words, words, words

The gauntlet has been thrown, I hereby challenge Matt Damon to a cage fight.

Matt, don’t pretend you haven’t read this, I’ll say it again, in case you don’t read so good: I challenge you to fight me.

You pick the rules. I prefer a no-holds-barred contest.  You pick the location: be it a ring, cage, octagon, or shark filled waters, those are all fine with me, but I prefer something within walking distance of my home.

I eagerly await your response.

Chicken …. bawk bawk bawk.

I have been noticing something in my Brazilian jiu-jitsu training lately.  If I look up a technique I want to try before class, I tend to over-focus on trying to find an opportunity to do that particular move.  Lets take, for example, the Otto-Plata.  I will spend a few rolls with my partners trying to find the opportunity to sink the Otto-Plata and get distracted from what is really going on.  This will happen until I am stuck under cem kilos still searching for it and realize that I need to get the hell out of there.

Or, in other words, if the only tool you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.

I start to lose focus on the gestalt of what is going on and keep looking for something to hammer nail.

So I am trying to back off the techniques and stick to basic movements, that way, I’ll be able to get into positions to find the nail.
I’m going to just go to class with goals like: “today I will Elvis-ize my hips”.  They are a bit too stuck to the mat.

All that said, training is going well.  I’ve basically recovered from all my injuries and the new cracks and creaks in my formerly injured joints are just the soundtrack to me rolling around trying to hammer things.

We just returned from another competition. This one was the Arena Búzios 2008. It was in Búzios, which is the beautiful are a few hours from Rio.

I got second in my weight division and second in the absolute. The bling collection just keeps growing…

Bit of a rainy day in Rio, but it is still warm. It was good to get out of Rio for a couple of days and see some more of Rio de Janeiro state. Also, the contest was almost entirely devoid of grigoes, so everyone got to compete against Brazilians this time.

The International Masters and Seniors Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu competition ended a few days ago. I wound up getting third in my weight division, and had a really bad draw for the absolute. I fought the biggest dude I´ve ever seen at a competition. He was 125 kilos of muscle. However, I did actually fight him, instead of backing out. Apparently a couple of other people looked at him and said ´no thanks´. So now, I won´t be scared to fight big dudes. They have feelings too!

Other than myself, the guys from my academy did really well and my instructor Flavio Ferreira, won his division in black belt.

I´ve been going to the beach, have seen the Big Jesus at Corcovado and went up Sugarloaf. Rio is such a beatuiful city. The people are really nice, too. Hopefully the surf will pick back up and I will get a board.   I´ve been eating heaps of Acaí!!!

The International Master & Senior Jiu-Jitsu Championship 2008 starts in Rio on Thursday.

I”m going to be competing in the Pesado / Heavy category for Master’s.  It is the Mundials for the … mature… eh hem.

Of course, I”ve got both of my knees injured and am still two kilos over my weight, so my goals are to make weigh-in and not get any further injuries… oh… and to win my division.  But I’m being realistic about it.  I haven’t had a chance to really prepare for this competition.  So I have reasonable expections.  In fact, this is the least prepared I’ve ever been for any competition.

I am in the middle of writing a big old blog post about my trip to Buenos Aires. It was really interesting, and fun, so I’ll have an update soon.

Also, I am going to the Pantanal in a couple of weeks for a bit, before I go to Rio for the nternational Master & Senior Jiu-Jitsu Championship.  It is like the Munidals, for the — eh hem — mature.

I just saw this and it made me smile.

In other news, I went by the gym today, to congratulate my instructor, Flávio Ferreira. (He has been winning everything lately, and just won the his black belt category at the Brasileiros.)

Turns out the cold I have is actually a virus, and a lot of people have it. Vale Tudo, one of the guys at the gym, was also sitting out and not training.  He told me that even his finger joints are sore. This jives with my symptoms, as it seems like all my joints ache, knees, back, even my feet. I know it isn’t dengue, even though it has been going around, because I’ve already had that. However, this is a crappy nagging illness.

I had a brief period of time off from training due to lingering injuries.  But now I am back… inching slowly onto the tatame.

There are really severe ups and downs in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Some days you can do almost anything you try, other days, you can’t do anything.

I have a theory about this. One that has kept me going in the times when you want to pack it in and go home.

So here it is:

Whenever you feel like you are having a great day, your opponent is having a crappy day, and vice versa.

For me, lately, it has been pretty close to 50/50. Good day, crap day. Of course that could be a self-fulfilling prophesy, but to demand good days just doesn’t work.

At the very least, this lets you go easier on people who are having a bad day when you in top form. And this, along with the fact that I live incredibly close to the gym, keeps me going when I’m in a funk.

I am certainly no zen master (for example: I really wanted to throw my malfunctioning alarm clock out the 10th story window today) so I’m not going to start selling self-help books.  But I think we’ve all felt the roller-coaster of emotions of training, and it is far too easy to quit.

We returned from Rio today.

It was a lot of fun, and no crime to report. The only thing that was remotely dodgy was the fireworks on Copacabana. There was a small explosion on one of the barges offshore from which they launch the fireworks and then the fireworks started to shoot into the crowd.

It was chaos. It felt like a war zone, large colorful explosions, lots of smoke, screams, and stampeding. Susi, completely unperturbed by the whistles and booms was packing her bags. She obviously couldn’t hear me as I tried to yell over the screams, “Just leave it!”

We met up with a number of different friends from London and spent a lot of time on the beach. I also went with Roger to train at Gracie Barra, which was great, but a bit humbling. There were more black belts than any other belt and they were all really friendly and helpful, as they smashed you. (Roger’s Mom wrote a book about Carlos Gracie, to be released in March, which I am looking forward to reading. In Portuguese, gulp…)

Rio is a great city. I think by far it is the most beautiful in the world. The natural landscape is breathtaking and the people are really nice. I’m sure that we will go back to visit again soon.

I’ll put up some pictures soon.