On training

I'm having an ouch day today.  Between yesterday's cycling, the squats and jujitsu at night my body is stiff and sore.  Feels good though, in that strange way only people who train can understand.  Today will be a day of stretching, reading, writing and playing with my escrima sticks.  


But before that, the benefits of cycling.


The benefit of cycling everywhere is the ability to think about things.  The benefit of cycling everywhere in the rain is that you have to think real hard to keep your mind off the sheets of rain that are currently soaking you to the skin. I'm getting good at this, at getting into that zen state where real thinking happens and you can just shut out the outside world of rain, cars, pedestrians, other cyclists and, today, a supremely feral one eyed cat.  Perhaps I need to strike a balance more :P
Anyway, I digress, this post comes from my cycle time; in particular, yesterday's cycle time.


Training.
I lift weights, I do jujitsu.
I do a lot of other things, don't get me wrong, but it boils down to, "I lift weights, I do jujitsu".  Why do I lift weights?  Because I enjoy lifting weights.  Weights don't lie to you, they don't try to out smart you or fool you or manipulate you.  The Iron is the Iron and you either lift it or you don't lift it. It's simple, it's my best meditation.  I always lift weights hard, but whenever anything bugs me, I lift weights really hard in that gasping for breath, leave your lunch and maybe a lung on the floor, borderline injury, ride the pain type of way.  Those workouts that only come from pure emotional intensity.  I've tried getting that relationship with running, but it just hasn't been the same: the Iron is my mistress, has been since I was 18, is now 12 years and many mistakes on.


I think I've got it down pat now, my routine, what I need to be doing. I squat and I deadlift.  Squats are for lower body power, deadlifts are for everything power.  I vary between lifting with speed and lifting more slowly with maximum strength.  Currently I'm making good progress in both. I used to do neither, I used to bench press 3 times week and do lots of arm stuff.  Leg stuff came in once every so often, but only on machines, never squats, never deadlifting.  Thought is was bad for you.  What a muppet I was.  To be fair, I had a hell of a bench press, but once you tear your shoulder up, benching is never going to be quite right again.  


It was a guy called Dan Vassiliou who taught me to deadlift and squat.  He was a close colleague for a while till he went his own way and we lost touch, which is a shame.  I used to have a bad back, and the he taught me to deadlift and my back got better.  Funny that, you take something that's weak and sore and you make it strong and the pain just goes away.  


What I'm learning now, which is something I wish I knew 10 years ago, is that it's not about how strong you are, it's about how you get your body to flow into the movement.  My deadlift has gone up since I came here, because I'm suddenly stronger or because my body is less tense and flowing better?  I'm going to go with the second.  Good technique in all things makes doing things easier; in lifting weights and in life and in jujitsu.


Which brings me neatly to my next point: jujitsu (it's like I planned this out whilst I was cycling or something :P).
I've tried Karate, Tae Kwon Do, Wrestling, boxing, Thai boxing, BJJ... jujitsu, the form of jujitsu I practise, is the one thing I come back to always.  I'm currently in a place where I have the time and the mindset and the mental energy to review my jujitsu and why I do it and what works for me.  I'm very lucky in that sense as i don't think many people have this opportunity, the chance to just step out of your life and assess it. Assess why you do certain things.
  
So, jujitsu, what is it and why do I do it?


Well... what is it is simple enough (not really, but that's for a later post), jujitsu is basically a close quarters  combative style, combative being a way of acting in combat.  That's jujitsu.  


Why do I do it?


Okay, honestly, when I started jujitsu I was floating around 19 stone and I was strong but unfit.  I considered myself tough in that was of people who had never been really properly tested and who had built happy little delusions around themselves.  I'd tried martial arts on and off over the years and seeing 'Kill Bill' made me go, "Hey, I'll try it again", so I looked up the local martial arts clubs, found jujitsu and joined up.  Fat, 19 stone and doing a martial art that involves throwing and being thrown with a fairly heavy fitness requirement. 


No one thought I'd last, but I'm funny; I wasn't tough back then, but there was something in me, some little "Fuck you" component that, if someone said I couldn't do something, it'd make me do it.  I would happily run across broken glass to prove people wrong about me, more so now.  Maybe that's all toughness actually is, that "fuck you" response.  You either have it or you don't have it.  Fat bastard that I was, I had it back then, strong and fit bastard that I am now, I have it in spades.  


So, I train, I go from being clumsy, unfit and shit to being okay and fitter.  I think "Hey I can do this" and then, as I progressed through the belts I went from, "I know it all" to, "I need to know more" to, "My skill sets are dreadful, I know nothing," the higher I got, the less I felt I knew.  To be honest, when I started I used strength as a substitute for technique.  Now, years on and stronger than ever, I'm trying my hardest to use technique as a substitute for strength.  


So...


So, the journey, because that's life, isn't it?  A journey from point A to point Z, quicker for some than for others.  Martial arts is the same thing.  In life you can get lost, it's easy enough, and in martial arts you can get lost too.  I admit it now, though at the time nothing would have ever made me admit it; there was a while, a good while, when I got lost.  It was easy to do. 


My first jujitsu club, which we shall refer to as the Old Club, it's ethos was... well, the training ethos was hard training, which is fine, but the techniques required a certain brutality of mindset, and that mindset was a vein that ran throughout the club.  I don't know, I'm having trouble finding the words for this, possibly because this is so close to my heart still.  I suppose, and I am loathe to say this, but it is the closest phrase that I can find, I suppose that there was a sort of Spiritual Corruption.  An acceptance that it was okay to hurt other people. 


Wait, I hear you say, you're doing a martial art, hurting people is part of the game!  


Well, yes, but not like this.  


Here's an example:  There was a Club dinner, a big affair and it was very... nationalistic.  Maybe jingoistic.  My partner expressed her distaste (I had a distaste too, but I wasn't going to say it because... well, more on that later).  It got back to the Head Guy and come the next time he was down on the mat, he chose me for his uke (his demonstration partner).  I knew he would do it and he basically did a 2 hour class showing the most brutal techniques possible, using me to show them.  It was painful, but I got on with it.


What the fuck was I thinking?  What kind of a retard must I have been to have accepted that instead of calling it out as a sad bullying tactic.  


But I was lost.  I'd gotten into and absorbed that Club's mindset, had made it a part of me and was busy hunting for my next belt, getting ready for my next grading, getting ready to take my Shodan-Ho.  I wasn't happy in my personal life, wasn't happy in my training life, didn't even like jujitsu any more, but I kept turning up so that I could get that belt, the Provisional Black Belt.  A fucking belt.  Like it means anything, but it meant something to me then, probably because I was lost and it was a piece of certainty.  A good friend of mine, Fraser, he could see it, and tried to help me out of it, but I didn't want to know.  Why didn't I want to know?  Well, because the challenge of it had blinded me.  The Club put so much energy into telling us how good it was, how being a Shodan Ho was such  a massive thing, how we were the best of the best.  And I wanted to be the best and I knew that the Head Guy didn't think I could do it (and, looking back, didn't like me much either, probably), so I was in full on "fuck you" mode and was quite happy to let the whole thing eat me up.  I neglected friends for that Club, I neglected an important relationship, I neglected work, worse than all that, I neglected myself and the little unhappy voice in me saying, "hold on a second..." I was so unhappy, though, so utterly broken up inside that the little voice in me I just ignored (which made me more unhappy).  I ignored the closeted racism of the Club, the BNP jokes, everything because I was hunting for a belt.  I just embraced the pain and got on with it.  


It started to infect me and twist me, I recognise that now.  My techniques became nastier, I became more selfish, my drive to win was everything.  I adjusted my training to adapt to the grading that was coming up: a 12 mile run followed by 5/6 hours on the mat.  I started running long distance, I dropped doing weights, I dropped weight in general sinking down to 14 stone.  It didn't suit me, the training, the weight loss, it wasn't me and that also served to make me unhappy. 


Looking back I was such a cock and to all those people I pissed off or hurt or treated badly, I am truly sorry.  


But everything in life is a test, I believe that, and I came out the other side. 


I went away with friends to Spain and the holiday I had really healed me, or started to heal me, or made me recognise that I needed to e healed.  I thank them for that, I truly do.  That holiday meant so much to me.  


When I came back I was refreshed and actually able to say "no" to the Club, something I'd had trouble doing before. It was... liberating.  


And in the end the opportunity for me to grade came and I didn't want it. It didn't meant anything to me at all.  Fraser had been saying to me, "Its just a belt", and I came to understand him utterly.  It was just a belt, it meant nothing.  


So I quit.


Around the same time my Sensei had also had enough and had been putting together his break away.  When it happened, I went with him and, well, the rest is history.  


I made some good, good friends in the Old Club, and when we split away, I lost them, which still pains me, even today. But that's the way of things.  I wish them all well.    


Where am I going with this heart on the sleeve emotional vomit?  


Well...


A belt is a belt is a belt.  It might mean something, it might not.  We shouldn't hunt for belts in martial arts, it's meaningless (mostly, maybe not always), think about all those "wanky 10th Dans" as Hatsumi said, did they earn all that?  Your ability to do your art, whatever it is, is not dependant upon a belt.  


But that's not the real thing I'm on about here.


What I'm on about is that we should always try to understand why we do things.  


I can say this now with hindsight, but there you go.  


At the Temple of Apollo at Delphi was inscribed, "know thyself" and it is good advice.


As martial artists you need to know your abilities, know what you can and cannot do.  But you need to know why you do this art and not that art.  Why you favour certain aspects of your art.  You need to know when to train and when to rest.  When to see friends and when to dedicate yourself to perfecting technique.  


You need to know yourself.  


There, I'm done.  


Peace out, I'm going to go and play with sticks!