Sunday, November 22, 2009

Wifey wants to learn BJJ...

...and I think it's hott!

I got her hooked on MMA a few years ago via The Ultimate Fighter tv show, and since then it's been AWESOME, especially as she's picked favorite fighters and (more sexily) been able to call out grappling and striking techniques in the midst of a fight.

Since I got her hooked, we've had some freelance grappling sparring, especially since she has such awesome leg strength and flexibility from years on a swim team.

Thus...I avoid the legs in those situations.
It's freaking amazing to hear "Oh crap, you're in side control," "you will NOT get that kimura!" etc.

Plus it's good exercise, if we could spar regularly.

Recently, we watched a mini-marathon of The Discovery Channel's series Fight Quest, which is hosted by a professional MMA fighter and an Iraq war vet, who travel the globe learning and fighting with various martial arts after training with masters.

Lauren and I knew many of the names in the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu episode, since the Gracie family was responsible for the initial creation of what became the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
However, watching MMA (which generally doesn't allow the use of gi's) did not prepare us for the wide variety of joint locks and choke holds which BJJ employs, all of which are at least useful in a real fighting environment.

Rickson (pronounced HICK-son) Gracie came to the U.S. in the early 90's to promote the martial art his grandfather Helio created from a combination of Japanese jiu-jitsu, judo, and aikido.
Rickson would travel around putting up $10,000 that he could beat anyone within a minute.
His proposal drew all manner of "tough guys," including Iowa champion wrestler and alley brawler Pat Miletich (who later would become one of the first UFC champions..after picking up BJJ of course).
Rickson never lost a single dime in any of his challenges, and used the opportunity, once his opponents regained consciousness, to give basic instruction in this new martial art.

And now my wife wants to learn it, and I'm excited as all hell.
We're already interested in it.
Doing it as a couple means we have no end of conversation material.
We're both badly overweight, so this is a shot at getting in shape AND learning a martial art AND having a self-defense system available in case we ever aren't packing heat.

Just wish it wasn't so fucking expensive, aside from books and online videos.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

A Literary out-of-body experience

Recently had a first for me.

I'd been working on my novel, and had spent hours redesigning her, as Joseph Campbell calls it, "special weapon," trying to redesign the scenario by which she comes by it, and by which she first uses it.

I put so much effort into it, I felt like I was THERE in the alley, hearing/seeing bullets, seeing her heroics.
Moreso than usual.

To the point that later, when reading a bit of Dragonquest before American Government started, a tragic moment in the story, which usually would have made me a LITTLE unhappy for the characters, almost brought me to TEARS.

It's like I'd so primed my imagination in the act of creation, that diving into someone else's work made me experience it on a deeper level than I ever had.

Makes me wanna figure out how to get myself there more often, not only for my own writings, but so that I can go back and re-read novels that have been collecting dust on my shelf for awhile, and get a vastly deeper experience of them.