Geeks in Gis

Archive for May, 2011

Well, we went back to the Faktory for our second BJJ lesson this week.  This lesson covered transitioning from half-guard to side control.  I find the techniques hard to perform correctly on Tineladia, because of the size difference, but trying them out in free-sparring with other people proved interesting.  It turns out that I’m not terrible at doing them against people closer to my size.  I have lots of trouble with “stocky” short people though – if their legs are heavy, they’re very hard to move!

I also learned a new submission from the mount (another choke).  I’m not quite convinced I can apply it to someone that is really resisting, but I’m sure that will come!  Right now, the emphasis is on getting me to stay stable, and keep my hips low so that I don’t get tossed around.

While I was working on passing guard, Tineladia got to do some more advanced free rolling.  That involved getting tapped out a lot, but that’s all part of the learning curve.

Total training time so far, 4 hrs 30 Mins.   Looking forward to next week!

Sadly, Karate is cancelled over the holidays.  Not just the normal class we go to, but all the ones that we’re able to get to!  Normally, we’d just go to a different class to stay on top of things, but this week we’re going to have to just practice at home.

We’re learning Rohai right now, but I only know the first ten moves or so.  I think rather than confuse myself trying to figure the rest out I’ll just keep practicing all the old Kata to keep them fresh, and wait until next week to go through the new one in class again.

Last week, we passed our Brown Belt 3rd Kyu Karate grading. That means we’re classed as senior students, and could reasonably take up a new art without it causing too many problems.

The art we’ve chosen to cross-train in is Brazilian Ju Jitsu, which we’re taking at The Faktory, a Grcacie Barra Aacademy.

Our first lesson was an interesting one. It over-ran, so we got two and a half hours of mat time.  We drilled triangle chokes, and escapes from the chokes, before doing some wrestling and a bit of free sparring. I didn’t do much in the sparring section though – just a bit of practice at getting and keeping side control.

I can now see where stories of chi and no-touch moves come from.  Ian, the instructor is a brown belt with four stripes.  He managed to throw me off him from side control really easily – I literally went flying through the air, and I didn’t feel him touch me.  Obviously he must have, but he’s so fast, and I’m so absorbed in the techniques, that I don’t notice what’s going on.

All it would take is a few exaggerated stories about that, and an unscrupulous instructor claiming that they really do have the ability to throw people with chi, and you’ve got the makings of a nice mystical system instead of a “Wow, he’s good” story. After all, saying someone is skilled isn’t as impressive as saying they have magical powers.

We’re going back next week.  I’ll be blogging more then! The goal is to chronicle our progression from the start, partly just for the memories, and partly to help others thinking of starting BJJ.

A friend forwarded me a link to the Sainsburys Feed Your Family for £50 website because I was constantly complaining about the price of groceries.  Apparently I need to learn how to economise, because the shopping bill for Tineladia and I is bigger than the shopping bill of a family of four.

I didn’t expect much from looking at the site – at least nothing that would help us.  Our big shopping bill comes from lots of milk, lots of fresh (locally reared) meat for Tineladia, organic fruit and veg, and supplements.   We try to eat real food most of the time, but we do need to top up with supplements otherwise we just wouldn’t be able to keep up with our training.

I did think that there would be some meal plans on there that might be useful – perhaps some cheap recipes that I could alter to include more expensive ingredients.  Sadly, the meals on the plan are pretty limited.

The plan has each family member having something like two slices of toast with jam for breakfast, one sandwich for lunch, and a cooked meal for dinner.   Totalling up the nutritional information, you end up getting 1,600 Calories per day -  with the majority of the calories coming from carbs, and not all that much protein.  Healthy fats are lacking too.

I’ll admit, I eat 1,400 calories per day six days a week, and have a re-feed day where I eat a lot more than that, but I’m currently trying to cut fat without losing muscle, and my maintenance is pretty low because I’m so small.  Tine’s maintenance is about 2,400 – if he followed the Sainsbury’s diet he’d end up weak and tired pretty quickly – he might lose a little fat, but in the long term he’d have far worse body composition, and there’s no way he could train six times a week on a diet like that.

I admit that the diet isn’t designed for athletes, but even my non-training friends couldn’t follow that.   I calculated the nutritional needs of a sedentary, overweight friend of mine, and it came out that he should diet at around 2,100 for slow, steady weight loss.  Going all the way down to 1,600 would have him feeling tired, hungry, and full of cravings in no time.  He wouldn’t be able to stick with it.

I give props to Sainsbury’s for trying, but I’d rather see a £60 or£70 meal plan that offered more variety, and better customisation options, suggesting things that you could add to the meals to bulk them up a bit – not just bread either, how about wholegrain rice, frozen vegetables, sweet potatoes, etc?  I like to keep wholegrain crackers and peanut butter on standby as a snack, for example.

The idea of cheap, healthy eating is a nice one, but I fear they’ve tried too hard with this one, and lost out on a good chance to help people learn about healthy eating.  Instead of learning that good food doesn’t have to be expensive, people may take away the message that you have to compromise on quantity (and satiety) in order to eat “good” food on a budget.  That’s not good.