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Blue Belt Week 87, August 16, 2013 Medical Insurance / The Helio Gracie Tournament in October

August 19, 2013 by Jason

If you don’t have medical insurance, should you be doing jiu jitsu?  I would say probably not a good idea.

As I was paying the bills, I noticed that I had accidentally skipped a month on my health insurance premium because the premium was double than normal.  I checked my records. I had skipped a payment.   Oddly enough, I didn’t receive any notice in the mail warning that I would be kicked out.   If a big claim happened, a bad injury, the insurance company could deny the claim because the premium wasn’t on time.  I quickly mailed in the payment.   I wondered how did that happen?  It was a mistake on their side and I got side tracked on my side.

Going to the hospital in the United States is expensive.  An emergency room is an expensive place. Over night stay is expensive.  An ambulance ride could be in the thousands of dollars.   My next high priority will be to get the health insurance premium on automatic payment.

I think I am ready to return to training.  After two weeks, I don’t have any throat pain.   For sure, I will be a lot more protective of my neck. I will be a lot more conscious of tighten my neck when anyone practices a choke and to protect the neck, chin down.  One good thing about my injury, I did learn some anatomy of the neck.

The Helio Gracie Tournament is coming in October in honor of Helio’s birthday.  There is no sparring.  Basically, its technique demostration so I will be loading up on the fundamental classes in preparation.

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Blue Belt Week 86, August 10, 2013 Clock Choke Injury

August 10, 2013 by Jason

Be careful with the clock choke, a.k.a., the baseball choke.  It was the last series of chokes from the back we reviewed in the advanced grappling class on Tuesday morning.   The slack of my gi laid incorrectly diagonally across my Adam’s apple.  I was on all fours, table top, while the choke partner was hanging on my side, shoulder in, facing the opposite direction.  As I stated earlier, the choke wasn’t working because of the position of gi slack diagonally across my Adam’s apple.  I had 165 pounds of pressure on my Adam’s apple for 10 seconds and no choke.  Class ended.

As I drove away in my car,  the pain started.  I knew something was wrong.  I was having trouble swallowing and my voice had changed.  Perhaps the Adam’s apple was jammed into my vocal cords.   If my condition didn’t improve by the next day, I would go to the emergency room.   My condition did improved and has slowly improved everyday.  From the internet, the injury could take up two weeks to heal.

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Blue Belt Week 85, August 3, 2013. Fine Tuning the Mata Leon

August 1, 2013 by Jason

Fine tuning the Mata Leon. If you want to get a good mata leon choke, make sure your choke arm is deep and the elbow of your arm lines up with your opponents chin and underneath. The choke arm makes a v shape. Once you have that, grab your bicep. With the free hand, monkey grip the back of the opponent’s head. Before, I did the Mata Leon by placing the back of my hand on the opponent’s head. That was bad technique. When the opponent is being choked, they will reach, grab, for the hands in desperation. If the hand, on the neck is cupped, then they have nothing to grab. Squeeze. Beware the opponent, may get off a punch but will soon be knocked out.

Changing topic a bit, I also learned a new throw, Kouchi gari, another tool for the arsenal. I also learned how to escape the classical judo pin. The classical judo pin was a side mount, one wrapped arm under the elbow and wrapped head with the legs scissor kicked in front. Ironically, with a 30 second pin, I had won third place in the Midwest Regional Judo Tournament in Chicago in the late 70s. I was amazed how easy it was to escape the classic judo pin.

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Green Coffee Bean Extract

July 29, 2013 by Jason

Dr. Oz raves about this stuff. I don’t recommend the brand he is promoting because of the cost. I am trying to drop seven pounds. so, I am giving the green coffee bean a try. As per this Web MD website, in 22 weeks, you could lose 17 lbs without working out by taking a pill 30 minutes before eatting. I believe it inhibits the formation of cells into fat cells. The weight loss does sound to good to be true. I havent found any good articles in regards to side effects after all it is just a coffee bean except raw uncooked. I found this informative from Web MD, http://www.m.webmd.com/diet/news/20120328/green-coffee-beans-may-aid-weight-loss. The pill must have 45% or more of Chlorogenic Acid to work. The green coffee extract on the Dr. Oz show is for a 15 day supply. I don’t have the price but it could be $10 an up. So, it would cost over $100 for the full treatment. You can get a similar brand at Costco, $16, Diet Works, Green Coffee Extract, ” Clinically Tested Weight Management Formula.” 180 pills. It is a pill to be taken twice a day.

I dont need the full treatment. In the first week, I lost 1.5 lbs. My appetite was also suppressed. What is important to keep in mind, is that this is a 22 week program.

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Blue Belt Week 84, July 26, 2013 What does a golfer, plastic surgeon, and a Jiu Jitsu student have in common?

July 22, 2013 by Jason

Answer:  Small changes, or corrections, in a golf swing,  facial symmetry, and jiu jitsu technique have big gains in performance, appearance, and survival.

A few weeks ago, I watched a video on YouTube, motivational speaker, Tony Robbins, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nZcbIGlCQk .  Tony Robbins spoke about how small changes could have big gains.  Tony gave a few examples, the plastic surgeon and the golfer.  The first one, according to scientific study which has shown that beauty was a measurement, for example, the ideal distance from the top of the lips to the nose was 3 mm, just as an example.   So if a persons distance was four mm then the plastic surgeon would try to reduce the distance by one mm, which would be a very small measurement for a big change in personal attractiveness.

Tony Robbins also gave another example of a golfer not able to hit a ball with accuracy.  When the golfer was taught to adjusted the slope of the club by 1 mm, he was able to hit the ball with better accuracy. There was a flaw in the golfer’s swing that was corrected.

In the Fundamental class, lesson number one, this week, which felt like the 20th time,  I had missed a point in the steps.  In all, I made four mistakes, so I made four corrections to the techniques.  After class, I wrote down the corrections.

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Blue Belt Week 83, July 19, 2013 The Best Offense Is The Best Defense

July 19, 2013 by Jason

Big gains in sparring development. The gains were NOT submissions, but defense from not being tapped out as often as previous sessions. I would say the development has to do with the advanced grappling class. When an opponent had me mounted and had their knees in the arm pits, I was able to shrimp out in order to get my elbows back down on the floor. Last time I sparred, I was tapped out a lot of times with the arm bar. Also, I learned a technique, from advanced grappling, to keep the elbows together on the chest and hands on the chin. That technique stopped multiple choke attacks.

This week I took the Advanced class which was taught by Professor Gui. During sparring, I was able to use the lesson on arm bar breaks to get a submission.

Back to fundamentals. I bought a new notebook. I plan to combine the notes from two other notebooks with the current lesson. I was trying to make a mnemonic device to help remember each lesson. I think this is the path to mastery. I believe I could get more out of my class time if I become more mindful. Mindful, being more focused, looking for details that I may have missed during previous lessons.

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Blue Belt Week 82, July 13, 2013. Back to the Fundamentals

July 15, 2013 by Jason

At the fundamentals class on Wednesday, I was very rusty. I need to go back and apply myself to the fundamental program. My practice partner, a three stripe purple belt, made me humbled. Also, Gui noticed that I had fallen back. Most fights are won with fundamental technique. The advanced class was double the lessons of fundamentals, almost overwhelming. The Helio Gracie Tournament, a techniques tournament, is in October, maybe I should focus on that?

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Three Gates of Right Speech

July 15, 2013 by Jason

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Blue Belt Week 81, July 5, 2013

July 8, 2013 by Jason

All the Valente Brothers dojos were closed this week for summer vacation, July 1 through July 8, 2013. It  is a fact that vacations prevent burnout.  I hope you had a good 4th of July!  What is the 4th of July in America?  That is when the US officially declared it’s independence from Great Britain, back then, that was the mother country and a super power.  We celebrated with fireworks, parades, and picnics.  Along time ago, this was the time of the year in my youth when we would stock up on Black Cats and bottle rockets.

For the holiday, I was in Millersville, Maryland, not far from where I went to high school in the late 80s.  I was about 45 minutes from District of Columbia, a.k.a. DC, the capital of United States, and 30 minutes from downtown Baltimore.  Anyways, I thought about practicing jiu jitsu at a local dojo, but quickly changed my  mind after looking over the web page.  It wasn’t strictly jiu jitsu.  It was a mixture of MMA, weight lifting, aerobics, and jiu jitsu.  Reading the description made me appreciate my school.  However, there was a great Gracie jiu jitsu school in Baltimore, but that was a 35 minute drive, so I didn’t do any jiu jitsu during the break.

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Blue Belt Week 80, June 28, 2013

June 26, 2013 by Jason

This week in advanced grappling taught by Professor Pedro Jr., we worked on a few passes from the half guard. The passes were easy to understand and to execute.

In class, we watched a judo match where a guy won on a thirty-second pin.  There was brief talk about how the sport of judo has changed over the years from 1981 to now. If I understood right,  I think the 30 second pin had been eliminated.  There seems to be a trend to more throwing and less ground battles.  The truth,  I want to remember  judo the way I learned it back in the late 70’s.  Judo of today and Judo of 35 years ago, not the same.   Will that happen to sports jiu jitsu?  

The throwing class was good; however, I over did it.  I will have to alternate weeks, one throwing and the other sparring.  To hard on my body to do both. Another thing I noticed was that my practice partner in the throwing class, a blue belt two stripes, never slapped to break his fall.  He told me not to worry about it.

Royler Gracie had taught a class on Saturday.   I wasn’t able to attend.

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