Jan 25/16 Mon BJJ

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Wow tone of new guys and gals OMT…

https://www.instagram.com/p/BA_MI8DpgIe/

Show up and train…

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#greatclass

Class was a great… had a visitor from Toronto, Natasha. Trains at Body of Four, with Mike Aviado and those group of killers. Have only met him a few time at the Ontario Open, seems like a great guy, even have him a a BJJ Facebook friend lol… hoping to roll with him one day.
Thor had us do a standard warm-up, then he got us to review a closed guard back take, then a closed guard arm-bar. Fan-freaking-tastic. I didn’t roll, due to my wrist. Could barley do a few of the warm-up exercises… still tried.

Partnered with Mitch… kid is picking up things quick. Training hard and a lot had his first competition not too long ago… i commend him. Competition isn’t for the weak. We repped out the back take, then the arm-bar quite a few times.

#everyonehasaprice

Word… Thor’s recruited a few potential BJJer’s from his work. Fan-freaking-tastic, had an extra Gi to lend one of them. That I’ve only worn once. I have the identical Gi in an A0 and all patched up… It’s an A1 in case I ever gain the weight back and need it to be IBJJF legal.

#Truth

I Gi hoard, truth i think of weird stuff like that. Especially if you like the style and brand. Fact is the A0, I still use in my rotation regularily, so you never know. But… I had an extra Gi to lend.

Turned out homie wanted to borrow it for a week. lol
That’s like lending your under wear out…  yeah no lol.

Either-way, I told the new guy that I’ll be taking it home and washing it right after. He asked if he could borrow it for a week or so until he figured out buying a Gi . In which I said no… I like my Gi’s cleaned regularly with after every use. I remember my first Gi as a white belt. It sure as hell wasn’t and I bought it, if I was lent one… I would have treated it worse. I ended up throwing it away, a Royal blue Reevo, very old model with no patches lol. He then asked if whether I would sell it… the following things popped into my head.

  • I have this exact GI one in a A0…
  • I wasn’t really gonna gain any extreme weight back…
  • I wore this particular Gi only once…

I offered it to him for $150 Canadian, which I thought was fair under the circumstances, I wasn’t in no way going to lend it to him for a week lol weird… especially since I didn’t even know him or whether he would return, or how he would actually treat it… He said that he would think about it and let me know after class. I agreed. I also lent him a white belt, which was my very first one… I told him he could get a GI online for $100 Canadian. I wasn’t intending to sell it or lend it out for a week lol. Shoot that’s weird,  especially when you know how much you perspire while training BJJ and the idea that it would be well taken care of made it easy to say no, I’ll just take it home.

I bought that puppy brand new for $104.00 USD, with shipping and handling at $25.00 USD & taxes $16.77 USD … that being said, totaled $145.77 USD.

The exchange rate not even sure back then… the bill on my paypay indicated 145.77 USD. However, currently…

exchange 1

$206.86 Can lol…

They GI I plan on selling doesn’t exist anymore at $150 CN… but these are very similar prices.

Redstar

soooo… $119 + $25 Shipping + $18.72 tax = $162.72 USD

exchange 2

$230.91 Can lol

That being said my original offer of $150CN was legit… he got a deal. My white belt however… guess he didn’t want the hassle of buying one online… I wasn’t going to sell it to him, but when he said $200 for both… 

#deal

I was gonna give my kid that white belt… but for 50 bucks, I can buy 10 of them lol.

#everyonehasaprice

One of my homies said I was a ruthless business person… I think it was pretty realistic that my original price of $150 CN was more then fair lol…

The logic and numbers don’t lie…

Truth is when you talk about a fair price, its always dependent on what the consumer market has the ability to spare. If they can afford it, they will pay for it. People don’t buy Rolex’s because they are dependable… they buy them because they can lol. However, unfortunately price can also be a delusion of dependability, and hold a high standard. 

If they can’t afford it, and still want to pay for it, you offer them a solution… which I did. The belt could be bought online for $10 bucks and I even explained that he could find a Gi online for $100.

BJJ related ranting gibberish over…

#over

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Ossssss!!

 

Jan 24/16 Sun Morning BJJ

I did managed to head out to Friday open Mat on Jan 22/16… didn’t roll. Just helped J-rock out with some questions. #Injuries can’t be like that forever… rest rest rest lol. Actually promised the wife I would not roll. She let me out of the house to hang out which was nice. Sitting at home after work from sitting all day at the office sucks especially when you got the bug for BJJ…

Either way Sunday was an awesome morning… got to LEMMA around 9:05 am.

Opened up the door and boom… the air hit my face yes hot air… lovely, actually wasn’t too bad once I got in the door. Not as bad as the past few times, obviously perceptively it may change lol.

You bet got on the rower at 9:20 am.

2 sets of 2 km, then 1 set of 4 km.

2, 2 km and a 4 km… kept it under 2:30 at least!! 11 am BJJ soon!!

A photo posted by T-son Inthisone D (@bjjfourlife) on

Average was below 2:30 mins per 500 m which was good enough for me lol. I’m showing up… Not bad for an old man who’s training irregularly now due to injuries and life lol. 90 percent of success is just showing up.

Clip of some box jumping after the row session… 3 sets of 10 reps. 30 inch box jumps? Think my ankle is better, felt better so I thought I would get some box jumping in… Not even sure of the actual box height, but the highest for the boxes we got around.

Got some good advice from Veal about some technique to improve the jump. Used it… and it works, got more explosion for sure!!

lol boredom gets you video taping workouts… plus its good for media content for a blog. Just irritable and long to edit though lol.

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A clip of all our training below… fun fun lol

We have a 49 year old dude that trains with us and shows up pretty regularly, when hes not working… I commend him. He just got his Blue Belt last year, seriously respect. A lot of time on the mat for that!

BJJ can be tough, especially when you get bitten by the bug and you have other life obligations like the wife, kids, work, or other hobbies you end up putting on the shelf lol yes other hobbies.

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Can we define life in just one thing we do?

Is the yearning to live defined by scope like attempts by being choked out by your training partner or while competing?

Training BJJ is highly commendable. Very commendable. Takes patience, extreme awareness of emotional intelligence and a freaking long time to just learn… you might think your getting good at one thing, then whoop, bam… your not lol. Soo much time on the mat to end up re-evaluating your skills after a horrible roll session or competition, yep wiped out. When your knocked down, do you not get back up?

Think this is kinda the essence of life. It ain’t perfect. Things get in the way. Do you quit? do you move forward? or are you just content on your current well being? There is a lot of sports or hobbies that could give you this same sensation. Especially combat sports like MMA, Muay Thai, Boxing in general? any fighting really… longevity, life expectancy, incurring long term physical damage another story. Obviously we’re talking about competitive training… not the excercising and physical workouts required to complete the acts, like boxercising or that kickboxercising dance stuff, like man. 

Your not a Muay Thai, Boxer, or even a Karate fighter unless you actually spar or fight with someone… or are you?

You train in a combat art for killing by which you don’t actually train against a resisting opponent? how effective would that be in real life which such a variant of circumstances? kinda what Gracie University was doing for a while with guys submitting video logged of technique to attain a belt on non resistant opponents. Right?

lol a Blue Belt without ever training with a resisting opponent… excellent ideals… washing out BJJ for a bunch of money. Consumerism and capitalism at its greatest. Sure they learn BJJ, sure they learn some kinda self-defense. But really do they? I get this may be helping BJJ grow, which in the end is great… but is it really? Look what happened to Karate. Sell the belt, make Karate a product, make it grow… Karate is an effective art. Just washed out… everyone one has a black belt, 2 years for a 13 year to get a black belt? Dfck lol… seriously… washing out the actual meaning of Black Belt. 

Karate!!
Found this karate rash guard for my buddy… hahahah

Karate rash guard

For Muay Thai the life expectancy of a fighter is what 30 years old in Thailand? not even sure… fighters live for the fight, live the living, and die training to support themselves.

Great blog below.

Here’s a good forum discussing of the life expectancy below.

Here’s a good article for life of a Muay Thai fighter below.

Reality is if you get out alive, there is long term damage from getting hit in the head repeatedly lol… Boxing I would imagine is another lol.

“Over time, professional and amateur boxers can suffer permanent brain damage. The force of a professional boxer’s fist is equivalent to being hit with a 13-pound bowling ball traveling 20 miles per hour, or about 52 times the force of gravity.
According to the Journal of Combative Sport, from January of 1960 to August of 2011, there were 488 boxing-related deaths. The journal attributes 66 percent of these deaths to head, brain or neck injuries; one was attributed to a skull fracture.
There are boxers with minimal involvement and those that are so severely affected that they require institutional care. There are some boxers with varying degrees of speech difficulty, stiffness, unsteadiness, memory loss and inappropriate behavior. In several studies, 15-40 percent of ex-boxers have been found to have symptoms of chronic brain injury. Most of these boxers have mild symptoms. Recent studies have shown that most professional boxers (even those without symptoms) have some degree of brain damage.” Verbatim from the article I read below,

Crazy!! no? Seriously though, what kind of damage is sustainable damage to the head? These articles below speak for themselves.

Interesting article about the load a boxer can produce when punching someone in the face. Pretty remarkable.

Can you actually really train these kind of combat sports effectively, competitively to not sustain this kind of actual damage? I’m sure you can make those decisions on your own… lets get punch drunk!! Either way scary like the above article indicates. I commend all those that fight for a living, its a hard knock tough life, which the path is ridiculously hard.

#respect

Either way I read somewhere that Rickson Gracie got involved with his nephews shenanigans and now they are revamping their logic… gotta roll guys lol, not rocket science or what, at least physics, applied physics? Money ain’t everything.
#Fantastic
lol

BJJ compared to the rest of these combat sports is definitely the gentle art within the combat realms in comparison.

I choose BJJ, continue to train BJJ. I can go 150% with willing partners or just compete and not sustain the long term damage to my head as compared to a competitive striker of any other Martial Art… unless I get need or accidentally punched in the face, hopefully not ever loose an eye from eye gouging.

#knockonwood

Not mocking it, whatever floats your boat and gets you off the couch… I used to make fun of the wife for her Zumba. Reality was, I didn’t mind, as long as it made her happy and feeling good.

She doesn’t need to know that… making her think that I think that I am the man… reverse psychology lol. hah!

My satrire somewhere up there? lol

#gibberish
#BJJfourlife
#BJJ4life

#endrant

Eitherway, regardless of my gibberish… continue to do what you like doing. Its just my gibberish.
Osssss!!

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Jan 17/16 Sun Morning BJJ

#whitbeltarmy

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In hopes they continue the journey!

Got to LEMMA around 9:10 am… no Keith the paramedic guy. Oh well at least it was a quite morning like most for the past few years lol. Aside for when Nathan used to join me to lift which burnt time for sure. Always been a good opportunity to reflect. Zoning out is hard when someone is trying to talk to you lol.

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I want to zone out when I train… I want to be in a state of constant metacognition, subconsciously learning during a really long roll. Is that even a thing? Can you zone out while driving, running, rolling and continually be able to function while doing such things effectively? am I speaking outa my ass? how is this possible? I used to train Muay, play soccer, tennis, snow board, lift weights regularly, and a lot of freaking basketball.

Zoning out while performing those activities was easy… in the moment.

Yep all these activities while I was younger… pretty good at them in fact, or at least I thought lol. 
While rolling it is even easier, that is, when all the stars are aligned lol… great temperature, trance beat, great vibes, seriously the here, the now.
No injuries, great flow, surviving, moving from one position to the next, countering your opponents counter and not even thinking about it.
Just doing it.

Just do it!!

Beautiful!!

Metaphysical?

Or

Metacognition?

Thinking about the best way to be thinking?

A higher order thinking?

Control over the cognitive processes engaged in learning?

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Must be talking out my ass…

Zoned out while rolling…

Shit can’t be real…

But being in the moment… is real.

Attuned

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I need this…allows my internal state to resonate within my inner self to reconnect with the world and feel alive.

#Darnit.

I did roll.

Not good though wrist got grabbed and banged up, even though it was taped. Man. messed… stupid me.

A clip of us training this past Sunday morning…

Took Monday to Friday off this week… hopefully it will help.

Rest is part of your BJJ journey… ain’t a sprint homie, make it last!

A piece of my own advice… straight up!!

See y’all OTM soon.

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Jan 15/15 Open Mat

Got to LEMMA around 5:00 pm… only a small crowd OTM.

1 more day to catch up on BTW lol…

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Signs that peoples NYE resolutions are starting to subside? Lol

Maybe its just injuries?

Could it be sickness or colds?

Darnish… I Got it!!!

Bad road conditions!

Let me just say this past Fridays weather just sucked… been through worse up here though. Been lucky this year so far. But for this year, it sucked. Sucked bad… considering the very mild conditions as of late. By mild, I mean 20 Celsius. I remembered last year -45 degrees Celsius now… yes lol nuts. Friday just happened to be a lot of snow lol. Soooo….much, I found out my 4×4 on my Jeep was blown… or seized. Whatever lol… got stuck in my works parking lot from about 7:00 am to 7:15 am trying to dig it out until the fellow we rent the office from came by to help nudge me out… hilarious. LOL

Honestly, this past Friday was a tell tale that I shouldn’t have gone to open mat lol.

#injuries
#badweather
#blown4x4

Reality is I should have taken a dose of my own advice.
When your injured stay off the mat. Seriously though…

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Hard to say, “you walk the walk, when you don’t walk it” lol…

Maybe it’s an ego thing even though. Especially when your injured. The best advice ever I’ve received from an experienced black belt.

“When you are injured, don’t show up to class… the temptation to roll is persuasive.”

2 steps forward, then 4 steps back lol… Too macho to realize it. Consequential, stay injured or make your injuries worse. Been kinda lucky with my ankle with all the reinforcement, ibuprofen, tape, and battle balm helping out. But man, between the toes, & now my wrist… body is telling me to take a little break… seriously. Lol

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Ain’t I getting younger?

Either way I had somewhere I had to be for 7:00 pm… so I quickly set the rounds for 10 mins.

Only guys there were partnered up… again on 4 guys. Small group lol.

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Hilarious

Either way homie showed up around 5:15 pm… so we started our roll at 5:30 pm. Naturally, I always acquaint my very first roll with a cool, lets warm up…  which was cool. The first 9:30 mins was cool… nice and light until the last 30 seconds. I felt a very deep collar grip sink in with all the hooks, looking at the clock 15 seconds left… no problems, defense kicked in, turned away, loosened up, buzzer went off and boom the collar grip went tighter… dfck? I spent a another 4 minutes defending that choke, then finally I got it cleared just above my chin when suddenly I could feel his body arch back with almost every muscle in his body trying to rip off my head… damn, with 30 seconds left… seriously, he wouldn’t let go… by this time after the escape, I was furious, spent, wrist, ankles and toe were not happy with me. During the escape I ended up in his closed guard… buzzer went off again and he started squeezing his legs lol…. like trying to squeeze the air outa me… wow,  in my head I was like WTF lol… maybe try bringing in your knees to your body to off balance me… either way I was angry. Really angry, spent another 6 to 8 mins working out of his furious closed guard lol… BOOM it finally breaks. I finally made my way to pass the guard, mount, worked for a top side cross collar and even a weak attempt on a arm-bar only to re-position myself with a deep collar grip with my right hand thumb in, good wrist by the way, while waiting for his away super powerful bridge and turn into me escape… I managed to grab deep under his left arm pit a very thick grip over his left shoulder which secured one of my favorite chokes… 

Weak side of course!

The paper cutter…

Which I’ve been subbed with numerous times by an old friend.

Dude moved to the dirty south for BJJ in Ontario, yep the MECCA Toronto lol…
A visit soon I suppose is indeed required… hard with the now baby duties. 
Missed those days. learned from the best, highly technical tactician for sure.  
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All for what I ask?

Seriously what?

What did I manage to do… beat my training partner?

Heck my white belt training partner. To be fair though, he does have a few stripes, has been training off and on for a few years, so he kinda has skills… heck he could definitely defend himself against a bigger unskilled opponent off the street. He’s fitter, much younger, runs, strong legs and has a similar build to myself. I’ll tell you, I have more problems rolling with guys with my build then others… yep lol hardest roll is always against yourself… Maddens me though… not that my training partner didn’t listen to the bell and let go or effective try to roll technically… but I didn’t rise to the occasion and stop it but instead lectured him afterwards.

Dude…. the bell went off stop!

Instead I prolonged the roll and continued to progress for a better position and work for a win?

Win what? Dfck… where did it get me? How did I just improve my jiu-jitsu by doing what I did? Nadda I say… nadda.

I did nothing to improve my jiu-jitsu aside from further injuring myself!

#truth

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You are your own worst enemy T-son!!!

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Regardless, I guess, the exercise was ok… even though I know I won’t be able to roll for a while to non-healing, reoccurred injuries… yep.

Gotta take some rolling time off.

Doesn’t mean I still can’t train BJJ in other ways or forms lol

Still can do technique??

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Jan 13/16 Wed BJJ

Got to LEMMA around 5:30 pm Wednesday last week.

Yes I’m still behind.

Sorry… I start these things then either the 2 little monkeys wants my attention.

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lol. Yes the dog, fur baby and my actual human baby lol.

#furbabiesneedlovetoo

Got OTM with Thor for only a few minutes left lol.

Either way, Thor ran the class… warm up consisted of us working on shrimping on the spot, then exercises to warm up the neck. Wrestling styled stuff.

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Uuuuhh my neck was sore the next morning lol.

Not to mention my wrist… dfck.

I partnered with Josh for the tech review. We worked on the arm bar with the pit stop first… Rep those out like a few hundred times. We then reviewed the switch when your opponent rips out the arm… to switch to the far side arm when they attempt to pass your guard, which should be obvious, repping it out a few hundred times.

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OR NOT hahahah?

Forget my tape and neoprene reinforcement for my ankle and wrist…

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No dice on rolling fck… seriously fck!

Probably smart of me due to my injuries anyway.

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Really though… my wrist is busted up.

I shouldn’t be rolling anyway.

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Must have subconsciously been doing myself a favor. No rolling till your hundo!!

 

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