Heybrad BJJ fighter - midlife crisis or just plain crazy

[heybrad]

I kind of want to document this somewhere, so what better than to take a crack at a dynasty. The few dynasties I've tried usually haven't taken off but since this will most likely be slow paced (an entry every couple of days in the beginning) hopefully this will stick.

A little background to start. I've always been a guy who's been fairly active physically but I've never really been in great shape. I've always carried a lot of weight even during my hockey days and when I ran a marathon. About 2 years ago I tried taking Brazilian Jiu Jitsu lessons and did so for about 2 months, but my schedule didn't really allow me to continue. I had done Kenpo karate long, long ago for a couple years as well, so I'm familiar with the workout routines in martial arts classes. They are definitely one hell of a workout.

Having recently relocated out to Virginia, I no longer have the commitments outside of work that I used to have. We've joked at home that I now go to work during the day and come home at night and wait to go to work the next day. Having been out here a couple months now, I haven't exactly met a lot of people to hang out with as that gets tougher as I get into my 40's. Not to sound pathetic, but... I don't have a lot going on.

So with all of that background, I decided to take another crack at taking Brazilian Jiu Jitsu lessons. I did some research and found a place not too far from where I live. I have a friend at work (back in Cali) who is a BJJ black belt who looked into the school for me as well. I know there's always been a bit of a culture to the martial arts but it seems like ensuring a proper black belt lineage in BJJ is very important. Anyway... my buddy gave his blessing to the school and since they offer a 2 week free trial, I signed up. Last night was my first class.

I'm familiar with the typical routine since I'd taken a couple months of lessons before back in Cali. It was 30 minutes of exercising, 30 minutes of technique and 30 minutes of grappling. I was given a gi (and I was shocked that it fit me although a little snug) and we were off. To my surprise, I got through the 30 minutes of exercise in fairly good shape. We moved on to technique where we learned a couple of reversals from our back. Hopefully I'll get better at explaining these as I go, but basically it was shrimping out, reaching across to grab your opponents elbow and controlling it, bumping up with your hips and rolling him over. Now, I'm sure that description doesn't do it justice since I'm a newbie. We also learned a variation where if you're opponent is pushing back against your hip buck, you can swivel your hips away and control his arm and elbow into a submission fairly easily.

To practice our technique, I was paired off with a 19 year old kid who has been training for 3 years. I got a good laugh when he told me, 'You have good hip movement for a guy your size.' He's a very nice kid and did a good job of helping and explaining things as we practiced our technique. He actually told me he was in the same boat as me in that when he began training 3 years ago he weighed 275 lbs. I'm (embarrassed to say) right around 270 right now. I found I was getting more and more gassed as we practiced. One of the things we had to do was as we were coming up off our back was to put one hand back and push up while using the other to control the elbow. There came a time where I could hardly push myself up. I kept hearing from instructors 'Don't go up on your elbow. Push up with your hand.' The problem was I so damn tired that I could hardly push myself up. To their credit that kept emphasizing for me to not overexert myself and I kept telling them I was good.

When it came time to grapple they put three guys on their backs and we had to rotate through each guy, getting in their guard and attempt to get to a side position without giving up our backs or getting submitted. I, of course, lost every time. I only had one move that I somewhat remembered from my few lessons long ago and it was pretty useless at this point. The guys were good at giving me suggestions and I could tell were taking it easy on me as the first timer. It was still fun, but I was dead.

When it was time to go, although tired, I felt pretty good. Then I started driving home and just sitting there made me feel like crap. I knew what was coming. It was just a matter of when. I made it home feeling pretty miserable at this point. I managed to get myself into the house and just sit there for a bit while a waited for the inevitable. It came in about 10 minutes when I puked up everything I had. Lucky for me I'd had some Gatorade so it tasted very orange. I actually felt great once the puking was over. It could have been worse. I clearly had over exerted myself and next lesson I think I need to do a better job of not overdoing it.

So that was my first day. While I can go everyday, I think it's best that I take today off and return on Thursday. My wife (who is very supportive of me) did ask why I was doing this based on seeing me looking pretty miserable afterwards. So why am I doing this? I want to get in better shape physically, lose some weight and puking aside, I do enjoy the workout and the camaraderie of sport. It's the biggest thing I miss from playing hockey. I want to do it for those reasons and so that I can kick all of your asses at the first annual FOFC conference.

[britrock88]

If this is your midlife crisis, your wife should count herself lucky.

[BYU 14]

I love BJJ, getting tough for me pushing 50 now, but it is a hell of a work out. Good luck.

[heybrad]

I completed lesson number 2 last night. Here's the breakdown.

Warmup exercises: I still can't hang it with the 30 minutes of running, shrimps, crunches and various other exercises but it is only day 2. The crunches kill me as we switch around to various forms of crunches in 30 second intervals, overall doing somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 crunches total. I felt like through the entire 30 minutes I was very conscious of my puking the previous night and I probably took it easier than I needed to.

Technique: We learned another reversal tonight and a choke. Again, I probably won't be great at explaining these but I'll give it a shot anyways. The reversal we learned went like this... We were on our back with the opponent in our guard. We would grab the gi near the elbow of our opponent and then reach up and across and grab his lapel with our other hand. The idea is to be dominating one side of his body with our hand control. Then we had to shrimp out so that we get one leg through where our shin was across his stomach and our foot was hooking him on the outside. With our other leg against his other leg we'd do a fairly simple scissors kick while pulling with our hands and our opponent would go over rather easily. I felt like I practiced this one fairly well.

Next we did a collar choke which I'm sure that's not the official name of it, but essentially we're using our hand and his collar to choke the opponent. The idea was to start with the same reversal technique but as the opponent tried to pull away from it you could use your grip on his lapel to pull yourself up, pull his collar across with your hand and reach across with your other hand above his head to lock in the choke. At this point I was losing energy so the sitting up to reach around for the choke was tough.

Sparring: I stuck around to spar and to my surprise they had the girl who teaches the kids glass join in with us. She's apparently a highly decorated competitor and basically dominated all of the guys in class. I was lucky that as we were switching out I didn't have to go up against her. It was another night of losing for me. During my first match somehow during grappling and slipping grips I got nailed in the face. That's a nice wake up call. I did get a chance to go against a purple belt which I knew I wouldn't win but I wanted to see how long I could hang. Although I'm a big fat pig right now I am I strong guy so I figured I'd go all out strength wise and just how long I could hold on before something went bad. I actually thought I had a couple of shots at controlling his leg at one point enough to pass but he managed to keep his legs so damn high I couldn't get my arm to the outside. Needless to say, at some point he got me into a choke that I managed to get out of but in doing so he got a hold of my arm and it was over. I felt like I'd put a pretty good fight.

The good news at the end of the night was that although I felt exhausted there would be no puking this time. I still feel like I need to stick to every other day this early on so I'll be back on Saturday.