Prancing and Sucking

Happy Thanksgiving!

2010-11-25T18:58:00.001-08:00

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

2010-10-24T22:12:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-10-17T20:35:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-12T17:33:00.000-07:00

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"

2010-10-12T13:37:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-09-27T15:18:00.000-07:00

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."

2010-09-23T13:52:00.001-07:00

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!

2010-09-21T21:45:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-21T15:29:00.000-07:00

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.

A different kind of competition

2010-09-17T07:39:00.000-07:00

On Sunday I'll be participating in my second USA Weightlifting competition. Here are the details: http://teamcrossfitacademy.com/?page_id=3057

I have three opportunities to clean and jerk and then to snatch as much weight as I can. My score is the combined totals of all of these lifts. I am competing against everyone else in my weight class, which last time was me. So maybe it's not so different from grappling competitions.

But it is a pretty low-stakes situation for me, and it's a good opportunity to practice the lifts while dealing with nerves. It's gonna be fun!

My promotion to black belt

2010-09-15T17:52:00.000-07:00

Someone took video of my belt promotion. I tried to say something articulate. I failed. I also apparently don't know how to breakfall. Well, there's always something more to work on.

The lineup from left to right is John Ouano, Rodrigo Ranieri de Faria, Johnny Ramirez, Cristian Lopez, and Tatiana Araujo. Quite an impressive group!

Here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2eB-SJaF6w

Momentum BJJ

2010-09-14T21:35:00.000-07:00

My friend Cristian opened his own grappling academy a couple weeks ago, Momentum BJJ. It's in Buena Park, CA, which is about 20 min from where I live. You may recall that Cristian is my favorite training partner and that he, along with Johnny, are pretty much responsible for getting my skill level to the point where I might be worthy of a black belt. He moves like an eel, he is an incredibly thoughtful and dedicated teacher, and he is a fearless competitor. I'm proud to be able to call him my friend, and his support of my grappling and of me as a person has been invaluable.

If you are ever in Buena Park, visit him at Momentum BJJ! (http://momentumbjj.com/).

Black magic

2010-09-07T14:24:00.000-07:00

I haven't written too much about life with the new belt. I still jump a little bit when I pull it out of my gym bag and it's black instead of brown, but it's becoming more and more "normal." I like to joke that it is bulletproof (though I haven't tested this hypothesis) and that while I'm sleeping it travels through time and has adventures. Nobody can discount either of these conjectures; at least, nobody has so far. Although more than one person has offered to shoot it--while I'm wearing it. Such a helpful crowd!

What is persisting is the feeling I think I described the other day of being subdued. While I go through the motions of suiting up and tie on the belt the way I always have, no matter the color of said belt, sometimes I feel, well, subdued. I have been training regularly and making a point of helping people where I see that they need technique advice. And I feel confident that I can help them.

But then sometimes I contemplate the holes in my game, the poor performances I logged the last time I competed, the weaknesses in my teaching and coaching, the times when lower belts give me more trouble than I think they should, and I get weary. I feel like there's so much more to learn, and while on the one hand I'm excited because I can learn for me and don't have to prove anything anymore, on the other hand, I have everything to prove because of the color of my belt--and, added to that--because of my gender.

I know a lot of this is in my head, but from what I hear from my black belt friends, it's kind of natural. I've heard that it can take as long as a couple years to grow into the belt. And usually accompanying the growing pains is a tendency to get trounced like never before in competition. In my case things might be a bit different, because I regularly competed against black belts even as a brown , but in some ways it could be worse because now the pressure will be on me. If I lost to a black belt as a brown belt, well, that's what was supposed to happen. But if I lose to a brown belt as a black belt, it will throw me into a tailspin. And it will give people reason to question me.

I've been talking a lot with my friend Cristian, whom I credit along with Johnny for getting me to the point where I could even begin to be worthy of black. He got his almost 2 years ago and has been incredibly supportive of my path to the promotion and, since I got promoted, of the things I've been experiencing. He and I have a deal: We are going to keep each other honest in that we are going to train now because we love it and not because we feel compelled by any external pressures or expectations. We want to continue to do well in competition and live up to the belt, but for our own reasons.

Easier said than done, of course. Also easier to say that a world title doesn't matter when you don't get eliminated in the first round, like I did for both my weight class and the open at the Mundials in June. It's kind of like saying that looks don't matter when you resemble a lawn gnome. Only the Jessica Albas of the world get to say that, and when they do, you want to tell them to shut their anorexia holes, that they don't know what they're talking about because they've been treated differently (read: better) all their lives due to their looks.

I'm sorry, what was the question?

Yep, I know world titles, and titles in general are important. I'd be lying if I said they wouldn't be nice to have. But if that becomes my only motivation, then it gets depressing and overly stressful. And then, according to Robb Wolf, the stress causes my cortisol production to rise, and then I get belly fat. And then I have to buy one of those remedies that they advertise on daytime TV and in the middle of the night. As my 6-year-old niece would say, "I said no THANK you!"

Meh. It's like I said. I'm subdued. This morning I CrossFitted and realized I've lost a ton of strength; in August I didn't train much because of injury (my elbow and my groin) and travel. I'm more winded and more muscle fatiguey when I roll. So I guess I'm just riding a trough in my training. I tell myself I'll come out of it, but sometimes when I contemplate my age, I wonder if I will. Maybe this is the time when I really start to feel the years; maybe Dara Torres and Randy Couture are genetic freaks instead of role models. Well, all I can do is what I love to do. And given how the time flies and how I focus like a laser when I'm CrossFitting (lifting, specifically) and grappling, my guiding principles still seem to hold fast. So maybe in time I'll pull out of it.

Okay, bookmark this page for a year or two from now and we'll see how I feel. Right now, I'm just glad Brazilian jiu jitsu is all about lying on the ground.

Overdone

2010-09-06T14:39:00.000-07:00

Even after all these years, I still apparently haven't nailed down how to train and rest effectively. I feel like I've been in a slump training-wise since after the Mundial in June. Once I got my black belt, I thought things would pick up, but August was basically a wash for me because of injury (elbow, groin) and travel (Canada, twice). I didn't CrossFit much at all, and I did train, but I didn't train particularly intensely. When I got back from grapplecamp last week, I overdid it and was achy for most of the week.

And I'm sleeping a ton. For me, this usually indicates that I am depressed, but I'm trying to think about it differently in light of the Robb Wolf seminar I attended right when I got back. Robb is a biochemist who, along with Loren Cordain, is the main proponent of the Paleo Diet. He came to Team CrossFit Academy last Saturday and filled my brain with all kinds of crazy useful stuff. But even in light of everything he knows about the effects of diet on health, well-being, athletic performance, mood, genetic conditions, etc, he said that the main takeaway from his talk was that sleep is of utmost importance. 8-9 consecutive hours per night. So I'm trying to take that advice to heart.

Problem is, the more I sleep, the more I want to sleep. I wonder if my body is trying to make up for years of deficit.

Or maybe I'm just getting old. I did turn 40. Usually I don't feel the effects of age--or should I say, I feel better than I ever have in my life--but lately I feel like the sleep is a double-edged sword.

The point is, for the time being, I've lost my competitive edge. I always waffle on the topic of competition anyway, and right now I'm on the soft side of the waffle rather than the crispy one. My black belt instructors say that it can take a couple years to get used to the new color, and I'm guessing that's part of what's happening here too.

The upshot is that I'm feeling more tired and less intense in my training lately. I don't know what's causing it, and I'm trying not to judge it. I suppose I'll just observe it and see where it leads. Right now, I'm gonna take a nap. Happy Labor Day!

Low-hanging fruit

2010-09-04T10:06:00.000-07:00

So I want to get back to writing regularly. I frequently have inspirations about things I want to write about, but it's usually when I'm in the car or the shower, or other places where I don't have a notebook or computer handy. This means that many of my ideas, some of which could probably be worthy of a Booker Prize--if I were the one deciding who gets the Booker and there were no other nominees that decade--get lost forever, either down the drain or out the tailpipe.

And then when I go to write, I blank. I want to write about the camp, about some things that are coming down the pike, and about my own continued journey to come to terms with the black belt, but I'm not inspired. I know that for me it's cyclical, and I feel like I'm moving toward the part of the cycle where I could actually be more productive and write a bunch. And some things are shifting around so that I should probably have more time to work on my book proposal, among other things, so I want to get back into writing regularly so I set the habit again.

Thus, I've decided to get the creative juices going by enlisting the help of my friends. I do my best to surround myself with hilarious people, and I do a damn good job. Well, at least, I think so. Maybe some of the laughs I share with my friends are of a "you had to be there" nature, but, true to the original purpose of this blog, I am going to amuse myself with some of my favorite text exchanges with some of my favorite people.

First, here is a brief exchange between me and my friend Natasha, who is actually coming to visit next weekend! She is a purple belt under Carlson Gracie, Jr., and when I met her 8 years ago at the gym in Chicago where we trained and where she still trains and is still a personal trainer, I hounded her until she started jiu jitsu. She probably started just to get me off her back, but since then, she has collected numerous belts, gold medals, and opponents' arms in her competition career, including a first place finish a couple weeks ago at the first IBJJF competition in Chicago.

This exchange is from the evening of UFC 118, which featured Couture vs. Toney. Natasha was out to dinner so I was keeping her apprised of results. Keep in mind that both Natasha and I are ladies:

Me: Couture arm triangled Toney.

Natasha: Good. Toney sounds like he's choking on his own nuts when he talks.

Me: He's sponsored by K-Mart.

Natasha: R u serious??

Me: I would never like about nuts-eating douchebags. Or K-Mart.

For those of you who don't know, Toney is a former boxer, a fairly successful one, from what I gather, who goaded Dana White into giving him a shot at a UFC fight. I know that many fighters, especially heavyweights, do not necessarily look ripped when they are in fighting trim, but Toney just looked out of shape. Unprepared. Over my years as a grappler, I have developed more and more respect for mixed martial artists. They work their asses off. And it just seemed that Toney underestimated how hard it is to be good at what those guys do. Couture took him down and choked him out in maybe a minute or two, without him throwing a single punch.

Anyway, moving on to my dear friend Chris. I've written about Chris too; he and I have known each other since about the 10th minute of college, so it's going on 22 years now. He is the brother I never wanted, and I am the sister he never visits, and through my blog, apparently I got him hooked on CrossFit, which he trains regularly in Washington, DC, where he lives with his family. I may even have shared my favorite exchange between him and me about CrossFit, where I proposed a workout called Fran Gone Bad, where after every round of a heinous three-round workout called Fight Gone Bad, people would do Fran, another heinous workout. I said something like, "Descriptions of Fran Gone Bad indicate that you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll cry some more, you'll throw up, you'll sweat, and you'll void your bladder AND bowels. In short, you'll be left with no bodily fluids whatsoever, because they'll all be on the floor beside you."

And Chris wrote, "Interestingly, that's also the typical description of Shrimp Gone Bad."

Anyway, here is a snippet of a text discussion I had with Chris recently:

Chris: Is the six flags mascot supposed to be an undead pedophile?

Me: The 6 flags mascot has a mini undead pedophile now too. That one can get into cramped spaces.

Chris: How did someone think that was good?

Me: When conceptualizing the commercial, they got some subject matter experts from the catholic church and the america's most wanted list?

Chris: Exactly.

Me: And the music was composed/stolen from a heavy metal/polka band by Milli. Or was it Vanilli?

More to come, from my friends and from my brain. Frightening but true.

And away we go....

2010-08-22T20:23:00.000-07:00

Grapplecamp 5 starts in T-minus 8 and a half hours. Felicia, Emily and I spent a bunch of time today planning the first day in detail and sketching out the rest of the week. Thus, what will happen is what always happens: Nothing will go according to plan and we will be improvising the entire time. I'm not complaining. That's part of what makes it fun. And weirdly, it also improves my confidence in my grappling, teaching, and leadership abilities, because if everything went according to plan, then things would be pretty easy, and the trained hamsters we got for camp could do a heck of a lot more for us.

It's a great time. And we are working on making things more efficient and planning for longevity. It's all very exciting.

Almost as exciting as my evening yesterday. After a fantastic Grapple Girls tournament, during which I saw some pretty crazy grappling, Renee and Heather, two Toronto locals who are friends of the camp and sometime campers, took me and some of the other out-of-towners to a restaurant called the Firkin and Church Mouse (and if that doesn't sound Canadian, I don't know what does. Except for guys with names like Blair, Shane, and Remy) and then to a cross-dressing show at a bar whose name escapes me (I have a receipt from some drinks I bought, but the receipt is across the room and I don't feel like getting up right now).

It was a fantastic night. Heavenly Heights, Teran, and Nicolette were the evening's entertainment, and entertain they did. There were costume changes, lip-synching, obscene finger and mouth gestures, and even an almost-altercation between me and the least attractive, most irritated entertainer. She was angry b/c I was texting while she was doing her act, but I was texting myself details of the evening so I could share them with my dear readers. She seemed to be okay with that, and even spelled her name to be sure I got it.

It was fun to be part of that group of "lesbian ninjas," as HH called us. Thanks to Heather and Renee for the great time! And to all the ladies who came out (pun obviously intended) for some sparkly, sequiny, sexually muddled fun. I hope the members of the group who were a little traumatized are recovered sufficiently to start camp TOMORROW!

Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to camp I am

2010-08-20T20:44:00.001-07:00

I'm in Toronto for installment 5 of the women's grappling camp. Hanging out at Alaina's place with Emily and Chrissy. Well actually everyone went to sleep, but it's not even 9pm according to my body clock, so I'm awake, a little bit hepped up on chocolate Riesen.

Tomorrow is a women's grappling tournament. I think Emily, Felicia and I get to hang out, watch good grappling, and eat snacks. And then in the evening some of the lady campers are supposed to take us out on the town (note I reisted the urge to say "oot and aboot." Well, I resisted until about a second ago).

More to follow for sure. I have been thinking a lot about my next steps and have a bunch of ducks that I'm trying to line up. They keep waddling around, but I think I'm tiring them out.

2010-08-13T15:19:00.000-07:00

It's almost been a month since I got promoted. The belt is a little bit floppier with wear (when I got it, it was stiff as a board), and it feels a little more comfortable, though I still stare at it sometimes. And it got me an exit row on the plane home from vacation--not first class, but still more legroom than the typical seat.

I didn't think things would change after the promotion, but they have, almost imperceptibly. While I was with my family on vacation, my mother commented that I carry myself differently, and that she doesn't worry about me the same way anymore. We talked about it a bit, and it sounds like she has breathed the same sigh of relief she did when I successfully defended my dissertation. I'm not in limbo anymore, and I don't have that uncertainty hanging over my head. I still maintain that I have a crapload to do to live up to the promotion, but now that it has happened, I am trying to settle into it and "own" the status, if that makes any sense.

No, that doesn't mean I'm acting like a self-important douchebag with a sense of entitlement (at least, no more so than I always have). I do keep joking that I'm going to gain 200 pounds, make people call me Sifu Val, and surround myself with white belts who can pick up my dry cleaning and get my car washed (because that's how they can acquire my grappling knowledge).

One thing that is true is that I have this weird mixture of relief and anxiety. On the one hand, I feel like I have nothing to prove anymore and after 12 years, I can finally get down to the business of learning how to grapple. I've been pretty mellow in my training in the past month (although for me, "mellow" is relative), and I'm spending more time watching other people train, with an eye to thinking more strategically about teaching, and about improving my game through observing others.

On the other hand, I also feel the weight of the belt. Not just in terms of wanting to be worthy of black belt status in my technique and my rolling, but also because there are more demands. One of the only things I remember from my college graduation, dazed and hungover as I was, is the college president talking about how we are now graduates, with all the "rights and responsibilities pertaining thereto." It's the same here. I get some cool perks as a black belt, some cool professional courtesies, but I also have some responsibilities and some visibility that are always going to be there.

There's more, but I'm still ruminating. I'll keep you posted, as always.

It's working its magic

2010-08-02T20:07:00.000-07:00

I swear, my life is going to be divided into BBB and ABB (before black belt and after black belt), because I'm telling you, that thing has magic powers. *I* don't have magic powers--IT does. But I get to wear it. So I'm just along for the ride.

Case in point: I'm in Canada right now with my family for a vacation. I had to take a redeye from LAX to New York on Saturday night, and without boring you with all the gory details, I somehow went from panicking that I wasn't going to get on the flight (despite the fact that I had a reserved seat and was at the airport 2 hours early--thanks, Mom and Dad for passing on the "overly anal-retentive traveler" gene) to sitting pretty in first class. Even though I have no empirical evidence to support my claim, I'm convinced that if I hadn't had the black belt in my carry-on bag, I'd still be at LAX trying desperately to get to the Great White North.

As it was, I got a hot towel, a free chicken dinner (winner winner!), a fully reclining chair with a real pillow and blanket, and the smug satisfaction of knowing that, if only for one transcontinental flight, I was better than the people behind the curtain, the people in that other class that rhymes with "roach." That knowledge kept me warmer than the blanket. And my seatmate was a very nice, Natalie Portman-lookalike from Zimbabwe who had been bumped from her previous flight and then upgraded too. So we laughed about how we wanted to get some sleep, but at the same time we wanted to stay awake to enjoy the first class-ness of it all.

I'm sure I'll have other examples of how the black belt makes my life easier. I just need to have it on me at all times. Meanwhile, I'm enjoying my trip and planning to train at Gracie Barra Niagara on Wednesday. More on all that later.

Sinking in

2010-07-25T14:05:00.000-07:00

I'm 8 days into my tenure as a black belt in Brazilian jiu jitsu. It's still surreal. I still feel overwhelmed and like maybe it shouldn't be true. But I hesitate even to express my doubts, because then that sounds like I'm questioning the decision of my instructors, which I don't, and which would be incredibly disrespectful. I just feel like I have so much work to do. Lots of people I know who have gotten the black belt say that once that happens, it's time to learn. And I have a pretty good sense of the things I want to focus on.

But it's still completely huge and daunting, which is partly why I haven't written much. I'm still getting my mind around it. It's the culmination of 12 years of my life, of my development as a person. So in some ways, everything is different. But on the other hand, I got the belt on Saturday, and then this past week I got on the mat and trained the way I normally do. Maybe I was a bit more subdued, and maybe I kept looking down at the belt and wondering why it wasn't brown. But the point is, I don't know THAT much more today than I did 8 days ago. So in some ways, nothing is different.

Blah. This is the time when I should have something really deep and articulate to say. I got nothing. I can talk about the ceremony itself, and I'll do that eventually. For now, I somehow think the stuttering and stammering is actually the best way I can express how profound--and how not profound--this all is and should be.

One thing I do want to say is thank you, thank you, thank you, to everyone who has helped me get here. I don't know what I do to deserve such friends and family, but I hope I keep doing it for ever and ever amen.

It's here...part 2

2010-07-20T21:42:00.002-07:00

On Saturday, July 17, 2010, Johnny Ramirez, John Ouano, and Cristian Lopez awarded me my black belt in Brazilian jiu jitsu.

More later. Right now, I'm still reeling.

It's here...

2010-07-15T14:55:00.000-07:00

...and it isn't fatal. "It" is my 40th birthday, which is today. And I'd like to thank everyone for all the good wishes. They mean a lot. As I mentioned to a friend, I am truly a lucky bastard.

As some of you know, I've been contemplating the big day for some time now. But in keeping with the idea that jiu jitsu is like life, turning 40 is like getting a belt promotion: in some ways maybe it's a big deal, but in other ways you're the same person you were before the occurrence. I've heard many people, black belts and otherwise, say that anyone who gets promoted was actually the belt they have just been promoted to for several months. So if you apply the analogy, I guess that means I've been 40 for a couple months now.

Okay, maybe not. It is a fact of life now, though, and it doesn't change my day-to-day existence very much. I realize that much of the trepidation and anxiety I have about entering my 40s has to do with the expectations I imposed on what 40 is supposed to be long before I ever got here--and my concern about the ones I believe I don't meet.

Of course, realizing that mentally is a far cry from internalizing it emotionally and psychologically. I just got finished telling a grappling acquaintance who is closer to the beginning of her journey than I am that there is no percentage in comparing her progress and her trajectory with anybody else's. It's tempting, and it's human nature, but it's ultimately a dead, depressing end. And it's dawning on me that I was supposed to have that conversation with her so I would realize it for myself.

Duh. I guess epiphanies are epiphanies for a reason. Okay, that's a good day's work.

In other news, the CrossFit Games are this weekend. Imagine an Olympics of CrossFit. They are being held pretty much in my back yard. I can only go on Sunday, but that's the day to go if you only have one day--that's the finals day. And it's all going to be streamed live, so I'll get a taste of it on Saturday too. But Saturday we have our belt promotion ceremony. And since it's as hot as Hades around here, cramming 75ish people, all wearing heavy cotton pajamas, into our academy at high noon is going to be very pleasant. But anyway, so I'll go to the belt promotion ceremony on Saturday and the Games on Sunday. Should be a good time all around!

What I did at summer camp

2010-07-08T15:45:00.000-07:00

I got back last week from the fourth Women's Grappling Camp (http://www.womensgrappling.org/), the first one in a weekend format, and the first one in Richmond, VA. Emily and I taught and Alaina administrated (or is it administered?); Felicia was busy with a prior commitment, so we soldiered on in her absence.

I'm pretty sure it went well; I know I had a great time, and it seems like the campers did too. We owe a huge debt of thanks to Chrissy Linzy, who floated the idea to us in the first place; to Triin Seppel of Fenom Kimonos (http://www.fenomkimonos.com), who donated a gi to be raffled off (congrats, Maggie!); and to Klint Radwani and Mike Crawford, who hosted us at the Yamasaki Training Center in Mechanicsville, VA (http://www.mechanicsvillemartialarts.com). The weekend format seemed to go well: the trick is apparently to tire everyone out the first day so they have no energy to complain on the second day. I personally had been worried that three days (Fri eve through Mon morn) would not be enough time to build cohesion and give participants the "camp experience", but I needn't have worried. The "repeat offenders" (campers who have come to other camps) and the new recruits mingled well, there was laughter and dessert galore, and the general consensus was that Emily and I did a good job of offering the less experienced students some solid basics while also providing the upper belts some interesting/useful details.

And that was good to hear, because as always happens, she and I went in with a plan, and then we quickly chucked the plan and improvised when it became clear that the campers' needs/wants were different from what we had anticipated. I don't mean to make it sound like we fly by the seat of our pants, because in so many ways we have become very good at running this camp, which is to say very good at enabling participants to enjoy themselves and learn something new. But in other ways, each camp has its own personality, and as any workshop/meeting leader will tell you, the ability to adapt is invaluable when you are learning the personality of the current group.

So, adapt we did. And we learned a bunch more about how to continue to improve the camp so that people continue to have fun and learn, or, as Felicia would say, to get out of camp what they need.

I'll write more about what's been going on with me. But the biggest thing is that I turn 40 in ONE WEEK. I'll be spending the next seven days bidding a wistful goodbye to my 30s. They were a good decade.

Elaboration on a theme

2010-06-22T22:17:00.000-07:00

I wrote the below on Thursday, June 17 while I was on the way to visit my family. Some things have changed since then; namely, I am in a better mood. Always a good thing. But the musings were kind of fruitful for me—they probably helped me snap out of it—and possibly interesting. I’ll leave it to you to decide.

“I have some time and some battery power to try to articulate what’s going on with me. I’m sitting on a plane traveling to America’s midsection, as one of my favorite people described it, for some QT with my family. This will be good and bad. Good, because they accept me unconditionally, even when I am acting like an asshole, and I feel safe with them. Bad, because since I feel safe with them, I will probably let it all hang out, which means crying and, well, acting like an asshole. What do they say? You always hurt the ones you love. (UPDATE: I didn’t act like an asshole much at all! Nobody cried or yelled because of me, and I didn’t get that anxious feeling in my stomach that I get when I know I’m being shitty.)

Regarding what I wrote yesterday, about feeling like I’m too old for this shit, I am still in that place, though like I said, I really can’t foresee myself ever quitting BJJ or CrossFit. I’ll always train and CF. Doing those things has become part of the fabric of who I am. But I also just finished reading Age Is Just a Number, by Dara Torres, the swimmer who took silver (by two one-hundredths of a second) in an individual event, among other events she medaled in, at the 2008 Olympics at age 41. This is making me feel, not guilty, but like a whiner. Because obviously, she figured it out and has enough of what it takes to be among the best in the world, even at her “advanced” age. I think what’s making me feel off kilter is the fact that I don’t know if I possess that drive to win, and if I do possess it, if I possess it consistently enough. Not to mention the bigger question of whether I possess the talent. Torres talks about how she was competitive from an early age, in every situation, from big things like swimming all the way to mundane things like fighting to be the first among her siblings to finish dinner.

That sounds exhausting. A friend of mine tells me I am competitive, and I guess I have to be since I do compete. But when I hear about people who sacrifice and dig deep and put everything else aside for their dreams, I don’t think of me. I don’t perceive myself that way. I don’t even really have a clearly articulated dream, other than to be happy and a good person. And I want other things for myself besides victory, I think, that I don’t really have, like social and financial stability. Like community. Like a rewarding way to make a living. Basically, all the things that I wanted before I went walkabout and thought I would find on the road. I don’t have a great grasp on those things, really. I wouldn’t go back to my old life for anything, but sometimes I feel like I’ve just walked in a big circle. Only now my shoes, my body, and my heart are a bit more worn and beat up. I have more gray hair. My knees are wrinkly.

I do feel like I’m in better physical condition than I’ve ever been in my life. I still absolutely love to train and to CrossFit. Even when I’m feeling like absolute ass, usually when I train/pick up heavy things and put them down again I am still thoroughly and completely in the moment. I am PRESENT. I go into that flow state. And I can’t afford not to feel that way at least sometimes. It’s what got me through the big decision to go walkabout in the first place, lo these 4 years ago. It makes me feel alive and like the best version of myself.

And yet, I’m back to it being a double-edged sword, because I’m back to noticing a lack of happiness outside of training and CrossFitting. So while training and CF bring me joy and contentment and fulfillment, they also highlight the shortcomings in my life outside of these things. And I don’t want them to be escapes for me, diversions, ways for me to self-medicate. So my brain goes walkabout, and it takes some time and effort to get that organ on board and synched up. And as we all know, 90 bazillion percent of physical performance is mental. So, what to do with a renegade brain? Feed it sugar and Gilmore Girls reruns, it seems, and don’t let it do too much of what it was designed to do: think.

Unlike Dara, there’s only been one stretch in my life where I have honestly and for a long time not wanted to train. In the book, Dara retired and came back no fewer than 3 times, and is contemplating a 4th comeback in the 2012 Olympics, when she’ll be 46. When she was “retired,” she didn’t swim. At all. Barely got into a pool. My retirement from training was the year after I got my purple belt—close to 7 years ago now. It was a time when I had what “normal” people have: a boyfriend, a cocktail every now and then, a later curfew because I didn’t have to get up for Saturday open mat, disposable income.

But I missed it, obviously. And came back with more commitment (in multiple senses of the word) than ever.

So maybe the issue is with competing, which anyone who has read my blog for any length of time knows is something that leaves me intensely ambivalent. For me, competing in jiu jitsu is lonely. And it doesn’t matter whether I win or lose; it’s a lonely road either way. I’ve had some experience with winning and far more with losing, so I feel like I can speak with credibility on this. If I lose, I feel bad about myself, question my abilities, and relive the match(es) over and over in my head, wondering what if I had just acted a split second earlier or done one thing differently. I endure the well-meaning but frequently misguided attempts of people to be comforting or placating, especially those who don’t do jiu jitsu at all or at least don’t compete in it. I tell myself I’m done, that’s it, it’s time to chuck the strictures of my diet, my training, and my mental focus and just lie around eating cupcakes. That’s to be expected. It’s losing. Losing is rarely the preferable alternative. I don’t stay in the dark place nearly as long as I used to, but I still go there.

But winning is lonely too. For me, it’s reminiscent of when I defended my dissertation. While I was defending, giving my presentation and answering questions from my committee, I was on. I was dodging bullets in the Matrix, bullets that seemed to be coming at me so slowly that I could do a little pirouette before I moonwalked out of the way. I wasn’t wearing my sunglasses and trench coat, but I did have on a great outfit.

After I successfully completed the defense, though, and got all the congratulations and accolades, I was hit with the dual realization that 1) I still did, and always would, have a boatload of work to do to improve in academe—and that there would never be a point when I had learned it all, and 2) now people were going to EXPECT things of me. I had the union card, which I had desperately wanted, but there were responsibilities—not just rights and privileges—pertaining to it.

Similarly, when I have won or done well at tournaments, I have savored the experience for a little while, maybe a day or two. But then the reality hits me that I want/need to continue to improve, which means going back to the mat and the routine and the demands of the sport. When I have won, nothing has really changed for me except for the intensity of the expectations, both my own and of the people who are in my orbit but don’t know me that well. My coaches and friends/family don’t judge me either way, for which I am immensely grateful. They don’t look down on me if I lose, and they don’t puff me up if I win. They just help me improve, as long as I want to.

And I always want to improve.

I just don’t always want to do what it TAKES to improve.

I go back and forth between believing that I create much of my life experience and being pretty certain that just because I do my level best to assume responsibility for my life, I don’t get a pass from feeling craptastic sometimes. So when I get like this, all cranky and thinky—all crinky—I wonder how I can tell the difference between wallowing in a self-indulgent pity party and just being human.

You read books like Dara’s and there is always that component of it, the part where the protagonist has doubts and fears and doesn’t know whether s/he will make it. Dara went there. The protagonist of my favorite novel, Ender’s Game, went there.

Writing a book or telling a story about the triumph of the human spirit is fantastic and uplifting and may be inspirational to those of us who want to push ourselves, but I’m here to tell you that in my experience, glossing over the horrible parts does a disservice to those same people, because working toward any goal is going to entail wading through, and sometimes eating, a shitload of shit. There are going to be times when you don’t want to do it anymore, and when you don’t do it, at least for a while. And you know what? Some people don’t go back. What about those people? They may be less inspirational, but they are probably more numerous. They don’t make good bestsellers, though, I guess.

As with most BJJ things, this seems to be like life. Whether a person’s story is triumphant or depressing depends on where you start and end that story. There’s a lot of time between when you say “And they lived happily ever after” and the time “they” shuffle off their mortal coils. Lots of time for all kinds of shit to go down. So sometimes when you enter the story, the protagonist is on the top of the medal podium, and other times s/he is underneath it, rocking back and forth in a pool of his/her own excrement, figurative or literal.

Right now, I personally am sitting on the podium, after the dust has cleared and everyone has gone home, and I’m eating a donut and waiting for the next competition (which may or may not be an actual competition, or which may be a metaphor for my next life challenge—see how that works?) with apprehension, some enthusiasm, and a huge sugar rush. Stay tuned.”

A grappler looks at forty

2010-06-16T21:07:00.000-07:00

Been experiencing some tribulations lately (I used to think that "trials and tribulations" were antonyms, but it turns out they mean the same thing), so I have gone to the mattresses lately, trying to hunker down and let them pass over me. For now, they are washing over me, which is slightly different. But at least I'm thorough: I've got tribulations in pretty much every arena you could name, to say nothing of the fact that I lost in the first round in both my Mundials divisions (weight class and open). This too, shall pass, and I'm handling it with some help from some of the people who love me, but it's definitely stinky.

I know this will come as a surprise, but all of this is making me contemplative. I'm turning 40 next month, and I'm thinking a lot about where I am relative to where I thought I'd be when I hit this age. It's been fun to be a grappling dirtbag for the past 4 years, but there are some aspects of this lifestyle that are wearing thin and that are starting to strike me as a bit unseemly. I don't know precisely what's unseemly about it, because it's not like I raise hell and have an out of control gambling habit, but I'm starting to wonder if maybe I'm getting too old for this shit.

So I don't know what this means, practically speaking. I'll always train and I'll always CrossFit. On the other hand, I don't know how many more competitions I have in me (though I know I have retired no fewer than 5 times in the past), and I don't know how much longer I want to be pursuing a dream when I don't know exactly what it is.

Anyway, so there it is. There's where I have been. I may get more like this as July 15 approaches (beware the Ides of July). I don't know. Maybe I should just have a beer. Meh. I go through these times sometimes, and they pass. I'd just like this one to pass soon, please. But anyway, that's a lot of why I haven't been writing much. I'm not making a lot of time for it because I'm busy making a living when I'm not training and CrossFitting, and when I do have the time, I don't have much to say. Or, more accurately, I don't have the energy to pay attention to the level of detail I have provided in the past. And I probably sound whiny. So things get boring.

Speaking of which, it's about 9:30pm, which means its past my bedtime. Night night.

Yeah, I know.

2010-06-12T21:39:00.000-07:00

Bear with me.

Again, disoriented-er

2010-05-27T11:21:00.000-07:00

Yep. Another fairly lengthy (for me) hiatus from posting. Lots going on, as usual, some good, some not so good. The big event looming on the horizon is the Mundial, the World Brazilian jiu jitsu competition happening in my back yard next weekend. My parents are coming out to cheer me on like they did last year. They had a ball and are coming back for more.

I'll write more over the weekend; I just wanted to put a place holder because it's been 11 days. Holy crapsticks. As the Grateful Dead would say, what I want to know: where does the time go?

Disorientation

2010-05-16T18:49:00.000-07:00

Coming back to blogging after over a week away is kind of like lying down for a "short" nap at 3pm and waking up in the darkness. Four or 5 hours have gotten away from you without your knowledge or express permission, and it's disconcerting and leaves you with a very unclear sense of what to do next--not to mention cotton mouth. So let's give this a go.

I got back from the east coast a week and a half ago, and life has stayed hectic. I continue to marvel at how much busier my life is now that I don't have a full-time job than it was when I was gainfully employed. Well, I'm gainfully employed now, but I kind of cobble together a living that enables me to do most of my work online, frequently at the academy, frequently right after training while wearing my sweaty gi pants and rash guard.

In addition to staying busy with my usual teaching gigs, a new consulting gig or two, and the usual litany of train, CrossFit, intern, eat, shower, sleep, repeat, I'm going to the contemplative place. You'd think that would prompt MORE blogging, not less, but the trend for me over the years that I've been keeping this account is to be more circumspect about what I share, both because people are more easily identifiable in my world, and also because I'm getting old and crotchety and have pretty much zero patience for the Anonymouses of the world passing judgment on my choices anymore.

Suffice it to say that my trip east shook some things loose. Some marbles, probably, but also some observations about the different kinds of lives my civilian friends have, as well as the different places I could live the life I have chosen. I realize this is a familiar refrain--I want to add some things to my life that I don't have now, and sometimes I don't feel like I belong in SoCal--but the challenge for me is that every time these things occur to me, they feel like the first time, like I'm having some kind of epiphany. I'm a slow study, I guess. It was just notable how at home I felt in Philly. Philly basically IS home for me; the town I grew up in is about 45 minutes away, and the mentality, the people, the energy, all felt really familiar and comfortable.

I threaten to move to Philly periodically. Anahi calls me a tease because of it, which I suppose is one way of looking at it, though what's more likely is that there's still work for me to do here in SoCal. Or, I'm just succumbing to inertia. I hope that's not true, much as I like to go for the self-deprecating humor. I do think there's more for me to do here, more for me to learn from my grappling and CrossFit coaches, more for me to learn about myself.

Summers are usually challenging for me, interestingly. Most people thrive in summer; it's warm out and everyone is in a good mood because they get to go on vacation and be outside and wear bathing suits. I don't know why I'm usually more subdued in the summer. The easy conclusion is that it's because my birthday is in the summer and I get depressed about getting older--and this July is a big milestone: a grappler looks at forty. But I've been like this for as long as I can remember, even back to my teenage years. So I just go with it, for the most part, and do my best to mitigate the effects.

And there are some fun things coming up: the Mundial (my parents are coming out to watch me compete again this year) at the beginning of June, a mini grappling camp in Richmond at the end of June, the CrossFit Games here in LA in mid-July, a trip with my family at the beginning of August, and a week-long camp in Toronto at the end of August.

So I'll definitely be able to keep myself occupied, and, fingers crossed, not too thinky. Part of my current state has to do with the fact that I am sick. Congested, headachy, phlegmmy. This too shall pass, but not before I work my way through several boxes of tissues.

Anyway, tomorrow it's back to the grind, which in my case, is pretty sweet. There will be some kind of test for a one-rep max at my CrossFit gym (so, I'll try to lift more weight than I did last time; Eric and Vanessa will choose the type of lift), there will be gi training after that, there will be grading, there will be teaching, and there will be eating, and probably even showering. The Mundial is coming up, so everyone's in prep mode. My parents arrive on the Thursday of that weekend (the first weekend in June), and then I will likely compete on Saturday and Sunday.

Okay, as happens after I awaken from one of the previously described naps, I have regained control over the majority of my faculties after having puzzled through this blog post. Score!

Home again, home again

2010-05-05T01:56:00.000-07:00

Sitting in Newark airport. Have been for about 4 hours now. Waiting for my flight, which leaves at 7am eastern. Planning to sleep HARD once I'm on the plane. I trained at Balance last night (Rick and Phil Migliarese's place) and then went to dinner with them, Anahi, Emily, Paul, Lauren, and a couple other people to a great Italian place a few blocks away. Since my flight is so early, it made sense to come and hang out at the airport instead of trying to figure out how to get here after 3 hours of sleep or less. (Yes, I need to stop booking the crack-of-dawn flights).

Anyway, it's been a great trip. I'm eager to get back to my own space, but I got some great training in with some amazing grapplers, I saw some dear friends, and I sated the wanderlust a bit. For now. I'm back in LA at 10am Pacific. And not a moment too soon.

More east coast adventures

2010-05-03T12:52:00.001-07:00

I went to the Hamptons, they're not in the mountains. I saw a bunch of children, in Brooklyn there are fountains.

I'm in the middle of my east coast trip. It's fun and stressful, seeing old friends and taking stock of my new life. Lots of impressions, but not much time to record them. I'm headed from my friend Jennifer's place in Brooklyn into Manhattan in a few to catch up with Emily and some of the other chicks from grapplecamp at Marcelo Garcia's academy. Unfortunately, MG himself is out of town, but Tatiana Toganini (MG's black belt wife) will be there to kick my ass, and I'm mighty excited about that.

Earlier this afternoon I paid a visit to CrossFit Virtuosity, where they treated me well and put me through a fun workout. Check them out if you're ever in Brooklyn! http://www.crossfitvirtuosity.com.

Next stop, Manhattan. Then back to Jersey tonight and on to Philly tomorrow for some punishment at the hands of the Migliarese brothers. Can't wait!

Back in the New SSR

2010-04-29T20:48:00.001-07:00

Okay, SSR doesn't really stand for anything. But I'm in New Jersey right now, my home state, and I wanted to acknowledge that cleverly.

Maybe I'll try again later.

Anyway, it's college friends time! Leigh is getting married in the Hamptons on Saturday. I'm at Rachel's place in Princeton. We're driving up tomorrow, where we will catch up with Jennifer* & Pat and Anne & Sean. On Sunday I'll get to see Jennifer (different one), Woody, Tim, and maybe Lee (not to be confused with Leigh). And then next week will be more east coast shenanigans, involving training and some of my favorite grapplepeople. More on that later.

I'm flashing back on the BJJ odyssey that gave rise to this blog in the first place. Nowadays I don't travel nearly as much as I used to, but I do still get that wanderlust, and this trip is reminding me of what a singular and life-changing thing that walkabout was. When you travel, especially for an extended period of time, you get to be anyone you want. Not that I lied about who I was, but I was trying to figure out how to make changes in my life, so being itinerant enabled me to foreground the parts of me I was satisfied with and spend less time discussing the parts of me I was trying to modify. I got to practice being me, with a variety of audiences.

In keeping with that idea, travel also always inspires in me the feeling that anything could happen. And with this crowd--and in this tri-state area--that is more true than normal. So even though it's only 9pm according to my body clock, I'm going to try to go to sleep NOW so I can wake up and start my latest east coast adventure. As the Beastie Boys would say, tomorrow it's on to the Hampty-Hamps!

Ragnar Revisited

2010-04-25T20:17:00.000-07:00

Ragnar was a success! 200 miles covered by 12 runners and 2 vans in about 28 hours, ending up on a beautiful beach in Dana Point at about 4pm yesterday. The runners experienced some stomachaches, fatigue, muscle soreness, and dehydration, but were generally in fine fettle by the end, after refueling and a bit of rest. And I suffered a mild case of beanie-head, but that cleared up by the end of my shower. Highlights: midnight trip to Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles; the van we saw that was decorated with Richard Simmons' head atop a giant chocolate chip cookie (if the goal was to make me feel slightly uneasy about cookies, mission accomplished); jokes that seemed funny at 4am but that probably weren't.

Team Pound Sand kicked ass, and I was happy to be able to contribute in a small way to their success.

In other news, come to this tournament: http://www.grappleseries.com! My friends are running it, and they will do a fantastic job. Unfortunately, I won't be there for it, because I'll be in New York for the weekend. The Hamptons, to be exact. My college friend Leigh is getting married! So it will be old home week for me. (This is a lot of the same group that went to London in 2007 for my friends Jennifer and Pat's wedding--when people gave me a hard time for writing about the wedding instead of the grappling. I may do the exact same thing this time around!)

And then next week I'll be sticking around on the east coast for a couple days to train and see some friends. It'll be like old times, when I lived out of the trunk of my car and roamed the country looking for likely training partners. Can't wait!

More on that later. Meantime, congrats again to Team CrossFit Academy, which fielded 3 teams in addition to the one I drove for, including the Ninja-Pirate Alliance, and particularly to Team Pound Sand!

Ragnar Relay

2010-04-23T09:31:00.001-07:00

As my friend Chris would say (very tongue-in-cheekly, as we are both almost 40, not Criss Cross--and yes, I chose Criss Cross to diggity date myself): Check it. I'm leaving in a couple hours to drive a van for a team from my CrossFit academy (http://www.teamcrossfitacademy.com)

as they participate in this: http://www.ragnarrelay.com.

Twelve runners per team will cover 200 miles in 24 hours, starting this afternoon from Ventura and going through to Dana Point. One runner goes at a time. Two vans carry the gear for 6 team members each, as well as the team members who aren't running. I'll be driving one of the vans. I anticipate that delirium and hallucinations will set in at about 3 or 4 tomorrow morning. I'll be mainlining caffeine and experiencing shenanigans from other slap-happy people in the van.

I'm an excellent driver. And not just in the driveway.

(That's my story, and I'm sticking with it.)

I'll let you know how it goes, after 24 sleep-deprived hours and the promise of a beer or two at the end.

And no, I never considered being a runner for even a SECOND. The team I'm driving for is pretty badass (how could they not be, with a name like Team Pound Sand?), and as I've mentioned before, I am convinced I'm made of all slow-twitch muscle and spare parts, running only when chased. Or when doing CrossFit workouts like Helen, Kelly, or Eva.

Competing in a finals match

2010-04-20T23:00:00.000-07:00

I have some other observations about the tournament, particularly the experience of participating in a PanAms finals match. For regulation matches, there are three people on the mat: the two competitors and one referee, who scores the match, watching and controlling the action--sometimes calling time outs or restarting competitors in the same position in the middle of the mat, or restarting them from the feet. This ref is on his (so far, all of the PanAms and Mundials refs I have seen have been men, but fingers crossed that that will change in the future!) feet, and sometimes gets down on his hands and knees to get close to the action.

For finals matches--at least the men's black, the women's brown/black, and I think some of the other belt colors, though I don't know how consistently--there are five: the two competitors, the referee who scores the match, and two referees who sit in folding chairs in opposite corners. The scoring referee runs the match as usual, but the corner referees serve as backup, and sometimes dissention, about calls. Here's my understanding of how the scoring works, though I may very well be getting some of the details wrong: If a scoring referee makes a call that a corner referee disagrees with, the corner referee stands up and waves his hand back and forth. If both corner referees stand up and wave their hands, the scoring referee is overruled and the call is overturned. If only one corner referee stands up, the call stands--majority rules.

Sometimes, a scoring ref will make a call; for instance, the ref will award three points for a guard pass. But then a corner ref will stand up and wave his hand and the other corner ref will stand up and make the sign for an advantage. What this means is that the scoring ref's opinion is that the top competitor passed the guard and convincingly established side control. The first corner ref disagrees and wants the points overturned. The second corner ref agrees with the scoring ref that the top person at least threatened the guard pass and deserves an advantage (which is kind of an "almost" point--if you almost execute a move or a finish such that your opponent must vigorously defend him/herself). In this case, I BELIEVE the score will be the advantage, where they split the difference.

None of this happened in my finals match, I don't think (I was busy during it, so I didn't think to watch.). But that's how it is scored.

So here's how a finals match goes: You get called matside as normal, and you go with the mat coordinator, usually with your opponent in tow, down to the appropriately numbered mat. Before this, you have been weighed in, had your gi checked for legality (can't be too short, too tight, more than one color, etc), and then spent some awkward moments trying to decide whether to chat with your opponent or just act tough and ignore her. I usually strike a balance between the two--I adhere to my goal of being smiley, but I also don't want to be pals until later.

You stand or sit around while the previous match happens, and since it's a finals match, you kind of want to watch, but you're also freaking out and wondering if you have enough time to pee before your name is called. (You probably don't.)

And then, when it's your turn, Tony Torres, the voice of the PanAms and the Mundial tournaments, calls your name and says your affiliation over the loudspeaker. You bow to the mat and step on, look back at your coach and whoever else is there to cheer you on, and smile with confidence that you may or may not actually feel. You have to remember when you step on the mat to run over to each of the corner refs and bow and shake their hands (each of them is a black belt as well)--they stand up to greet you--and then you bow and shake the hand of the standing ref. And I usually bow and shake the hand of my opponent after that, though if I don't, or if my opponent doesn't initiate it, the ref has us do so before we square off.

And then the ref makes sure the table workers are ready (the scorekeeper and the timekeeper), makes sure the competitors are ready, and then starts us off. And then off we go.

This year, Budovideos was streaming some of the finals matches live. They only streamed the men's finals, which is a drag because some of the women's matches were pretty amazing. Technical, exciting, all that good stuff. I hope they change their procedures in the future. But in my case, I fought my finals match at the same time as Cobrinha (aka Rubens Charles Maciel), who, for those of you who don't know, is kind of like the LeBron James of Brazilian jiu jitsu. There are far geekier grapplenerds than I who can recite a litany of his accomplishments, but let's just say that he is one of the winningest competitors around, and he puts it out there all the time.

Plus, if the little interaction I have had with him is any indication (I accosted him in an acai line at a tournament a couple years ago to ask for a picture, and he was incredibly gracious and accomnodating), he is a good person as well. The point is, Budovideos made the absolute right call streaming Cobrinha's finals match instead of mine. (And he won.)

Still more to come on my tournament observations. Just getting it done in fits and starts. And it has nothing to do with the fact that today is 4/20.

Settling dust

2010-04-16T08:50:00.001-07:00

The PanAms are over. I am finally caught up on all those pesky making-a-living things I had put on the back burner while I was busy crapping bricks for 4 days in anticipation of competing. Let's see if I remember anything of note.

Of course I do. I reread my description of the PanAms, and it's pretty fitting. On the days I didn't compete--Thurs and Fri--I ran around supporting our guys who competed, chatting with friends who were in from out of town, and eating acai. I saw some really good matches, missed some others, and did some pretty sweet people watching. I just love tournaments. Love, love, love them.

And hate, hate, hate them.

Well, more accurately, I love and hate competing. It's amazing how polarized I am about this whole competition endeavor as it relates to my own participation. Because competition in the abstract is an amazing thing, and I get how important it is to individuals and to the human race, for building character, helping us learn about ourselves and each other, and, equally importantly, for providing incredible entertainment. I don't mean to sound holier-than-thou or elitist, but I really do feel sympathy for people who don't know what they are seeing when they watch a high-level grappling match between world-class athletes. Because what they are watching is beauty, resolve, devotion, heart, and most of all, strategy and intelligence.

Okay, if I'm going to be completely honest, sometimes what they are watching is stalling or playing the points or poor sportsmanship. I know that. But throw me a bone. Those of you who DO know what you're watching have had the experience I'm talking about, of seeing matches that just leave you breathless, stunned at the risks some will take, amazed that people can be that good at jiu jitsu--and mildly depressed that you aren't that good. (Well, I should speak for myself on that last part.)

But then there's me and my personal competition experience. When I first started competing (after I'd been living at New Breed for a couple months and become part of that community, a community that puts its shit out there), I'd become Mr. Hyde weeks before the tournament. I'd hate life, I'd hate myself, I'd hate everyone who was dumb enough to come within restraining-order distance of me. And I'd wonder why on earth I competed. Pray to get hit by a car so I'd have a graceful and face-saving way to get myself out of it. Count down the days with growing apprehension and contemplate making a getaway to Saskatoon or Ashtabula. During those times, if I had been a comic strip character, my dialogue bubble would have been just a huge black scribble. I'm sure I was a total asshole to most people.

And then after competition, I became a different person. The flavor came back to my food. The color came back to my world. Win or lose, I became smiley again and felt like I'd gotten a pardon. It is in the after phase that I remember why I compete: Because it feels so good to stop.

Okay, not really. Because it really is fun, challenging, and in some ways what it's all about. I have to get more articulate about why I compete and what I get out of it, but I do know that it's good for me.

And now that I've had more experience doing it, the Mr. Hyde phase lasts for a shorter and shorter time. I still go to the dark place, but only for a day or two rather than weeks. And I'm always glad I did it, win or lose.

And this past weekend I had both the losing and the winning experience. I competed against Hillary Williams in the open division on Saturday. I pulled guard and she settled into top half. Then it was 10 minutes of her doing a really great crossface (resulting in a pretty shiner and a big chin scrape for me) and trying to pass my half guard and me defending the pass and trying to sweep. Neither happened, so she won by advantage. The next day, after my shiner had started to come out and the huge scrape on my face came up, we ran into each other and she said, "What happened to YOU?" And I laughed and said, "YOU happened to me." She felt really bad, which was unnecessary--as Carlson Jr. is fond of saying, "Jiu jitsu ain't ballet!"--and we hugged it out.

So, I learned some good stuff from the loss, not the least of which is that I'm still a delicate flower--all you have to do is look at me funny and I bruise. (But that was obvious, that I'm a delicate flower. You can tell by my jackedness, my beanie, and my t-shirts with slogans like, "New Breed Grappler" and "Team CrossFit Academy: Red Militia Solder.")

The next day, Sunday, was my "weight class." I use the term loosely, because my body is doing weird things weight-wise. Many of you know that I refuse to cut weight, even a few pounds, because I'm a woman and I live in the US, which means I have an unhealthy preoccupation with dieting and being "fat". Normally I walk at about 150, so with a gi I weigh about 155. This means I compete in the middle heavy division, with a cutoff of 163. Some people think that's crazy, because the cutoff for the next weight class down, middle weight, is 152. But as I said, I don't cut weight. So I usually give up some pounds, but it's not generally an issue.

But lately, I've been walking closer to 145. I'm eating the same and training and CrossFitting the same. The only difference is in HOW I'm CrossFitting--I'm doing a lot more Olympic and power lifting--clean and jerks, snatches, heavy squats, deadlifts, presses. Maybe that's got something to do with it. I love it, by the way. Lifting is incredibly fun, challenging, and stimulating--and if my strength and conditioning during the tournament are any indication, it's friggin' effective. I owe my CrossFit coaches Eric, Vanessa, and Kellie a huge thank you for their support and instruction.

Anyway, even though I have been walking lighter, I went ahead and signed up for the middle heavy class, for a couple reasons. First, I didn't know whether my weight was going to decide to jump back up to what had until recently been normal. And second, there is a very tough female black belt on my extended BJJ team who had signed up for middle weight, so it made sense to spread the wealth.

But when I weighed in, I laughed because I was at 149. With the gi on. Three pounds under the cutoff for the next lower weight class. So it might be time to consider a change. I've already chatted with my teammate, who might be going down a class. We'll figure it out.

So, the division. The brown/black women's divisions were 3-6 people this year, though I am happy to say the open had 18 people in it, at least at the sign-up. I don't know how many people actually participated. Get this, though: the women's purple belt open had something like 30 people in it. So what that says to me is that in a couple years, as these women advance and get promoted, we're going to get some bigger brown/black women's divisions, and maybe we'll be able to split them! I'm really happy about that! For many reasons, particularly that I'll probably be retired by then.

There were 3 of us in my division, and they did it round robin style. My two opponents fought each other first, and then I fought the loser of that match. So, A and B fought. A won, so I fought B. And I beat B as well. So that put A and C (me) in the final. Someone asked for a play-by-play of my matches. Here's what I remember (another interesting thing about competing is how trancelike it is and how my perceptions don't necessarily always match reality). First match: She pulled guard, I passed to half, then I spent some time passing to full mount. She tried to recompose the guard but gave up her back in the process, so I got her back on top. And then I was able to get a short-hand rear naked choke. I don't know how long it took.

Second match: I pulled guard, got a half guard sweep ("old school") and spent some time trying to pass. She had a very good spider guard that I had to fend off. I eventually got the pass, got the mount, and finished with a mounted head-and-arm choke. I was debating dismounting to put more pressure but decided to see if I could finish without having to give up position. I don't know how long that took either.

I have lots of observations about competing, especially in a finals match, which I will share later today or tomorrow. And there's other cool stuff going on too, so I'll write more. But I wanted to get this out there for now. Thanks so much to everyone for your congrats and good wishes. I'm the most fortunate delicate flower I know.

PanAms epilogue

2010-04-13T07:11:00.001-07:00

The PanAms are over. There were some upsets and some surprises, and some world class jiu jitsu, as I predicted. I have more to say, but not a lot of time right now to say it, so for now, I'll just report that I was able to win my division. So that's exciting, and I'm grateful to all my grappling and CrossFit coaches and friends for getting me there. I PROMISE I'll write more soon, but you should definitely check out some of the other blogs out there to get the inside scoop.

Ask and ye shall receive

2010-04-04T14:00:00.000-07:00

David Penn, you wondered why I wasn't posting about the PanAms, and I will rectify the situation toute de suite. I even shunted aside what could have been one of my best post titles ever--"Pan-Amania"--to let you know that your feedback and input are valued. (Although, now that I think about it, I may have used that title before. For a different PanAms. Well, anyway, it's a good one. I'll remember it for next year.)

Okay, here's what's going on vis-a-vis the PanAms: The PanAms are next weekend!

That is all.

Just kidding. For those of you who don't know, the PanAmerican Jiu Jitsu Championship is one of the big gi grappling tournaments; it, along with the Mundial (World) championships, constitute the twofecta (no, that's not a word, I don't think) of gi tournaments that every grappler aspires to win. They last for 4 days, and grapplers come in from all over the world to test their mettle against other grapplers. It's a combination of anxiety, excitement, joy, trepidation, laughter, overstimulation, acai and cooked meat, sweating, Portuguese curse words yelled at ear-piercing decibel levels, and world-class Brazilian jiu jitsu.

Many of my friends are coming to town, and tons of other people, too. It's at times like this that I remember one of the many reasons I live in SoCal: the world comes to us for the opportunity to participate in and witness elite grappling events. The PanAms used to be held in FL sometimes, and the Mundial used to be held in Brazil sometimes, but for the most part, they are both held here now, in my back yard.

One of the friends coming to town is the newest black belt I know of, Ryan Hall. Ryan is very bendy and extremely accomplished in the grapply--the most prolific and successful competitor I know, and a very smart, friendly, upstanding person to boot. Ryan was promoted by Felipe Costa this past week; Felipe apparently tied his own belt on Ryan at Ryan's academy, 50/50 BJJ, in Arlington, VA. So now he gets to come out and represent the new status. HUGE congrats to you, Ryan! I truly don't know anyone who deserves it more.

The trickle of people coming to town has started, and will become a deluge by about Wednesday. The first day of competition is Thursday. I compete in the women's open division on Saturday and in my weight class on Sunday. I decided to register in the 163lbs and under division even though I've been walking a little lighter than normal lately, because my weight is weird, and you have to weigh in with the gi, and we've discussed at length how I don't cut weight. (The next lower weight class is 152 and under.) I normally compete in the higher class anyway, so we'll see how it goes, whether I made the right choice. Regardless, I'm excited to compete!

I know it's Easter, but in keeping with the fact that I'm out of step with the rest of the world (there is something called the Final Four going on, I believe), I haven't eaten a single jelly bean or searched for a single egg. Is there a Scrooge character for Easter? I hope I'm not that bad; I'm just out of it. But anyway, Happy Easter and Happy Passover!

Not much

2010-03-28T20:27:00.000-07:00

Working a lot. Lying low. Mildly out of sorts. More when there's something to discuss, either because something has happened or because I become inspired.

Forgot to mention...

2010-03-21T15:22:00.000-07:00

...check out this video of my high school chum Chris Conefry at http://www.wtoc.com (look for the video with the description "Men participate in beauty pageant for charity".) He's the one whose stage name is Condoleezza Nice. It's too bad not more of you know Chris, because if you did, you'd know that he's simply fulfilling his legacy by doing this. In high school, we were pretty sure that he was the result of some nefarious scientific experiment that combined the DNA of Will Smith and Vanilla Ice, with a bit of Paula Abdul thrown in for good measure. We knew back then that he had the dance moves. What we didn't know is that he has the gams for an evening gown.

Good show, Conefry! Looking forward to video.

When you figure it out...

2010-03-21T13:50:00.000-07:00

Lately, it looks like I'm managing to blog, at least a little, on the day of "rest." Our lord's day. The day of Ra (the Egyptian sun god, I think). I've been contemplative again this week--contemplating folding laundry, contemplating getting the oil in my car changed, contemplating all the shoulds, and managing to get relatively few of them done. I'm down, but in a huge change of personality, I'm not going to write much about it. Wallowing doesn't seem to help, so I'm going to ignore the feelings and maybe drink them away. Or beat my wife. Or speed. Or do any of the other things normal people do to self-medicate and avoid having to deal with them. These particular feelings are not about anything I can do anything about, anyway, dealing as they do with the eventualities of life.

So instead, I'm going to write about one part of my evening yesterday, a part of my evening that you may have had to be there for, but that I'm going to try to describe anyway, because it was thoroughly amusing. I had gone to the movies with a friend (Alice in Wonderland in 3D--trippy and generally thumbs up-worthy), and after that we met up with some other people at a bar in Abbott-Kinney, which is a neighborhood somewhere in Los Angeles (Have I mentioned I don't get out much?). After we had been there for a while, a very large man tapped me on the shoulder and asked me to step back. He was large, so I did.

Then he and his 2 or 3 similarly large friends stood in a circle in the area they had cleared, crouched down, kicked out their right feet, stood up, lifted their heads, and yelled, "HOOOOOOOOOOOO!" like the sound a wolf would make. As they were getting ready to do this, my sophisticated Spidey sense told me that something cool was about to happen, so I poked my friend to get him to watch.

Unfortunately for him, the guy who asked me to stand back saw us watching and came over to explain what was going on. "When you figure out that you are drunk, you gotta kick the door down."

???

"First, you gotta clear a space--I was polite when I asked you to move, right?" he asked me. "Oh, very definitely," I said. Then he said, "Next, you gotta get down, wind it up, and kick that mo-fo down!" He showed us how it was done. Then he grabbed my friend to get him to do it too. He protested vehemently, but with the gentle encouragement of a group of enormous dudes, he ended up yelling "HOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" with the best of them. And while he did that, I laughed and laughed. And then I laughed some more. But it's great, because now he has 3 or 4 new best friends who will totally be there for him, man...if they recognize him the next time they see him. (They won't.)

Okay, I've cheered myself up a little.

Gracie mag story about chick camp

2010-03-15T23:14:00.000-07:00

Check out this online article about the third women's grappling camp, which we held back in Jan!

http://www.graciemag.com/en/2010/03/jan-25-female-grappling-camp-in-cali/

It's cool, right? And not just because I get a by-line, though that's kind of cool too. (It was a fun article to write.) But also because the camp itself is cool, and it's great to get a little publicity for it. Tell your female grappling friends!

Bright spots

2010-03-14T21:21:00.000-07:00

It's been sort of a challenging week for reasons I mentioned on Sunday. So I've been trying to remain grateful for what I've got while not being Pollyanna. I always struggle with that balance--allowing myself to be human and feel the uncomfortable feelings while not allowing myself to wallow. If anybody knows the exact ratio, please forward to me so I can use it.

Anyway, I wanted to share two bright spots in my somewhat darkened week--maybe these are a reminder that the universe does have my/our back even when we don't feel that way. First, Renee and Heather, two ladies from the second grappling camp we did in Toronto last August sent me a lovely gift.

Renee and I bonded the week of camp when we took a kettlebell class, during which I learned some new curse words that I had never heard before, and some new ways to invoke ones I had heard many times before. The cursing increased in direct proportion to the amount of time we had been kettlebelling, which is to say, the more tired we became, the more, um...verbal Renee became. I credit Renee with helping me survive the class, and then when I went back to Toronto in November to do a seminar, the memory of August was enough to prompt me not to take the class again. (It was a great class, btw. Just pretty exhausting. I think there are some pictures on my Facebook page of her and me swingin'.)

Heather was a brand new grapplechick during camp, and it turns out she is a mischievous imp. During camp, she liked to tell me that I was her favorite instructor, out of me, Emily, and Felicia, and then I would find out that she was telling Emily and Felicia the same thing. And every time one of us did or said something, she would change her story, and tell us what we could do to get back into her good graces. She is a fickle one, that Heather, and always good for a cheery hello on Facebook, for which I am always grateful.

Well, those two crazy ladies sent me a gift that I received this week: a Valentine (the package had to clear customs, so I guess it took a little time) and a t-shirt and menu from this place: http://www.shanghaicowgirl.com/, a fantastic diner down the street from MECCA, the academy in Toronto where we held the women's grappling camp last summer and will be holding another one this coming August. Unfortunately, Shanghai Cowgirl does not deliver to Southern California, but I can use the menu to make sure I already know exactly what I want to eat when I get there this summer. If it's a healthy day, it'll probably be an omelette with salad or a spinach salad with chicken. If it's a cheat day, it will not be poutine. I tried poutine and was not a fan. (Sorry, Canada!) Poutine is fries covered with gravy and cheese curds. You'd think I'd love it. I didn't. So my cheat from Shanghai Cowgirl will/would be: French toast, pierogi, or corned beef hash.

Thank you, Renee and Heather! Your gift came in the middle of a trying week, and it totally brightened that week.

In other news, speaking of T-shirts, I got another cool one from Rodrigo Tovar. He is a New Breed teammate who works for TapouT, doing awesome artwork for them. He also does all the artwork on the walls of the houses the guys stay in on the tv show The Ultimate Fighter. I keep saying I want to commission him to do a piece for me, but I should probably find a place that would do his artwork justice. In the meantime, I'm happy with my shirt, which provides details about the art exhibit he's going to be having on May 8.

Check out his portfolio and watch for details of the show at http://www.painteddemons.com/, and check out the space where the show will take place at http://www.purerockstudio.com/. Rod has promised free hot dogs, tacos, and beer, in addition to awesome artwork. (He had me at t-shirt.)

You may notice that Rod's artwork appears a bit dark and is filled with characters that look menacing and otherworldly. What's interesting is that Rod himself is very kind and very mellow, so if you go to the show, which you should (I'm going to), don't be afraid to talk to him. He's also incredibly cool; just standing next to him ups my hipness factor exponentially. Plus, he's got a nasty guillotine, so if you roll with him, get ready to tap. Good luck, Rod! And make sure there's mustard!

This weekend was the Sectionals competition for the Southern California region for the CrossFit Games. I'll write more about it, but for now, suffice it to say congrats to everyone who competed! What a fantastic display of elite fitness.

Where do you, where do you go, my lovely?

2010-03-07T10:14:00.000-08:00

"You" = "the week." I just wanted to quote a bopping '90s dance mix (thanks to No Mercy) to convey how quickly life goes by. Blogging is always on my to-do list, and is something I look forward to doing, but the time just gets crazy, taken up with Things. And it's too bad, because I always look forward to blogging even if I don't exactly know what I'm going to write, like now. I generally have some idea, but then the execution is pretty haphazard. So let's see what I come up with.

Paradoxically, although I'm feeling pretty busy, I've also been more introspective than usual. I know, I know--how is it possible for the queen of the navel gazers to be more introspective? Well, lately, as I look back on how busy I've allowed myself to become, I realize I've actually gotten out of the habit of choosing my life, as one of the self-helpy books I've read before describes it. I've been letting my days happen to me--and while it's still a damn good one, what it is they say about the unexamined life? A Google search says that it's not worth living. At least, that's what Google says Socrates said about it.

But then again, if you believe what this page has to say about it: http://www.relaxfocussucceed.com/Articles/2003010002.htm,

Socrates was put to death for heresy shortly after he said that. So maybe we should rethink how much credibility we give to old Socrates. I mean, what did he really contribute to the world?

I kid. Poorly. And anyway, I lump self-reflection into the same category as grappling, CrossFit, and laughing--even if it turned out they were terrible for me, I'd do them anyway.

On the other hand, the frequency and intensity with which I do all of the above may probably sometimes be bad for me. I have never gotten a hernia from laughing, but I definitely put it to the test. And I have gotten injured doing the grapply and the CrossFit, so it's all a matter of degree. So maybe it's good that I haven't been THAT introspective lately. But the pendulum is swinging back the other way, and I've found myself in that pensive place a lot lately.

One of the main catalysts is the fact that I've crossed paths with a notable number of people who have lost loved ones this past week. Some of them are very close to me, and others are not as close, but since I don't believe in coincidences, I am paying attention. First, my deepest sympathies to all these people, and also, please know that I'm absolutely not trying to make your losses and pain about me. I'm just trying to process some things that have been going on with me recently, and as I said, I don't believe in coincidences.

Yikes. Having written that, that I'm honestly not trying to make these tragedies about me, it comes across as hollow and doesn't do anything to stop me from sounding like a self-centered roaring asshole nonetheless. For that I truly apologize. And I'm going to keep writing. And I dare Anonymous to make a peep. I will crush Anonymous if Anonymous tries. I'm trying to make sense of some things, and rightly or wrongly, these losses seem to be part of that process.

Anyway, the first thing these sad pieces of news prompted me to do was to contact my family and tell them I love them. To those of you who are my friends (and not Anonymous), know that I love you too, and that I'm going to do my level best to appreciate you as much as I can. Because as stale as the platitudes may sound, we really do only have today to make our lives matter. And I don't mean matter in terms of being famous or powerful or good-looking or thin or rich, but you probably knew that. I like to imagine that my life will ultimately be measured in terms of the number and variety of small kindnesses I perform. So I'm getting back on that wagon.

I'm also going to get back to remembering that I choose my life. I had fallen back into the habit of believing that my life happens to me, rather than that I actively choose everything about it. Even if I'm in a routine or a rut, it's because I put myself there. And if I don't like it, I can choose something else. So I'm back to that too.

I know; all of what I'm writing is tired and has been said before, far more eloquently than I ever could. But I'm rediscovering the importance of what I'm writing, in my life, in my brain, and in my heart. And so for me, it's anything but tired.

I have more to write, but I've been working on this all day, off and on, while I sometimes cry and sometimes do other things. Plus, I haven't completely wrapped my mind around all of it. So herewith is my abrupt ending to my latest post.

What today's short run means in the long run

2010-02-28T15:50:00.000-08:00

Today I took a trip back to my grappling roots--I ran a 5K. Admittedly, running doesn't immediately sound related to grappling very much, if at all, unless you are one of those grapplers who despises running in a circle at the beginning of class to warm up.

But as some of you might recall, I ultimately came to grappling through running; maybe 14 years ago, before BJJ was even a gleam in my eye, I was in grad school and experiencing more and more of what my college pal Honor referred to as "couch butt" (so named because of all the time grad students spend sitting and reading, and enhancing that sitting and reading by drinking coffee, eating snacks, stressing out, and generally neglecting the physical in favor of wigging about the mental). I had forsaken all activity other than studying, eating, sleeping, and occasionally bathing and washing clothes. It had gotten to the point halfway through my first semester where walking across the living room to the bathroom (on the same floor) winded me.

So as someone who had always been active--and, truthfully, who didn't want to be fat--I cast about for ways to stop the insanity, and to reclaim my body.

And I started training for marathons. Starting with one arduous mile at a pop and working my way up from there, I ran, outside when weather permitted, and sometimes even when it didn't, and inside when even I thought it would be stupid to brave the snowdrifts and single digit temperatures. (Remember, I was living in Michigan at the time.) I read Jeff Galloway's book on running. I kept a training journal. I distinctly remember the first day I ever ran ten miles, a challenge as daunting psychologically as it was physically, if not more so. And that night I went to some swing club in Royal Oak with friends (swing was all the rage during the 90s--remember Jump, Jive and Wail by the Rick Setzer Orchestra? Setzer was formerly of the Stray Cats), and not only could I not dance (and seriously, who can't at least move their feet along to swing music), I also could barely stay awake.

Looking back on it, that was my first time experiencing the utter exhilaration/captivation/stupidity of strenuous physical challenges. It was the first time I had really learned to push myself beyond my perceived capabilities in the physical arena. And I guess I liked it, if my life now is any indication.

I did some 5 and 10Ks in preparation for my marathons (one in Chicago in 2007 and one on the Potawatomi trail in Pinckney, MI, in 2008. During the trail marathon it poured down rain the entire time, and I was so cold at the end that I couldn't get my fingers to work to untie my shoes or unlock my car for about 20 min.), and I remember the feeling of camaraderie and fun of those runs; they were usually for a good cause and the participants ranged from complete novices, like me, to seasoned veterans.

The marathons were fantastic too--for instance, the entire city of Chicago turned out for the one I ran there. My favorite memory, over and above the bands, the city muckety-mucks who made long-winded announcements, and even the beautiful dragon that danced around the runners as we went through Chinatown, is of a very small elderly woman, bundled up against a freezing cold winter (though the temperature was probably in the 50s or 60s), standing on her doorstep banging on a pot as hard as she possibly could. I have no doubt that she stood there and banged on that pot for hours--and I for one am grateful that she did.

It didn't take too long, however, for me to max out my potential, such as it was, with marathons. I ran two, and I realized that I wasn't ever going to get much faster, both because, as I like to joke, I'm made of all spare parts and slow twitch muscle, and also because I wasn't interested in doing what it took to overcome what I perceived to be my physical limitations. That's when I started to cast about for something else to do that would give me the adrenaline rush I had become addicted to, but that would also keep me thinking and wanting to do better. So first, it was muay Thai, but then when I saw judo rolls, hip escapes, and situps from guard, I was a goner for the grapply.

That was twelve years ago, and for most of that time, as I also like to joke, I haven't generally made a point of running unless I'm being chased. Or unless I've been warming up for jiu jitsu. More recently I have been doing more running because the CrossFit frequently commands it--Helen, Nancy, Murph, anyone? Indeed, my very first CrossFit workout was Tabata sprints. (In my case, "sprint" quickly became a relative term.) Awful. And addictive; I remember thinking to myself after that workout, as I lay in a pool of my own phlegm, "I want to die. I wonder what tomorrow's workout is going to be." But running has usually been something to avoid/endure, mostly because I have found myself in the position of trying to run faster than is comfortable for me.

Turns out that today was no exception, but it was far more pleasant than I was anticipating. I think I've mentioned that for my internship at http://www.teamcrossfitacademy.com, I have to meet some physical requirements. I've got most of them, though they aren't always pretty; they include things like a sub 9-min Fran, a score of 220 on Fight Gone Bad, a 3/4-body weight clean and jerk, and others. But one of them was eluding me: a sub-26 minute 5K. We did a 5K in class one morning recently, and I got a 26:31. Close, but no cigar. And we are supposed to meet these requirements by, um, today.

And thanks to two of my TCFA teammates, I did. Kellie invited me to run with her this morning in this race: http://www.kintera.org/faf/home/default.asp?ievent=326504. Shannon, an accomplished runner, paced us, running as fast as we needed to run to hit our time so that all we had to do was keep up. Result: my time this morning was 25:26. I came in third overall for the women and first overall in my age group, out of 24 women. Not too shabby. I'm hugely grateful to both of these ladies for enabling me to do this; I wouldn't have made it without them. In addition, I made a contribution to a good cause (children's hospital); got to see someone who is apparently famous, from the TV show Castle (Stanna someone); heard an a capella rendering of the national anthem that DIDN'T make me cringe; saw the actual Rose Bowl arena for the first time, though I've lived within 20 miles of it for almost 4 years now; got free post-race snacks; and got oot and aboot on a beautiful sunny day.

I can say with some certainty that I'm probably going to stick with grappling tournaments for the foreseeable future, but it was very fun to mix things up a little bit today. Thanks to Shannon and Kellie, best of luck to Kids on the Run, and tomorrow it's back to grappling and picking up heavy things.

Huge congrats to Alaina!

2010-02-22T11:32:00.001-08:00

Okay, dumb side rearing its ugly head one last time this week. And then it goes away for a long time. I forgot to mention that my pal, and the mastermind behind the women's grappling camp, Alaina was awarded her purple belt on Saturday by Mark Stables and Felicia Oh.

HUGE congrats to Alaina! Alaina is very bendy, so keep that in mind when you roll with her; just when you think you have passed her guard, she will tickle your ear with her big toe, and all of a sudden you'll be contained again. Alaina is also a fantastic person, and I'm fortunate to be able to call her a friend.

There is video of the promotion, which I will try to find and post here. It's worth it to see Alaina's belt change AND Mark's fantastic hair. (Mark looks fantastic all the time, but for some reason, his coif is particularly badass lately.)

The dumb side

2010-02-21T23:01:00.000-08:00

In jiu jitsu, people tend to have what I call a smart side and a dumb side. For instance, some people can complete the guard pass to the left very easily, but are more awkward when they try to pass to the right. Or they prefer to attack the right arm for an Americana and hit it consistently whereas when they attack the left arm they have far less success.

Vince says wrestlers can be this way sometimes too--he knows a lot of wrestlers who will only shoot for an outside single from the left, for instance.

As with many things jiu jitsu related, I see the effects of my smart side and my dumb side in my life, too. I'd like to say that this past week I've not written because I've been out and about creating awesomeness in the world, but truly I'm glad the week is over because I've been busy showcasing my dumb side like crazy.

I don't want to go into too much detail about what I've been doing--I am a woman of mystery, after all. (Not buying it, after almost 4 years of gory detail about my life? Understandable. But still.) Suffice it to say that I'm working on it and hoping this week will be better.

In other news, I'm training and CrossFitting a lot, getting ready for competition. I also spent a hilarious day yesterday with Su, Miguel, Ben, and Zeb, eating Greek food and playing video games at the arcade on the Santa Monica pier (Galaga, Centipede, and Area 51, to be exact). Oh, and a cupcake may have been eaten. A devil's food one with peanut butter frosting and peanut butter inside. Maybe. And then an elevated heart rate and a little hyperactivity may have ensued. But the data are inconclusive.

And today I'm getting caught up on a bunch of things, mostly grading. Tomorrow it's back to the grind, which for me involves doing two things I love, training and CrossFitting, and seeing a bunch of people I like. So it's not that grindy after all. Things are looking up! Just gotta lead with the smart side.

Thick-cut, peppered wisdom of the ages

2010-02-16T07:39:00.000-08:00

Had a great time at the Ouano tournament on Saturday. There were some exciting matches, I got to hang out with some friends, and I got to run the stopwatch, which always makes me feel powerful. And when time was up on the matches, I got to throw a knotted up towel at the ref to put a stop to the action. Big Jason was my fellow table worker, and he's got this time, score, and bracket keeping down to a science. So I held the stopwatch and he basically did everything else.

Oh wait. I also ate Hershey's kisses, a hamburger, and some Skittles. So I did that too. I have a trick I can do with Skittles, M&Ms, Reese's pieces, or any small candy (and believe me, I have put in a lot of practice) where I flip a piece of the candy into my mouth super fast. Big J was suitably impressed. Or, at least, he claimed to be. (He knows me well enough to know that you just have to nod and smile enough and I will eventually pipe down.)

I have to say, I was incredibly impressed with New Breed's kids. Not only did they all do well at the tournament, they also demonstrated unbelievable sportsmanship--far moreso than many adults I know. First of all, there were enough of them so that some of them had to compete against each other. So they just acted as if it were another day in the academy, fought hard, and then were pals again afterward, regardless of whether they won or lost. And after some confusion about the outcome of one match, one of the kids stepped aside so his opponent (from another school) could advance. How many adults do you know who would do that? They should be very proud of themselves; they certainly taught me a thing or two about poise and why people look up to athletes. So, huge congrats to them for many, many reasons.

There are lots of other things going on that I will report on soon, but for now, I'll report on the most important piece of news, which centers around my visit today to my friend Traver for an acupuncture treatment in Santa Barbara (he and I met at our old CrossFit gym, CrossFit LA, and he opened http://www.crossfitpacificcoast.com/); my alopecia has come back, not as bad as before, but any alopecia is too much. And it's an indication that something isn't quite right.

So I intend to treat myself better. The upshot, according to Trav, is just that I work out a ton--I usually CrossFit once a day and grapple once a day 5 days per week. I rest like crazy on the weekends, but my weekly regimen is pretty intense. So I've tried to increase the amount of sleep I get, and Traver said I need to eat more red meat. He's also going to put me back on the Chinese herb regimen he had me on last year, and I have committed to getting a massage before the end of the month. And I skipped training tonight, so I only worked out once today. And I will say that that little physical activity seemed decadent.

But that's not the important piece of news, speaking of decadent. What was really important about that appointment is that Traver gave me a piece of chocolate that had bacon in it. I had never seen, let alone tasted, such a thing before, and I'm a little irritated that I've lived this long without knowing about it. It was life-altering. I highly recommend that everyone try it, whether they need Chinese herbs or not. And if bacon chocolate is one of the cornerstones of acupuncture, then the Chinese are wiser than I had originally believed.

Always promising

2010-02-13T07:35:00.000-08:00

I'm always promising new posts. My joke has always been that it's difficult to strike a balance between writing about my life and going out and having a life to write about. So I'm erring on the side of living this past week. But good stuff is happening, as usual. I'm a lucky chick.

Most notably, I'm dog-sitting this weekend, and the dog is the best person ever. Yes, I have to pick up her poop, but she's pretty and undemanding and likes to lie around a lot. (I wish I could say the same for myself, about all of it.)

I'm headed to the Ouano tournament (http://www.ouanotournaments.com) in a little bit to work a table (keep time and score) and cheer some people on. Then it's back to picking up more poop and maybe grading some papers. And maybe getting my hands on a cupcake or two. My life is glamorous indeed! More soon.

Back to life, back to reality

2010-02-04T21:54:00.000-08:00

I had more of a post-camp hangover this time around than I have in the past. While the first 2 camps were absolutely fantastic, they were 2 days longer than this most recent one, so I was just fried by the end of them. This camp was 5 days--long enough for us to have a blast, but not long enough for me to become desperate for sleep and lose control of my faculties. I think we have a winning formula now; we scheduled in enough rest time that we protected ourselves against ourselves and our own penchant for overtraining, and the 5 days was enough to get some stuff done but leave us wanting more. At least, that's what happened with me.

So I've been back at my "normal" life for a week now, and it's groovy too. But I miss the ladies. The camaraderie. The double entendres. (Okay, I get the last two at my academy. But it's different when it's just us chick(en)s.) Felicia, Alaina, Emily, and I (and Kelly, one of the assistant instructors) debriefed the camp last Saturday and have some cool ideas about how to take it into the future. Because it looks like there is going to be a future; we are talking about places and times to have other camps.

I can't tell you how gratifying it is for this camp to be successful, for so many reasons. First, it seems to be helping people. Second, *I* get to help people. I have the knowledge base and the teaching skill now so that I can actually positively affect people's grappling. Third, all this helping is going on within the context of this sport I love so, so, so much. And it's nice to be around people who not only don't need it explained to them, but who share the love, sometimes in scarier and more intense ways than I had imagined possible. Especially members of Team Estrogen.

So I'm thrilled that there's momentum behind this whole endeavor and that it enables me to give back, not just to the chicks who come to camp, but in other ways to my own academy and to grappling in general. I returned to the scene of the crime (BJMUTA in Valencia) on Thurs to discuss next steps with Felicia and Alaina (who has not yet returned to Toronto). We assigned ourselves some tasks and then spent a hilarious 2 hours performing a task that probably should have taken about 20 min: opening a bank account for the camp.

In our defense, our banker was Sheik, who happens to be full of hilarious stories AND a martial artist himself. We love Sheik. So we wasted a good hour and a half of his time opening a bank account, shooting the breeze, and, in my case, drinking 3 cups of coffee. And I don't drink coffee. I had been concerned about the drive back from Valencia to my corner of SoCal, because I was feeling a little sleepy, so I figured a cup of coffee would give me a boost. But then we stayed longer and longer and I drank more and more coffee. By the end, my heart was pounding, and I was definitely blabbing.

So now we have a business bank account! We're sort of official!

I hit the training hard this past week; I'm on a schedule of working out 5 days in a row, one CrossFit workout and one grappling session per day, and then taking the weekends completely off. The weekends are when I become "that person," who does absolutely nothing. I think about things I need from the kitchen right now AND things I might need an hour from now so I only have to get up once. I drive to the drugstore that's a block away. I groan like a senior citizen. I eat only soft, gummable things. Pap, mostly, and any food that comes in "sauce" form.

Okay, I'm not that bad. But I give into the weary, and it's lovely. I slept for 11 hours on Friday night/Saturday morning, and I'm definitely adding that to the to-do list on a regular basis. I visited some CrossFit pals and cheered them on as they did a new warrior workout called Stephen (it's unfortunate when there's a new warrior workout b/c it means there's a new casualty of war--I know; there are many every day, but the new workouts drive that home in a unique way). While they did the workout, I sat on a plyometric box and drank water. I cheered every now and then, and then I examined my fingernails, and then I stretched, and then I hugged some people I hadn't seen in a while--from a seated position, of course--and then I congratulated everyone on a job well done. And then we all went and ate!

I also continued my internship at Team CrossFit Academy this past week; I may have mentioned that in addition to working out at TCFA, I have been interning there since November, helping out with classes and learning more about how to be a good instructor. I'm getting great guidance from Eric, Vanessa, and Kellie, and learning to teach CrossFit well is as humbling as striving to improve at CrossFit itself. Particularly with the barbell work, so of course that's what Eric has me work on all the time.

Eric and I had a meeting the other day to discuss my progress. I have a pretty good sense of what my weaknesses are and what I need to work on; in addition to just content knowledge about lifts and terminology, my main goal is presence/confidence. Apparently Nicole Carroll, who has been a CrossFit instructor and athlete for many many years, talks about how it's important for you as an instructor to come across with the "big you." In other words, as I develop confidence and become a better coach, I'm not going to be another Eric (I'd have to work for decades to even get into the same galaxy as Eric anyway). Instead, I'm going to be the biggest, most present version of myself.

So that's what I'm working on. It's intangible and odd and challenging, but I feel like I'm making progress. I also have physical requirements to meet, and I'm slowly knocking those out too. But this CrossFit stuff is very much like jiu jitsu in that the lasting lessons/takeaways have relatively little to do with how to perform a correct squat, and relatively lots to do with how to be a better person--the biggest me I can be.

I'm struggling with making the time to write. I'm writing here, in my blog, though I haven't written since last Sunday, but I'm not working on creating a book deal. I thought I was still smarting from being dumped by my agent last summer, but I really don't think that's it. It's just that things conspire to fill the spaces in my life. In good ways. But I intend to be more diligent about it; the writing truly is important to me, so now I need to demonstrate that to myself, to others, and to the universe.

I've been wondering lately if part of my block against making the time to write is that I don't want to encounter the quiet place in my mind. If there are things lurking there that I don't want to face. So of course that means I need to face them. Add to to-do list: meditate. Or at least get quiet. Turn the radio off in the car. Turn off the TV (but not Judge Judy). I intend to have a much better year this year than I did in 2009, so I want to be all proactive and shit about it.

So maybe it's time to go be pensive. Oh, and I forgot it was Superbowl Sunday until about 10 this morning. Congrats to the Saints! And now, back to gumming my dinner.

This much fun should be illegal

2010-01-31T18:37:00.000-08:00

and probably is. Okay, lots of ground to cover, because it's been a busy and most awesome week.

First, the ADCC gi trials. I think I mentioned that I tied for 3rd. I wish I had won my semifinals match, but I made one mistake that my opponent capitalized on, getting a reversal in the last 30 seconds of the match for the win. Well, what can you do? In my case, you can congratulate her, enjoy the rest of the tournament and chat with your friends and opponents, eventually cheering for divison winner Lana Stefanac (WOO-HOO!!). You can go out with your teammates (who include my coach Johnny Ramirez, who won his division and is getting an all expenses paid trip to Abu Dhabi to compete there in April!!! WOO-HOO!!) and friends for bacon gorgonzola sliders in Santa Cruz. You can hang out with Darren and his awesome family, playing Fact or Crap. You can give Darren a hard time for dressing metrosexually. You can commiserate with Danny, who flew out to SoCal from Chicago, spent literally about 36 hours on this coast, and then flew home at 6am the morning after the tournament in time to start a shift at his job as an EMT.

In other words, you can have a blast anyway, and just resolve to do better next time. I really feel like I have turned a corner vis-a-vis competing. It's very important to me to do well in competition, and I'm going to train my ass off in the coming months to prepare for the PanAms and Mundial. But I'm also going to be happy, and beating myself up before and after tournaments is not conducive to that. I really do think it's possible to be happy and intense, and I'm going to work on that this year. Plus, Johnny thinks I did really well--I did some things right, and then I made the aforementioned mistake. So my instructor is happy, and besides myself, he's really the one I have to please.

We returned from Santa Cruz late Sunday evening, and then first thing Monday morning we started women's grapplecamp.

Ah, chick grapplecamp. In the immortal words of Erasure (which I think I have invoked before), how can I explain, when there are few words I can choose? I remember in college I wrote a paper for my American Poetry class contrasting the rhetorical styles of Walt Whitman and T.S. Eliot. I argued that both Whitman and Eliot felt hamstrung by the tools at their disposal--the English language--to convey adequately the ideas and feelings they experienced. Each of them used a different technique. Whitman used what came to be called "catalogues of images," where he repeated a concept in several different ways, using sweeping language and what may have seemed to be repetition, but was actually elaboration on a theme. Eliot, on the other hand, used an "imagist" technique, where he employed just enough words and phrases to create a picture for the reader, where every picture was a carefully crafted whole--no word extraneous. He even sometimes implied his point, or described the opposite of what he meant, because that was more descriptive than actively stating his ideas.

Wow, that was a walk down memory lane. It was a damn good paper, as I recall. The point is, now that the 3rd grapplecamp is in the history books, it's becoming more and more apparent that this experience has a profound effect on the people who participate, myself fully included. But I don't know how I can adequately describe the effect to people who weren't there. In my case, the limitation is not the tools I have, but rather my relative ability to wield them. Whitman and Eliot were geniuses bumping up against the limitations of communication. I am a reasonably intelligent mat rat who likes a good poop joke. So I'll try my hardest to do justice to this amazing "thing with legs" called Women's Grappling Camp, but I make no promises.

As it was with the first camp just under a year ago, we were excellently hosted at Big John McCarthy's Ultimate Training Academy (http://www.bjmuta.com). BJMUTA is an MMA enthusiast's Shangri-la, with a cage, a boxing ring, rows and rows of heavy bags, free weights and barbells, kettlebells and medicine balls, and, of course, what looks like miles of mat space. (Also an endless supply of low-carb Monster!). Emily, Felicia, Alaina and I met early to try to get ourselves together and seem organized. And then the campers started to arrive!

Each day Felicia, Emily and I, with the help of Kelly and Nikki, who served as assistant instructors, ran a gi and a no-gi session where we taught techniques and ran situational sparring and free rolling. We held informational round tables on nutrition, courtesy of Krista, health and wellness courtesy of my friend Traver, and eating disorders courtesy of Lily, our inspiring 60-year-old brown belt entrepreneur who runs http://www.catfightgear.com. We had evening discussions about different aspects of BJJ and life--how the choices you make on the mat reflect the choices you make in life, how to deal with competition fears, how to distinguish between issues we face that really are gender-based and issues we face that are just typical grappler frustrations, whether you are male or female.

And we're starting to realize that the true power of the camp is in these experiences, the opportunities women have to get reality checks, understand that they may be crazy for being BJJ-loving women, but that they are not alone in their insanity. And most importantly the women have the opportunity to "do" BJJ the way they never get to at their own academies, which is to say, to roll, kibbitz, hang out, troubleshoot, roll some more, with a roomful of other women. Many of the women at the camp have the same experience at their academies that I have at mine; they are part of the family, and the guys have their back without question or hesitation. And that is a beautiful thing, and I'm blessed that it's true in my case.

But what the guys at my academy, much as I love them, cannot give me, is the opportunity to train with a bunch of other women in a non-competition setting. And at this camp, we all get that opportunity, where the stakes are relatively low, to learn and practice, get frustrated and have breakthroughs, and yes, to cry. It is a women's camp, after all, and as Felicia, Emily, and I not-so-subtly tried to convey, jiu jitsu is about life. And life can be intense, as can jiu jitsu. So some of the ladies got a little catharsis, and who doesn't need that?

On that topic, it's Felicia who said that everyone gets out of the camp what they need from it. And that's not necessarily technique. In my case, I get more and more confidence every time that I actually have some grappling skill and that I can help other people improve too. I become a better teacher. I put my ego aside and really listen and learn. Other people make friends, get ideas for ways to run their own warm-ups or even get a break from a life they are contemplating stirring up in big ways--but just need a little courage to get started on. We all get a little boost in one way or another.

What this means, writ large, is that we can give back to the broader grappling community, which is mostly dudes. When we started the camp, we never meant for it to be exclusionary. It wasn't about hating men and wanting to be our own island. I know I speak for Emily and Felicia when I say that whatever success we have achieved in BJJ is directly traceable to the many, many men who have befriended and supported us, taken an active interest in our development, and taught us how to be better grapplers. The camp enables us to take more of a leadership role in our own training and bring that mentality back to our home academies, hopefully to inspire our other teammates, men and women, to be stoked about women's grappling just like they are about men's.

And it's already happening. When Nikki told her boyfriend, who happens to be Lucas Leite (for those of you who aren't in the grappling world, think Michael Jordan or Wayne Gretzky), about the camp, he asked how he could help. So he came in and taught us a sequence of techniques that have worked for him in competition. And he said that he was impressed with what we were doing, because it meant that women were making a mark in BJJ. My male friends and instructors are always ready to help out. Some of the campers came with husbands and boyfriends who train, and they had to band together and go find other places to play because the women had important work to do. So we as a group are building our confidence and our knowledge base, and we can go back to our academies and participate in the growth and strengthening of this art we all love so much.

I have so much more to say about the camp, about the individual women I met, and about all the laughs and raunchy comments, but I'll stop for now because I'm tired and have other things to do. I need to keep looking for my voice, which is coming back slowly but, as Susan said, I still sound amphibious and primatey. That is glorious, for reasons which shall stay part of grappling camp.

One other side note: check out this video, courtesy of CrossFit Ventura, of the affiliate challenge Matty, Ben, Gretchen, and I won as the Clock Blockers a couple weeks ago. You can see all four of us at :58 seconds, running off to start our first WoD, me and Matty doing pullups and Gretchen doing thrusters at 1:14, the four of us starting our barbell run at 1:52 (we're on the right), my bottom half helping Matty help Gretchen do handstand pushups while Ben squats fater than the naked eye can see at 3:31, and me, Matty, and Ben (Gretchen had left), during our photo op after the winners (us!) were announced at 3:45.

There is also footage in that video of many of my friends lookin' and actin' badass: Eddie, Zeb, Alyssa, Su, Miguel, Karen, Dawn, Sondra, and others. And of course the homage in the middle to Crossley, one of Traver and Eric's students. Check out his fashion choices, which obviously contributed to his stellar performance.

http://vimeo.com/9035698

And as the excitement of the week calms down and I head into another "normal" week, it's fitting to become a bit contemplative. Tomorrow marks the 4th anniversary of the death of Carlson Gracie, Sr., who passed away in Chicago after some kidney problems hospitalized him. Some of you know that I had the honor of training with Carlson, Sr., for the last 4 years of his life and that he tied my purple belt around me when he and Carlson, Jr., promoted me to that rank. I still count that as one of my proudest accomplishments.

I've said before that I only got to "have" Carlson for 4 years; I can only imagine the effect his death had on Carlson, Jr., and his stable of black belts, those guys who trained with him for years and years, and who viewed him as a father figure. He was a controversial, passionate person, and people had very strong feelings about him. I'm grateful that I got to see a bit of the man behind the legend: the man who wouldn't let me help the guys put the mats away because I was "a lady" (little did he know), the man whose record collection included both samba AND Britney Spears, the man who would literally take off and give you his watch or his jacket if you complimented him on them (I saw him do this), and the man whose love of jiu jitsu was so pure that he got as excited about the most beginnerest white belt match as he did about the most highly anticipated black belt world championship final.

So it's the time of year when I remember how blessed I have been in my jiu jitsu life to have had such a remarkable teacher. RIP, Carlson. And thanks to Chuong, from whom I stole this youtube link to a Carlson Gracie tribute: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxSe2VqV1qU.

Lots of ground to cover

2010-01-28T22:24:00.001-08:00

and it's going to have to wait a bit.

We're going into the last day of chick grapple camp tomorrow. It's been fantastic, even though I lost my voice, which made it a bit difficult to teach. For the third time, we've had a wonderful crop of ladies, some repeat customers and some brand new recruits, who have brought their techniques, their ideas, and their energy. With each camp, I become more and more humbled and gratified that I get to be a part of this. I will write more once I've had a chance to collapse over the weekend.

The ADCC tourney was okay too. I had fun competing, and I ended up tying for 3rd. I wish I had gone farther, but I did some things right in addition to the big mistake I made that my opponent capitalized on for the win in the semifinal. Meh. Live and learn. The big thing is that I need to up my intensity. Johnny took his division, and Lana took mine, and both of them are going to Abu Dhabi in April! Huge congrats to them.

Okay, sleepytime and then lots more grapply tomorrow. I wish I didn't sound like a goose.

Calm before the storm

2010-01-24T08:04:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting in my motel room in Santa Cruz, waiting for my teammates to wake up so we can go to the convention center and get this tournament on the road. It's the North American qualifier for the Abu Dhabi gi tournament in Abu Dhabi in April. I'm excited to compete! I'm nervous too, but that's not the overwhelming sensation, as it usually is.

I'm thinking that's partially by choice. I read somewhere that the physiological characteristics of excitement and anxiety are exactly the same; it's our minds that apply certain emotions to them. So we almost decide to feel nervous rather than excited. That's what Randy Couture said once, in a seminar he gave at BJMUTA maybe 3 years ago now--that when he's getting ready to compete, he thinks about how he's excited, not nervous. So I'm gonna go in and smile, and haul as much ass as I can, and be present in the moment.

And I'm going to pee a lot. (Some things never change.)

Abu Dhabi and grappling camp: two great tastes that taste great one after the other

2010-01-21T22:52:00.000-08:00

The lifestyle I have chosen enables/causes me to be somewhat self-centered at times. Since I don't have a full-time job, my life continues as normal even during national holidays like Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, which was Monday. I hope everyone had a good one, and that the festivities that took place here in LA, which I missed, were uplifting and rewarding.

It's really rainy here in SoCal, which is freaking out the natives. I have gotten soft where cold weather is concerned, but I can still deal with rain. It's a little harder for those people who are used to sunny days all the time. And admittedly, this rain is a bit more than just rain. There was a tornado watch earlier this week, the 101 freeway was flooded, there is talk on the local news of evacuations, and on my street there are miniature rivers flowing downhill near the curbs because the sewers are overflowing. I also hydroplaned once or twice on the highway today (don't tell my parents). And we are in the middle of several predicted storms; apparently there's one for every day this week. They are supposed to last through the weekend.

But it could be much worse, as I know from the happenings in Haiti. My thoughts go out to those who are affected, and I'm counting my own blessings, which are many.

Coming up this weekend is the Abu Dhabi North American gi qualifier in Santa Cruz. I'm competing, and I'm excited about it. )Check out http://www.abudhabibjj.com/ for details and the bracketing info.) This is a good place to be; as those of you who have followed my trials and tribulations vis-a-vis competing know, I'm usually freaking out. But right now I'm happy and full of anticipation. Several of us from New Breed are headed there (about a 5-hour drive) on Saturday for the competition on Sunday. And then we turn right around and come back Sunday evening, and THEN, the very next day, the third women's grappling camp starts in Valencia.

So it's gonna be a busy week and a half! More to come on all of it.

CrossFit madness

2010-01-17T11:29:00.000-08:00

Yesterday (Saturday) I got to spend the day doing some crazy CrossFit stuff with my friends. It started with a meet-up at Matty's place at about 6:30am, where he showed me his Egg Genie, a Ronco product that hard-boils your eggs in a snap. Hard boiled eggs are a staple of the Paleo diet, to which both Matty and I subscribe, so we both probably had a bit more interest in an appliance that facilitates that than normal people. We also ate thick-cut, peppered bacon. Delicious--and necessary for energy, or something. (Work with me.)

Anyway, then Alyssa, Ben, and Emily arrived, and the 5 of us took off for Ventura, specifically for CrossFit Ventura, which hosted an affiliate gathering. People from "boxes" (CF affiliates) all around the area came to support the event, which was a friendly team competition consisting of three WoDs (workouts of the day) for 2-man, 2-woman teams. With my Team CrossFit Academy coach Eric's permission, I joined Matty, Ben, and Gretchen (who came separately) in representing Paradiso CrossFit (http://www.paradisocrossfit.com/) in the tournament.

Thanks to Ben, we really did have the best team name: The Clock Blockers. The best part about it is that when people yelled it to cheer us on, they invariably ended up saying something a little bit different--at the top of their lungs. Fantastic.

I had been a little bit nervous about accepting Matty's invitation to be on the team, because Matty, Gretchen, and Ben are friggin' monsters. Matty is a big, strong monster, Gretchen is a lovely, sylphlike monster, and Ben is a sweet, friendly monster. But they are all unbelievable athletes and CrossFitters, and I was definitely the weak link in the chain. No, I'm not being falsely modest. I am totally fine with it, both because they are all such wonderful people and also because they inspire me to do my best.

And apparently my best was good enough, because our team came in first out of something like 15 teams! We placed first in the first two WoDs and second in the third WoD. The first WoD was 3 rounds of a 400m run as a team, and then kind of a modified two-person Fran. When we got in from the run, Ben went to the pullup bar, as did Gretchen, to do 25 and 20 pullups respectively. While they pulled up, Matty and I did thrusters--each thruster took a second off our overall time, and since we block the clock, baby, we wanted a low time. But thrusters also tire you out and make it harder to do pullups, so in the second and third round I did many fewer to make sure I finished my pullups soon after Matty finished his. So we ended up with the fastest time in that event.

Then, the second event was a mile run, with our entire team carrying one 95lb bar. If we put the bar down or tried to hoist it to our shoulders, we had to do 5 burpees each. The name of the game there was just to keep moving and to switch positions when our grips got tired. We had some competition in our heat; the next fastest team pulled into the lead on the first or second lap (we had to run the course was a quarter mile/400m, so we had to run it 4 times). But we just kept right behind them and pulled into the lead somewhere in the 4th lap. They tried to make a comeback, but they dropped the bar and had to burpee, so we pulled away and ended up fastest there too.

The third event was pretty funny: AMRAP (as many reps as possible) in 5 minutes of assisted muscle-ups, assisted handstand pushups, and air squats. Each muscle-up counted for 5 points, each pushup for 3 and each squat for 1. So our strategy was for Matty to help Ben do as many muscle-ups as possible. Ben has muscle-ups on his own, as do Matty and Gretchen (monsters, I tell you) but the goal here was quantity, so assisted was the way to go. (For those of you who don't know what a muscle-up is, check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAE6lCIkDNE.

Or just do a search on youtube on "muscle-up." There are tons of videos.)

I explained muscle-ups to my mother and she said, "Can't be done." That's definitely how it feels when you don't have one. But I felt that way about pullups for a long time, too. So I'm hoping to get a muscle-up this year.

Anyway, while Matty and Ben were muscling-up (muscle-upping?), Gretchen and I took turns grabbing each other's legs and churning each other like butter. So imagine I'm upside down on my hands and Gretchen is holding onto my leg and helping to pull me up as I'm pushing up as hard as I can. The best part, though is that when Ben got tired with the muscle-ups, he'd start to squat faster than the naked eye can see. That was his "rest." And then Matty would grab the other leg of whoever was upside down, and that's when things got REALLY fun. The hands of the person doing the pushup would literally come off the floor; I heard that the Claw, who is one of my friend Traver's students at CrossFit Pacific Coast (http://www.crossfitpacificcoast.com/), had enough time to clap in between his pushups.

We came in second on that event, and we won the thing overall! So I'm grateful to Matty, for wheedling me into participating, and to him, Ben, and Gretchen for being such great teammates. It was a fantastic day all around, with opportunities to hang out with some of my favorite people out here on the left coast.

I don't post many pictures these days, mostly because I never replaced the camera I took into the drink with me when I fell in the river back in the summer of 2008, when I got pink eye and went to Durango anyway to visit my friends Jen* and Pat (I haven't been that sick before or since). But there are a bunch of pictures on the Paradiso website (http://www.paradisocrossfit.com/. It's the Jan 17, 2010 entry, called Clock Blockin' the Beats). Here is one of my favorites. It's hard to see us, but it's Matty, me, Gretchen, and Ben, from left to right. Our friend Eric from Pacific Coast is in the red shirt to the left; he was one of the judges and had to run with us to make sure we didn't drop or hoist the bar, or to make sure that if we did, we did our burpees. We didn't actually run this way very far; most of the time we were in single file, but I just like this picture a lot. Teamwork and all that. I've tried a couple times to crop it so we zero in on the 4 of us, but I can't get it to work. Maybe it's too late at night.

So thanks to CrossFit Ventura (http://www.crossfitventura.com/) for a fantastic day, and thanks to The Clock Blockers for helping me go above and beyond what I thought I could do.

A couple updates

2010-01-12T15:13:00.000-08:00

First, thanks to everyone who is still reading! That's way cool and I'm thankful.

Second, tell your female grapply friends about the third Women's Grappling Camp, starting on Jan 25! http://www.womensgrappling.org. Felicia, Emily and I will be teaching, and there will be all kinds of other cool stuff going on too! Nutrition, acupuncture, a field trip, and the usual shenanigans.

Third, check out the interview with me and Emily that David Webb conducted at http://www.kombatclinic.com/2010/01/womens-grappling-camps/ about the camp(s) described above! HUGE thanks to David for promoting women's MMA. He's also going to do an interview with my CrossFit instructor, Eric LeClair, to give his readers the lay of the CrossFit land: what it actually is, what its purpose is, how it works, etc. Eric is incredibly articulate and knowledgeable about CrossFit in particular and wellness and fitness in general, so I know *I'M* looking forward to what he has to say! I'll keep you posted.

In other news, I've decided to set aside an hour a day in 2010 to write. Writing is one of my priorities this year, so I'm making time for it. So far, so good! Today I wrote a couple pages and did a little research. Tomorrow I'll be working on some queries to literary agents; you may recall from July that the agent I was working with decided he didn't want to work with me anymore (it wasn't me; it was him, or so he said), so I've been licking my wounds for the better part of a year on that. A family friend, upon hearing that my agent dumped me, asked my father, "Just one?" So that gave me a little perspective. It may be tough to get an agent and a book deal. But I'm prepared to do the work. And I'm in a much better place now than I was a couple months ago, so I'm ready to see the humor in the situation--and to create some where none exists. Bring it!

Gratified

2010-01-09T12:00:00.000-08:00

Hey, people are still reading my blog, even after all this time. And even if it's only those of you who commented (or didn't, in Brain's case), that's pretty cool. Thanks! I'll try to make it worth your while to continue reading. Fortunately for me, most of you probably read b/c you are trying to procrastinate or are bored, so there's not a lot of pressure to write a Pulitzer Prize-winner.

It's been a fun weekend already. I'm thoroughly enjoying interning at Team CrossFit Academy (http://www.teamcrossfitacademy.com/), even though I learn a bajillion things every time I do--and retain maybe two of them. So I interned yesterday morning, after rowing a 5K and working on my deadlift, and while it's true that my retention rate needs to improve, I'm setttling in more, learning people's names, feeling more comfortable and maybe a teeny bit more confident. I got a degree in a learning field (educational psychology), so I know both personally and professionally that learning can feel awful, both because it is hard to acquire new knowledge and skills (makes your brain work overtime, and in the case of things like CrossFit and bjj, your body as well), and because it reminds you of the fact that you don't already know these things, which sucks. No wonder people don't like to take up new hobbies or admit that they are at a loss.

But doing that makes us better, smarter, and more empathetic, I think. Learning is is a virtue, I guess. (More evidence that learning sucks. It's far more fun to work on vices.)

In the evening, I helped one of our teammates celebrate his 40th birthday (Hooray! Someone who is older than I am!). His name is John, but his nickname is Big Ugly. He hated me when we first met, because I said, "That's a terrible nickname for you. You're not that big." The nickname spawned others: Vince became Little Ugly, Johnny became Mini Ugly, etc. I wanted to be Pretty Ugly, but nobody liked it. Maybe that's a good thing. And he didn't really hate me. He tried, but I'm just so cool that he couldn't. I bought him a birthday lunch: a Red Bull, some beef jerky, and some peanut butter cups. All from the dollar store. Happy birthday, Ugly! Thanks for being older than me!

Today is some training, maybe some movie watching, maybe some writing or reading. I'm pretty beat from the week of training and CrossFitting I've done; TCFA has a "strength bias," which means lots of barbell work. This week, I back squatted, front squatted, clean and jerked, deadlifted, and snatched. I am terrible at these things (back to learning being a virtue--it's hard to suck at this stuff, but the only way to get better is to do it more. Plus, it's really fun, when I put my ego aside). The theory behind the strength bias is that getting stronger helps you on other measures of fitness as well, including metabolic conditioning. In other words, a few reps of picking up heavy objects close to the maximum amount you can lift will help you PR on benchmark CrossFit workouts like Fran or Helen. I'm using myself as a data point about this--I've never lifted this frequently before, so we'll see how it works! Plus, I just like the stuff and want to get better.

But it will be interesting to see how it helps me prepare for tournaments, the first of which will be the ADCC gi qualifier in Santa Cruz in a couple weeks (http://www.abudhabibjj.com/). I draw the line at GOMAD, though. That's Coach Rippetoe-speak for "a gallon of milk a day," which is what he believes we should all be drinking. Well, maybe not that much for women, but he thinks milk is a great post-training nutrition source and that it helps us get "70s big."

So here's another post, literally the contents of my brain spewed out onto the computer screen. I am grateful that you are all still reading--and mildly worried that you might need to get out more. Gonna go train now, because that's why I write this blog in the first place.

Anonymous is still out of it but...

2010-01-07T12:24:00.000-08:00

...one or two friends mentioned that they would have left comments on some of my recent posts if I were allowing comments right now. You might recall that I disabled comments as much as possible because I was tired of dealing with Anonymous' self-righteous, judgmental remarks. I don't even know who's still reading my blog because I post pretty sporadically these days, but if you are, and you don't mind identifying yourself, you can now comment again.

Anonymous can still suck it.

Cool stuff coming down the pike: my team Matty, Gretchen, Ben and I are going to compete in the CrossFit Ventura (http://www.crossfitventura.com) Affiliate Team Challenge next Saturday. I'll be competing for Paradiso CrossFit (http://www.paradisocrossfit.com), which is where all three of them compete, though my heart and my immature squat now belong to Eric, Vanessa, and everyone at http://www.teamcrossfitacademy.com. They are all cool with me helping out my friends, though as I told all of them, I'll definitely be the weak link on this team. It's not false modesty; it's the truth. The three of them are incredible athletes and I'll be doing my best to keep up. Maybe this is one of those events where sure, yeah, you do the workouts, but between sets you eat a double-double, like they did for In N Out Fran (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaC3TDOTzkQ).

But would that be better or worse? Hard to say.

Officially 4 years out of date

2010-01-04T14:20:00.001-08:00

Yep. I started this blog three and a half years ago, in 2006. I can't think of any unique or original way to marvel at how time flies, and how the more things change the more they stay the same. For example, the more I grapple, the more there seems to be left to learn. Also, the more I realize how difficult it is to make conscious and deliberate choices choices every day about how I want to live my life, the more I realize how important it is for me to make them. (I'm not always successful, but I try.)

And most importantly, despite the fact that I am getting more gray hair and wrinkles, I continue to break out. WTF?

I have a lot of things I didn't have when I left Chicago in June 2006: pretty much complete autonomy; a lifestyle that makes for great, if bemusing, cocktail conversation; perpetual aches, pains, and abrasions; and much more clarity about what does and doesn't make me happy. The rub is always doing the things I need to to bring about that happiness, of course.

I still don't have a lot of things I thought leaving Chicago would give me: a romantic partner in crime; a big picture sense of what's coming down the pike; and, along with that, a feeling of security about my life, that things are predictable and quantifiable. I guess nobody really gets that, even if they try for it, and I'm pretty sure I'd be unhappy if I actually got it. But at my advanced age (I'm almost 40, you know), I'm becoming more Macon Leary from The Accidental Tourist in spite of myself. I like my Frank's hot sauce, I like my Judge Judy, and I like my gray and black striped hoodie on cold days.

This doesn't mean I'm going to stop training or CrossFitting, though those are two of the most unpredictable things I can do/have ever done. But I do think it means I'm going to focus on creating a more stable existence that provides support for that overlay of unpredictability. And no, I don't really know how I'm going to do that. My vague idea includes getting a dog, or a ficus, or something else that needs regular care, so I can build a schedule around it. I seriously doubt that I'll buy another home, at least not in the near future.

My vague idea also includes creating a schedule that includes regularly scheduled time slots for me to write. I'm still teaching writing and qualitative methods courses online to support my career of grappling/CrossFitting, which doesn't support me, and I'm interning 5-10 hours/week at Team CrossFit Academy in addition to all the other stuff (like sitting on my ass) I like to do.

Add to this the fact that I'm in one of those phases where I'm convinced I don't really have anything to say, and that even if I did my writing is drivel and the fact that I'm planning to compete a lot in the next 6 months, and you have a recipe for a busy, achy, cranky, self-absorbed, sleep-deprived, but hopefully stronger, more grapply, more prolific Val.

Or maybe I'll do something completely different. I guess only time will tell.

Happy new year!

2010-01-01T17:39:00.000-08:00

It's the calm after the storm and before the next storm. I had a great rest of my visit to FL, culminating in a visit to Pedro Carvalho's in Port St. Lucie, where he kicked my ass for about 2 hours. I believe during that time he also did his taxes, cured cancer, and wrote the great American novel. (In other words, I was working very hard, and he was not having to work hard at all.)

I returned to SoCal on Monday and got back into CrossFitting, training, and cleaner eating. Until Wednesday, at least. Then yesterday it was up to Santa Barbara to ring in the new year with my friends Su, Miguel, and Jeff. After sushi and watching CrossFit Games videos (which were awesome and a perfectly normal way to spend New Year's Eve, thank you very much), we went dancing. In my case, "dancing" = "lifting one foot and then the other and tossing my hair sort of to the beat." We stayed up way past my bedtime, and then I slept in late enough that Miguel and Su (with whom I stayed) had to call their own answering machine to get me up (the answering machine is in the room I stayed in). This is not like me. Or maybe I'm turning over a new, hipper leaf in the new year.

Not bloody likely.

So now I'm back home, after crushing a fantastic breakfast and walking around on State St. in the SB. It's fascinating to me how many people have been saying that 2009 just blew chunks and they are all happy it's over. I wonder whether we all tapped into some kind of cosmic suckage that just cast a pall over the year. I wonder whether we can avoid it in the new one.

I'm hunkered down right now, and tomorrow it starts in earnest again. A friend of mine uses the word "roger" synonymously with "kicking ass." As he would say, I'm ready to roger the new year!

Happy holidays!

2009-12-25T08:49:00.001-08:00

I'm still THAT person, but this time it's brought on by too many carbs in addition to the rowing and the burpeeing and the running; I'm not a finely tuned instrument, but these days I do react to refined sugar with a racing pulse and a desire to assume the position (prone) for hours at a time. Fortunately, central FL, where I'm enjoying my Christmas day with my parents, is very flat, and I have yet to encounter a flight of stairs in any store, home, or other building around here. And it's a driving kind of place, so the only walking I'm doing is through the supermarket toward the TastyKakes (KandyKakes, people!). Plus, it's about 80 degrees and cloudy, but it should burn off, leaving a gorgeous, shorts-weather kind of day. Sorry, rest of the country! Enjoy that snow!

The plan tomorrow is to see if I can connect with Pedro Carvalho in Port St. Lucie for some training. Meantime, there's more Christmas food to be cooked and eaten, and next week the plan is to get back to my normal training schedule and start writing/finding an agent. I know I'm ready to do this because I've been reading a ton, which usually precedes a writing jag, and the universe is conspiring with me: some of my Christmas gifts this year included a how-to manual for making a living writing one book, Mark Twain's Roughing It, and Dara Torres' Age Is Just a Number.

So I guess I'm going to be competing, CrossFitting, and writing my head off in 2010; it's written in the stars. I turn 40 in July (yes, I've been practicing saying that. Forty. 40. Twice twenty. Half of 80. Jeebus.), so 2010 will be a turning point, at least in my head. I don't know what I'll be turning toward, but it seems like it is time to crush some grappling and CrossFit challenges before that happens--with a little help from my friends, to quote the Beatles, though in my case it will be a lot of help. Fortunately, there are some pretty awesome grapply and CrossFit events coming down the pike early in the new year, so after this next weekend of Carbapalooza and just maintaining my fitness in the face of very little equipment, I'll be killing it (or myself) in January and beyond.

Yes, this time of year is perfect for introspection. This isn't necessarily a good thing for those of us who are already prone to navel gazing, but I've got my game plan--and of course I realize that that means nothing will go according to it. Such is life--and that's what makes it wonderful. Regardless, I hope you have yours, and that you are all having a wonderful holiday season, full of magic and promise and fulfillment. Now go have some egg nog and put on that new garish holiday sweater. It will make your mom happy.

THAT person

2009-12-17T16:56:00.000-08:00

I go through phases where I'm "THAT person." The one who takes the elevator one floor. Who drives a block to the drugstore. Who creaks like an old staircase and pops like Rice Krispies. And complains like an octogenarian about various aches and pains, including a lower back ache that I'm currently medicating with a lidocaine patch, and weird shin pains that feel like my legs are on fire. Whenever it happens, I assume it's because I am moving ever closer to actually BEING an octogenarian, but then it goes away for a while. But now it's back. I've been training a lot and pretty intensely the past couple weeks, both the grapply and the CrossFit.

I'm settling into my new CrossFit gym, http://www.teamcrossfitacademy.com/, and it is AWESOME. They are very focused on heavy lifting, which I love, because I'm terrible at it, but I think it's taking more of a physical toll than I originally realized. The usual structure of the class is to do a heavy lift (back squat, deadlift, clean & jerk, front squat, press, push press, bench press, snatch) at some percentage of your one rep max for 2-5 reps 2-3 times, and then to do a shorter workout of the day (WoD), like today's, which was 4 rounds for time of 50 double-unders and 20 box jumps (to a 24" box).

You wouldn't think that a couple reps of lifting heavy things would be that tiring, but when you consider that you're working at close to max effort every time, it makes perfect sense. I always make that mistake, that fallacy in reasoning, that you have to sweat and work out for a long time in order to make progress on your fitness. But that's not how it works. Coach Rippetoe, who ran the barbell certification I took back in September, talks about how getting stronger makes you fitter; he has people do rotations of lots of lifting and not so much metabolic conditioning and then when they go back to do some of the benchmark CrossFit WoDs like Fran or Helen, they crush them.

So anyway, the lifting is lots of fun, but it is KILLER. And of course I'm grappling a lot on top of that. Add to that a dearth of sleep because I'm finishing up the semester (lots of grading in the online courses I'm teaching) and getting ready for the holidays, and you have one decrepit homunculus of a Val.

And yet, I can't stop smiling. Being THAT person is THAT good right now.

More later, on my awesome Vegas trip.

Check out my interview on kombatclinic.com

2009-12-11T10:22:00.000-08:00

Recently a friendly Brit named David Webb contacted me. He runs an online magazine called Kombat Clinic, and he asked me to grant an interview. Of course I did! Here it is so you can check it out:
http://kombatclinic.com/2009/12/valerie-worthington-interview/

One of the many cool things about David and Kombat Clinic is that my interview is one of several he's done with female grapplers. Thanks to him for highlighting the hard work that so many of us on Team Estrogen do to improve at and promote the sport we love.

Off to Vegas soon! After more bathing. (Earlier this morning I did a modification of a CrossFit workout called the "Badger," which is 3 rounds of 30 95lb cleans, 30 pullups, and an 800 meter run--I rowed instead of running and did less weight on the cleans--and it was a killer. And soon I'll go and roll a little. And then, the promised bathing.)

I'm going to Vegas and am stupid busy

2009-12-10T17:19:00.000-08:00

Leaving for Vegas tomorrow for Grapplers Quest on Saturday. I'm not competing--just working a table--though there is a pretty sweet women's pro division. It'll be fun to watch, and rest. I've been hitting the CrossFit and the grappling pretty hard this week, and I've also been spending a lot of time on my online courses. So that leaves less time to sit on my ass and do nothing, which is usually a priority for me. Not this week. Any spare time is spent holiday shopping and/or sleeping. And eating. And repeating.

I'm not complaining. I'm just observing. I'll write more later. Right now I need to explore this thing called "bathing."

Congrats to Klint, Mikebyrd, and Katie!

2009-12-06T19:20:00.001-08:00

December is usually a big time of year for grappling academies to have belt promotions (New Breed's is on December 19). For people getting promoted, it's like finding a little (or big) extra something under the tree, or near the menorah, or on top of whatever the iconic structure(s) is/are for Kwanzaa.

This year is no exception. And I'm very very happy to be able to report on the promotions of three great grapplers: Klint Radwani received his black belt from Team Yamasaki, Mikebyrd (yes, his name is Mike Byrd, but everyone calls him Mikebyrd) received his purple from the Yamasakis, and Katie Weilbacher received her black belt from Paragon (Franginha). Congrats to all three of them! I'l get to see Katie break in her belt next weekend at the Grapplers' Quest in Las Vegas. Well, it's a no-gi event, but maybe she'll wear it out after the tournament is over.

HUGE congrats to them. Apparently there is footage of Klint grappling one of his teammates who also earned the black this weekend; they are in their underwear and going at it in the snow. I'll have to find that link.

Happy birthday Mom! And maybe it's time to write

2009-12-02T22:53:00.001-08:00

I love my family. I hope this is evident by now, after 3 and a half years and hundreds of blog posts. Today, December 2, has been my mom's birthday. She celebrated in style, with a golf luncheon (no golf), and dinner out. Mom, I love you and hope it was a great day! (Happy birthday to Seph, Ben, and Renee too!)

Anyway, I think this is a common refrain in recent months, but I have been remiss in writing. I have been thinking a lot about writing, though. About how I haven't really felt like doing it for the past half year, since I got dumped by my agent. About how this dry spell could just be part of my writing career, much like I truly believe that the year I took off from grappling shortly after I got my purple was an important part of my training. I remember this from studying for my comps one summer in grad school: once I finished them, I didn't want to write for a LONG time. I coasted through the fall semester, "writing" my dissertation proposal, which shouldn't have taken 3 months, but which did. I've also been thinking about whether I want to write my book, in addition to or instead of my blog. And sometimes the answer is yes, but that's usually when I'm behind the wheel or otherwise nowhere near a computer or even a pencil.

What this means is that I have written probably dozens of really cool, eloquent, funny, and touching sentences, but only in my brain. Maybe I'll get a tape recorder so I can capture those bursts of creativity as they happen.

Probably not.

But these urges I'm having to write are kind of like what happened when I came back to training after my year off. About halfway through the year, I started asking myself whether I wanted to come back. Up till then, the answer had been a resounding "no." But at about the 6-month mark, the answer became "maybe." And a couple months later, the answer became "yes," and the rest is history.

So I'm trying not to beat myself up for the fact that I'm not compelled to write right now, preferring instead to be happy that I may be experiencing the beginning of the end of my long, dark teatime of the soul, and that that will be characterized by a burst of writing creativity. I'll keep you posted.

And I'll write a lot more about actual grappling. Just not tonight. I'm tired from all my mom's partying.

Great weekend, eh

2009-11-23T18:24:00.000-08:00

I left Toronto yesterday after a fantastic stay. Alaina had invited me to come back to MECCA to help with Carlson Gracie team training; Mark Stables, the black belt who runs MECCA, has his lineage under Marcus Soares, who is a black belt under Carlson, Sr. So it was all in the family. She also arranged for me to do a seminar.

It was a fabulous weekend for many reasons. Most of those reasons have to do with how awesome Mark is. First of all, obviously, he is a black belt, and from what I remember of rolling with him in August, doing so is like putting your entire body in a very friendly, very good natured vise. Second, I learned that he appeared in a video for Lee Aaron, a Canadian pop singer from the late 80s or early 90s. You can see the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVIFVUX6nSM. Mark is the one who looks like Milli. Or maybe Vanilli. I can't tell. He is for sure the one who at the very end puts his face in his hands, and throughout the video, he looks a little bit bored and rides a motorcycle, thereby cementing his all around badassery.

And finally, Mark is awesome because he let me do a seminar at his academy, for which I am grateful. Alaina is awesome for inviting me in the first place. We had a good turnout, with lots of fun and interested people, and said people laughed at my jokes and seemed to learn something, so I'm happy. And the people at MECCA just rock. Kind of like Lee Aaron. (And by extension, Mark.)

Back in SoCal for about a minute

2009-11-17T21:20:00.000-08:00

I got back from Chicago yesterday morning. I had a fantastic trip to Chicago, and I got to train with some great old training partners, including Issac, who recently got his black belt from Leo Dalla. (Congrats to him! LOOOOOOONG overdue!) We rolled for about an hour--he worked me and I hung on for dear life. I was reminded of the fact that I nicknamed him. One time, years ago, before I left Chicago, I had been rolling with Issac and when we were done, I laughed at how easily he kicked my ass--all while smiling the entire time. So I said, "You're like this happy assassin!"

And the name stuck. And not only does that punk smile--he giggles sometimes. But it's seriously just because he's having so much fun. And when you're rolling with him, you can't help but feel that way yourself. Our friend Natasha was watching, and she said I had a dopey smile pasted on my face too. In addition, among other cool people I got to play with, I rolled with Jen Torino, who had been at the most recent women's grappling camp. She drove in from Madison to play and then had lunch with me and Natasha.

So now I'm back--for a couple days--and then on Friday I head out again. I'll be going to Toronto for the weekend to help with team training at MECCA, the place that hosted the camp that Jen went to. They have invited me back again. I'm pretty stoked to see everyone--and to eat shawarma from this place called Ali Baba that's right down the street (lived there this summer).

In the meantime, I have started at http://www.teamcrossfitacademy.com, both as a student and as an intern. I have SOOOO much to learn, about weightlifting and about being an instructor. I'm really really excited to get started! The atmosphere there is so welcoming and fun, and the people are friendly and informed about CrossFit. I think I'll be happy there.

Right now I'm very sleepy. I've been getting up at 5am during the week this week and last, to train and to observe classes at TCFA and then training. I have also been slowly getting myself back on the Paleo-ish wagon, after a couple weeks of just being off the wagon. Right before Thanksgiving probably isn't the best time to do this. Or maybe it's absolutely the best time.

Time flies

2009-11-14T15:23:00.000-08:00

It's already over a week since I wrote last. I lost my first match in the open at the No-Gi Worlds. It was against Gabrielle Garcia, whom I just cannot get a handle on. She is beatable, though, as Hillary Williams expertly displayed. So I have some work to do.

I'm in Chicago now, for a variety of reasons, and started at http://www.teamcrossfitacademy.com on Tuesday. I made it into the internship program, so I'm going to be spending a lot of time there! More detail soon; right now, Natasha and I are headed out to help Eshanthika celebrate her birthday!

No-gi Worlds

2009-11-06T14:40:00.000-08:00

Sunday is the No-gi Worlds. There's nobody in my weight class, but there are about 9 of us in the open. I'm planning to do the same thing I did when I competed in the Mundial in June--smile and have fun. Not a single other thought in my head right now, so I'll keep it brief.

Nope

2009-11-04T07:48:00.001-08:00

I got back from Portland on Monday morning and was back into the swing of my life a few hours later. Even after a chocolate-covered, cream-filled "cock-and-balls" donut from Voodoo, I'm still not inclined to move there, though Eben and I discussed the possibility of me substituting for him from time to time so he can travel. That would definitely be a shot in the arm. I found a coffee shop near the academy that was great for extended hanging out, and Portland definitely has many things to recommend it, including and especially my friends Jon and Alison, with whom I got to take their 9-month-old trick-or-treating in the neighborhood.

It was bittersweet to see them. Sweet because they are fantastic friends from way way back, and there's no substitute for that. Bitter because they have a lifestyle that I don't have but am thinking I would like to have. But maybe I don't want that lifestyle, because I haven't chosen it so far. But maybe I'm ready for it and am frustrated that I can't find it. I have been trying to explain what I want to selected friends, and the only/best way I can articulate it is that I don't only want to be a grappler anymore. I want to be a person and, God help me, a woman. And I don't feel like I am making the time/effort to be either of those things in any meaningful way. And I don't trust that I'd be able to express all of those facets of me if I stay here. But maybe my preoccupation with the geographic cure is just in my head. In other words, I have to work on that shit regardless of where I am. But I don't know how to work on it.

So in some ways I'm back to square one: dissatisfied with things but not sure how to fix them. So I'm also back to doing nothing. I don't know exactly what I want to be doing, so I take it literally minute by minute. I HAVE to make money, so I'm teaching my writing and qualitative methods courses online. And I HAVE to eat, so I'm fogging down some non-Paleo stuff this week before I get back on a mostly Paleo diet next week. And I HAVE to sleep--and I do as much of that as possible. Other than that, my life is a crap shoot. I'm signed up for the no-gi worlds, but am reserving the right to bail; I hemmed and hawed for literally hours before making my decision to register. I'm thinking that one way to signal to the universe that I want something different--that I want to be a PERSON--is to retire from competing. So, assuming I compete this weekend, it could be my swan song. I know I have threatened this before, and maybe I will again. We'll see. I'm on the edge of my seat as much as anybody.

I'm traveling again for the next couple weekends starting next weekend, through Thanksgiving, and that seems again to reflect my ambivalence about being here. I won't bail on any of those trips, but in my day-to-day life, I am doing what I want to and nothing more.

Eventually I hope I'll get tired of my own dejection and snap out of it. It hasn't happened yet. Usually the people around me get sick of it first, but nobody has called me on it. Maybe because I am cranky and everyone is avoiding me. Meh.

Deja vu all over again

2009-10-31T11:07:00.001-07:00

I'm in Portland. Having a really nice time so far, but not feeling any real affinity with the place that would make me move here. Admittedly, I haven't been to Voodoo Doughnut yet, but what I am feeling is the sense I had when I was on my walkabout/vision quest: It's a nice place to visit but I have to move on. The twist this time is that I want to land somewhere. Well, I don't need to make any decisions right now. I'm just going to enjoy being out of LA and getting some perspective on that.

I'm also officially and thoroughly off Paleo, at least for the weekend. I started slowly yesterday, with some sips and crackers at a wine sale, and then I progressed steadily through some mac and cheese, cheese-covered bruschetta, fried calamari, and a mini chocolate sundae. No real ill effects. My stomach was more vocal than normal, but I'm feeling okay. Gonna train in a bit, so we'll see how I feel performance-wise. Later today I'll see some college friends and tomorrow I'll see some high school friends and try to walk around and take in as much of the city as possible.

For now, pass the sugar! I'm off the wagon--with a vengeance!.

Heavy lifting

2009-10-27T08:17:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend I deadlifted 290lbs. That's a personal record for me; my old PR was 285. I tried 295 first, and that was just not going anywhere. And 290 was a true PR--it took everything I had, and then when I put the bar back down I had to stay bent over for a couple seconds while I waited for the blood to rush back to my head.

I'm getting excited for my trip to Portland. Eben has graciously agreed to host me, which should be fun; he lives over the New Breed there, and it's across the street from a dive bar called something like the Copper Penny. The plan is to train some, check out a few of the CrossFit gyms in the area, see some friends who live there, eat my weight in Voodoo Doughnuts, and otherwise get a feel for the place to see if I might like to live there. I also need to figure out a Halloween costume.

I'm nervous about the trip, too, because of the what ifs: What if this amounts to nothing, what if I'm unable to imagine myself living there, and what if after this trip I'm still right where I started: unhappy in SoCal but not sure what to do about it? Well, I'm trying not to worry about that before there's a need, but I like to plan ahead, I guess. It's a blessing and a curse. At the very least, I just have to trust that whether or not I end up moving to Portland, it's my necessary next step, and taking it will lead me to my NEXT necessary next step. I have to go to Portland. That's all I know right now. That's all I get to know, I guess.

Meantime, I'm still training and CrossFitting a bunch, in preparation for the No-Gi Worlds. Not much else to report until my next spate of trips starts: Chicago to see my friend Natasha's Second City production (and train at Carlson Jr's), Toronto to help with MECCA team training and maybe do a seminar, and then downstate IL for Thanksgiving. So I'll be back to being busy/distracted, which will be a good thing but also maybe too much of an escape. I'll have to make a point of figuring out how to create a life for myself that I don't want to spend all my time going out of town from. While I'm going out of town a lot.

Meh

2009-10-24T07:59:00.000-07:00

Lying low. Continuing to train and CrossFit--oh, and make a living periodically. Looking forward to my trip to Portland next weekend to see friends and go here: http://www.voodoodoughnut.com. There are two locations, open 24 hours, and you can apparently get married there. I'll be done with a month of Paleo dieting by then, so it will be time to ruin my stomach with refined sugar. I'm still probably the only person who has gone on Paleo who has not lost weight and has maybe even gained a pound or two. It's okay, though.

Yesterday was momentous: I had to go to the doctor to get a bunch of wax removed from my ear canal--there was so much that I couldn't hear out of the ear. My friend Brian had told me that the same thing happened to him; when you do jiu jitsu and your ears get rubbed a lot, apparently they react by producing tons of wax. Yet another glamorous aspect of the grappling lifestyle. The doctor took it well and didn't ask any pesky questions.

No-gi worlds is on November 8, two weeks from tomorrow. I'm planning to compete. I'd better register. I keep forgetting. I don't think that's Freudian, though.

Anyway, I'm sure there's more, but I can't think of it. I haven't written in a while, obviously. Haven't tried to find an agent. Don't feel like it. So I'm not. Meh.

Fran kicked my ass, but then we were friends

2009-10-17T19:36:00.000-07:00

Momentous last weekend: I worked a table (Gazzy Parman was my ref) for the Grapplers' Quest at the Pyramid in Long Beach. Stressful, but fun. When you're sitting at the table, it doesn't really look like you're doing much, but during a match, you have to watch the ref the whole time to make sure you catch every call. You keep score and you keep time, and you organize the competitors so that they are ready to go when it's their turn. You fill out the brackets. So I was a little distracted when people tried to talk to me. But I heard that our mat was very efficient, so that's kind of cool.

And then on Sunday, I went to Paradiso CrossFit (http://www.paradisocrossfit.com) and did the Fran. For those of you who don't know, the Fran is an iconic CrossFit workout that causes even the bravest of people to quail in fear. It is this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVBgKB4Gnsw

21-15-9 reps of thrusters (95lbs for men, 65lbs for women) and pullups. As you can see from this video, those people finished in faster than 4 minutes. The fastest Fran time is under 2 minutes. My time, doing the workout as prescribed for women, was 6:52, and I writhed on the floor in pain and discomfort for about 10 min afterward, getting up only about twice, and then just to my hands and knees, to crawl outside and hack up a lung and spit it out. It is a KILLER workout, both physically and mentally/psychologically.

I had had a mental block against Fran for over a year. We had done a Fran challenge at CFLA, and I actually got a SLOWER time (by maybe 3 seconds) over the 8 weeks from the baseline to the "training" time. And I hadn't done Fran since. So I was freaking out about it. Had all kinds of excuses about why I couldn't do it. And then my friend Zeb, who was teaching the class, started the backwards countdown, and off we went. And my 6:52 was almost a minute faster than my times from that challenge.

Maybe it's the Paleo (day 17, by the way, though I cheated today, with a hoagie from Jersey Mike's. No cheese, but a pretty big roll. And yet, no adverse effects--so far. I keep hearing that going off the Paleo just kills your insides. I must have a cast iron stomach.) Whatever it is, my Fran problems are solved, for now.

Paleolicious

2009-10-09T22:15:00.000-07:00

I've been on the Paleo diet for 9 days now. That means no dairy, no grains/refined sugar or flour, and for me, no diet Coke. I do get to eat meat, nuts/seeds, and fruits/veggies. People who swear by this diet say it makes you feel fantastic, drop body fat, and improve your athletic performance.

So far, I have gained about 2 pounds. I am pooped, sleeping upwards of 9 hours a night if I can. I have a rumbly stomach most of the time, and my poop is orange. (TMI? Yeah, probably. But it's true.) I'm going to stick with it; my friend Sean says it can take two weeks for your gut to "heal" from the effects of grains and dairy, and after that you start to enjoy the benefits. But my other friends said they started to feel better immediately. So I must be a slow learner. But being off the diet Coke and the refined sugar and flour is reason enough to keep going. I know those things are terrible for me, and I'm glad to say I've been able to withstand the temptation for over a week now. That's huge for me.

Today was a fun day: I went with Johnny, Vince, and Paul to the Paramount Studios lot for a health, safety, and wellness expo. We brought a bunch of New Breed banners and flyers. Shawn and Sean were there from Hollywood BJJ too, and it was fun to see them. Plus, I saw the Hollywood sign for the first time in the 3+ years I've been living here. It was actually pretty impressive, and since I'm a cynical New Jerseyite, that's saying something.

Tomorrow will be a long day of tournament attending/working--it's the Grapplers' Quest in Long Beach. It should be fun.

I'm slowly snapping out of my funk. I still want to escape from LA (like Snake Plissken?), but for now I'll bide my time the way I said I was going to: by doing only what I absolutely must. And eating my weight in almond butter and Omega-3 enriched eggs (both Paleo).

What a difference a fortnight makes

2009-10-04T08:24:00.000-07:00

I know, nobody in this country uses the term "fortnight." But "What a difference two weeks makes" sounds cumbersome. Anyway, I was just skimming some old posts and found the one from September 15, in which I vow never to give up looking for happiness.

Yeah, whatever. I'm not going to beat myself up over that one, because I am a grown-ass woman and I don't have to do what I don't want to.

Nothing is the new something

2009-10-03T19:19:00.000-07:00

Turns out I'm still really unhappy. I had just been staying a step ahead of the unhappiness curve by traveling so much--I guess I didn't have time to feel it because I was operating on little sleep and even less alone time. I still have flashes of happiness, like when I train or CrossFit or spend time with people I like. For example, I had a GREAT evening on Wednesday, when Cristian and I went to train at Rodrigo Teixeira's in West Covina. It was fantastic to take a field trip, as it had been a while; I love training with everyone at New Breed, and when I train elsewhere, I get to compare styles and techniques. And Cristian and I were able to compare notes and start to think about ways to improve our games and add stuff to the class he teaches so the other students can benefit too.

Teixeira is terrific; he made short work of me but somehow managed to make me feel good about my grappling at the same time. He said we are welcome back any time, and he might be sorry he said so, because I'll definitely go back, and I know Cristian wants to too.

So there are some good moments. But when I'm by myself, alone with my thoughts and my identity and my situation, I feel yucky, and I do the things I usually do when I'm abjectly unhappy. I cry at sappy commercials and songs. I sleep an inordinate amount. I eat a lot (and since I'm on the Paleo diet for the month of October, that translates into almond butter by the spoonful.) I observe that my mind is racing and I can't seem to stop it, and I get depressed about the bad in people rather than focusing on the good. I feel put upon and insignificant and like I'm a dime a dozen. I feel like nobody else ever feels this way and already has their shit all figured out, and that at age 39 I'm no better off than I was when I left Chicago, and in fact I'm worse off because now I'm older and have no assets, prospects, or, even furniture. I can't think of what would make me feel better, even if I could get it. And worst of all, I feel very far removed from gratitude. I have a lot to be grateful for, and when I feel this way, I don't appreciate any of it.

Plus, I think I have butt arm. (This is when you overuse your arm muscles eccentrically--lengthening them--and they swell and your arm looks like a butt when you bend it.) We did power cleans, knees-to-elbows, and double-unders at the CrossFit class this morning, and they all put lots of stress on my forearms. So now my left arm is swollen. If it's not butt arm, it's still freaky looking. Maybe I have arm mumps.

But anyway, I'm frankly tired of working at feeling better. At looking on the bright side. (It rings false because I don't feel it right now.) At faking it till I make it. (I'm making it nowhere.) At being happy and complete in myself and the things I have right now (100% horseshit). I feel, rightly or wrongly, that I have done a SHITload to bring happiness to myself in recent years, since I started my vision quest. I've pretty much spent the past 3+ years challenging myself to pursue a happier life by facing my fears, articulating what I want for myself, and learning from my mistakes. But I'm experiencing a crisis of faith, if you want to call it that, or just total fed-up-ness that it's still eluding me, and I can't think of anything else to do, or how to do things differently.

So I'm done.

No, I'm not done THAT way. And I'm not going to stop writing/bitching (or making it impossible for Anonymous(es) to pollute my blog with their complete fuckwittedness). But I'm not going to do anything anymore that I don't want to do, other than the things I absolutely have to, like support myself financially, eat, sleep, and breathe. And bathe. Those are imperatives. But I don't really have to do anything else, because I'm a grown-ass woman with relatively few responsibilities. The things I have been working hard to do don't seem to result in anything I want anyway, so I have decided to take the path of least resistance and do much more nothing.

I was talking to Anahi today and she said that there's some kind of Buddhist koan about doing by not doing; in other words, the best way to get things done is to do nothing. Maybe it means to refrain from resisting. But when I Googled it, the first hit I got was "Zen and the Art of Doing Dishes: Finding Joy in Everyday Chores." And that just enraged me. So I'll take Anahi's word for it--and I do vaguely remember reading about it somewhere--but I can't remember it exactly.

What that means is, if you are a douchebag training partner, I'm not going put aside my own discomfort and force myself to roll with you. If you say stupid shit to me, I'm not going to assume you meant well and take it. I'm not going to smile because you tell me to. I'm not going to put your needs before mine. If we both had the same entree, I'm still not going to split the check evenly when I had water and you had 3 beers. I'm not going to accept your Mafia Wars request. I'm not going to listen to your monologue, unable to get a word in edgewise, especially when it's clear that you have no interest in anything I have to say.

In short, I have decided to get a jump on manifesting all the qualities of the eccentric, crotchety old paycheck-to-paycheck-living bag lady I'm apparently on my way to becoming. I can't imagine going back to my corporate life. But this one needs a kick in the pants too. And nothing I do is helping with that. So from now on, I'm phoning it in. I'm done trying to orchestrate any sort of future. (Yes, I'm going to go to Portland and I'm going to change CrossFit gyms, and I did do those other things I mentioned that I had hoped would set me on a good course. But those are all about what I want in the moment, not about the future.)

I'll let you know how it goes. Unless I don't.

2009-09-28T21:49:00.000-07:00

Spent the weekend getting my CrossFit barbell cert on with Traver and Eric. What. A. Blast. Who knew picking up heavy things and putting them back down could be so much freaking fun--and so complex and intellectually stimulating? We covered the back squat, the press, the bench press, the deadlift, and the clean. I cannot wait to work on them some more! Coach Rippetoe is an amazing instructor, not to mention the biggest curmudgeon around. It's fantastic. His rants were far-ranging and never disappointing, about Canadians, cyclists, how difficult it is to eat crabs, orthopedists, pediatricians, and basically everyone in the room (at one point he said, "Now is about the time when I have to tell everyone to shut the fuck up.")

In short, he is the kind of coach for whom you would die rather than quit.

It was a fantastic weekend; my form improved drastically on all 5 of the lifts. Of course, they are still pretty bad, but they are worlds better than they were. It's amazing how having that kind of coaching can help you make such huge strides forward in such a short time. Maybe a few lifetimes from now I'll be as good a coach as Rip. Meantime, it's nice to know he's out there, hating most people and dropping the F-bomb like it's hot.

In other news, check out http://www.themat.com/section.php?section_id=3&page=showarticle&ArticleID=20866 for an article on Felicia, in which she mentions me, Emily, and the women's grappling camp. The camp really has legs. It's happening. A lot. Repeatedly. Chicks like us. They really like us!

Further, if you check out the Fightworks Podcast again (http://www.thefightworkspodcast.com) again, you can hear the second half of Felicia's, Emily's, and my round table with Bruce Hoyer about women in grappling. Okay, it may be a bit overshadowed by that minor tournament known as the Abu Dhabi Combat Club international tournament, which is only the premiere grappling event ever, but that's okay. This is episode 181. I haven't listened to it yet.

And finally, I think I'm going to join Traver and Eric in going hard-core paleo for the month of October. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, the Paleo diet is sort of the caveman deal where you only eat things that were available to cavemen: meat, nuts, seeds, fruits and veggies, and eggs (yeah, the eggs thing surprised me too. Maybe dodo eggs or something. Yes, I know my chronology. No, I don't.)

Some people say the paleo diet will reduce your allergies, give you extra energy, save you a fortune on car insurance. I want to give it a try to see how it feels, to see whether it helps with my sugar cravings (assuming I can get past the initial ones), and to have an excuse to complain about going paleo. I'll keep you posted. I start on Thursday. Meantime, I'm drinking a diet Coke and just had an ice cream sandwich.

Curve ball

2009-09-24T12:55:00.001-07:00

Okay, so some of you may already have seen this footage:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ka-VfDAvQjI

which is me at my Fifty/50 seminar showing a defense to the guillotine choke on my friend Ryan Hall. The defense can also be used as a submission, as the footage shows. I guess I applied too much shoulder pressure, which put him to sleep. Snoring and everything. He is such a good sport--I, on the other hand, freaked out, as you can see. He was just OUT, and he started to convulse a little bit, so I got scared. (Mostly I was scared they were going to decide not to pay me. And to press charges.)

So since that's probably the worst thing that could happen at a seminar and I survived, I don't have anything to worry about anymore--other than that I'll probably never be invited to do another seminar. I also dodged one bullet and took another. The bullet I dodged is that nobody commented on my hair. I don't know what it was doing at that moment--it was all high and swirly and disheveled. (This is all the more reason for me never to be caught on film in any form or fashion.) The bullet I took was that various people gave me heat for the way I pronounced "guillotine." I pronounced the Ls instead of saying "gee-oh-tine."

I actually debated how to say the word, knowing that the Marcels of the world would give a crap and would give me crap. I decided to say the Ls because it sounded less pretentious. And those of you who don't like it can suck un oeuf and tell un ami.

Anyway, I THINK the seminar went well, but it's hard to say. I liked the stuff I showed, but I don't know how well I showed it. I forgot lots of details, and when I asked for feedback, people seemed to be okay with what I showed and the level of detail. I went around to each pair to make sure they were getting things, and that seemed to be helpful. So I'll just assume everyone got their money's worth, especially because I put my host to sleep. SERIOUS sleep. Maybe I just worry too much.

In other news, I head to Santa Barbara tomorrow to hook up with Traver and Eric, and then we head to Santa Cruz for a CrossFit barbell certification with the legendary Mark Rippetoe. We're going to be working on deadlifts, bench presses, back squats and the like. I fully expect Mark to live up to his name and rip my squat a new one. He is, shall we say, irreverent. But he's also incredibly knowledgeable, so I embrace the rip-age. I'll keep you posted. I'm really looking forward to this cert, even though I'm traveling like a crazy person lately. My goal this weekend is to get a 300lb deadlift. I figure if anybody can get me there from my current personal record of 285, it's Rippetoe.

Next week I will settle in for a couple weekends of no traveling. This means, I hope, that I'll get to do some serious writing, searching for an agent, and looking for a home, whether in SoCal or Portland, or some other friggin' place. Who knows?

Meanwhile, best of luck to Ryan, Lana Stefanac, and all my other pals who are competing in the ADCC tournament this weekend in Barcelona! Also, best of luck to all my CrossFit friends who are participating in the Fight Gone Bad fundraiser. I hope you raise a crapload!

Okay, off to grade some papers, take a nap, and then go train in the pajamas.

Checking in from RVA

2009-09-21T12:15:00.000-07:00

I have been having a ball in Richmond, seeing some friends, doing some training, getting ready for my seminar tonight at Fifty/50. I'm excited and nervous about the seminar; it's the first one I've ever done, and I vacillate between thinking I know some things about grappling and thinking I know jack crap about grappling. I put together a handout for the participants that started out as a cheat sheet for me, but then it occurred to me that since the thing I remember most about the seminars I have attended is how little I remember from the seminars I have attended, I decided to make it a takeaway. I know most people who do seminars just do them from memory and decide on the fly what they want to show, but I have a brain like a sieve, so I'm glad to have a cheat sheet.

Teaching grappling is so funny, because you're basically trying to force yourself to bring back to conscious awareness all the moves you spent years making rote and instinctual. In other words, you WANT to get to the place where you don't think about what you do when you grapple. You want to get to the place where you just do it, because muscle memory works faster than stupid brains, which insist on analyzing and doubting and making you miss your opportunity because your opponent didn't have to stop to think and instead just acted, leaving you tapping like the Little Drummer Boy, which fortunately, somehow, IS rote and instinctual.

But then when you teach, you have to re-surface all those steps and variations and body part placements, not only to bring them back to your conscious mind, but also to put words to them for someone else to try to consume. Many someone elses, in this case. And you also never know what's going to be novel or boring, simple or complicated for a given group or group of individuals. People are very unpredictable (read: annoying) in this way.

So I'm just gonna go in and show some of the moves I love to do and that have worked well for me at tournaments and in my own training. As Emily says about her jiu jitsu journey, I'm fortunate that many hands have shaped my game and my grappling personality, and I'm going to do my best to share that personality with the people who are kind enough to come to my seminar. (And if that doesn't work, I'll lay it on thickly with the self-deprecating humor. People love the self-deprecating humor.)

Wish me luck!

Oh, and in other news, check out http://thefightworkspodcast.com, episode 180 (the current episode as of 9/21/09, but that will obviously change in the near future), for a round table discussion with me, Emily, Felicia, and correspondent Bruce Hoyer, who asked us about the women's grappling camp and the state of women's grappling generally. It was cool to be part of that!

Tomorrow it's back to SoCal, when I'll take another trip to Monrovia and plan a trip to Portland. Life is busy but good.

Forward momentum...?

2009-09-15T20:26:00.000-07:00

The tournament was a lot of fun! I saw some good matches, as I predicted, and I ran into many friends and acquaintances, some of whom invited me to come train with them. In the coming weeks, I'd like to take them up on it. Tournaments remind me of how many great people there are in the grappling world, and how many of them live in SoCal. I want to take advantage of the opportunity to learn from them while I can.

Yes, I guess that's a bit of foreshadowing. I don't know for sure that I'll be leaving SoCal any time soon, but I am pondering it as an option. (Okay, this is a bit more than the fluff I promised to write about in my last post, but the comment option is still disabled completely for Anonymous and as much as possible for everyone else, so here I go.) I'm feeling very restless, and like maybe I have spent the summer closing a chapter of my life. I don't yet really know exactly what the chapter has contained, because I still plan to train and compete, CrossFit and write, which is basically what I do now. But I have experienced/caused a few doors to close in recent months, starting with cleaning out my storage locker in Chicago. That sort of signified that I'm done there. Even though I knew I was, it was a period at the end of a sentence. A teary, gut-wrenching period.

And I have made other profound decisions since then, including the very difficult one to switch CrossFit gyms. As a lot of you know, I have been training at CrossFit LA, nee Petranek Fitness, since I started doing CrossFit in April 2007. Well, the drive clear across town has finally gotten to me. I have been driving 35 miles/45 minutes each way, 3 times a week, to get to Petranek. I have decided to start going to Team CrossFit Academy (http://www.teamcrossfitacademy.com), in Monrovia, in November, when my time is up at CFLA; Monrovia is about 15 miles and 20 minutes away, which will be a big difference. TCFA is run by Eric LeClair, who was one of the instructors at my level one certification. To say that Eric's knowledge of CrossFit principles and ability to teach them are exemplary is to understate the case. I'm going to get instruction that is just as good as the instruction I've gotten for all this time at CFLA. I'm glad to say that everyone at CFLA supports my decision and that I'll always be part of the family there, and I'm grateful to everything they have helped me do and become.

As with many things in my life, one decision tends to start a domino effect. And right now, I'm exploring two paths, neither of which may actually end up being the one I take. But also as with many things in my life, I am just focusing on what's most compelling, because that tends to be the most direct way toward what I really want. At least, that's what I have to tell myself so I don't freak out or freeze in my tracks.

Okay, there's one path, really, but two directions it could take. The path: I need a change of scenery; I'm not happy living in Whittier anymore. So one thing I'm considering is moving to Monrovia. Especially if I get accepted into the internship program Eric runs at his academy, I will be spending a lot of time there. And I could just commute to New Breed; I'd have to commute to one or the other, so maybe choosing to live closer to my CrossFit gym rather than my grappling gym would be the shot in the arm I need.

To that end, I went to Monrovia today just to drive around. Old Town actually looks very much like Whittier, only a little bigger and maybe a little more modern (they have a Baskin Robbins AND a Pinkberry. Nice.). I found one studio for rent and put in a call about it, though I haven't heard anything back. I would like to find another place like the one I live in now: partially furnished and very small. Not so interested in maintaining a large home, at least for the time being.

I got a fairly good feeling about Monrovia; or at least, I didn't get a negative feeling. There was a restaurant called "Mundial," which means "world" in Portugese, and is the shorthand term for the world BJJ tournament I competed in back in June (the one my parents came to watch me compete in). The streets are named things like "Lemon" and "Lime." It is close to the 10, the 605 AND the 210. And like I said, ice cream. And cute coffee shops and bakeries.

So, I'd like to find a month-to-month, partially furnished studio for around the same amount I'm paying right now. In Monrovia.

On the other hand, the other direction the path could take is toward Portland, OR. (Yes, I realize this would make it difficult for me to train at New Breed or Team CF Academy on a regular basis.) Here's why I'm considering Portland: In the past week, two friends who are from there and/or live there now have suggested I visit. On the suggestion of a third friend, I went to http://www.chooseyourspot.com, which is a website that pinpoints a geographic location you're likely to be happy living in based on your responses to questions about geographic, political, meteorological, and social preferences.

After I punched in my preferences, I got a list of cities/towns that would suit me. Of the top ten in my list, 4 hits were in Oregon: Portland, Eugene, Corvallis, and Medford.

Doesn't seem like a coincidence. And add to that that there is a New Breed in Portland, and it seems like I'm being beaten about the head to check it out. So I'm going to. I already emailed Eben, who runs the Portland New Breed, to make sure he'll be around when I plan to visit, which should be some time in October.

Anyway, as I mentioned in my Facebook status update, I feel like a coiled spring, or a drawn-back bow, or a monkey in a tree waiting to jump onto any unwitting bananas or other fruits that might happen by. I'm getting ready to act. I just don't know exactly what I need to do. So I'm going to make plans to visit Portland, continue to scope out Monrovia, prepare for a couple of no-gi tournaments that are coming up, and start cleaning house--making sure I'm light enough to travel if/when the time comes, wherever I end up going.

If I stop to think about it too much, I worry that I'm just planning to run away, like I did when I left Chicago over 3 years ago. But then I remember that my intuition hasn't really steered me wrong, so I just have to pursue this line of action and trust that it will lead me to where I need to go, whether that means actually going elsewhere or making dfferent choices in my current location to shake things up. One time when I was still living in Chicago, I got a really strong feeling that I should visit Boulder, CO. So I did. And obviously I didn't end up living there. I still don't really know why I was supposed to go there, but it must have led to my next step in some way. So the moral of the story is that not everything I feel compelled to do leads to the next obvious step (i.e., visiting Portland may not result in me moving there, but will take me forward). And equally importantly, seeing where this leads can't hurt me in any way.

Anyway, in the meantime, I'm going about my business. I leave on Thursday for Richmond, VA, to visit some friends (Chrissy, Brian, Andrew, Cynthia, Mikebyrd, Klint, Burdo, Liz, and Trey--oh, and Deke, Miles, and Lego) and do a seminar at Fifty-50 BJJ in Arlington, VA (http://www.5050bjj.com). Fifty-50 is run by my pals Ryan, Seph, and Jen, and I'm really honored that they asked me to come.

Then next weekend I head up to Santa Cruz with Traver and Eric for a CrossFit barbell certification with Mark Rippetoe. And I'm continuing to teach and train and eat and sleep and pursue happiness.

Oh, the happiness. Whenever I find myself having to WORK at being happy, like I have been (with relatively little success) the past couple months, I remember something a very wise person once said: "Being happy is difficult. That's why so many people stop trying."

Here's to NEVER deciding to stop trying. Even when it would be easier.

Next...

2009-09-11T21:20:00.000-07:00

No, you still can't make comments. I've gotten some nice emails from people voicing their support for me, though, so thanks for those. I have been thinking about the definition of insanity, which is something like "doing the same thing but expecting a different outcome." I had been continuing to write things that are sensitive to me and expecting Anonymous and other people to respond in a way that's more palatable to me. But it hasn't been happening. So for me to continue doing it is insanity, no? I have three choices: disable comments, as Becca suggested, write about things that are less sensitive to me, or both. For now, I think I'm going to do both.

Before I do, I want to comment on one thing: I think part of what is pissing me off about people's opinions of me is that they are drawing conclusions without knowing the whole story about what's going on in my life. I do write as honestly as possible about a lot of what goes on with me. But I do not write about everything. So everyone knows what I choose to share with them. What I do share I share as honestly as I can. But you guys don't get it all.

Yes, I ask for feedback by posting. (But if the tables were turned, I'd spend a LOT more time checking my own motivations and agenda than some of the peanut gallery members around here do before I opened my yap.) That is easily remedied, by disabling comments and posting about fluff. (I'm too self-centered to stop posting altogether.)

Thus, in lighter, airier news, in the souffle of news, as it were, tomorrow and Sunday is the US Nationals in Carson. I'm not competing, but some friends are here to put on their pajamas and duke it out, namely Liz & Burdo, Emily & Gerry, and some of the New Breed guys from Chicago, Michigan, and Oregon. So I'm excited to see some people and some good pajama fights!

I also may be getting a line on what my next step is re: where to live and whether I will/should stay in SoCal or move altogether, but we'll table that for now because I'm still mulling it over. In the meantime, I head to Richmond, VA, on Thursday to visit the crew there, help out at the Pendergrass tournament, and do a seminar at Fifty/50 BJJ, run by my pals Ryan, Seph, and Jen.

So there you have it--a wholly uncontroversial, and probably wholly boring, post. I'm going sleepies now, because I'm getting up ass early for a CrossFit workout involving hang squat snatches. And yes, they are as cool and mysterious as they sound! And then it's off to the tourney, where I will run around, eat acai, and run around some more, all while watching awesome grapply!

One final note: Moment of silence for all those lost on 9/11/01. RIP.

No more comments

2009-09-08T17:07:00.001-07:00

I've disabled the comments function as much as I can. Call it childish, call it "emotional," call it Betty. I don't care. Thanks to Becca for the suggestion (though I know others have made it too).

Getting "emotional"

2009-09-07T15:55:00.000-07:00

When people say they are getting "emotional," they usually mean they are crying or angry or feeling one of the emotions that nobody really likes to feel. But this weekend has been a truly emotional one in the literal sense of the word--I have been running the gamut in terms of what I've been feeling, from anger to exhilaration to tears to everything in between. Contentment, gratitude, happiness, fear, anxiety, envy, sadness, despair, excitement, exhaustion (is that an emotion?) etc. What are the other emotions that I didn't list here? I have felt them this weekend too.

I got to visit CrossFit Pacific Coast in Santa Barbara again and hang out with Traver, Eric, Su, Miguel, and, of course, River, the newest CFPC member. River was also the best at sniffing, panting, and lying around while the rest of us did the CrossFit Total, which I've never done before. CF Total is 3 attempts on one rep of each of 3 movements: deadlift, back squat, and shoulder press. I PRed on each movement! Deadlift was 285, back squat was 165, and shoulder press was 80. So my total was 530. That's a lot of pounds!

Anyway, so then we spent the rest of the day hanging out and talking at Su and Miguel's place and eating delicious, not-very-Zoney/Paleo foods (though there was plenty of BBQed meat). It was a gorgeous day, it was great company, and lots of people picked up really heavy weights and quickly put them down again.

Yesterday I trained lightly with some friends and then went to a my friend Dawn's place to cook out with some CrossFit pals. They did a CrossFit workout that I "missed," and then we sat around and laughed and ate and laughed and ate some more.

So all the "positive" emotions found their way into my day with those groups; it was easy because they are all wonderful people. All the "negative" ones cropped up when I was alone and contemplating my near future. (Word to the wise: keep Kleenex in your car, because it's hard to use your shirt to mop up snot.) I'm crying and angry and stuff because I'm uncertain about the future, but frankly, I don't want to write much about it because I don't want to hear from the anonymous peanut gallery about how I'm being a victim and doing things wrong.

Suffice it to say that I'm a bit weary of feeling down; it's been a rough summer and I'm ready for a turnaround. I have done a couple very difficult things very recently that I think will help me head in an upward direction, but I'm still waiting to see if that's actually the case. Keep your fingers crossed for me. I'm making a point of taking opportunities to be with people who make me feel happy, because then I feel happier.

And at least I'm feeling more compelled to write. That's a good sign. I keep getting evidence from people that there really is a there there in terms of my grappling walkabout, and I want to continue to work on that, even though my agent dumped me. There are other agents in the sea, right? Also, I'm going to be really busy this fall, and that will keep me from thinking too much, which is one of my tendencies that isn't such a great idea. I'm going to intend to feel my way from now on, much as Olivia Newton-John suggests John Travolta do in the song You're the One That I Want in the movie Grease. Only I'm not going to tart myself up the way she did (though admittedly she did look good).

It's just a lonely patch right now. I may need to make a grand gesture, which I was hoping not to have to make. What I mean by that is that I may need to move. I keep threatening to, but Whittier, at least, isn't the right place for me anymore. I don't know if that means Southern California isn't the right place or if I just need to move somewhere within SoCal. (And yes, Anonymous, I'm still waiting for a sign about that. So keep your mouth shut about it and take care of your own shit. I'm sure you have some.)

Plus, I'm back on the sauce. (Sauce = diet Coke) I was off for about a month, but at the camp I went back to relying on it because of the time difference and the crazy long hours we were putting in. Oh, and today I kicked one of the iron bars on the window at New Breed while rolling. (We were doing competition-style rolling to get some people ready for the US Nationals on Saturday. I'm not competing. Nobody really in my division, and my head isn't in it right now anyway.) It hurt my foot. And then I tweaked my own hip while trying to duck under for a double-leg takedown. (This is why I don't like takedowns--I hurt myself. In stupid ways.)

So I'm gimpy on my left side because of the spaz factor, a little achy on my back because of the lifts, and a little flabby because of the Labor Day dining choices. I'm thinking a little escapism is the order of the day. Maybe a movie or a nap. Or both. And then some ice cream.

There IS crying in grapply, apparently

2009-09-01T21:02:00.000-07:00

I know this because I was doing it today. It started out as a great day. My friend Zeb's new CF gym, run by David and Martina Paradiso, is a great space in Marina del Rey. They put us through a fun chipper-style workout--jumping rope, tire flipping, wall ball, ring traverse, box jumps, kettlebell swings, virtual shoveling, L-sit, abmat situps, GHD back extensions, rowing, thrusters, and running with a 35lb sandbag. Afterward, we sat around shooting the breeze and just enjoying each other's company.

But when I peeled off to run some errands and get ready for gi class at one, I started to get down. I keep saying I'm at a crossroads and that since I cleaned out my storage locker in Chicago I'm waiting for some kind of sign about what my next step should be. But it's not coming. And I continue to feel not quite at home here in SoCal. And I'm just coming off kind of a whirlwind month of traveling and intensely emotional experiences--being with my family, seeing old college friends, training with cool chicks.

So I suspect now that I'm back for a few weeks I kind of crashed; I'm exhausted and spacey. And lonely and scared about the future. I'm just sleepy a lot, which is a sign for me of depression, and I tear up at things I wouldn't normally--songs, sad movies, etc. So today, I was drilling with Cristian, which is usually fantastic. But he was just destroying me, because he's good like that, and I started to struggle and get frustrated. He could tell, and he asked me if I was okay. I hate that my energy is so palpable like that, though maybe it's that palpable when it's positive too.

But anyway, we drilled for about a half hour, and every time we stopped to switch position, I had to really work to keep my shit together. I didn't want to leave Cristian in the lurch without a partner, so I finished up, and then when we were done, I went into the bathroom and sat on the floor for a while and cried. And you know it's bad if I sat on the academy bathroom floor. I have a good idea of what's on that floor. And I sat on it. To cry.

I stayed there for about 10 min, through several knocks from people wanting to use the bathroom (too bad; there are two others in the building, so they had choices), and got myself together. I was also feeling nauseated and headachy, which didn't help. But I stayed and helped with the technique part of the class, and then I rolled a little with Johnny and a couple other people. It ended up being okay, but I have cried a couple more times since then, only just not at the academy.

But there IS crying in grapply! I wish I hadn't had to learn that myself, though I already knew that very well. I just hate being reminded.

One of the things I'm not doing very well in these recent blog posts is commenting on the little things and making them funny. Apparently I'm good at that; one of the best compliments I got recently was that the complimenter wanted me to blog about how I brush my teeth because I'd surely make it interesting and funny. That's flattering. I want to get back to that. I'm too tired right now, and the time difference between here and Toronto doesn't help right now.

I'll work on it. I'm always working on it.

Back in SoCal

2009-08-31T21:37:00.000-07:00

Felicia and I got back to SoCal yesterday after an AMAZING women's grapplycamp. I don't know where to start describing it. I met terrific women who love grappling and are in different stages of their grappling development. I got to help them think about where they might want to go with grappling and how they might want to contribute. I got to see old friends too, from the other camp and from earlier than that. I got to hang out with Emily, Alaina, and Felicia, who are the group that makes up http://www.womensgrappling.org/ (check it out!). I ate poutine, ketchup chips, and other Canadian delights. I had a great time at MECCA, which is the gym in Toronto that sponsored us. I, along with Emily and Felicia, talked to Bruce Hoyer for http://www.thefightworkspodcast.com/ about the camp and women in grappling--that podcast should be airing in about a week.

And now I'm back, trying to get back on Pacific time and gearing up for a very busy fall. I'll be teaching online courses, teaching CrossFit, teaching grappling, CrossFitting and training myself, competing, and writing. It will be good--a good way to start my new chapter, I think. Oh, and I'm also going to be doing a seminar at Fifty 50 BJJ (http://www.5050bjj.com/) in Virginia on September 21. Fifty 50 is run by my friends Ryan Hall, Seph Smith, and Jen Flannery. That should be wicked awesome!

I do resolve to write more as part of that busy fall I mentioned. But right now, I have to go sleepies so I can get up early tomorrow and support my friend Zeb, who is starting as an instructor at David Paradiso's new CrossFit box (http://www.paradisocrossfit.com/). Their grand opening is tomorrow. Check them out, and congratulations to them both!

Oh, and one last thing. I haven't forgotten that I have been drawn east lately. I'm just not prepared to do anything about it other than be drawn. We'll see where that leads; as I mentioned, my next trip is in September; before I make it to Fifty 50, I'll be hanging out in Richmond with the usual suspects there. So I'm just gearing up for a fun autumn; I think I'm the only one who is happy that summer is almost over. And the rest will take care of itself.

Grapplycamp

2009-08-27T20:23:00.000-07:00

I'm in Toronto; have been since last Fri. Whirlwind week of training and hanging out with cool grapplychicks, including Felicia, Emily, Alaina, Chrissy, and many many new pals. There's lots to report, but very little time (and at this point in the camp, energy) to do it. I gotta get honest again about writing. I think I'm ready, both to blog and to work on my book proposal.

The camp is pretty badass. We think there's going to be enough interest going forward to do two a year, one per coast. Not too shabby.

Right now I'm going to settle in for an early night (it's about 11:30, which is about 3 hours earlier than we have normally been going to sleep this week. And every morning it's back to MECCA (Modern Something Combat Something Academy, run by Mark Stables, Marcus Soares black belt, and his little dog Buddha) for about 14 hours of shenanigans, free samples from our sponsors, jokes, Toronto life, and training. Life is pretty good in Toronto if you like the grapply and are a chick. More soon, I hope!

Continuing to walk about

2009-08-17T20:47:00.000-07:00

I just got back from the east coast; I was at a wedding in NYC and then in the Catskills for the weekend with the wedding folks. What. A. Blast. Tim, the groom, is a friend from college (so, 20 years ago), and Danielle, the bride, is the sister of another friend from college (Jason). So many of the guests were people I literally learned how to be an adult with. Or, at least, learned how to pretend to be an adult with. I spent the weekend laughing so hard my stomach still hurts, and marveling at how many amazing, smart, funny people I know.

Now, lest you think I have forgotten how many amazing, smart, funny people I know whom I DIDN'T go to college with, I haven't. In fact, seeing friends I rarely get to see has made me realize that it's important not to take for granted the ones I get to see more often--and to make the effort to see them as often as possible. So what it boils down to is that I am a lucky chick with lots of people in my life bringing the funny.

I got to train at Clockwork BJJ on Fri, with Josh Griffiths. I had met Josh a couple years ago during a different trip to NYC, and this time I got to hang out with him and his students. He rolled with me and let me play, only sweeping me a couple times instead of tapping me out repeatedly like he definitely could have. It was a good way to sweat out some wine from the wedding the night before and shore myself up for the weekend in the Catskills that followed. There wasn't any grappling there, but there was some CrossFitting, some 12-oz curls, and some swimming in a freezing cold river to cool off after a rousing game of old school kickball. There was also plenty of sitting around and being lazy.

And oh, the food. Suffice it to say that I'm hoping the next 3 days of training a lot will get me back to fighting trim.

On Friday I go to Toronto for a women's grappling tournament and then the second installment of the women's grappling camp. Should be a great time. In the meantime, I am catching up on stuff, thinking about when/how to start writing my book again, and wondering if I belong in SoCal anymore. I seem to be drawn east lately, and I'm trying to pay attention to that. I'm not prepared to make any grand gestures any time soon, but I have been feeling somewhat dissatisfied with things for a while now. I'm hoping that all my trips will help me get clarity, and not just serve to distract me.

Anyway, I should provide more details, but I'm sleepy. It's past midnight on the east coast.

New, improved walkabout

2009-08-08T17:24:00.000-07:00

I've been in Canada for the past week with family, seeing theater at the Shaw festival, training at Gracie Barra Niagara and CrossFit Niagara (thanks to Vince, Mark, Kim, and everyone else who has helped me keep some semblance of a routine this week!), and generally enjoying a little time outta Dodge. I guess you should be careful what you wish for, because I'll be in SoCal a grand total of 6 full days this month, and then parts of one or two other days, which are for travel. I've been here, in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, and get back tomorrow eve. Then I head out again on Wed morning for NYC, where my friends Tim and Danielle are getting married and I will have what will amount to a mini college reunion with some of my favorite people. (I'll also train at Clockwork BJJ, run by Josh Griffiths, and check out CrossFit Brooklyn with my pal Chris Walker). Then I'm back after that weekend for about 4 days, after which I take off again for maybe 8 days, back to Toronto, to teach at the 2nd women's grappling camp sponsored by Felicia and Alaina.

So in some ways, I'm back on walkabout. This could be good, because I kind of did want an escape. Kind of. There are some good things about my life back in SoCal, but there were enough dissatisfying ones that I did want a change of scenery. So I'm hoping this month will shake some things loose and start me down a new path, now that, as Nora says, the old walkabout chapter has come to a close with me cleaning out my Chicago storage. So this is a NEW walkabout! For the month of August it is actually, geographically a walkabout, but as I move forward, I'm imagining that it will become a walkabout of the mind. And soul.

Oooh, I'm really deep!

Anyway, so, like a baby deer trying its legs for the first time, I am stumbling around the cluttered spaces of my own life trying to find the good stuff, blithely mixing metaphors as I go. I'll keep you posted.

I'm back, somewhat

2009-08-02T04:25:00.000-07:00

Aside to John: Both of us stole "long, dark teatime/party of the soul" from Douglas Adams. He's dead, so he probably doesn't care, but you gotta give credit where it's due, especially to the man who reminded us of the importance of a towel and that 42 is more than just how old I will be in really not that many years. Yoiks.

Okay, for the first time in weeks I have actually felt a little bit like writing. I don't feel like working on my proposal, or even the book, which you'd think would be the fun part, but I'm ready to start stream-of-consciousness writing on here again. I know I've been down because of how long the days seem. Back when I had left the grid, sort of, but didn't know what I was going to do with myself, the days stretched out endlessly, and the idea of filling them meaningfully was daunting. When I hit my stride and now, when things are flowing, the days just fly by in a good way. But at the moment, I'm back to wondering how on earth I'm going to fill them. And I'm also finding myself way too preoccupied with the past and the future, which takes me completely out of the present.

I was going to say that some of what's taking me out of the present is fear, but that's all of it, if I'm being completely honest. My very wise friend Adamarie told me that people make decisions and act on those decisions for one of two reasons--love or fear. (I have probably described this before.) And we try to keep each other honest, that we don't make our decisions based on fear anymore; if we have tough choices to make or find ourselves sliding back into old habits, we remind each other.

Well, I have fallen off the wagon recently. I'm doing lots of things out of fear. Not writing. Feeling lonely but pretending I'm not because I'm preoccupied with what other people will think. Wondering if I belong in SoCal long term. Worrying about money, though my history with money in the past few years suggests that I will be absolutely fine, and that money will come along when I need it, which I don't quite yet--though it's getting closer than it ever has, which is why I'm fearful. I'm working on all of it, and that includes focusing on doing the things I love and feel compelled to do (see, there's that love thing going on). So keep a good thought.

So that's a start. I'm in the Atlanta airport right now and have been since my red eye from LAX landed about 3am (according to my body clock). As I described to my friend Moike (he's from Australia, so I make fun of the way he says "Mike." Because I am an a-hole.), being in an airport in the middle of the night is like being in a funhouse mirror, only every sense is distorted. I'm waiting for my connecting flight, so I'm not thinking too clearly. But the point is, even though I'm missing some fun stuff back in SoCal, I think it's good for me to get out of Dodge for a bit. And I'll be getting out of Dodge quite a bit in August; I'm gone on this trip till next Sunday, then I leave again the following Wed for my friend Tim's wedding in NYC. Then I'm back for about 4 days before leaving again for the last 10 days of the month for Women's Grappling Camp 2. This time we go international, to Toronto. There's also a women's tournament there, to start the week off right.

So, as I said, I'm somewhat back. I'm trying, at least, even though Yoda says there is no try. Well, Yoda can suck it. Just this once.

To Anonymous

2009-07-28T07:25:00.001-07:00

I don't want to hear from you anymore. Either identify yourself or keep your mouth shut. Or, ideally, identify yourself and then shut up so I can have a crack at you.

The long, dark teatime of the soul

2009-07-24T21:23:00.001-07:00

So things went to crap almost immediately after I wrote my last post. Later that day, I lost my agent. It is for the best, but it really threw me and has made me want to write even LESS than I did before. So I've been bummed out about that, among other things. I need to start bringing some money to me. I have had other crap going on too. It's been a drag. I am probably snapping out of it again, though that's what I said the last time.

I'm trying. But I'm weary and fragile and stuff.

Tomorrow is our belt promotion, which will be fun.

That's all for now.

I haven't forgotten you!

2009-07-14T11:50:00.001-07:00

To cover soon: my awesome Independence Day, the amazing CrossFit Games in Aromas, my birthday (tomorrow), my lingering discontent over my tournament performance, my snapping out of it-ness (I am perking up), my busy end-of-summer, my conditioning class (the one I'm teaching), my proposal, women's grappling camp.

Lots going on. Not writing much about it, obviously, but it's generally good.

Looking up

2009-07-03T20:35:00.000-07:00

I think I'm snapping out of my malaise. And even if I'm not, I kind of don't have much time to indulge it these days.

Nor do I have cause. I'm healthy, everyone I love is generally okay, I am financially secure for the moment, and I have some really fun things coming down the pike this summer, starting with a road trip tomorrow with Eddie, Zeb, Mike, Chris, and Alyssa to Santa Barbara! (Others are coming too, but that's the group that's going in Mike's car.) We're going to descend upon CrossFit Pacific Coast, run by our good pals Traver and Eric. We'll do an Independence Day workout and then hit the beach! No, it won't be the sore, but thanks to Paul M. and Dave T., I'll be bringing a taste of the shore to the beach, in the form of 3 lbs of pork roll/Taylor ham (a NJ favorite) and the biggest care package of TastyKakes known to man. (TastyKakes are like Hostess, only they are a Philly institution.)

America! F*ck yeah! More to follow, but for now, I gotta go sleepies so I can get up at 4:30. We're leaving early to avoid the holiday traffic.

Congrats to Seph and Jen!

2009-06-30T22:22:00.001-07:00

My pals Seph Smith and Jen Flannery got their brown and purple belts, respectively, from Felipe Costa last night! I spoke with Seph very briefly, and he was incoherent from the brutal hour of rolling with maybe 30 different people. I'm sure Jen felt similarly. But these promotions were well-deserved; Jen has been placing in every competition she has entered this year, and Seph is a monster. A perfectly safe, friendly monster, but a monster nonetheless.

I'm very happy for them!

To Anonymous who asked about the Murph: I have done that workout 3 times, all as prescribed (so, run the mile, do all the pullups, do all the pushups, do all the squats). The first time was in the fall of 2007. I did the pushups from my knees and assisted pullups. It took me about 62 minutes. The second time I did it was maybe 6 months ago. I did the pushups from my toes and unassisted pullups. It took me about 60 minutes. The third time was Memorial Day, same as the second time. It took me about 58 minutes.

It is a grind. But it's always fun to be done!

As for all the comments on the hero part of the post, thanks for those. I am still conflicted, but I am just going to continue doing what I'm doing and hope it shakes out for the best, for as many people as possible.

More later!

It is finished.

2009-06-26T12:24:00.001-07:00

I know, pretty presumptuous to quote the last words of Jesus Christ to describe the completion of my project to empty out the storage locker I have been renting lo these 3 years since I left Chicago for grubbier, grapplier pastures. But as of about 2pm Tuesday (today as I write this longhand, perhaps later in the week as I type it in), that’s what the project is: finished. I also thought about saying, “Now we finish it,” like that one kid in the Seinfeld episode right before the entire pee-wee karate class beat the shit out of Kramer in the alley as payback for him tossing them around. But that’s not quite as accurate, at least not anymore.

Maybe I should go with, “I’m done mucking around in my past and feeling an overwhelming mixture of nostalgia, regret, love, fear, anticipation, hysteria, sadness, and even shame. May I please be excused? I have to go curl up in the fetal position and engage in a soothing, repetitive behavior.” Only that’s not entirely accurate either, because I’m not done with the feeling part, much as I’d like to be (not even today, as I type this in.).

I’m having trouble pinpointing exactly what I’m feeling and why this exercise, of finally getting rid of a bunch of stuff I haven’t missed in 3 years anyway, is dredging up quite so MUCH feeling. I guess I don’t really need to know—or what I need to know will become evident when I need it to, but I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t try to pick it apart and ascribe some meaning to it. I’m sure it’s about roads not taken, and sometimes wishing desperately that the untaken road were the right one for me because it would make life so much more straightforward, and of course about feeling like the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Coming face-to-face with that storage locker brought the memories flooding back of me, 3 years ago, contemplating the gaping maw of my existence, knowing that my journey was the right thing, but feeling terrified, alone, and worried about money, identity, and whether I was going to get the things I want(ed) in life. Three years later, that storage locker conjured the same feelings in me. Only I know it’s not only the storage locker. It’s that I’m back there again feeling that way about my life again.

There are some notable differences between the me of 3 years ago and the now me. I know this. I’m not THAT worried about money; worrying about that after all the synchronicities I have experienced related to money is now more of a habit. I am a crapload better at BJJ now. I can break parallel on a squat. And I know, even during the hard times, that the life I have been choosing since I started my vision quest is a much better fit than the one I left behind.

But that’s where I start to feel like nothing has changed. I am feeling pretty much exactly these days the way I did when I was in the final month of planning for my trip: scared, alone, unsure of what’s anchoring me, like I’m behind where I’m supposed to be at this stage of my life, but simultaneously like I have to do what I’m doing because I don’t know what else to do. Back then, it was plan for my trip and trust that it would lead me to my next step. Now, it’s work on my proposal, train, CrossFit, teach conditioning at New Breed, and trust that it will lead me to my next step.

I’m drained, though. In the past couple weeks, no fewer than 10 people have told me that they, or someone they know, consider me their hero. Nora (my channel, whom I’ve been consulting lately because the past couple months have been pretty hard) says it’s because I need the reminder that my journey and I are awesome. That’s a truly nice sentiment. But it makes me feel like a fraud. I don’t feel very heroic right now.

At the moment, I have heartburn because I have been relaxing my Zone habits in favor of expediency. I am soul weary from the cumulative effect of a couple months of confusion, sadness, anger, and befuddlement from a variety of Life Occurrences such that I could easily fall asleep on my feet right now if I allowed myself to. I am covered in scrapes—burns on my shins from rope climbs and on my wrists from muscle-up practice, and rips in my palms from pullups—that make it look like I barely said the safe word in the nick of time. And at inopportune times (like while waiting in El stations or while chatting with some of the friends I have gotten to see while I’ve been in Chicago), I frequently start to laugh or cry, as being back in the place where I first started to go crazy and hatch my vision quest plan reminds me of important people, intentions, and assumptions, some of which I have taken with me, and some of which poke at my heart because they stayed behind.

That doesn’t sound very heroic, I’m afraid. I don’t know why people think I’m a hero. I have more gray hair than the average hero (is “average hero” an oxymoron?), and my handwriting is messy and illegible like a doctor’s. Or a serial killer’s. I’m flattered, but I’m also pooped. It doesn’t compute. Heroes don’t eat ice cream for dinner or watch Judge Judy to make themselves feel better about themselves.

Well, hero or not, I confirmed some things. One thing I know for sure is that I don’t belong in Chicago. It isn’t my home anymore. I love so many people there, and it was good to me for the first part of the time I was there. But it's not the right fit now. This is a great thing to know, and I’m thankful that I do. It’d be even greater, though, to know where I DO belong, which I don’t anymore because this trip, among other things, is giving me perspective. (“Too much fucking perspective,” to quote David St. Hubbins.). But like I said, another thing that I do know is that the thing I need to be focusing on right now is my proposal. The rest should fall into place if I focus on that. That at least has been the formula since I went walkabout—whatever is the thing I’m preoccupied with is the thing I must do; even if it seems like a detour away from the things I feel I need to accomplish next, it is usually the express train directly to those things.

Okay, enough heavy stuff. Next entry will be how the week has been going and all the annoying things I’ve had to deal with, turned into witty, self-deprecating anecdotes, of course.

My visit to CrossFit Chicago

2009-06-25T07:38:00.000-07:00

http://www.crossfitchicago.com/post.php?post=1241

I'm a pretty pretty princess!

A picture says a thousand words. I have to open my hips more at the bottom of the kip instead of bending my knees (at least until I get the butterfly kip, which I tried for the first time at a gymnastics seminar a couple weeks ago).

It was a fun workout: front squats and then handstand pushups, one-legged squats, and pullups. Ivy, the instructor, took great care of me, and the students were great too. CrossFit is like grappling in that the people are just awesome.

Anyway, I'm recovering from my walk down Memory Lane and am still processing it all. Writing one of my usual witty, brilliant posts. Stay tuned.

I meant San Juan Capistrano

2009-06-23T15:03:00.001-07:00

I'm in Chicago. Have been since Sunday. Those of you who have been with me since I started this blog know that I lived here for 6 years before going off the grid and taking my vision quest. This week I have been cleaning out the storage locker I have had here since I left; it contained all kinds of vestiges of my former life. So I spent 2 full days going through the stuff, and the accompanying emotions, to put a close to that chapter once and for all.

Feeling/thinking lots of stuff about it, and the timing, as always, is fascinating. More soon.

Moving on...

2009-06-19T22:05:00.000-07:00

I got a letter from my insurance company saying that they are unable to locate the person who hit me, which I assume means the information he gave me is outdated or falsified. So I won't be able to get the deductible from him. Again, draw your own conclusions.

There's plenty more I could say about Anonymous' comments and the subsequent discussion, but I'm not going to bother. Moving on...

Tomorrow is a tourney in San Luis Capistrano. I'm not competing, but I'll be coaching our students and being a mat coordinator. Should be fun but a long day. And then on Sunday I leave for a week. I'm headed to IL; I'll be in Chicago for a bit cleaning out my storage locker. The one I left behind when I left Chicago THREE YEARS ago. Whoa. In some ways I am a completely different person, and in some ways, not much has changed. I'll be getting everything out, jettisoning some things, and giving the rest to my friend Adamarie, who is meeting me in Chicago. She just moved into a new house and needs furniture. So I'm giving her a couch and whatever other things she wants, and then the rest of it will go into her basement. Yeah, I'm just changing storage areas, but I'll get to clear some stuff out and I'll also not have to pay anymore.

Plus, I think it will be important for me to get rid of my last connection to Chicago. It's kind of like a security blanket, maybe, like if this life doesn't work out I can just unpack the storage locker into an apartment back there. But I know I won't be going back there to live. I don't know if I'll be staying in LA, but I won't be going back.

I really think things will start to get interesting once I begin to shop my book proposal around. My agent has it now and is going to read the draft this weekend. And after that I will probably have more revising to do, but my goal is to have a circulate-able draft by the end of July.

So those two things, cleaning out my closet and circulating my proposal, are going to be pretty momentous, I predict. I'll be moving on in more ways than one.