Enter “The Wrestler”

Posted on September 29, 2011 by pauly2bags

Recently, we at the academy were joined by Devin. He is an athletic 24 year old with shaggy blonde hair and weighs around 165 lbs or so. He showed up just before one of our “Vale Tudo” classes and immediately signed up to start training right away. “Vale Tudo” in Portuguese means No Holds Barred and is the predecessor to modern day MMA that you see in the UFC and other similar productions. In this particular class, we work on a series of striking combinations accompanied by techniques for  taking the fight to the ground by setting up shots (takedowns) with strikes or achieving a clinch before taking your opponent to the ground. Towards the end of class, we usually switch to straight submission grappling to tighten up our no-gi game. I noticed how effortlessly Devin was entering of the clinch during takedown drills and it became apparent that he did in fact have a background in wrestling.

I had faced decent wrestlers before. We have had quite a few train with us over the years and, as I have stated in previous posts, I also came from a wrestling background but never pursued it after the highschool level letting my skills degenerate for 20 years before getting back into a grappling art. All the same, I was pretty sure that as a blue belt, I could handle anything a wrestler could throw at me. In hindsight, this was a fairly naive train of thought (especially from a guy pushing 40 years old) because, all wrestlers are not cut from the same cloth.

This is going to hurt you more than it will me....

When the grappling segment of class commenced, he was paired up with one of our white belts and was taking it to his opponent pretty handily. It was a mauling where no quarter was asked for and none was given. This behavior was not alien to me as I have seen new students come and go over the years and (for a good number of them) it always seems that they have something to prove during the first week or two before they start seeing other students as teammates instead of opponents. I decided to roll with Devin during the next round. He seemed friendly enough as we paired up and when the buzzer signifying the start of the round sounded off, we gave the customary show of respect (a light slapping of hands followed by a fist bump) and began our roll, as usual I attempted to start with a slower pace to try and gauge what kind of energy I needed to be giving and proceed accordingly from there. I started in sitting guard and immediately was passed in the middle of my transition to butterfly guard.I suddenly found myself defending side control.

What in the hell just happened? This guy was ridiculously strong and explosively fast and was all over me from the beginning.  I returned to half guard only to have my guard passed again. The session turned into one prolonged scramble. I started adjusting to his passing attempts and had begun sweeping him only to bail out on my own attempts to pass. I was being forced to pull guard in the middle of being swept myself so as to not completely lose all avenues of attack. I don’t know what the score was after three minutes because everything was happening too fast for me to spare any concentration towards the score keeping department. His cauliflower ear should have tipped me off as to what I was dealing with but his ears were cleverly hidden under his shaggy hair. I thanked him for his time and started looking forward to taking care of this upstart once we donned the Gi’s (that will slow him down!) for the following days BJJ class.

By the time people started arriving for the next days class, the rumors had already starting flying around. Statements that were made included: “This dude was on the junior national wrestling team”, ” the guy is a sandbagger posing as a white belt”, “he’s been training BJJ with American Top Team in Florida for five years” and ” Devin was a high level collegiate wrestler before destroying his knee!”. I won’t go into what was true and what wasn’t here. That’s really not the point. The point is that we had a new guy, an unknown, come into the academy and start really competing against some of our top blue belts! People were simply taking notice and were looking for answers. I was prepared for a different outcome for that nights sparring session. I mean, he didn’t submit me last night,……right? I am 38 years old and I was able to hang with this guy in no gi, I thought to myself. He probably isn’t very good at submissions. I should embarrass this whelp in the gi! As we lined up on the wall to prepare for the sparring sessions toward the end of class to begin I had Devin in my sights. This is always how we start, on one wall we have the white belts facing the opposite wall which is lined by the upper belts. The higher ranking of those upper belts then pick their white belt counterparts to start things off and the rolling commences. It’s all like some very surreal High school dance where the guys that either needed a rest or were not picked have the job of making sure that two pairs don’t collide with each other while locked in battle.

I walked toward him and offered to roll. We faced each other on our knees and, again, I sat back into guard. This was my world! Approximately 15 seconds later I was tapping to an armbar that materialized immediately off of a pass. I was taking him way too lightly and took quite a shot to my overinflated ego (this was a good thing). We started out again with me taking a decidedly more aggressive and serious approach. I started out in his guard and tried one of my favorite passes. I had a grip at his knee and one on his sleeve on the same side. Opening the right side of his body like I was opening a garbage bag, I started my pass. Devin exposed a serious flaw in my technique by having the strength to pull both appendages away from me as he turned his body toward me to return to all fours prompting me to pull guard underneath him.

For the first time in this session, I had achieved full guard and decided that fancy techniques had to take a back seat to fundamentals. After a bit of a struggle I began to break his posture and started to climb my legs up his torso. He let an arm slip underneath my guard and I went for the triangle finish. He began to posture and I transitioned into an omoplata, locking my legs about his arm in a figure four, I started to move my hips away as to increase the leverage of the shoulder lock. Devin began to tuck his head and roll out but I stayed with him. He rolled again and I kept following him, each time slightly bettering my position to finish.  The next time he rolled we had gotten so close to the wall at the edge of the mat that I could not follow effectively and lost my position. The buzzer rang out as he escaped and session #2 was over leaving me to walk away and attend to my wounded pride. Our resident Brown belt expressing his delight at our entertaining roll was no help at all at the time. I had been submitted (in convincing fashion) by a white belt.

In following sessions I began to adjust to rolling with Devin, he has submitted me a couple of times since then but has yet to be successful with the same move twice and I have begun to get to know him a little better as a person. He has since admitted to being somewhat of a one trick pony with armbars (he’s really good at finishing them) and told me that he is prone to being choked by guillotines (maybe by people that are better at applying them than I). You see, I can’t speak for him but I know that it was I that was guilty of viewing a classmate as an opponent rather than a teammate who could help me to tighten my game up. Technical details that had been remembered by me but discarded where coming back to me. I was being forced to rise up by a newly added ingredient into the batter of our academy. It turns out that Devin was (is) a very talented wrestler that did, in fact, suffer two catastrophic knee injuries to the same leg within a very short period of time. One of these injuries involved his quadricep being completely torn away from his knee. After being told he may not even be able to walk normally again, let alone wrestle, he still attempted an improbable comeback. His coach and teammates were so inspired that they produced a video documenting his struggles.  The kid has some serious heart and has since become one of my favorite training partners.

I have heard it said that a really good wrestler is the equivalent of a purple belt in jiu-jitsu. I don’t know if that’s true or not but you would think that if someone has dedicated himself in training to control a person on the ground for as long as it takes to achieve the rank of purple belt or longer (whatever the discipline), he should be pretty good at what he does and is owed his due respect when faced on the mat. Facing physical and mental challenges and taking hits to your ego are necessary roadblocks that must be cleared on your journey forward, wherever your path is taking you. Always meet the problem head on with no fear because fear, more than anything, hinders growth. In the future I will see new guys as an opportunity to learn, regardless of my rank, and will always greet them warmly. You just never know…..

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BJJ ON THE STREET (in defense of puppies and other noble causes)

Posted on August 19, 2011 by pauly2bags

At the time of this incident, I had been training for maybe two and one half years. This was a “situation” that, in retrospect, probably could have been avoided by just walking away but…. who really knows? I will start this by noting that I am not a tough guy. What I mean by that is; I do not portray myself in a manner that might suggest that I want anything to do with a physical altercation. The most valuable tool for conflict avoidance that I have received from training in Brazilian Jiu-jitsu is self confidence. Self confidence alone greatly reduces your chances of being seen as a victim or a target of convenience. Sure, I got into a few scraps when I was younger, not because the world is a scary and dangerous place, but because I had made a series of questionable decisions that had put me on a bad course to begin with. Just like one of my favorite sayings in Jiu-jitsu, “if you don’t want to get caught, don’t be there in the first place!” That being said, let’s get on with the show….

During the first few years of training, I had worked as a manager at a popular bar in Asheville Nc. Asheville is a great town but has quite a large population of street hustlers, indigents and transients that are always out and about. An alley that runs directly behind the bar (my former place of employment) is a haven for such individuals. The employee parking lot is on the other side of the alley way as it opens up to a cross street. Most of the folks that you pass on the way to your vehicle are pretty good people but every once in a while you run into someone who is intoxicated or generally not so nice even if they are sober. The character that my wife and I, along with my daughter (two years old at the time) ran into was of the later caste.

My family and I were getting ready to go out of state into Tennessee to stay the weekend at my parents house. I was just getting off of work so my wife and daughter came by to have a quick bite to eat with me before we made the drive out of town. As we exited through the back door, my wife stopped to check on a puppy that someone had tied to a tree with no water in the middle of summer. It was hot…..the pup looked malnourished and my wife has a huge heart when it comes to animals so she started asking around to try and determine who the owner of the dog was. One of the alley “regulars” had pointed towards a younger guy (probably mid to late twenties) that was busy asking for change from someone and my wife immediately started questioning this person as to why the puppy had no water. Classic instigator, my wife is…….this was something that I really did not want to deal with, thanks honey! :-) He would not even make eye contact with my harassing wife, he just kept staring at me as I was giving him a look of “you’re on your own pal”!

As he started toward and past me on his way to a little market on the north end of the alley (still giving me a ferociously evil eye) he said, “you get the dog some water, I’m going to get a fucking beer!” I had seen enough. He was half way up the alley and this was a perfect time to hustle my (not so) shy and demure wife and oblivious toddler (who had been playing with the puppy while all this was going on) into the car and leave this guy and his dog in the hands of fate. Neither he nor I would be so lucky. Just as I had finally fastened my daughter into her car seat, the guy comes back with his beer and a whole new attitude. Apparently he had some time to think about the “situation” and had become quite enraged. He was cussing me aloud and approaching me with beer in hand. I tried to quell the “situation” by letting him know that, although my wife was concerned for the dog, it was really none of our business and he could continue to go about his routine and forget this whole mess.

My would be assailant was getting bolder as it looked to him as if I were retreating. He switched his gaze to somebody behind me and called out “Hey Tye, we got a situation over here”. I noticed a friend of his (Tye) approaching from the far side of the parking lot and, for the first time, I thought that I may be in real danger. My family was with me for Christ’s sake! Anyway, I needed no more prompting as I turned to look at him and said, “A situation? I was fucking leaving! Now we have a situation!” I then pulled a maneuver that I am calling the beer slap to an armdrag back take and I had both hooks in while sinking in the rear naked choke. As we fell to the ground, he was trying to hit me with the fist nearest my head on the exposed side so I removed that same side hook long enough to trap his arm with it and increased the pressure of the choke. This was still a bad “situation” for me as I could see his buddy (Tye) rapidly approaching. At my request, one of the alley regulars ran interference just long enough for me to completely subdue my antagonist. Once he was out cold ( he was struggling mightily so he slipped into unconsciousness pretty quickly), I gently pushed him off of me into, what was then, beer soaked dirt and prepared to address Tye.

Tye looked at me and then down to his friend and appeared as if he was in deep thought for a moment before returning his gaze to me. He then held out his fist for me to give it a “fist bump” before saying to me “he’s had it coming for a while”. He (Tye) then picked up the half empty beer can and continued on his way elsewhere. I am not sure exactly how long it took for the “puppy abuser” to regain consciousness but my family and I were already leaving in our vehicle when I saw him starting to stir and get back to his feet. My sweet and innocent wife then started giving me the “with great power comes great responsibility” speech about why I shouldn’t fight outside of the academy before she paused for a minute in retrospect. “I wish it had been me that choked him out!” she said as we continued down the road to Tennessee.

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“That Boy Sure Is A Running Fool!”

Posted on May 21, 2011 by pauly2bags

It had been a good 20 years since I had done anything resembling “working out”. Sure, I was an assistant coach for a high school wrestling team some years back, but that doesn’t really count as training. After my first BJJ class I was more determined than ever to get back into shape. For one, because I had yet to learn how to “flow with the go”, I relied on my wrestling experience during my first “free roll” (the open sparring towards the end of class) and I about had a stroke. Wrestling is exhausting when you are in good condition. Speed, power and cardio are necessities, especially when your technique is lacking due to lack of regular maintenance. If you are as fat and useless as I was at the time, you don’t have much to rely on. It would’ve been great if my ego could’ve stepped in for the assist but it decided to look the other way (I swear I could even here it whistling while it was looking down at it’s little ego feet). I was completely out of gas after a mere two minutes on the mat with a fully resisting opponent, a humbling experience to be sure. This is where some people decide that this sort of activity is just not for them. Their ego brought them to this place and it is their ego that is now pleading with them to never ever come back. I knew I could do this.

My cardio was nonexistent and I wanted to improve it as quickly as possible. I know for a fact that Brazilian Jiu-jitsu alone is enough to help build cardio and shed pounds. I have seen this first hand with most of my classmates. I just wanted to go at this thing as hard as possible so I decided to start running to expedite the situation. Now, everybody involved with this sport has either experienced or seen the parodies on Youtube about the guy coming into an academy and, before ever stepping foot on the mat, he states that once he  gets in shape, he will return to  try this out………..Seriously, nothing gets you in Jiu-jitsu shape like Jiu-jitsu and nothing motivates you more to get into shape than getting your butt whipped! These “interested” individuals must be really working hard out there somewhere because it has been years now and I still am awaiting their return. Just commit, man!

After my first practice I went to the nearest sports retail store and bought a decent pair of running shoes and convinced myself that I was going to go through with this. I decided that I would start off slow by running one mile so, after mapping the correct distance out while driving in my car, away I went……. After running half a block I already wanted to quit. I started walking as my mind started to be flooded with silly nonsense about what my neighbors might think of the pudgy middle aged fellow trying to give jogging a go. I was imagining the teenagers, just out of high school for the day, laughing as they drove by. Why do this to yourself, man? Who are you kidding? You can’t even run one full block, let alone one mile! And you were thinking about two? Just turn around and go home, dude! Shut up, just shut up and pick up your damned feet you punk!, my ego chimed in with the first bit of helpful advice since I stepped foot in Professor Basulto’s class. I had already walked another half block when I decided to start running again and had quickly come up with a new strategy for making this work.

Forget about how it looks to other people. Are those folks going to be at your bedside after you’ve suffered a biggie burger induced heart attack? NO!! I was going to finish this mile any way I could. I ran until I couldn’t and then walked until I could run again taking special note of where those walking gaps started and ended. I made it through the first mile and was not interested in how long it took me to do so.  On subsequent runs I just tried to focus on shortening those “walking gaps” until I was running the whole mile. I think it only took me three tries before I was able to do so, and I felt like I had really accomplished something special. It was a small goal but when you don’t regularly set goals for yourself they all seem more difficult than they actually are.

I  had quickly moved up to running two miles and was feeling pretty confident as I had also managed to quit smoking. In  Jiu-jitsu class I was able to “roll” with three people consecutively without needing a break, that’s one full match for a white belt for those of you keeping track (once again, it seems like a small thing now but…..). Anyway, I had lost ten pounds almost instantly and I hadn’t even changed my diet yet! I was feeling like a kid again, but with more focus. I was done lamenting about wasted talent and was just getting out and doing it! I realized fairly quickly that I shouldn’t buy new clothes until I stopped shrinking after I had gone to the mall and bought two pairs of fancy TapouT  shorts (it seemed like a good idea at the time) and went from a size 36 waist to a size 32 in the first nine months. I was now running anywhere from two to five miles a couple of times a week while going to class twice a week. Every few months I would see someone I hadn’t hung out with for awhile and they would always do the double take. Coworkers were calling me the incredible shrinking Paul, it was awesome!

I was fully into the swing of things, my grappling was improving everyday as my body was being transformed into more suitable vehicle for withstanding the rigors of training. I had started running ten mile loops just to see if I could, and was loving every minute of it. So much so that I was bragging to Professor Basulto about my long distance running. His response to me was something like, “running more than two miles is not really good for you, it doesn’t translate well into the mechanics of jiu-jitsu and makes the legs heavy”, or something to that effect. I just knew that I was enjoying overcoming obstacles and I was not going to stop. It was on one of these ten mile runs that I discovered just how bad running could actually be for you. Although it wasn’t for any of the reasons that my instructor had listed.

There just aren’t enough sidewalks outside of Downtown Asheville, Nc. which means you if you are a runner, then you are probably going to be running on the street with traffic unless you are on a trail somewhere in the woods. This never really concerned me and I just assumed that it would never become an issue until one fateful day as I was preparing to compete in my first ever Brazilian Jiu-jitsu tournament. I was pretty close to my weight class of 155 lbs. and was still one month out but I wasn’t taking any chances so I hit the street for one of my longer runs. I was about five miles in when I saw the car approaching. It looked as if the driver was trying to mess with me (it happens) because, the angle that the vehicle was taking was  directed at me. I gave the driver the evil eye as I moved further off of the road and it became clear that something was seriously wrong as the car was moving too fast for any real corrective action to be taken behind the wheel.

Things started to move in slow motion as I heard the spoiler underneath the car make a crumpling sound as it jumped the curb and was still coming right at me! My adrenaline had already propelled me up in the air as I was attempting to clear the front end of the wayward Toyota. The nose of the car clipped the upper part of my thigh and lower buttock as I was sent spinning across the hood and off of the windshield before being slung to the ground and into a chain link fence. I watched as the car continued past me before running headfirst into a telephone pole, snapping it in two. I had time to give the obligatory “Holy shit!” as I now had to deal with the developing situation of having a telephone pole fall upon me. Not to worry, the power lines had caught it in mid air to provide me with a brief respite. Before I could say “whew, that was a close one!”, I could hear, and then see, the power lines giving way and snapping under the weight of this unfortunate convergence of circumstances. My body moved on it’s own volition as I sprang to my feet and sprinted out of the range of the falling live wires before collapsing in disbelief at what had just transpired. I looked toward the car that now had a utility pole resting upon it, and a passing motorist had already made it to the vehicle and was checking on it’s occupant as he was simultaneously advising me against moving. I now had time to assess the situation and catalog any injuries that I may have sustained.

I was extremely lucky to be alive. Not only was I still alive but was relatively uninjured aside from a separated rib, sprained shoulder and some small fractures in my right foot. I was feeling pretty good! So good, in fact, that I actually declined transport to the hospital (never a good idea) and was attempting to continue my run before a police officer offered a better alternative by driving me home. Once the adrenaline finally wore off, all of the aches and pains started setting in and I began to realize that a trip to the hospital was not a bad idea after all. At the end of the day, it was Jiu-jitsu that saved my life. I would’ve never been able to successfully avoid taking serious damage if I was still riding the couch every day. Of course……I wouldn’t have been running on the street either, but are we really going to split hairs here? Coach, you were right. Running long distances is not the healthiest of activities.

 

 

 

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The Petri Dish that is your Brazilian Jiu-jitsu Academy

Posted on May 18, 2011 by pauly2bags

How many of you have felt ill and still made the decision to come train on the mats with your fellow classmates (potential host organisms). I recently asked my instructor if he was a germaphobe but thinking back on the question, how could he be? How could any germaphobe or hypochondriac introduce him or herself into this kind of environment. I mean, sure, the academy itself is cleaned on a regular basis. The mats are scrubbed after every practice. We use some sort of super disinfectant anytime someone bleeds on the training surface but as far as martial arts go (or any activity for that matter), it doesn’t get much more intimate than Brazilian Jiu-jitsu.

We sweat…….a lot! We are literally all over each other in every position imaginable. Breathing on one another with our chronic halitosis. Seriously people, brush your teeth already! If you have pet dander on your Gi, there is a good chance that I might sneeze on you. I can remember one instance in particular in which I could see the sweat bead up on a training partners nose and then in super slow motion,…….. drip into my mouth. I know, right! Gross! The academy and maybe an Elementary School are perfect little breeding grounds for any number of sicknesses. By the way, Professor Basulto (my instructor) is also a fifth grade teacher so how he and his family aren’t sick more often is beyond me. I think I heard him say that he has his own decontamination chamber at one entrance to his house.

With all of this in mind, we (myself included) continually make the judgement call on whether or not we are too sick to train. I did it just last night. I won’t be training tonight of course, but I really shouldn’t have done it last night. I just chose to ignore the signs. This particular illness has already gone through three people tied to class so I know I am not the first person to bring the bug inside these walls. If this was a job, I would’ve probably called out sick at the slightest inclination of trouble. You know, it’s just best for your co-workers and patrons. You really don’t want me to bring this in with me today…….do ya boss? The override is our love for Jiu-jitsu!

I have to have serious problems outside of scheduling conflicts if I am to miss a class. This is my church, the place I can always count on to be able to reconnect with myself for better or worse. It is my drug of choice, my escape from the world around me where I am totally in the moment. If I am unfocused there, I will probably pay for it, learn a valuable lesson and move on to the next challenge (there is always another challenge). It is limitless, where the only thing that is certain is the handshake before and after “rolling” (sparring). I can be having the worst of days and still leave class with a grin that would make even the Cheshire Cat turn green with envy. One minute detail from class will start the wheels in my mind spinning for days on end. I have made this art, this sport of Brazilian Jiu-jitsu my life with no regrets and I have never been happier.

Now, what were we talking about again? Oh yeah, if you are sick, stay at home. Seriously, don’t bring that funk in here!…………………

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Sibling Rivalry

Posted on May 6, 2011 by pauly2bags
"Squaring off"

"Let's just go easy"

So, as the name “Twinjitsu” suggests; I am a twin and my brother and I are both heavily involved in Brazilian Jiu-jitsu. Before I get into the whole “sibling rivalry” thing, let me just say that I found BJJ first and then introduced it to my brother!……………. Now that we have that out of the way, let’s continue.

My Twin brothers name is Patrick (Pat for short) so my parents, like most parents of twins, thought it would be cute to give us similar names. Some moms and dads like to do the whole rhyming thing, ours started our names with the same letters; Pat and Paul (I concede top billing because he was born four minutes before me and also, because alphabetically, it just makes sense). It is my twin and I that are pictured staring each other down at the top of this page. I am the better looking of the two (in the blue gi). Anyway, Pat and I have a problem which causes us not to be able to spar or “roll” with one another in training sessions anymore.

If Pat were reading this (and he probably will), he would say that this is purely my problem. This could, in fact, be the case but I am not here to blame anyone (Pat’s fault). I am and have always been the smaller/weaker twin and I do get frustrated often when the sparing session gets amped up and he is able to impose his pressure oriented game on me. It sucks! It’s not the dominant position or even the submissions that bother me. It’s the fact that it is Pat that is perpetrating this assault against me. I should be able to get the most out of these “rolls” by learning from the mistakes that put me in these bad situations to begin with but there is some really deep seeded emotions tied to ego that I have not been able to let go of.

Pat and I are the middle children in a military family of four boys. We always played different sports growing up but most of them were team related; i.e. football, basketball and baseball. It wasn’t until the Highschool level that we had abandoned other sports to pursue wrestling, but I never really remember the competition being quite so fierce between us then. Wrestling is a different beast than Brazilian Jiu-jitsu. Size and strength play a major roll and he was always two weight classes above me, at least until his senior year, just before the regional championships, when he made the cut to 145 lbs. I think it was the acceptance of this advantage that made it easier for me to stomach the whippings he was handing me. Since then he has returned to and maintains this twenty pound weight difference.

Last year, Pat and I met at a friend and fellow students house for a “rolling” session and there were only a few of us their so we could not avoid each other for long. I begrudgingly knelt across from him and we both gave a nervous kid of nod to each other as we thought that maybe this one was going to be good natured. We started out going relatively easy, things were looking good. We weren’t exactly giving anything away but we were going slow enough that we could take time to really work on technique. When the timer went off signaling the end of the session and neither of us stopped, that’s when things started to change for the worse. Eventually he had managed to really pin me in north and south and had started applying real pressure while transitioning into an armbar. I was defending but could not escape. I tried to run out, no dice. I tried to upa (bridge) and drop to turn into him to pull my arm out, not happening. He was going to take this armbar and did not want to transition into anything else. It was only a matter of time.

As my breathing started to become more labored, I could hear him saying “come on” in exasperation. I angrily replied back to him, “break it!” (I freely admit that I am an idiot and that there is just no high ground to take here.) At this point my arm is extended and I feel him starting to engage his hips, it was then that my hand involuntarily(it wasn’t me) tapped before he could break my arm. I then sprang to my feet and started wildly throwing punches at my dear brother in front of friends and family. None of these blows connected, however, because as my three year old daughter would tell you………….Uncle Pat is Spiderman! I was then thirty-six years old. How could I let this dynamic between us produce such a reaction?

Since then, our rolling sessions have been few and far between with each one of them starting with the phrase, “let’s just go light”. Some of them do and some of them don’t but none have come to blows, so I guess I should just be happy about that. Why is it that I can “flow roll” with other people in class and readily tap to them as long as it is not my brother? My brother is my stiffest competition (at my rank) in class so why can I not take full advantage of our time together? Why would I rather skip over him and give up 100 lbs. against another teammate then roll with my own flesh and blood?

If any of you have a sibling in class and you have similar experiences, please tell me about it. On the other hand, If you are confused as to why this is a problem for me, I would like to hear from you as well.

Royler seminar WNC 2010

Twinjitsu

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How Brazilian Jiu-jitsu saved my life: The beginning…..

Posted on May 5, 2011 by pauly2bags

As this is my first ever blog, I feel I should start with an introduction. My name is Paul Ramey and I am currently a third stripe Blue Belt under Royler Gracie/David Adiv Black belt, Armando Basulto. I am 37 years old and getting older by the minute and I usually walk around at about 165 lbs. but like to compete as low as 145 lbs. I have left the relative comfort of my previous job, moved to a location that is closer to the academy and my wife and I have started our own business (http://www.groundswellfitness.com) surrounding this art that we have come to know and love. I will delve deeper into the successes and failures regarding this in later posts but right now let’s just get on with it.

Three and a half years ago, when I started down this path I weighed 215 lbs……….I’m 5’6″ with my shoes on. If you were to say I was unhealthy, you would have been right in most areas of my life. I had long since traded the days of competing in and coaching High School Wrestling for fast food and beer with the occasional round of disc golf for exercise, which if you know anything about disc golf, it is perfectly acceptable to do while drinking a beer in most places. I was generally happy with my life but had no motivation to improve my position as I made a comfortable living managing various restaurants and I had been truly blessed with the best companion a man could possibly ask for in my wife, Dianna. Apparently Dianna was a chubby chaser, so I got lucky there. We were both smokers before Dianna and I became pregnant and decided to quit before little Lucy was born. My wife held up…..I did not (not then anyway). I started looking for a way to get back in shape but never had the motivation to start. I would say I lacked discipline but discipline, at that time, meant perseverance to me and that didn’t seem fun. I’m not a young guy and I was looking for something that I really enjoyed doing and that never seemed like a chore. I just needed to be active again and I needed something that I would love pushing myself for.

I started looking online for some kind of grappling or wrestling club for adults. I gotta tell ya’, Asheville Nc. was not exactly overflowing with training opportunities. There was a local Catch Wrestling place that was intriguing because of their ties to Catch Wrestling Legend Billy Wicks, but I could really feel the ego of the place (my opinion) before I even stepped foot in it. I went into another place that was geared towards MMA and the instructor there said “I guess you could say that I’m a purple belt in Brazillian Jiu-jitsu” and then asked me if I was interested in coaching a class on “American style” wrestling. Needless to say, I left there with a notable lack of enthusiasm for training with them.

It was a week later when my wife returned home with a flyer for “Authentic Gracie Jiu-jitsu” with Armando Basulto (then a Brown Belt). It can be quite an undertaking to choose a school and Instructor that is right for you but this was the beginning of a beautiful lifestyle change for me. At the time I had no idea and had no frame of reference as to how the decision to meet Professor Basulto would change the course of my life. I say it saved my life. In the literal sense, I’m quite sure it added a few years and I certainly have less back pain and am less of a candidate for stroke and heart disease due to the weight loss and change of diet but I feel my life prior to Jiu-jitsu was stagnant. I was unwilling to give up a bad position to try and transition into a better one. I was flat on my back and had become comfortable there because I thought I was in a safe spot and I was patiently waiting for the endgame. Brazilian Jiu-jitsu has allowed me to return to my feet and start looking for the takedown! ( I have a flare for the dramatic as you will see in future posts)

Now, Brazilian Jiu-jitsu is a family affair as my wife and my identical twin, Pat are both as hopelessly addicted to it as I am. We even have our three year old Lucy in kids classes now! Dianna and I took a loan from family to start an online retail store specializing in BJJ and MMA training gear and apparel and actually opened up our own Fitness center/Pro-shop in which our BJJ Academy is now located!

I would love to get feedback from you as to where BJJ has taken you. If you have any questions that you would like to discuss, please do not hesitate to ask.

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