Clutter(less)

Uh... organized chaos???

“Tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today”
― African Proverb

My living space is a wreck. My bedroom is a mess. My car is a nightmare. I have no time for myself let alone to straighten up....at least that's how I feel. Unfortunately, that thought process leads to failure. I am relatively minimal, we don't have a lot of stuff, but when things are never put back where they belong, it becomes pretty disastrous.Instead of spending time working on important tasks, your mind becomes distracted with the problem on hand...which is organizing. I don't know if I have some degree of obsessive (well, according to J, I do), but if my space isn't clean and tidy, I will eventually go crazy. Instead of getting work done last night, I spent 4 hrs cleaning... and I don't mean tidying, moving things around, etc. I mean that whatever wasn't needed or would never be used went in the trash, and everything else was put in its place. I guess my point is that everyone needs to make time to organize or get rid of the unnecessary stressors in the environment. I know for me, I have this thing nagging in the back of my mind, making great days stressful, until I can get to whatever was bugging me. Instead of putting off the annoying work, do it first. Now...the living space is organized and tidy. Later, when I start working on tasks, I can actually focus and accomplish that which I set out to do. Granted, I still have to clean my car...and room... but that's another day.

The interesting thing is that this concept can be applied to jiujitsu. Minimize the clutter - take out the unnecessary techniques and movements that don't help your game. Once that happens, you can focus on the concepts that will benefit your training. The saying "don't collect, perfect" applies here - instead of collecting a bunch of techniques, you should perfect the few that you do have. This is because instead of being able to do 20 different guard passes decently, you could do 3 perfectly. In a tournament situation, it's the difference between almost passing and guaranteeing the guard pass. My homework for tonight? Think about what I need to focus on and what I need to let go in order to improve my game. What clutters your game?

They live for the love of the game...

This photo says it all.

10,000

I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times  - Bruce Lee

This quote is packed with so much meaning in so few words; it has been adapted a few times, especially for BJJ... but essentially, it's not the individual who practices one move, it's the dedication to developing a few effective tools. Don't drill twenty fancy guard passes, as you won't be proficient. Practice one pass until you understand and perfect it.... then no one can stop it.  Perfect your technique, don't collect. Happy training!

Update to Women's Training Camp

I mentioned in my previous post that the PNW Women's Training Camp will include black belt competitors Andrea Emmel and Miriam Cardoso.. but I have to admit, I am overly excited because Fabiana Borges will be flying from Texas to attend the camp. Her main goal is to promote women's jiujitsu, and is excited to helping us accomplish our goal of uniting the women in this region.

Check out the full update on the Camp Blog - the writeup on Fabiana can be found here. 

Can this camp get any better?

Women Only Training Camp = Awesome

Ever since I attended the Leticia Ribeiro training camp, I have felt driven to unite the women in the Pacific Northwest. On a school by school basis, there aren't a lot of female jiujitsu practitioners.As a region, there's a mass. Last year, I started Grapplin' Gals, which is an unaffiliated women's open mat. When I left my last school, and started West Seattle Fight & Fitness, Grapplin' Gals came with me. This desire to get more women to train together fueled the beginnings of a PNW Women's Training Camp, run by Professors Miriam Cardoso and Andrea Emmel, both black belt World Champions, along with good friends and amazing technicians Amanda Loewen and Leah Taylor.

What's interesting is that many women do not realize how crucial it is to train with other women. In class, guys almost never train with you at full speed, meaning you never practice with proper resistance... (if guys do go full speed, you will probably end up crushed under some extraneous weight, not very comfortable). Training with women though, especially if you're preparing for competition, takes your game to a completely different level. Techniques that you weren't able to hit on that dude that weighs the same but happens to bench press your body weight you can now hit on someone your size. It's that realization that "oh wait, I do know jujitsu " I went into my first competition as a blue belt (which was really my second competition ever) not knowing what to expect from my opponents. After training with guys for so long, I didn't know that I would get aggressive and strong women coming at me the way they did. It was like being tossed to the wolves, in a sense, or getting Hulk smashed. How did I resolve this? By training more with women...It was from this competition actually that I was lucky to have met Amanda Loewen, one of the most technical women I have trained with.

Erin Herle, founder of Pulling Guard Zine and current author at GracieMag describes it best in her article, "Why Women Only Open Mats are Thriving and How they Benefit the Community." Women only events, whether they are training camps or open mats, builds a real camaraderie and sense of belonging. I feel like they also help the retention of female practitioners because let's face it - it's a male dominated art. Women may have a hard time even opening the door to a jiujitsu academy. I remember the first time I opened the door to my first gym, my heart was pounding... as I walked through the academy to find the head instructor I passed by a bunch of sweaty and intimidating guys. I was shown to the women's changing room - a partitioned section smaller than a closet next to the men's changing room, separated by a curtain. I almost left before class even started, to be honest. The more women unite, the more women feel comfortable, and then opportunities for better training present themselves.

In short, it's this want for a sense of belonging among women training jujitsu and want for women to be able to train with other women that sparked the women's training camp happening next month - for more details, check out the Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/118076841693592/

Resolutions

It's Christmas Eve, I'm stuck at my parents' house... but all I can think if is jujitsu. Not just jujitsu, but necessarily lifestyle changes that need to be made in order to improve...well, everything. I guess if you want to label it, this post is about resolutions, except I wouldn't even call them resolutions because they are changes that I need to make in order to be happy and successful, and to keep my life in order, regardless of the new year. Sure, you can make order out of chaos, but it's better to prevent the chaos right?

1. Strength and Conditioning: this is something I haven't been doing at all lately due to some excuse or other. I know what I need to do, so I need to take an hour every other day out of my schedule and just get it done.
2. Diet: I don't mean eat less. I need to eat clean, simple, right... no more processed foods, no sugar. The hard part is sticking to it in this world - if my coworker brings in homemade raspberry cheesecake... gotta say no. 
3. Minimize: What do I mean by that, you ask? Minimalism is simplicity; it'sthe principle of living with only the essentials, with what you need. It means I don't need something in my closet that I haven't worn for over a year, because chances are I'm not going to wear it. Or that box of miscellaneous items like a clutch, old nail polish, sewing kit... It's cutting out the excess in your life so you can enjoy what you do have. It reduces clutter, and reduces stress. I want to have as minimal a lifestyle as possible in order to reduce the unnecessary stuff in my life to focus that which I love.
4. No more excuses: I'm tired, I'm cold, I'm sore, I'm sick - they're endless, and they need to go away. As Nike is famous for saying, Just Do It.
5. Positive Thinking: I have to point this one to J. I am always putting a negative spin on something already negative; how you think affects your mood; it also affects your day, your attitude, and everyone around you.

If you realize how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think a negative thought again. - Peace Pilgrim .

Those five things are lifestyle changes that I feel are crucial to living well. The key now is to keep motivation enough to achieve these goals. Though as I think about it, I realize that motivation isn't even necessary if you just believe in the philosophy and principles behind minimalism, positive thinking, etc. because it's a positive lifestyle change. If you want to do well, you have to believe in what you're doing.

Anyway, here's to positive change, a new Sonia, and I guess a new year.

Preventing Bad Training Habits

Oftentimes, we think of Jiujitsu as techniques... however, it isn't about techniques, contrary to popular belief. What's it about then? Concepts. It's about understanding the movements - the purpose behind each foot placement, each grip, each push and pull. Essentially, a student of Jujitsu needs to understand the mechanics behind each movement before having the ability to successfully pull it off. What's the point of learning the Scissor Sweep if you don't know what each step is for? You can drill it hundreds of times, you can become proficient at copying the steps and do it over and over again. Once resistance from your opponent comes into play, it's difficult to complete the sweep if you don't understand the mechanics behind the sweep. For example, when you pull the person over you, just before sweeping, the weight of your opponent is forward on their knees- it isn't distributed equally amongst the four points he/she had on the ground (both feet, and both knees). Thus, when you sweep, they have nothing to base out with (you're already eliminating their arm with their same side grip, right?). If you don't know this concept, you will most likely not be able to execute the move neither in specifics nor sparring. If you learn the concept, the technique clicks easily rather than painfully trying to learn by copying. Instead of building bad habits, you start out with good ones from the get-go...no relearning necessary.

For me, not understanding concepts caused bad jiujitsu habits. Personally, I trained for three years before I started learning actual concepts. Wait...what was I doing for three years then? Honestly, I have no clue. Well, actually, what I was doing was learning bad habits by copying instead of understanding. I didn't even know what the purpose of a hip escape was - I was told to copy a movement, and for six months, I didn't even know why I was trying to escape my hips at the beginning of every class. I eventually put two and two together, but until recently, I still felt like it equaled five. 2 and 2 equaled 4 when I started training with Jei at WSFF a few months ago. It wasn't even through private training that hip escapes made perfect sense - it was actually watching him teach the basics to white belts. This is why I still see myself as a white belt. The mechanics of a triangle choke is a good example to use when thinking of concepts. Most white belts, even some blue belts, complete the move based on copying other teammates. It is a choke that is very difficult to complete if you don't get the "why" of it. Ultimately, you are cutting off blood circulation to the carotid artery in your opponent's neck. This is done with the shoulder of your opponent (which is why you need to push their arm across your body) and your leg (which is why you need to get the perpendicular angle of your body to theirs). A lot of the students at WSFF didn't quite understand it until it was broken down step by step in our fundamentals class - each movement was isolated and explained. Pretty quickly for them, 2 and 2 easily equaled 4. It was much quicker for them because they started learning the movement properly. Even though the triangle is my go-to submission from guard, it wasn't until a few months ago (when I started learning concepts) that I could finish it.

This is why learning by copying rather than understanding is a waste of time because you're setting yourself back. Think about what you're doing, why you're doing it, and understand the movement before drilling. Break down the mechanics of your technique, and check yourself by asking "what's the purpose of this [insert move here]?" Basics + Concepts = Jujitsu.

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