Wake Up Call

In this piece I’m changing directions and instead of focusing on travel and culture I’m talking some about Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ), some about sports psychology and some about how sometimes the universe likes to rub things in your face. I’ll try to keep away from being too technical when I discus BJJ (I’m hoping that my my non BJJ friends can enjoy this too) and I’m going to try to stay away from getting too corny when I discuss my recent revelations because narcissistic, philosophical writing annoys me. Here we go:

For starters, right now I’m at a standstill in my BJJ development. I know that any athlete, musician, or anybody who has tried to master a skill that takes years of regular practice, will empathize with me. In all the serious athletics I’ve done, starting with wrestling in high school, my year of judo in college, and now BJJ; I’ve noticed that athletic development does not occur at a steady rate. A friend of mine, compared progressing as an athlete, to struggling up a flight of giant steps. You walk along without much change for a while, and then you hoist yourself  up to the next level and all of a sudden you’re developing your jiu jitsu game quickly and all kinds of little details are fitting together and you’re understanding technique in a whole different way and… you hit another plateau.

There’s probably some evolutionary reason that humans learn in this pattern. Maybe after learning a new hunting technique we have to give the animals a chance to evolve and adjust to our new skills. I don’t know. Regardless, the pattern where a period of growth is followed by a period without much growth, is a fact, and it’s a fact that you have to learn how to live with as an athlete. I try to cross train by throwing in things like running, swimming, and weights. I try to remember to rest sometimes instead of constantly pushing myself to the max, especially when I’m not training for competition. I try to remind myself that I love BJJ, whether or not I’m having a good day, and that I’m always happier if I’m training. Perhaps the best technique I use to deal with my frustration caused by a long period of plateau, comes from a chat I had with my mother about a year ago. My mother is a serious singer and one of our ongoing conversations is about trying to excel in music vs. trying to excel in sports and how the two compare. I think I was complaining to my mom about how I wasn’t progressing in BJJ as quickly as I’d like to and she shared a piece of wisdom that she got from her voice teacher. When you’re trying to measure your progress, whatever your discipline is, the smallest period of time you should consider is six months. This helps me, when I’m feeling particularly negative about my last day, week, or month of training, I stop and think, “ok how do I compare to six months ago”. Every time I realize that I have made significant progress, and that I am heading in the right direction. It’s a nice trick.

So, having a BJJ learning curve that is full of periods of acceleration and period of stagnation is ok. Right now I’m in one of the stagnant phases. My BJJ game is sloppy and that I haven’t really learned any new techniques for a while. I’m consistently making the same mistakes when I train and no matter how many times I remind myself not to throw my arms around, I still do it, so I get caught in lots of armbars. And while I know that I am over all in really good shape, I’ve been unusually tired for the last week, and I feel slow on the mat. But it’s ok because I’m a mature, experienced athlete, and I know that the fact that I’m plateauing right now just means that I can look forward to learning at an accelerated pace sometime in the near future. Right?

Wrong! I’m so frustrated with BJJ, and my body right now that it’s hard to focus on anything else. Actually frustrated is too polite of a word. I’m pissed. I train so much, and so much of what you do as a serious athlete is push your body to keep going even when it doesn’t want to, that when I push and my body doesn’t listen it really pisses me off. I’ve been cranky and discouraged about BJJ for about a week now, and every time I go to train, I hope I’ll feel different but I also worry that it’ll be more of the same. (Which is probably a horrible psychological cycle, but we won’t get into that right now.) Anyway I was transitioning from being frustrated to feeling sorry for myself, “I train so hard, why aren’t I learning!” when the universe decided to give me a bit of a wake up call.

The academy where I train here in Israel is a MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) academy with a really strong BJJ program. That means that there are classes in BJJ, boxing, muay thai, and MMA; and there is a team of fighter that compete in professional MMA fights. There is an event this Thursday where a bunch of the fighters from the team are going to be competing and it’s going to be pretty exciting to go as a spectator and watch guys that I train with kick some ass. At least that was the plan.

My Hebrew, at this point, is good enough that I can understand the gist of a conversation most of the time, but I miss all kinds of details. Sometimes I will understand a sentence or two in a row and feel very proud of myself, and sometimes I’ll be unable to grasp a word in five straight minutes. But most of the time I can figure out the topic of the conversation if nothing else. Anyway, I had just finished a grappling class (no-gi BJJ) on Monday when I heard the names of a few of the fighters who were on the fight card for this Thursday. Hoping I had misunderstood Iasked for a translation. Apparently the two guys were on a motorcycle together when they got in an accident. The good news is that they’re both essentially ok. The bad new is that between a broken arm and some serious bumps and bruises neither of them are going to be able to fight on Thursday.

Let me just reiterate, the fights are this Thursday, the bike accident happened sometime in the last week or so. Fuck. These athletes have put themselves through the months of training, and they’re not going to be able to fight because of pure bad luck. Hearing about their situation put my frustration about my training into perspective. And while I am so thankful that the crash wasn’t worse, that they’ll both be able to train again, I can’t help but be heart broken for them. I’ve never had an MMA fight, but I have competed a lot and training for competition is hard. Your body starts to break down because you push it so hard and you have to watch your diet so that you can make weight. You’re sore all the time and it’s easy to wear yourself down psychologically. To go through all that, and then have the chance to fight taken away is just wrong. It’s so upsetting, that I’m going to take a break from all this serious talk and insert a youtube video by Joe Rogan that talks about what it takes to become a successful professional fighter. All you crazy kids who think you want to be the next George St. Pierre see below and think twice:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tM5KVt499zw

Anyway, back to the universe messing with my head. There’s this page I’ve seen floating facebook in the Israeli BJJ group. I didn’t pay much attention to it at first because it has the stupid name of “My Champion Film”. For some reason I was messing around online today and I decided to take a closer look. Apparently it’s a documentary about Merhav Mohar, the boxing champion of Israel, who moved to the US to take a long shot chance at becoming a boxing world champion. At some point an Israeli documentary crew started following him around and filming his life. The film is going to be released in the next week. Alright, good stuff, no? I love underdog stories, especially in sports and the Israeli fighting community is small enough that I figure some of the guys I train with probably know Merhav. You can check out the documentary website, including a trailer here: http://www.mychampionfilm.com/

Here: http://www.ajlmagazine.com/content/032006/contender.html is the newspaper article I read that tells the end of Merhav’s journey to become a world champion. Midway through his title fight, Merhav got caught with a left hook and woke up in the trauma unit of the hospital. You can read up on all the details of his injury in the article above, if you really want to. I’m just going to say that a guy, who gave every thing he had for a chance to become a world champion boxer, can’t jog now because his doctors are afraid it’ll move his brain too much. Merhav is 22. I can’t even imagine.

So while I promise I will not to use my blog as a place to bore you all with my deep revelations about life, I want to take a moment to list things I am grateful for as an athlete. Most importantly I am grateful for my health. While my nagging back problems are no fun, it could be so much worse. In all my years as a wrestler, and then BJJ practitioner, I’ve never had to deal with anything worse than back pain and a stress fracture in one foot. So far all my tendons and ligaments are intact (the most common place for injuries with grapplers) and I’ve never had a major break, or anything that required surgery. I’m thankful for all the support I get in my athletic endeavors. My parents take my athletic goals seriously and even show up to cheer for their crazy daughter who thinks that it’s fun to choke people out. I’ve overall had really good luck with coaches and trainers. As a girl in male dominated sports, I’ve always been taken very seriously and treated with great respect. The team I’ve found to train with here in Israel is exceptionally friendly and supportive, but everywhere I’ve gone I’ve been lucky to find serious training partners and awesome (if crazy) buddies. Lastly I’m thankful that I have something in my life that I’m passionate about. Not everybody has a overwhelming obsession, and while life would be easier if I wasn’t BJJ obsessed, it wouldn’t be nearly as interesting or rewarding.

So I’m grateful. And while I’m not satisfied with my jiu jitsu I’m thrilled that I have the opportunity to continue improving.