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Really interested to hear anything @grungebob and @stimpsonslostson want to share about their training experiences, especially how they might keep their fingers from getting damaged, so they can still play guitar!
I started in June this year, a couple of weeks before my 48th birthday and after three years of inactivity due to Achilles tendon rupture / surgery. I got the all clear from the surgeon - after an op in November - to start sports training again and went in at the deep end.
After a few early injuries - ribs and shoulders kept me out for a month in July / August - I feel I'm getting somewhere. Slowly. It's a relatively new BJJ Academy so aside from the Professor we only have blue belts and white belts, plus the occasional visiting black or brown belt who knows the Prof and might train with us for a couple of weeks if they are staying locally. The blue belts have been training for around two years and a few of them are regularly winning tournaments, so I think the standard is decent. The Professor is a Black belt under Roberto ‘Gordo’ Correa in Brazil.
I've gone from being tapped in about 5 seconds in my first roll to being able to (sometimes) lasting 3, 4 or 5 minutes with a Blue Belt without tapping. I'm also starting to tap out other white belts occasionally as well as them occasionally tapping me out.
It's a
brilliant sport, challenging training and fantastic community.
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I do Aikido here in Singapore now.
Studio: https://www.voltperoctave.com
Music: https://www.euclideancircuits.com
Me: https://www.jamesrichmond.com
I started training BJJ in 2002 with Wilson Jr who runs the UK arm of Carlson Gracie Academy. In those days it was quite hard to find instructors / classes, so I could only train once a week, and had to drive quite a way to get to classes, which were on a Friday night. I last about 6 months and jacked it in.
I restarted a few years later with Ricardo Da Silva when he was still under Roger Brooking (Alliance) in Epsom, which became the MMA team Nova Forca. This time work took over and I missed too many classes to warrant paying the up front monthly fee.
I supplemented the training with spending about 5-6 hours on a Saturday in a gym space in Croydon with one of my school mates who also did BJJ. We'd run through the stuff we learned in the week and spar from certain positions. My friend moved to the US, and the gym in Croydon shut unfortunately.
I've now got a fair bit of free time on my hands and I'm started to get bored of just lifting weights, so I am looking to restart after a hefty old lay off.
My gi's are down from the loft and washed. I just need to pull my finger out.
My nearest academy is Jiu Jitsu Brotherhood run by Nicolas Gregoriades and his students, so I am gong to give them a try. Will report back here once I have.
I can't help about the shape I'm in, I can't sing I ain't pretty and my legs are thin
But don't ask me what I think of you, I might not give the answer that you want me to
Unfortunately because of schedule issues I can't do it at the moment, but I use a lot of what I learned in teaching judo groundwork.
This is what that looks like.
It's quite easy to slip and damage a fretting finger.
Trading feedback: http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/72424/
Im 40, started BJJ beginning of June this year after getting tired/bored of lifting weights and punching a bag on my own. Loved it from day one.
I went from constantly tapping to surviving rounds without being tapped. Control is my objective at the moment, if I can keep control, I can tire them out then tap them.
Invest in some finger tape and tape either side of the knuckles that ache and soon they stop hurting. Of course this doesn’t stop you rolling over your own thumb backwards with a big dude on top but for the day to day stuff it works.
When i I first started cardio and claustrophobia were the big issues ( that and sore ribs), now though that all stopped. White belts go hell for leather all the time, calm it down and think more and you’ll progress.
I started Taekwondo as a teenager, but my university didn't have a club so I did Capoiera for a bit (fun but not really fighting), then tried Aikido for a year (interesting, but I could never really see it being "useful")...
I then moved house and did Krav Maga for 5years. This was brilliant. It's not a sport & often boils down to "kick em in the nuts". We trained guns, knives, sticks, hand to hand, ground, standing, scenarios etc.
Really varied & challenging- you never knew what was going to happen at a class.
Then I moved again & took up BJJ (& MMA). I've been doing it 7 years- though I don't take it seriously any more I'm a solid blue belt & tap purple belts if I really put some effort in.
I competed a bit, but realized that unless you dedicate yourself to it then you run a high risk of injury. Especially pushing 40!
Now I stick to training BJJ & light contact MMA, I try to train twice a week.
I've had my share of injuries, but with good physio I've always recovered. The worst was herniating two discs, getting sciatica etc & not training for 2 years!
Now I take more care of myself & do yoga as often as I can. Yoga for BJJ is superb- it doesn't have the faux spiritual stuff so prevalent in most yoga.
My wee girl has started Judo. Her coach spotted me wearing BJJ t-shirt & immediately started trying to get me to try it. I'm really tempted- it looks great, but I think the throws would be hard on my body & that the way the newaza isn't allowed to run to conclusion would irritate me.
Injuries to my hands weren't really a big issue. Boxing gloves and wraps, so your hands are fairly well protected, although the forearms can get pretty bruised up. Savate is fought in hard shoes, so blocking kicks needs care.
I never took up MMA or BJJ because I know from past experience that I have pretty fragile knee, elbow and shoulder joints, and I'd just get injured all the time. It'd definitely mess with my guitar playing. With a kicking style, I knew that I could get hurt a bit, but it was generally nothing worse than bruising or a black eye, or the odd knee injury.
I've not trained for a couple of years because I changed jobs, and now, I'd need a good 6 months or so to get back into the kind of shape I'd need to be to train at a decent level. The two local instructors are people I know well, so I couldn't just rock up and be treated like a total beginner.
My daughter does karate - she’s was 7 last month and will be grading for her purple belt in 4 weeks. Some weeks she trains 3 nights and I’m really proud of her dedication.
The one that fascinates me though is Krav Maga. I’ve posted this link before - this guy lives near me and I’d never heard of it until I read the article. Maybe it’s the Krav Maga or maybe he’s just a nutter!
https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/martial-arts-expert-injured-fights-14292503
I have mates who do judo who are thinking of switching too due to injuries etc and the fact it’s become so tightly run as a sport, it’s either ippon or stand after 5 seconds newaza doesn’t get a chance.
Oh, and there's a big public relations con going on for Krav Maga - I'm sure it works, but it is portrayed as some sort of magic martial art that always works, doesn't matter if the baddie has a knife, a gun, a tank, twenty other friends with machine guns... all martial arts pretty much say the same thing. As an example Wing Chun was re-developed by Ip Man to counter the common threat at the time - Japanese fighers who did karate and kung fu, perhaps western boxing, and then re-re-developed by several instructors for westeners... Jeet Koon Do, several MMA types, etc... there are even multiple "military" modern martial arts, from America to Russia, and KM is just the Israeli version - but it gets really good PR.
I still want to give KM a go, but there's way too much sales pitch for me to take even a tenth of what gets said seriously.
I don't buy some of the more elaborate claims about self-defence, though, and I only think that arts that spar regularly are much use. I think some Krav schools do a fair bit of sparring, and some don't, so I'm not in a position to generalise about Krav specifically.
But ... every time someone talks about their reality based martial art versus combat sports, I remember all the times I've seen someone with reality based martial arts experience getting their arse handed to them in a ring by someone who mostly does prancy effete looking kickboxing (but who spars dozens of rounds every week).
What puts me off about most of the Krav schools local to me, is that they are very much martial arts as a business. The franchise nature of the operation, and the fee structure has always put me off. Far from the only style like that, I've come across the same with JKD, and more than a few others, but still, it grates a bit.
I don't mind paying a reasonable rate for instruction, but I don't want to have to sign up for all kinds of long "gym membership" style membership deals, where I'm tied in for a couple of hundred quid once I've taken a sample class. I'm intrinsically suspicious of that kind of thing. I don't mind paying a month at a time, but I'm stuffed if I'm paying for 3, 6 or 12.
There are several knocking around and the idea of rolling every day for a week whilst combining with yoga / beach / skiing / sightseeing quite appeals.
I particularly enjoyed a class where we all had to bring a white t-shirt we then fought with marker pens instead of knives. Moral of the story: regardless of how good you are, get in a knife fight & you're getting stabbed. Probably fatally.
In the few altercations I've ever been in I ALWAYS used my Krav rather than anything else- it's not a sport. Krav is about ending a confrontation and getting away. Some of the techniques are brutal, but work.
I agree that there is a mythology around it though & that there are any number of other systems that are probably as good.
I've had poor experience with some reality based things in the past, either from sparring (or watching) people spar who had done then, or for some classes I've attended as tasters. You know the "grab my wrist" sort of thing, or even the, "here's how to disable someone with an eye gouge" type stuff, where the practice is so slow, and against such unrealistic techniques.
I remember one class, where the instructor was genuinely a hard guy -- he'd have chewed me up and spat me out -- but he was demonstrating a ton of (on paper very nasty) defences against hooks, at a range that no-one who'd ever been shown how to throw a hook would throw it. I kept stepping closer to him, and he kept stepping back, because the thing he was trying to show was just not going to work at actual hook range.
I didn't take it very seriously though, mainly just went for something to do. There used to be a youngun there I dsparred with in stand up a few times who was as soft as shite. He kept coming back though and ended up having a few pro fights. Just shows what determination and a good attitude can do.
His camps look great, I know a few people who’ve done them and they all speak highly of the experience.
https://www.bjjglobetrotters.com/