Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm sitting and digesting my turkey dinner as if I were a snake that had swallowed a whole ibex or something. So I thought I'd check on my much neglected blog.

And then I draw a blank. So, I hope you had a wonderful holiday, and I will check back again sooner or later. :P

Coast-to-coast seminars

Check out this link: http://www.womensgrappling.org/wordpress/upcoming-camps/seminars-for-charity

Felicia, Emily, and I are doing two seminars in November to raise funds for local charities. Felicia and I will do one on Saturday, November 13 at Felicia's academy in Woodland Hills, CA, and then later that day we will hop on a redeye to Princeton (my hometown!) to do one the next day with Emily at her new academy.

Are we crazy? No more than usual. Check it out!

And the Ragnar Relay ended today. Well, it ended yesterday, but we got back from Vegas today. Great, great fun. And I'm pooped. I'm probably the only person in the van I drove who gained weight; everyone but me ran 15-20 miles over the course of 24 hours, and I sat on my ass and ate snacks. I like to think I'm winterizing. But tomorrow it's back to my own workout regimen, among other things.

Lifting and running and driving, oh my!

Yesterday I participated in the Crossfit Football Total at Team CrossFit Academy. The CFFT is a workout where you have three chances to find your one rep max on each of four lifts. It is similar to the CrossFit Total, which is three chances on each of three lifts, some of which are the same as the ones in the Football Total. The Football Total lifts are power clean, back squat, bench press, and deadlift. I only PRed on the power clean, but I had a good time and learned a bunch about the lifts.

And then today was the Beer to Bear to Beer run. Monrovia, where TCFA is located, is in the foothills of the Sierra Madres. Thus, there is ample opportunity for trail running, hiking, and the like. So the B2B2B starts at a local bar, T. Phillips, where runners drink a huge stein of beer, takes them 2.5 miles up into the foothills where they tag a wooden bear that was installed there by I don't know who, and then brings them back down to the bar where they drink another beer.

My race was more of a beer to beer, and more accurately, a club soda to diet Coke. I skipped the bear altogether, choosing instead to sit inside, out of the rain, and tell anyone who would listen that I only run when chased. Of course, this isn't entirely true, but it gets me some laughs, which for me are as important as oxygen. And since I seriously doubt there are any restrooms along the trail where the bear is located, and since I have a bladder the size of an apricot, I would have had a logistical, er, storage problem up there on the mountain. So it was a prudent decision on my part to sit this one out.

It was a grand old time anyway. Boisterous bar atmosphere, fun conversations, and slightly loopy, slightly sweaty/rain-drenched runners.

This was the last run for many people who are preparing for the Ragnar Relay this weekend. (http://www.ragnarrelay.com/race/lasvegas) There are three or four 12-person teams from TCFA running a 200-mile race in and near Las Vegas. It starts on Friday morning and ends sometime on Saturday afternoon. Some of you may remember that I participated in a different Ragnar Relay earlier this year in SoCal--as a driver.

Yes, the relay teams need two vans each, to cart gear and the runners who are resting between legs, and they need drivers to (wo)man the vans. As I am made of all slow-twitch muscle, I can best serve a Ragnar team by hauling ass for them behind the wheel. So I'm reprising my role as driver, this time in and around Sin City. Should be fun, especially around 4am on race day, when we'll be about 18 hours into the race and still have about 12 hours to go.

Conveniently, I have blotted out what it was like last time, though I vaguely remember visiting Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles at the very end of the night, or at the very beginning of the morning, depending on your perspective. Maybe I wrote about it.

Anyway, so this week I'll be cramming 5 days' worth of stuff into 3 and a half days so I am ready to leave with my team at 1pm on Thursday. More to come!

Latest WGC caper

Women's Grappling Camp is on the move. We are holding two seminars in November. On Saturday the 13th, Felicia and I will host a seminar at her new academy in Woodland Hills, CA. I thought I had the link, but I can't get it to work, so I'm going to check back with all of you. But anyway, after the Saturday seminar, she and I will hop a redeye to Princeton, NJ, where we'll meet up with Emily and do a seminar at her new academy at the Princeton YWCA on Sunday the 14th. Pretty wacky, eh?

Proceeds are going to Safe Passage in CA and the Breast Cancer Resource Center in NJ.

The seminars are open to any and all grapplers, male, female, child, and otherwise.

More to come!

"I don't care what you think"

I've been thinking about this phrase a lot lately. About how often people say it, and about how rarely they actually mean it. Cartman says it. ("I do what I want!") Trashy people on trashy reality shows say it, usually while waggling their fingers in other people's faces, feeling the effects of a huge bender, repeatedly dropping the f-bomb, or some combination thereof.

But I also personally know lots of people who say it, including me. In my case, though, what that really means is, "I care what you think, but I'm going to do what I want to anyway. It's going to be hard, and I'm going to second, third, and fourth guess myself, and I may even lose some sleep. Goddammit, maybe I should just do what everyone else thinks I should do."

That's what that means. I have no insights about how to make it NOT mean that. I guess I'm just going to continue to do what I want, as long as it doesn't hurt other people. And try to catch up on my sleep on the weekend.

And yes, I guess this means I'm thinking about life, as usual, and what I want to do with mine. Also as usual, no answers. Just questions that make my brain hurt.

Congrats to my teammates!

New Breed acquitted itself very well at the American National BJJ tournament this past weekend. My teammate Paul won his purple belt division with a combination of some barn burners and some routs. Ugly (aka John), won the purple belt senior division very decisively. Chris Q won his blue belt division (and his brother Mike won his white belt division the same day in Vegas at Grapplers Quest). Mark, our teammate from Chicago, won his brown belt masters division.

We also had a large handful of second and third place finishes, as well as some people who competed for the first time. And win or lose, everyone did great just getting out there.

Huge congrats to everyone! Now it's time to gain back the weight you cut.

Possibly to be filed under "You had to be there."

First, today is my coach Eric's birthday. Happy birthday, Eric! And thanks for all the hard work you put into making me a better person. That job is not for the faint of heart; if anyone's up to it, you are!

Today is also my dear friend Chris' birthday. The Chris who is the source of so many amusing (to me) text exchanges. Happy birthday, Chris! And in honor of your birthday, here is another exchange between us, from a couple weeks ago. Note that none of what I say about my academy is true; it is rather the victim of a little poetic license. That would be obvious to me, but then again, I rarely say anything serious.

Me: How goes it otherwise?

Chris: DC is hot like an ox's ballsac

Chris: Work is for suckers but u know that...

Chris: Paperwork continues...

Chris: Just took a HUGE poop...

Me: You know a guy named Ox who is hot for Balzac? That's weird, but I guess anything goes in DC.

Me: You have to file paperwork for your bowel movements? Again, that sounds strange, but hey, whatevs.

Chris: U don't have to record your movements at yr affiliate?

Me: No, at my academy, we poop on a stick once a week and then for every gram of gluten they find, we have to do 10 muscle-ups.

Chris: Oh, when you posted today about reading people's minds? I spent half an hour failing to find an image or video of Homer when Burns wonders what he is thinking and it's a dead donkey with flies.

Me: Nice! There's also the time when he sings the Meow Mix song.

Chris: I actually had wine and bread last week on vacation. And it didn't kill me, and I got a pr on my clean and jerk yesterday.

Me: Scones are my power food.

Me: I'm happy for you!

Chris: About the big poop?

Me: That too! I assume all your documents are in order?

Emily in the news!

My friend and fellow camp instructor Emily Kwok is being featured in BJJ Legends magazine. Check out the story:

http://bjjlegends.com/bjj/bjj-news/jiujitsu-mma-news/item/417-emily-kwok-world-champion-jiujitsu-black-belt.html.

Congrats, Em!

Picking it up

Another fun and educational time at the weightlifting meet. Here's how it works:

Each participant weighs in and then competes against others in his/her weight and gender class. Participants have three chances to establish a one rep max, which may or may not be a personal record, in first the snatch and then the clean and jerk. So this may mean starting with a weight you know you can do and then moving up to a weight that's more challenging, and finally one that might be beyond your ability, though I've also seen people go straight for a PR, miss it, and then nail it the second or third time. Women go first. Participants and/or their coaches submit the loads they want placed on the bar for their lifts, and there are two loaders who add the plates, which are in kilograms (and are color coordinated, so the lime green plates are 10 kg, for instance).

The bar sits either on a raised platform or, as was the case on Sunday at TCFA, in a taped-off square in front of the the three judges, who sat on plyometric boxes in a kind of semicircle, and the announcer, who sat behind a table with all the paperwork. Coaches give the announcer the loads for each participant, and the announcer tells the loaders what they are. He announces the person who is "up," the person who is "on deck," and the person who is "in the hole," which just means the person whose turn it is, the person who is next, and the person who is up after that. The judges decide whether the lift is good or not by giving it a thumbs up or a thumbs down--although James, one of the TCFA students, inadvertently gave a thumbs sideways once. I think he needs to work on his wrist flexibility. (Just kidding, James!).

When you complete your lift, you must hold it in the locked out position (either at the top of the snatch or the top of the jerk) until the head judge says and signals "Down." Then you can drop the bar in a controlled fashion, unlike what I did after my first snatch, where I literally let go of the bar at the top of the lift and kind of watched it bounce all over the place. Not so good. I did better subsequently.

The weight on the bar always goes up. What this means is that the weaker people go first and then the stronger people. And I may do my three snatches before a bigger or stronger (because the stronger people are not necessarily bigger) even does her opening lift. (Yes, this has happened, and did happen on Sunday. A couple of us finished all three of our snatches before one girl who was super strong even did her first one.) If I end up "following myself" in a lift, where I lift and then lift again because my weights are lower than the next person's, I get a couple minutes to rest.

There are also strategic gambits you can use to maximize your rest. For instance, you can submit a load that you know you want to change. Then when the announcer announces your load, you ask to change it, and then the rest clock restarts. Sneaky, eh?

When it's your turn, you have two minutes to start the lift. You can go before that, but you must have initiated the lift before the two minutes is up. I don't really know exactly what happens if you don't, because nobody went overtime, but I suspect you don't want it to happen, whatever it is. Different people have different rituals for before a lift, ranging from chalking their hands, to slapping their own faces and legs, to just kind of going up to the bar, setting up as well as possible, and going for broke (that last would be my ritual).

You can power clean and power snatch. This means that you do not have to receive the bar in the full squat position. You can bend your legs only as much as you need to in order to make the lift. This is what I like to do because I'm so squat challenged. Of course, people who are far, far better at lifting than I are more likely to drop into a full squat, because if your technique is where it needs to be, you can lift more if you drop than if you power. I am not there yet. Maybe someday.

Maybe.

For those of us who are mathematically challenged, having the weights in kilograms is a mixed bag; since I don't know how much is on the bar for me (Eric, Vanessa, and Michael make those calls), I don't know whether to be nervous. A well-adjusted person would decide not to be nervous at all. I decide to be nervous all the time.

Fortunately for me, the stakes here are pretty low. If I'm not mistaken, some people use these meets as entrees to bigger meets; their scores qualify them for bigger events. In my case, I just use it as an opportunity to practice the lifts and do so in front of an audience. I got two thumbs-up snatches and two thumbs-up clean and jerks, and then I got one thumbs down snatch and one thumbs down clean and jerk (the last one of each). This is because I "pressed out" on the snatch and then on the jerk. This means that instead of receiving the bar in the snatch and the jerk with my arms locked out, they were slightly bent and I had to straighten them after the fact.

This is a no-no. And it means that I do need to get lower as the load gets heavier. The feedback I get consistently from my coaches and teammates is that I have the strength to lift heavier, so I just need to trust that and get under the friggin' bar. Easier said than done. Eric said that people spend decades perfecting just these movements. I believe it.

Other no-nos are walking outside of the tape or off the platform (obviously, you don't want to walk off the platform), and of course, dumping, which entails dropping the bar and launching yourself in the opposite direction to minimize the likelihood of getting hit with it.

We saw some pretty sweet lifts. I'm going to think about how it feels to lift a PR successfully and try to describe it here; there were a couple people who fought like hell for what ended up being beautiful lifts, some after fighting like hell for what ended up being heartbreaking dumps. If you haven't at least tried to lift, and in front of an audience, no less, it might be difficult to imagine how difficult it is to pick up a bar that's heavier than any other bar you have ever picked up before. And how exhilarating.

Meantime, congrats to Vanessa, who PRed by a lot on her clean and jerk (can't remember the amount--I think it was about 145lbs) and to everyone who participated. Technically I came in first in my weight class, but that wasn't really what it was all about for me. I have tons of work to do and now I know how to proceed. Hooray! Thanks to Eric, Vanessa, Michael, and Kellie, as well as my teammates and cheerleaders. It's fun for me to get to know a different subculture, after spending so much time in the grapply one.