and fall into a headlock position.  Unfortunately, this also twisted Jay's neck more than was good, and he had to sit out for the rest of class.  I checked on him at the end, and he's OK, but I felt pretty bad about it.

This left me partnerless, with about 30 minutes of class left.  I just stood there looking dumb for a minute (something I'm pretty good at), before somebody else asked if I wanted to practice.  It was Andrew again (*sigh...*), and his partner Joe needed a minute to rest.  This set the pace for the rest of my night - I moved from partner to partner each time somebody else needed a rest, and ended up fighting four other guys besides Jay.  It was exhausting, but along the way, a really cool thing happened.  Tony was occupied with wrestling one of the other instructors, so these guys started instructing and drilling me themselves.

After Andrew and I fought, he complimented me, and said I'd improved even since last week.  He said that I was especially good at finding gaps and getting hooks under them.  He told me, though, that instead of trying to force my way up with my elbows when I'm down, that I need to put that weight on my opponent and tire them.  I tried it on him in our next round, and it worked!

Then I fought his partner Joe, a burly guy with short dreadlocks.  He is really good at nailing down your legs so that you can't escape, and then executing whatever moves he wants to.  After we fought, he told me some things that I could try so that I could free my legs.  I tried it, and it worked!

Next, Nick and Anthony, two brothers who train together a lot, took turns working with me.  These guys were much smaller than me, and are lightning fast.  Joe's game is strength, these guys focus on movement.  I fought Nick first, and then Anthony.

Here's where it got really cool.  I was wrestling Anthony, and all of the other guys I'd practiced with gathered around to watch.  They were cheering for me, and shouting encouragement!  They were calling out reminders of things they had taught me so that I'd remember to try them during the fight.  Ultimately, I lost, but Andrew helped me up off the mat, and they all patted me on the back and told me it was a good match.  It was maybe the best part of this month so far.

The bruise on my chest has faded, but here's how my biceps looked when I got home last night.  I still have no idea how the bruises formed in such a strange pattern.  I know this picture is weird - it's two pictures side-by-side.

Enter The Danny: Round 9

"I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times." - Bruce Lee

Two and a half weeks ago, I really didn't think I'd be at the point where I'm at right now.  With only one week left to go, I'm nearly through with the whole month!  Every time I think I'm getting pretty well acclimated to class, something switches up, and leaves me sore all over again, but I'm learning to weather it better.

Speaking of switches, last night's class was a much different experience from the others.  One of our classmates, Zach, is competing in a professional MMA bout this weekend in Dallas!  Tony and Nate both traveled with him to be in his corner (it's so weird to use that phrase in its actual, originally intended sense), so our class was led by Chris and Gabe.  Gabe is another of Tony's assistants, and Chris usually teaches the children's class that meets right before ours.  Both of them have trained in martial arts for a long time.

I think that a lot of guys either only want to be there if Tony is teaching, or they just decided to take a long weekend, because the class was about half the size that it usually is.  This was actually kind of nice, because there was more room to work in.  Also nice?  Gabe and Chris left the two fans in the wall turned on so that there was some air moving while we worked out.  I've been trying to work with different partners as much as I can this month, so that I can get to know more people and experience a variety of experience levels.  I ended up working with Chad again last night, though, simply because the class was so small, and most of the guys who were there were at a much higher level of experience than us.

As I mentioned in my last post, Chad is a great training partner.  He offers constructive hints to help improve your technique, he acknowledges good moves, and he encourages.  One of his long-term goals is to open a non-profit women's self defense school.  I like training with him.  Last night, however, I think he may have been better off working with somebody besides me.  Obviously, if you were ever to bust out your Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu moves in a street fight someday, you'd have no control over the size of your opponent, but in a competitive environment, you go up against guys in your same weight class.  I'm going to guess that I'm about nine inches taller and fifty pounds heavier than Chad.  When you're just running drills for most things, it's no biggie, but some of the things we were doing last night were making him stretch waaaaay farther than he should have safely had to do, just so he could get himself positioned right.  Poor guy.

The things we worked on last night were mainly more moves from the full-mount position, aimed at getting a submission.  There was a wrist bar move, a choke hold with your opponent's neck between your arms, and a move where you shift your weight off of your opponent only to trap his head beneath your leg.  The last one is the one that Chad should have been able to practice with somebody closer to his size, because it kind of required him to be both near my head and leg at the same time, and it just wasn't happening.

Still, it was a very good class.  Gabe and Chris like to spend a lot more time working on single things, until everybody in class is up to speed.  With the smaller class size, they were easily able to make their way around the room and spend time working with each individual.  For sparring time, after Chad and I went for a while, we all switched, and I rolled with a guy named Andrew.  I already know Ali will make fun of how gay this sounds, but the dude had a seriously charming Latin accent.  Also, seriously intimidating arms.  We wrestled a couple of rounds, and I told him I was afraid I was slowing him down, and he just smiled and said, "We're both where we need to be, man."  I'm continually surprised by the lack of ego that is in this class.

Today I took the kids swimming, and wondered why the ladies in the chairs on either side of mine gaped in horror when I took my shirt off.  Then I remembered the baseball-sized bruises on my chest and left bicep, and the mat-burn on my right shoulder.  I'm starting to think of them as badges of honor.  I understand how people can get so into this now.

Enter The Danny: Round 8

"Shida Kichinosuke said, 'At first it is an oppressive thing to run until one is breathless.  But it is an extraordinarily good feeling when one is standing around after the running.'"  From The Hagakure: The Way of the Samurai

At the beginning of each class, Tony has all of the students line up against the wall of the gym, where we bow to him, and he bows to us.  Then he makes his way down the line, bumping fists with each of us and collecting our attendance cards.  Sometimes he'll crack a joke or two with some of the guys.  Last night when he bumped my fist, he asked, "What night are we up to?"  Night eight.  "Are you learning anything?"  I think so!  "Learning how to tap, right?"  That one made me laugh.

Yesterday, Lubbock broke a weather record - the most days over 100 degrees within a single year.  The previous record was 29 days, set in 1934.  Yesterday was the thirtieth day so far this year, with many more unfortunately predicted.  As I mentioned in the first post of Enter The Danny, Blackbelt Universe has no air conditioning.  Yesterday's class might have been the sweatiest hour of my life.  No exaggeration - I weighed myself before and after class, and there was nearly five pounds difference.

My training partner last night was Chad, the same guy who I worked with on Night 4.  We spent the class working on further techniques from the half guard, including knee bars and working your way out of the guard and into a full-mount position.

Sparring time started earlier than usual last night, and went later, so that there was about 25 minutes of sparring in all.  Tony usually has us switch partners partway through, but he was practicing with one of his assistant instructors last night, so Chad and I spent the full time together.  I've definitely still got my weaknesses, but I'm also beginning to discover a few very reliable strengths, namely my height and my legs.

I've always had pretty strong legs, and I'm finding that I can break my way out of nearly any hold as long as I can get them under me and stand up.  Sometimes that's much harder than it sounds, but that's where the height comes into play.  The extra height gives me some added leverage that comes in handy when I'm breaking loose.  I've even kind of developed a go-to move using that advantage.  As long as I can reasonably control my opponent's legs, I can get to a standing position, flip them into a prone position, and go into the neck hold that I had success with on night 4.

When both of us had wrestled so much that we couldn't go any more, we got a drink, and Chad complimented me on my improvement over last time we'd worked together.  Then he told me to look at the results of the June tournament on the website when I got home.  "The name at the bottom, in last place?  That's me.  But I get better every time I come, and you are, too."

Enter The Danny: Round 7

"There are times when a person gets carried away and talks on without thinking much.  But this can be seen by observers when one's mind is flippant and lacking truth.  After such an occasion it is best to come face to face with the truth and express it.  The truth will then be arrived at in one's own heart, too."  From The Hagakure: The Way of the Samurai

Except for a brief, disastrous stint on the eighth grade basketball B-team, I have never played team sports.  I was on the swim team through junior high and high school, which technically still made me part of a team, but it's still a solo endeavor.  For a guy who spends a healthy amount of time inside his own head, it's a perfect sport, because when you're in the water there's nothing to do but think.  You can't talk with your teammates, the scenery consists entirely of the feet of the swimmer in front of you, and the repetitive motion and breathing puts you into something almost like a trance state.  There were times I wrote entire papers in my head during workouts, and then put them down on paper once I got to school.

This was an aspect of sports that really appealed to me, the introspective part.

Last night I told a lie to my parents.  It was a panicked moment where I wasn't sure what to say, and I used the first believable thing that came to mind.  The thing is, even as I told the lie, I knew that I couldn't sustain it, and that I'd have to tell the truth eventually.  Here I am, 35 years old, still letting nerves get the best of me when I talk to my folks.  They had invited us over for dinner, and then offered to keep the kids while I went to class.

In class, I partnered with Jay again.  He's a good guy, I like him.  The class focused on the half-guard position.  Take your right foot and put it up on your left knee, so that your legs make a 4.  Now imagine that you are lying down and you have a guy's leg trapped in there.  That is the half guard.  We spent the first part of class working on what you can do next if you have somebody in your guard, and the last part working on how to shut those things down if you are the guy on top.  I'm not going to spend a bunch of time describing them.

At the end of class, when it was time to wrestle, I can't really describe what happened, but Jay and I both really switched it on.  Like I said, he's a nice guy, but there was a point when I looked into his face and it was just a mask of aggression.  Even though I couldn't see my own face, I suddenly felt it in detail, and knew that it was a mirror of his.  And then, I don't know - I just went inside.  My mind was both in the fight and a thousand miles away from it.  I knew in that moment that I needed to tell the truth, and how I was going to do it.

Both of us won a couple of falls, and then we had to quit from sheer exhaustion.  On the last one, he put me into an arm bar, and it hurt.  Telling my parents I'd lied to them hurt, too.  There was no tapping out of it.  I'm not entirely sure where the situation is right now.  But I am glad that I had the chance to look inside for long enough to strengthen my resolve.

Enter The Danny: Round 6

"In addition to having spoken sufficiently it is the highest sort of victory to teach your opponent something that will be to his benefit.  This is in accordance with the Way."  From The Hagakure: The Way of the Samurai

TGIF, man.  Or thank goodness yesterday was Friday.  TGYWF.  Each time I do one of these blog projects, I reach a point where I'm around halfway through, and I look at the rest of the month stretching out ahead of me, and I think, "Why am I doing this?"  Yesterday was that day with the current project.  I think that doing classes three days in a row may have been pressing my luck a little bit.  Sometimes your body sends you reminders that you are not in college anymore, and throwing yourself into combat for three days in a row makes those reminders come at a faster pace.  Somewhere in the middle of last night's class, I realized that my right hand had a tremor in it that I couldn't stop, but I think I may have just been a little dehydrated.  Today I feel like I've been to the evil chiropractor, the one who manipulates your joints to cause you maximum discomfort.  He's not covered on most plans.

This has actually become a sort of day-after game for me, counting the places where I hurt.  Today, it's both shins (from Muay Thai on Thursday), the arch of my left foot, heavy bruises on the insides of both forearms, and screaming joints in my right arm (more about that in a minute).  Also, I forgot to take off my wedding ring before class last night, and it ended up tearing the skin between my fingers.  Here's a lousy picture of it.  (It's the spot with the skin flap hanging off, which really doesn't make it look as painful as it is.)

The wedding ring injury may actually have been a subconscious effort to emulate Ali, so that my blog can get as many followers as hers has.

Tony was absent last night, treating a minor injury, so we had a guest instructor, Nate, one of Tony's assistants.  Nate seems like a very good guy, and is very gung ho.  He decided to focus the class period on working your opponent into a submission from the side control position.  Side control is pretty close to what you would think of as a classic wrestling pin, where your opponent is on their back, and you are laying across their chest with your arms locking down their head and arms.  To keep it short, we basically spent the next 45 minutes learning and performing various ways to move from that position into the arm bar.

The arm bar.  The reason why my right arm is full of quivering nerves today.  There are variations on how it is performed, but it comes down to trapping your opponent's arm between your legs, while your legs are across his chest, then leaning back and bending his arm backwards at the elbow joint.  He'll either tap out, or his arm will break.

I trained with Jay last night, who I found out is the one dude in class older than me.  We partnered well together, I think.  Both of us know that we're going to be breaking out the Icy Hot when we get home, so we only took things as far as they needed to go.  What impressed me is that he's been doing this for only about six months, and he had really good technique.  I'm learning that this is something that you can become pretty decent at if you stick with it for a while.

We also shared a pretty good silent laugh and a look that said "Fuh-huh-huck that" when Nate was demonstrating a move which included the instruction, "Now just whip your leg over like this, and bend it into this shape..."

We sparred pretty evenly at the end of class, and then Nate had everybody switch partners.  I finished class with Kyle, who is only a little shorter than me, and shaped like a big, muscular triangle.  I started out OK!  Before long, though, I was inescapably pinned, and struggling hard.  Then I had an idea.

"*gasp...* What would you do if you were in this situation?"
He stopped, thought for a second, and then thoughtfully explained and showed me different alternatives that I could use.  And then I kicked him in the nuts and put him in an arm bar.

Not really.