Deborah's Brazilian Jiu Jitsu & Arnis-Eskrima Training

or my lack thereof... There was a time I would have never thought to take up a martial art.  I did.  There was a time I never thought I would be good at it.  I practiced.  Now I have skill.  And I love it. There was a time I was a terrible shot.  I hated shooting practice.  I dreaded it in fact.  Then I got frustrated with being frustrated.  I switched to a better, smaller, more comfortable gun.  I practiced.  Now I have skill.  And I love shooting. There was a time I said, "I'll never be able to do one pull-up."  I challenged myself, "BUT, what if I tried..."  I practiced.  Now I have strength, and I can do weighted pull-ups.  I love doing them.  Once, during work, I saw a guy doing pull-ups on the bar of a traffic light.  I moxied up, walked over, and did 4  pull-ups with my 30 pound gun belt. Right now, I hate take downs.  I have always hated them. I suck at them.  Well, ...

WELL, I suppose I need to write. I have been back to consistent training since June.  The last couple of months have been fairly exhilarating.  The months I was absent from training were like a slow winding of a rubber band, and when I started up again, the band snapped into a lovely, slow perpetual motion.  I have had more good training days than frustrating ones, my movement is becoming sharper and cleaner.  I am beginning to dominate more sparring sessions than ever before.  Now, I am about a million miles from being a frightful threat, but there was a time when everything was...just...it just felt like a LOT of work.  Not that it's all easy (Ha! right, uh, no), but the vision of the fight is becoming clearer, thus, I use less energy, thus, occasionally, I surprise myself with the occasional moment of, gosh,   flight, is the word that just popped in my head.  Flow.   Clarity.  Submissions that are planned and that work.  ...

Yeah, 4:01.  That was my time on the swat obstacle course.  The time limit is 4:00. The rest of it: 440M-79 seconds Hand-Release Push-Ups-37 Sit-ups-51 Pull-Ups-11 So, long post short, my next challenge is to fine tune my ability to execute speed and strength together in one gorgeous dance. We will now return to our regular scheduled programming of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu chat with Dagney. Dag

Eleven. In a row. For the first time, double digits in one set. That is all. Dag

10News - 80-year-old becomes oldest man to reach top of Mt Everest - 10News.com - US/World News .      You are too old? Really? Someone told you that? That person is HELL wrong.

This always happens when I have not written for a long time.  I write one post, and then the flood gates open. The short version of this post is: Listen to your mother and eat your vegetables. I have demanded a heap of work from my body lately, and I have stayed (knock wood) healthy, with the exception of a couple of little hiccups (a cold and a minor bout of tendonitis in my feet).  I am of the post-40 crew, which according to some, means I am on the down turn.  A couple of years ago I thought, well, the hell with that!  And I started down this path... I was doubly inspired last year during the olympic trials watching Janet Evans and Dara Torres, two doyennes of the swimming world, out there scrapping it with women half their age.  Neither of them made the olympics, but when you examine their times in real world terms (not the millionth of a second terms), they rocked at those olympic trials. So here are my menu items: water water water water water wat...

Hello.  I have not written for a long time. Reason being, I have not trained Brazilian Jiu Jitsu for what I consider a long time, roughly, 6 months-ish. I have been preparing for the swat tryouts again, since I did not make the grade last year.  I have cut everything that is not related to the following: sprinting 440M, push-ups, sit-ups, and pull-ups, and an obstacle course.  I miss BJJ terribly, but I could simply not risk injury.  As you all know, when training BJJ with any modicum of frequency, you always carry a twinge or twang somewhere in your body.  Some muscle that fusses for a few days, a stiff joint.  Jammed fingers. I also train in Intrepid Arnis Eskrima, and was supposed to compete in a sparring competition in April.  Along with my BJJ sabbatical, I had to tell my Eskrima Guru that the risk of a broken finger was too great, and I would have to bow out from sparring.  I felt so bad telling him this, as I am one of four of his st...