Blue Belt...

 

I attended a grading at my BJJ school this weekend and I got my blue belt.

To say I was chuffed is an understatement. I never take any belt promotion for granted, but I felt as though I'd had a solid year where some techniques and strategies were starting to bed in.

My guard and guard attacks are better than they were, I'd added an overhook guard and attacks into the mix, I have some half guard technique, and I'm slowly learning to transition between all three positions. Much else is still pretty woeful, but there are signs if life. 

More importantly, my instructors thought so and I am now promoted. 

Getting a new belt is always daunting as you have to rise to the challenge, but it's also important not to be too worried. 

It's the same journey and the same path. It just means you've hit a different road sign telling you where you are. So I am pleased, humbled and nervous. But I'm well happy, too.

And I can now use wristlocks!

Competition Time...

Last year, I missed the BJJ Surrey Open through injury, so I was delighted to be turning up to compete at this year's event. Even better, I was in the correct age category with two other fighters who were born before 1970.

I'd put a solid couple of months of training into preparing for this and I was about as injury-free as I get these days. I'd also been really careful about making weight in the months leading up to the event, so I didn't have to lose excessive amounts in the weeks before it, and I made 181 lbs with something to spare.

My key goal at this event was to not make stupid mistakes and try to attack more, and I think I did that. 

In the first fight, I pulled guard from the off and threatened chokes from there, then got mount, tried an Ezekiel choke, spun into an armbar, got back to mount and finished with an Ezekiel choke. Although a decade older than me, my opponent was stupidly strong and was a karate fighter with 30 years experience. But I got into a dominant position and I didn't relinquish it.

In the second fight, I tried to pull guard and managed half guard. I threatened a loop choke at one point, but it was very much a game of me not managing to establish full guard or launch any meaningful offence from half, while he moved into better positions, which meant I was playing positional escape and trying to re-guard. I didn't get submitted, but he beat me by a lot of points. His frame and movement was very good and he was better than I was. 

Overall, though, I was pretty pleased with today. I'm never going to be a really aggressive or exceptional grappler, but I can be a solid one and today I felt OK to be competing again. It was also good to meet two more grapplers in the olds category.

On the mats, I'll have better days than this and I'll have worse days than this. The trick is to just keep having days and to keep learning. I think that's the right attitude.

Intensive Hapkido…

I had a full four hours dedicated to hapkido training this weekend and, for me, it was a chance to reconnect a bit.

For long periods of time recently, forcing myself to train has been a bit of a chore. It’s nothing to do with hapkido or any sort of falling out of love with it either. For the past three years, I’ve simply faced huge additional demands at work and that pressure has squeezed my free time elsewhere, and it’s affected pretty much every aspect of my life, from my family to my writing, and from my pool playing to my fledgling attempts at learning BJJ.

I have, however, managed to retain some type of weekly hapkido training schedule and my progress has maybe not been spectacular but it has steady. 

So this weekend was a time to spend a precious four hours in the dojang with my teacher and my fellow students and it was hugely enjoyable. It involved basic principles such as nailing down the fundamentals of base and balance, some work on retaining hip integrity during roundhouse kicks, and some work on employing one technique to open up others.

On the last point, we took the principle of the standing armbar and hyper-extending a joint and employed it with a thumb lock from a handshake to a kneebar from several takedowns. We even played with a rolling kneebar at one point.

We also did some sensitivity drills. This involved running through a series of wrist locks to defend wrist grabs, then repeating the exercise wearing blindfolds and executing the wristlocks bereft of the visual stimulus.

It was solid training time and a chance to reconnect mentally as well as physically with a lot of hapkido principles and techniques. It was like catching up with an old friend who’s always about but you haven’t properly seen in a while.

It also reminded me that, after about 13 years of training, I should be much better at this by now. But I'm still managing to be an OK black belt and, at 46, I’m still training and learning and, with pressing time demands elsewhere, I’ll settle for that. For now.

New Nickname...

I've been sporting excellent sideburns for a while now and my BJJ teacher thinks they're either brilliant or hilarious. The plus side of this, however, is that I have a new nickname at the BJJ school... Wolverine. 

It's a cool nickname. I am a massive comics geek and I would have paid money to have that. Sadly, as a couple of bad injuries have made very clear in the past few years, I have no mutant healing factor. I may invest in some claws, though...

Sticking Point: Part V...

Hapkido grading... done! I even think it went OK. My form and my double kicks felt a bit wonky because I'm still operating on one leg, but my techniques felt good and I felt pretty strong in sparring. I basically used what limited kicks I have left and relied on my hands, which I'm pretty comfortable with. So we'll now wait and see what the result is. 

The important thing was, pass or fail, to just get through it. After a year of annoying injury that has limited several of my martial arts ambitions in both Hapkido and BJJ, it was good to actually get something solid under my belt. The journey between first and second dan will take a bit of time so it's important to stay on course and continue to refine everything.

There were many things to admire throughout the grading: seeing junior belts go through their paces, seeing the more senior belts (who will be bypassing me pretty soon) look very impressive, and seeing my teacher and her teacher interact in that tender and respectful relationship that they have. 

The highlight of the grading, though, apart from testing alongside the ever-fierce Other Woman, was seeing the Other Woman Who Loves Other Women (or Miss Other Woman Who Loves Other Women now she's a grade higher than me) get her second dan. 

She's an astonishing martial artist. She has a relaxed grace, speed, balance and power that I constantly marvel at. She's awful to spar with because I often switch off and enjoy watching her and forget there may be a roundhouse kick en route that I'm more than capable of walking into, despite her best efforts to pull it. 

It's the sort of good day that makes occasional bad ones worthwhile.

Sticking Point: Part V...

I am grading in a week and a bit for parts two and three of my second dan in Hapkido. This is quite a lengthy process and there are about 12 parts in total so I am some way off a new belt. But, for the first time, I will be grading alongside the Other Woman, who has passed part two and is grading for part three. 

This means we are grading buddies and we will be testing at the same time. This should be a lovely and harmonious experience. Unfortunately, she is uber-competitive and it has trouble written all over it, particularly as there will be sparring involved and we are also grading with weapons.

How competitive is she? Well, she's entered a 'just-for-fun' Bake Off competition at work and she is genuinely considering poisoning the other contestants to ensure victory. 

I suggested this was not a normal course of action. She sneered. 

This morning, we stayed after class and did an hour of running through Hapkido techniques leading up to black belt. Even trying to be gentle, she was in an unforgiving mood and she seemed to enjoy wrist-locking me and slamming me to the mat a little too much. 

She then went onto to tell me that I should see these rapid and sometimes painful descents at high speed as 'mat cuddles'. 

An hour later, I am so sore from 'mat cuddles' that I can barely move. Fortunately, we have another review and grading preparation session booked in for next week. And I am going to 'mat cuddle' the fuck out of her tiny, violent and malevolent frame. 

If I can move by then...

Grappling Talk...

I’m currently injured so I’m out of regular BJJ training for a while, apart from a few open mat sessions, where I’m essentially turning up to do light rolling or drilling.

It’s not my first injury lay-off and it won’t be my last, so I try to remain philosophical. But injuries remain annoying, especially when it’s put the kibosh on all my BJJ competition plans for this year. 

I was reading an article online a few days ago, though, about an American black belt called Chris Haueter. He’s one of the so-called ‘Dirty Dozen’, a group of BJJ practitioners who were the first 12 Americans to be awarded their black belts in the US. And he said the following thing:

‘It’s not about who’s good, it’s about who’s left.’ 

I love that and it chimed with me a lot as it reminded me about my other ongoing martial arts journey. 

In Hapkido, a Korean martial art I've now studied for 13 years, I was a terrible white belt and not much better in my other early belts. I also saw younger, more skilled and more graceful students join and leave me in their slipstream as they progressed up the ranks while I struggled. Their kicking, punching, knees, elbows, takedowns, joint locks, throws and sparring were all superior to mine. 

But they didn’t stick around and I did, so I was left. And because I was left, I slowly got better. Even at the giddy heights of my current black belt, I still wouldn’t claim to be a good black belt, especially when I look around the do-jang and see other students who are faster, more technically proficient, more graceful, more balanced, etc. 

But I'll be left and that means I'll continue to improve. And that's the same approach I take into BJJ and pretty much anything else. It’s a good lesson and one that keeps me sane when injury prevents me from seriously training in either Hapkido or BJJ.

Tattoo News...

I've wanted a new tattoo for a few years now. Then the Boy got a very cool bespoke design a few months ago and I got major tattoo envy. Of my son. 

So, this week, I finally went under the needle.

I've always liked the idea of tattoos as life milestone markers on your body. I love the 'Goole' barcode on my left shoulder that the Missus bought me for my 30th birthday. It was the equivalent of human branding about the town where I'm from in East Yorkshire.

My new tattoo is similarly personal: it's an armband of my hapkido black belt. 

I was awarded my black belt more than four years ago and it's an achievement I'm proud of. It was a nine-year journey from white to black and there were many challenges to overcome, not least being really bad at it for the first three years. For the first year and a bit of being a black belt, I also didn't really feel like one. Even though the belt was won by sweat, graft and constant application over limited ability, there was lengthy 'settling in' time. 

I'm through that now and I feel as though I wear the belt and it doesn't wear me, so it finally felt appropriate to mark that particular milestone.

Inside the loops of the belt is a ying-yang symbol of two fighting wolves. This is a reference to a Native American Indian story. 

The story involves a grandfather explaining to his grandson that his tribe believes a white wolf and a black wolf are locked in a constant battle for supremacy at the heart of every man and woman. The white wolf represents virtues such as compassion, love and sympathy, and the black wolf represents negative factors such as agressions, lust and anger. The grandson asks which wolf wins the fight. The grandfather replies: 'The one you feed...' 

The story chimes with not only my hapkido journey but journeys in other areas such as my writing and my BJJ. To keep going, the white wolf generally has to win. But you do sometimes also need the black wolf. Starving him achieves nothing and you sometimes need the so-called 'negative' qualities that the black wolf is supposed to represent. 

In fact, the longer version of this story isn't about starving the black wolf at all. That's the version adopted by the religious right in the US. The Native American Indian version of this story is about keeping the two wolves existing in harmony with each other and not starving or over-feeding either. 

I love my new tattoo. It's not about announcing to the world that I am a black belt and I'm a very hard or an amazingly skilled martial artist. It's about marking a journey, celebrating overcoming difficulties and not giving in. It's also about being in a place where I feel balanced with my life.

Competition Time: Part IV...

Today, I was supposed to be competing in the Surrey Open, which was supposed to be my third BJJ tournament of the year. But I'm still recovering from injury, so, like the last one, it was a non-starter, making it a disappointing one out of three for the year so far.

A couple of my pals were fighting, though, so I went along to see what was what.

The first thing to note was that it a very well run event, with mat times and fight schedules running pretty much exactly as advertised. One of my friends picked up a deserved bronze after winning one fight, then losing the next. The guy he lost to looked much bigger and my mate had a damaged hand, so he did well not to get submitted. My other friend fought a guy who quite simply looked like an ogre, and he was eventually submitted, despite battling on very bravely against what looked like a brutal leg triangle attempt.

It was good to watch them in action, though. I then went to watch the people in the category I would have been fighting in. If fully fit, I think I'd have done OK.

But I'm slowly coming back to training and competing in the London Open in October is now the goal.

Sticking Point: Part IV...

As has been previously documented on this blog, I am learning my first martial arts weapon at Hapkido, the Korean martial art I've studied for more than a decade. 

The weapon is a short stick called a tahn bong and it's used for striking, blocking, stabbing, choking and manipulating joints. It's a little like the billy club my favourite superhero, Daredevil, uses, so I was hoping I'd be a natural with it. Sadly, I'm not. 

To improve, I've built training for 15 minutes every day into my work schedule and I've now been doing this for about six months, and, recently, I thought I was getting somewhere with it. My strikes were fluid and my striking accuracy was definitely improving. 

Then, at a couple of recent classes, I've had a few major corrections to my striking. The first was to do with excessive shoulder rotation and the second was to do with thumb placement. I was also told that I'm gripping my stick too hard. Make your own jokes… 

So I've had to re-adjust my striking technique and pretty much restructure most of my delivery. It's a bit annoying I'm not as good as I want to be, but it's all part of the process. 

At least, I'm slowly working my way through more of the second dan syllabus now. These things take time, and I'm in no rush. I also need to sometimes remember that most 46-year-olds don't even study one martial art, let alone two.

Perseverance is all. 

Competition Time: Part III...

I was supposed to be competing in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu at the Brighton Open. Unfortunately, my ribs are still healing and a recurring knee injury is flaring up, so I went along to support my team-mates and do a bit of a recce to see what the competition was like. 

My friends did very well. One blue belt pal looked pretty unstoppable in both go and no-gi, while a white belt colleague won all three of his fights to win gold in his division pretty comprehensively.

I watched the fighters in the age and weight category that I compete in and a few of them looked very good, very calm, very experienced and technically very solid. But I felt, if fully fit, I could have worked as hard as they did and have been as dynamic, which would give me a decent chance of at least not getting totally ruined against them. 

It also made me realise that If I want to compete and do well I  have to train, eat and rest properly before an event. Preparation may not be the key to winning against a more skilled fighter, but it will give me a better chance of success. 

I did see two brilliant things at the Brighton Open, though. 

The first was a young lad in a wheelchair, who had lost the use of the bottom half of his body, fighting in the event. He won a massive round of applause for both his fights and rightfully so. Getting caught up with winning and losing can sometimes make you forget that just competing and learning and improving should be enough when you're doing a martial art. It was a good lesson in humility.

The second was a young girl of about six competing. She already looked quite fluid but everyone else was just so much bigger than her. It was impressive to see, though, and again quite humbling. 

But it was a good day. Competing would have been better, but a bit of supporting and the chance to do a recce wasn't a bad second place option. 

The key tactical things I took from the day were: fighting and driving for position and securing a stronger position; and never accepting an inferior position.

Fit...

I have a few days off work so I ventured to a dinner-time BJJ class. I've been away from any serious martial arts training for a while with an injury and I'm just starting to tentatively return again.

My instructor was pleased to see me, then pointed to my stomach and suggested I'd piled the weight on in my absence. 

The class was fab but I got ruined at sparring. It was good to be back. 

Even if I am fat...

Competition Time: Part II...

My second martial arts tournament. I went to the event with three goals: to make weight; to survive a full five-minute round and not do anything reckless or stupid; and to watch what I could and learn from other people.

And all three were achieved pretty successfully. 

I even picked up a bronze medal after scraping through my opening fight, and I felt I could have maybe gone further if I hadn't suffered a rib injury two minutes into my semi-final. 

But I have no complaints. If anything, I probably over-achieved. It's a single step on a very lengthy journey and not the end destination. The key thing is I'm feeling less out of my depth at these events and I'm adding extra bits of experience.

I now need to recover from this injury as I have another event in three weeks. But I wanted to compete this year and, aged 45, I'm now doing that. I'm a very happy (if a bit of an injured) camper.

Competition Time: Part I...

I competed in my first martial arts tournament today. I was like a puppy wagging its tail before I left the house, then the Missus offered the following sage words of advice:
'Just don't do anything stupid, don't get injured and please tap out before anything breaks!' 

And I didn't get injured, do anything too stupid or get any bones broken. 

The only stupid thing I did was maybe enjoy it a bit too much – and maybe think I'd like to do more of these...

Sticking Point: Part III...

My tahn bong training continues at hapkido and today I learnt the first blocking moves. Then my teacher picked up her bamboo sword and told me block her strikes.

I utterly trust my teacher and I know she has absolute control over what she's doing with a sword, but it was still a really bizarre moment to see a big bamboo sword coming at you.

The tahn bong blocks, like the tahn bong strikes, are multi-directional and seem to be an extension of how you'd normally block with your hands. And, like blocks with your hands, you need to have the confidence to let the strikes come to you before you parry them at the last second.

This is new and difficult stuff for me and it has the requirements of time and patience written al over it. But like anything else I've done to a decent level, I'll simply stick at it and at some point will improve. I just need to make sure I put the hours in...

English Martial Arts...

Terry Brown is an English martial artist who began training in kung-fu in 1967 and has nearly five decades of fighting experience under his belt.

In 1980, he began researching English martial arts, and he's now one of the leading authorities on a vast subject that includes using weapons, such as the broadsword, the bill, the quarterstaff, the sword and buckler, and the sword and dagger, and using no weapons, which involves bare-fist fighting and wrestling.

His book, English Martial Arts (Anglo-Saxon Books, 1997) is a very informative and entertaining read, chronicling both the cultural shifts and historical conditions that, from perhaps as early as the sixth century onwards, helped forge a nation of warriors with its own indigenous fighting style.

The book not only includes a potted history of English martial arts and records its eventual decline, thanks mainly to improvements in ballistics, but also includes great stories about some of its early heroes. These include bare-fist fighting champions James Figg, Jack Broughton and Daniel Mendoza; plus some of its lesser-noted characters, such as Elizabethan sailor Richard Peeke, who was captured by the Spanish and agreed to fight for his freedom against up to six armed men at once... as long as he could use a quarterstaff. Peeke defeated his opponents and won his freedom.

The early chapters chart how the Company of Maisters, the governing body who controlled schools of self-defence and the teaching of martial arts in England, was established. The Company of Maisters was obviously important as it won royal patronage from both Henry VIII in 1540 and James I in 1605, and the 'schools of the science of defence' that flourished under the banner of The Company of Maisters were run along the lines of other respectable trades with strict rules and regulations.

The schools also had a strict order of promotion, very much like the ranking and belt system in many modern martial arts, and students first entered as a Scholar, before being promoted via a series of open challenges to the rank of Free Scholar, Provost and then Master. The Company of Maisters itself was governed by the Four Ancients, who were the four most senior members of the organisation.

Brown's book also includes details on the theory of fighting, such as the Four True Times, the Four False Times, the Four Grounds and the Four Governors, organising rules from more than 700 years ago about how and when to attack, which will make complete sense to anyone who's ever taken part in a sparring session, whether it involves weapons, hands and feet, or just hands.

It's a wonderful book that's clearly written by someone who's passionate about his subject. And it's also worth remembering that, with the current resurgence of martial arts thanks to MMA, England also has much older martial arts traditions to sit alongside its rich history of boxing and wrestling.

Anyone fancy a bit of quarterstaff work?

Sticking Point: Part II...

My tahn bong (short staff) training continues at hapkido.

I was hoping to be a natural at this because it heavily relies on hand and eye coordination, and that is a skill set I'm comfortable with. But, sadly, I was hoping to be a natural at many things in life and they never materialised. I also realised a long time ago that the concept of being 'a natural' at anything is utter rubbish, and dedication, hard work, commitment and perseverance are the only things that really matter.

Consequently, I'm spending a lot of time working on basic strikes at the moment and hoping it will all come good. I will yet be Daredevil with his trusty billy club.

Sticking Point: Part I...

I've been studying the Korean martial of hapkido for more than ten years, and every grading and every belt en route to my first dan came with its own challenges and problems.

I've now had my prized black belt for a few years and it's still a challenge to retain the standards that got me there in the first place. But, as pointed out by Winston Churchill, 'Success consists of going from failure without loss of enthusiasm.' So I just remember that struggles remain part of any process when you're trying to improve.

I started training for my second dan a while ago and I've just graded for the first part of it, so it's something I'm particularly remembering. I passed the grading so I started officially training with my first martial arts weapon yesterday.

The name of the weapon in Korean is 'Tahn bong' and this translates as 'short stick'. And I'm particularly excited about this because, as a kid (and as an adult), one of my favourite superheroes was Daredevil, a blind superhero who used a short stick.

So if times get tough and I'm struggling to learn new techniques for my second dan, I'm going to console myself with the quote from Churchill and remember work and failure always comes before success... and the fact I could be a real-life Daredevil complete with short staff in a few years.

Thrown...

In hapkido, each belt has a separate set of skills attached and I struggled through every single set of skills I had to learn on my way to black belt. At times it was a tortuous process, probably more so for my long-suffering instructor and fellow students, and even today I still find myself making basic errors on things I should know.

The only time this didn't happen, though, was on a set of skills called Yew Sool, which are the Korean equivalent of judo throws. In doing Yew Sool, I suddenly found something I could do and understood almost automatically. Suddenly my off-balancing, timing, momentum and foot movement were all happening in the correct sequence and I could throw people bigger and heavier than me.

These skills also opened up a lot of other hapkido techniques because through understanding these skills I suddenly understood what was happening with other skills and I started to realise what I'd been doing wrong and how to correct that.

Sadly, I've recently returned to these skills after not doing them for a while and suddenly I really suck at quite a few of them. And one of them in particular, which in judo is called ashi guruma or leg wheel.

I've spent a bit of time in class on this recently and I'm really struggling to collapse my opponent by dragging his right elbow across his body to collapse his hip and knee with my left lower grip, while at the same time hook punching my right arm with my higher grip to get his shoulder turning and complete the off-balancing. 

I'm starting to sort it out but it's a salutary reminder that if you don't use it (or at least practice it) then you do lose it.

Rolling News: Part II...

One of my oldest friends is now back in the UK after living in New Zealand for many years.

We're both Goolies and we both did A Levels together and our lives have intertwined at various stages over theatrical interests and martial arts interests without us actually knowing at the time... and only discovering these bizarre crossover points when we periodically caught up to discuss things.

Apart from us most recently discovering a newish shared passion for cartography, one of the things we're both a bit obsessed about is grappling and groundfighting so once we're sorted with a venue we'll be doing some rolling and some skill swapping.

I'm looking forward to this immensely. I think he is too. I can't think of a better way to reconnect with someone than to do this and in anticipation I've been going over all my old BJJ, submission wrestling, catch-as-catch-can wrestling and judo books and reading up on armbars, kimuras, Americanas and triangle chokes.

I'm even going to suggest we jokingly give ourselves a name:
Goole Wrestling Club: London Branch

It has a certain ring to it...