Golden Gloves Tomorrow Night

How often do you & your friend/significant other/mom look at each other & say:

"What do you wanna do?"

"I dunno. What do you wanna do?"

"I dunno."

Tomorrow night is the final night of the 2011 Golden Gloves competition for Travis County. Tickets are only $10!

Everyone says MMA is so brutal blah blah, because once your opponent is down you jump on him & try to pound him into submission or break one of his limbs. The thing is, boxing has always scared me way more. In MMA there are loads of ways to win or lose - choke out, tap out, knock out, or just be outmatched.

In boxing someone is hitting you in the head, hard, over and over and over. I think that's scary.

Needless to say, I'm gonna go watch some boxing tomorrow night. If you'd like to come, too, click here for more information.

http://www.co.travis.tx.us/sheriff/press_releases/golden_gloves_tournament.asp

Boxers are brave and they are incredible athletes, and boxing has been a way out of poverty for young men as long as the sport has existed. Come support these local fighters and do something different this weekend. I guarantee you'll have stories to tell at work next Monday. I hope to see you there!

The Doctor Is Not In The House

Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor, so I'm not telling you what to do, I'm telling you what I do. Use your own brain regarding your own body.

My forward fall breaks & side fall breaks are decent. My back fall breaks, not so much. We'll have to do high fall breaks at my next Phase, so at a couple of workouts every week, where I have access to a crash pad, I practice them. The goal is to help me get over the fear of falling backward through the air as much as practicing the technique.

So the other day when I was flinging myself to the ground repeatedly like some sort of confused schoolyard bully trying to steal my own lunch money, I managed to whack the back of my head on the pad quite nicely. Not too bad, no little flash of light, but a couple of hours later my neck stiffened up & didn't want to swivel my head around the way it's supposed to. No real injury, just an inconvenient boo-boo.

That night in GB's class we practiced slow sparring & Matt kept grabbing me by my headgear & slinging me backward & forward to headbutt me. I was gritting my teeth because he's already being so careful not to bust open my gut where I had the surgery, so I figured I should just suck it up. However by the end of the class someone yelled, "Stop slinging me around by my damn head, my neck is killing me!". The voice sounded suspiciously like mine - my mouth betrayed me once again. As I listened to his brief by heartfelt lecture about how it's my responsibility to tell my partner these things (shut up, please) I wiggled my head & shoulders around, & guess what? His cruel massage fixed me. My neck felt totally fine.

We get lots of inconvenient boo-boos in Krav. The question is, when do you train through it & when do you stay home & watch Family Guy? For me, the general rule is if its stiffness and soreness from training, more training will make it go away. Go to class. If it's a limb that's out of commission, I have other limbs. Make accommodations for the the injury by protecting it, not using it, etc. Go to class. If there is a risk of making an injury worse so that it will remove me from training completely for a week or more, or if my doctor says, "wake up!" then I'm watching class only, or watching Family Guy.

It can be difficult sometimes to be objective about our own lives and our own bodies, so the goal is to take one's ego out of it. Training when our situation is less than perfect teaches us to endure and to persevere. We can do much more than we think we can, just be smart and don't make a moderately bad situation worse.

Mateo Says So

My sweet friend Matt is amazing. Seriously.

That's him in the pic with me on the top right corner of your screen. I've often wondered if he knows he makes it all look so easy, and I'm happy to find he does know that. He wrote this blog post recently for Fit and Fearless' website, and he's been gracious enough to let me borrow it for y'all to enjoy. Every word he says is true.

How To Be Amazing

Have you always been athletically gifted? Are you one of those people to whom martial arts flow from your limbs as if you were born to strike? Well if you are NOT one of those people, you are like me. I know that a lot of times when I teach class, especially Combatives Conditioning, I may make things look simple, rather, easy. I know that sometimes if you take class with me, it may seem that I struggle much less than others or perhaps not at all. Trust me, this has not always been so. Everything that I have attained thus far is a product of hard training, commitment, and repetition, repetition, repetition. Did I mention repetition yet? Good.

For the purposes of this blog, for this post, we are going to FOCUS on KRAV MAGA only, although this can be applied to almost any aspect in life.

I work like crazy at the things that I care about and appreciate. If I am not good at something, I will work at it until I am good at it. If there is an exercise I hate - I do it until I love it. I do it until I am good enough at it that only a malicious exercise combination or very ambitious amount of reps will make me weary of it. It becomes some form of obsession. Let me tell you that when I first started Krav Maga around 4 years ago I practiced EVERYWHERE. While I was in the car I would practice where my hands would be in a fighting stance and at the lights I would practice inside defenses dry. I would punch and focus on body rotation and form in the shower (slowly of course). If I ever did any ab workout or was just lying on the ground watching TV I would ALWAYS get up "the Krav Way". I would turn corners in the house with elbows, hammerfists, whatever I could think of! ... What is the point in all of this? The point is this - although I might make it look easy, which sometimes it might be for me now (depending on technique), it has only become so because I put in the work and continue (keyword: CONTINUE) to do so.

We have just concluded the New Years Resolution month - that means, it's time to separate the "Talkers" and the "Doers". Those that talk of big change, of moving forward, and of perfecting a technique or skill-set AND...those that ACTUALLY DO IT. Be the one that DOES it. There doesn't have to be any losers either. If you are reading this post there is no reason you can't be a "Do-er"

So a student comes in, he wants to learn Krav Maga. He starts training and then gets distracted, he does a technique a few times and wants to do something else. He does a gun disarm five, six, times and says, "I got the basic idea." No my friends, this is not the way, this is not the way of the warrior, this is not the way MY instructors trained - this is not the way I train - this willnot be the way you train.

Commit to your training - do whatever is necessary to be the best for yourself, for your family. Use wraps and gloves, take cardio class to gain some endurance, take conditioning classes, get some private lessons, use the Level 1 classes to PERFECT the techniques you "already know" - if you are a level 2+ student please do not get caught in the mental trap of being "too skilled" for Level 1 classes either! Commit to yourself - commit to your training and do whatever is necessary to achieve your goals!

I was focused on what I needed to do, nothing else mattered. It is simply a mindset. You go for it, you don't stop and look to the side of the road; you just keep driving. It all starts in your head.

Do today what others won't and tomorrow you will do things others can't!

Here, bite this bullet...

Sometimes the stuff we do in Krav is painful so I don't want to do it. During an exercise I might find myself backing away when instead I should be driving forward. I see this all the time in others, as well, so I will share a little trick I was taught by my friend and former Chayon-ryu instructor Glenn G.

So says Glenn:

Pain is usually your body telling you that something's wrong, so it's natural to try to avoid it or be frightened by it. When an exercise hurts, first decide if you're in any real danger. If you're not, tell yourself, "It's only pain. I'm not in any danger, I'm not going to die, and the pain will go away. It's temporary, and it's only pain."

At first I thought he was messing with me. Then I was annoyed with him for giving me terrible advice.

But sure enough, the next time I found myself in that situation I told myself, "It's only pain..." and it worked! I stopped being afraid of it, gritted my teeth & just accepted that it was part of the deal. I accepted what it was and what it wasn't, and it became a lot easier to live with.

Why not give it a shot?

Austin's Murder Rate Hits 13 Year High

But that's not the real news. The real news, for Kravists, is that of the 37 people murdered in 2010, 22 were killed by someone they knew. 11 people were murdered by a person with whom they were intimate (roommate, family member, etc.) In fact, the sharp rise in the murder rate is primarily due to increased domestic violence.

We often train with the sudden attack from a stranger in mind - the faceless, nameless "bad guy". But the reality is, most attacks come from someone we know.

Nobody wants to think about this, because it's extremely disturbing, but the numbers don't lie. Assuming you survive, the psychological damage caused by being assaulted by someone you know - maybe even someone you love - can be devastating.

Most often, there are warning signs that a person in our lives is a potential attacker, but we ignore them, because the thought is too painful to entertain. Nevertheless, if your partner, friend or co-worker exhibits some of the following traits you have reason to be concerned:

**If you feel you are or might be in danger - trust your gut! This might seem obvious, but many people have come to regret telling themselves, "I'm just being silly..."

**The person has used violence to control others in the past - especially if they blame the victim because "they deserved it".

**The person has used violence against animals.

**The person has a fascination with weapons, especially their use as a source of power.

**The person insists on knowing where you are at all times.

**The person destroys material things - particularly objects owned by the subject of their anger or defaces photographs of the person they're angry at.

This is just a brief list, the first ones that come to mind when I think back to the book Gift of Fear. I will say one thing: if a person has used violence against others in the past, but you think they'd never do that to you... I'm about to say something offensive: You're not special. A person who uses or has used violence to control or punish others feels justified in doing so, regardless of who they are hurting.

If you'd like to read the Statesman article, click here:

http://www.statesman.com/news/local/austin-homicides-up-in-2010-especially-those-linked-1188445.html

Struggling vs. Fighting

When a person has been assaulted, they often say about the incident, “I tried to fight”, and indeed they did try. But often they were not fighting, they were struggling. There is a great difference, and that difference is primarily mental. Sadly, it is often also the difference between victory and defeat - in a situation where victory means only survival and defeat means death, rape, or permanent injury, the stakes are very high.

To struggle is to resist. To struggle is to actively respond to the actions of the attacker - but you are only responding. We can see this most readily in class in bear hugs from behind with the arms caught. The defender bases out, wiggles fiercely, grunts, exhausts himself and wonders why the technique “doesn’t work”. His frustration mounts.

What must change is the defender’s mental attitude. He must go from “The attack is on, I must respond and defend myself” to “HOW DARE YOU TOUCH ME I WILL DESTROY YOU”. For many new students this mental switch can be a tremendous challenge.

To fight is to attack. We do not respond to the actions of the attacker, we make him respond to ours. We strike relentlessly until the threat is neutralized, which means not only that they are no longer attacking, but that they are no longer willing to and/or capable of attack. This could be something as simple as delivering a quick groin strike and running away, if there is a safe place to run to. It could also mean something more.

We can see this again in bear hug from behind with the arms caught: the fighting student bases and spaces aggressively and starts shooting elbows back and fists forward like an enraged beast, stomping and kicking back with his feet as much as maintaining his base will allow, and as soon as the arms around him have loosened, he whirls around and furiously attacks the attacker.

This is the nature of self defense: taking control of the situation and keeping that control. As I say in class, it’s not over ‘til I say its over.

How can you start to train yourself mentally to move from one who struggles to one who fights against an attacker? Try these tactics:

1. Learn to set boundaries in your daily life. Practicing saying “no” and sticking to it, without excuses or apologies, will give you more confidence on the mat. Become accustomed to standing your ground in small matters, and the big ones will be conquered more easily.

2. In class, choose a partner who likes to go just a little bit harder than you do. Just a little bit. This will give you a higher standard to strive for, and give you the freedom to strike a little harder than you’re accustomed to.

3. If necessary, tell your partner that you have a hard time hitting aggressively and you’re trying to overcome that roadblock. Most people want to be helpful, and will happily encourage you and guide you.

4. If you still find yourself holding back, find someone much larger than you to hold the pad for combatives or attack you during self defense. Then hit!

5. Learn to objectively assess a situation for the level of danger it presents. This will be the subject of another blog entry, but until then I strongly recommend you read the book The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker.

Understand that being aggressive with your combatives doesn't mean you will become an aggressive or offensive person off the mat, unless you make the choice to do so. Working on expanding the limits of your capabilities in class, however, will affect the rest of your life in a very positive way. Learn when to exhibit control and when to go all out, and you will be surprised at what you can accomplish!

I Got In Trouble With My Mom

I am reprimanded for 2 things regarding this blog:

1 - I swear too much, including blasphemy.
2 - I denigrate my own accomplishments too much & don't give myself enough credit.

My official response:

1 - I do swear quite a bit, don't I? I love a good swear word. Take the "F" word, for example. Crispy on the outside, soft on the inside just like a quesadilla. It's a hardworking word, too, being a verb, a noun, and an adjective. I think its quite beautiful.

Regarding blasphemy and other swear words, I told her the following.

"Mom," I said, "God likes me and I like God. We have a good relationship. And He says that He's noticed I don't rape & murder people, or molest children, or set dogs on fire, so He told me He's going to let this one slide."

2 - It's also true that I write a lot about my shortcomings in Krav. This is because I generally tend to think of what I want to improve instead of ruminating on how well I keep my back heel up in fighting stance. In the interest of parity, and because I love my mom & want her to be happy, here is a list of Krav things I do well:

*I am a hard worker. I continued to come to class the entire two months my injured shoulder left me incapacitated, and I still rarely miss a session.
*I do not quit easily. Twice I've had to leave class to vomit, and both times I've immediately staggered back into the room to finish training.
*I care about my students and want them to succeed, and will jump through any number of hoops to help bring this about.
*I am very teachable. If my instructor tells me to fix something, I always try do so as quickly as possible, preferably immediately.
*I am a good teacher. I really believe that, and it makes me incredibly happy.
*I work on my weak points as soon as I recognize a problem, and do not stop working on them until they are better. Right now my weakest skill is sparring, so instead of practicing my front kick, which is already strong, I'm doing a lot of sparring. It's kind of embarrassing, but that's the door I have to walk through to get to where I want to be.
*I'm outperforming some people half my age. Bwahahahaha!
*I'm not as good as I want to be, but I'm a whole lot better than I was. I earned this.
*I smell like roses. This is a verifiable fact.

Ta dah!