Belt Patches – A Proposal

In order to signify proper achievement and rank in the martial arts I propose a new belt rank system, the Super Duper Action Belt Patch Series 3000.

It has long been established (thanks Jigoro Kano!) that universally the most respected belt rank is that of black belt. (the issue of red-black and red belts are for another post entirely) The black belt should represent in depth knowledge and superior skill above any other belt color within the respective combative art.

Unfortunately, with the advent of other martial systems adopting a wider color scheme, false and self promotions, more systems based on effectiveness, technical merit vs competitive skill vs ready4dastreetz practitioners, the current status of measuring skill in a martial art via belt color is severely faulty at best.

I submit the Super Duper Action Belt Patch Series 3000 as an attempt in clarifying the large skill gaps within the martial world.

Thumbs Up Patch
Your rank is genuine and official. Your peers agree that you have earned the belt tied around your waist. Be proud.

Two Thumbs Up Patch
You are an instructor, and your rank is genuine and official. Your students enjoy learning from you. You treat everyone with respect and you represent your martial art with great responsibility and honor. It is your hope that your students become better people through the study of martial arts rather than World Champions. Although both wouldn’t be bad.

Five Star Patch
You are deadly efficient in your combat system. You can handle a Professional Rugby Player OR a Firefighter OR both with ease. Anyone foolish enough to call you out on your skills are required to immediately apologise.

Judo vs Jiu-jitsu

Sorry about the misleading title but it’s true. Sort of.

I’ve been watching a bunch of online vids and become inspired to work more on my stand-up (kneeling is still a problem for me).

Case in point – the Camarillo brothers vs each other. Plus I like their Judo. It’s nice.

train like you mean it

It’s amazing what a trip back to the academy, seeing old friends, and chit-chatting about – what else, of course – jiu-jitsu. Fires up the passion for sure.

Went over to Hakapara. I arrived before Tomari-sensei and when he came in he had a bad cough and bags under his eyes. Ah the joys of fatherhood. He spent the night taking care of his baby, who was sick and his recovering-from-being-sick wife. How he manages to still teach and spar is beyond me.

He asked if I was going to participate in class, I told him no, still being patient, really want to get my leg strong and flexible. He was happy I was taking my time and we looked at some really great instructionals and a DVD to pass the time.

I asked one question and got a mini-seminar from Tomari-sensei. Ah, the joys of being the only person in the academy and having a really cool instructor.

Eventually, more people walked in, including Sam who I haven’t seen for awhile. It was really good to see him again. Sam’s been busy with work and his English school, so training for him is a once-a-week affair.

I think that’s been to Sam’s benefit because he took the session very seriously – his intensity was inspiring and he put in a lot of sparring time. I immediately saw the difference in Sam’s game.

His sweeps are sharp and dead on. If Sam wants to sweep, there’s no stopping him now. He passes guard easily, most of the time feinting one way to only go the opposite way. I even saw Sam hold his own against a new blue belt who joined Paraestra that day.

not the blue belt, but still cool to see

I kinda felt sorry for him, the new blue. Hakapara is a scrappy school. He burnt out after positional sparring with Sam.

There was also this really badass guy there who put in a session with the Shooto class AND sparred jiu-jitsu afterwards. He gave Kyuhei-san (the Shooto instructor) a run for his money, matching submission for submission. Then he strapped on a TT Jiu-jitsu gi – founded by Eduardo Telles and Fernando Terere – and gave Tomari-sensei a run for his money as well.

poor, poor white belt

What was cool about this guy was that he toned down his jiu-jitsu when he rolled with the white belts. That’s incredible skill for sure. He still owned them, but it wasn’t a crazy feeding frenzy. More like nibbles on a bait, until there was nothing left on the hook.

Watching both Sam and that guy roll (they didn’t spar together though) made me eager to get fully prepared. But, yes, I didn’t train but I’m feeling much more centered and a lot better, now that I spent some quality time on the mats.

Just gotta stay away from them badge making websites…

as i slowly go mad

What’s Up Broke Leg?

Nothing much.

Nothing really new to post either.

Busy teaching. Exercising my legs. Stretching them out too. Watching DVDs. Watching Japanese game shows. Studying Japanese by means of these lovely magazines (my friend Matt’s site btw, if you’re in the UK pick one of these bad boys up). Did I mention that I was watching DVDs?

Most recent interesting thing that happened to me?

Got pulled over for a routine alcohol check. The officer politely asked if he could smell my breath. I was drinking this at the time. I’m sure he enjoyed the fruity scent.

But that’s it.

The Masterpiece – favorite martial art films pt.5

Part of a whole group of posts that occupy my time while I get back into jiu-jitsu shape. They have either a little bit to do with jiu-jitsu or not a whole lot. This one is a Bit Off Topic.

In my previous post on the subject of martial art movies, I wrote that I believe Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon to be the Greatest martial art film of all time.

If that’s the case then where does that leave Seven Samurai, the film I’ve selected for this post entry?

Where indeed.

Well, Seven Samurai fits nicely into what I concider to be a martial art movie.

And yet, it can’t just be a martial art movie. To call an Akira Kurosawa film a “martial art movie” is down right insulting to the man and his body of work.

Making its debut in 1954 Seven Samurai is clearly such an amazingly dated film. There’s no computer graphics. No slow motion scenes. No stereo surround sound. And, oh my, it’s in black and white!

Despite that it sparks to life like no other film on my list and has a juggernaut of a legacy beyond any movie with a Judo Chop or Karate Kick.

Case in point: there is a scene early in Seven Samurai, where the villagers are searching for help from samurai in a town. It is the point of view of the villagers looking at the passerbys on a busy road intercut with a shot of the villagers themselves.

If the casual movie-goer watches that scene, they will notice nothing because the way the scene is presented is something taken for granted in the movies of today. Seven Samuraiis over fifty years old, and in today’s internet entertainment age, it might as well be prehistoric. And yet, its storytelling technique can be seen now in almost every single movie.

Six years after the release of Seven Samurai, Hollywood comes out with a remake of the film entitled The Magnificent Seven. Though highly successful in America – spawning sequels and even a TV series – The Magnificent Seven feels flat and lifeless when viewed back-to-back against the original film.

By far, it is the oldest of my film selection and it is also the most deserving of my praise. More so than Enter the Dragon. Sorry, Bruce.

If Bruce’s film is a must-have for any martial art film library, then Kurosawa’s film is a must-have period. Whereas Enter the Dragon influenced future martial art movies and martial artists, Seven Samurai influenced a whole generation of filmmakers thereby changing the entire face of cinema.

I can easily say that all Kurosawa films easily move beyond their genre. It’s a testament to his genius and magical storytelling ability.

Seven Samurai is no different. It’s not just a martial art movie, it’s not just a film either.

It’s a masterpiece.

Tag teams, being stretchy and the puzzle that is Jiu-jitsu

Yesterday, at the elementary school I was teaching at for the day, I joined a game of team tag chase – in Japanese it’s called “onigokko”. There’s a group of eight or so “oni” (demons) and they run after the rest of the class to catch them. Kinda like a game of freeze tag on crack.

I told the class that I wasn’t up for it but thought it’d be fun to just walk around the playground to be an extra target/oni to complicate things.

However I got caught up in the pure joy of the game and, to my surprise, began running. Running to catch the faster kids when my oni group couldn’t. Running away to avoid capture. Running to just run.

The Good News – my knee held up. It’s not sore today. Which makes me look forward to really pushing my limits.

The Bad News – on the other hand my legs are tight and on fire. Everytime I walked to class students and teachers stopped me. They were afraid I injured both legs!

The Bad News too – my cardio sucks big time. In mid-sprint I’d be thinking “yeah, you can’t get anywhere near me! Ha ha ha! Take that Yu… Whoa, I’m super tired now.”

I sense that’ll be real close to what’s going to happen when I start training again.

***

Over the course of the weekend I’ve been butterfly stretching and attempting to sit cross legged. I kinda look like those American Football athletes that try to butterfly stretch but their knees are pointing straight up into the air, their knees nowhere near the ground.

Except that they’ve got these massive legs of power and I’ve got chicken legs that make it seems like I’m ridiculously wimpy and unflexible.

***

A few posts from across the blogsphere on jiu-jitsu being just as much of a mental challenge as it is a physical one.

Lynn over at Lynngineer writes about jiu-jitsu being a “body puzzle.” And being an engineer as well, Lynn’s definitely way more smarter than me. She used the word “nexus” in her post. That’s never gonna happen with me…

And speaking of BJJ women smarter than me…

BJJ Grrl Leslie sees jiu-jitsu in the same way. She’s said that “It’s a puzzle, and while it has consistent rules and methods and logic, I see a different face of the puzzle every night”. And that “BJJ is perfect for geeks”. I have to agree, being a self-proclaimed geek myself.

Here’s Leslie’s highly detailed post on tracking her progress in the art. I’ll definitely borrow her format when I do get back into it.

And, of course, there’s Adam over at Conceptual BJJ. He has held strongly on to the notion that jiu-jitsu is akin to chess. He hasn’t had much “jiu-jitsu puzzle solving” posts providing insights into the training process lately (cause he’s been getting ready for the mudials – GO ADAM GO!!) but his older posts provide some great reads on the subject.

Jiu-jitsu Update

It’s been more than six weeks since I re-injured my right knee. I’ve been good about taking things easy and not rushing back to the mats. The only time I’ve found myself on the mats has been to take photos or video or to do something vaguely resembling coaching.

At the time of writing this previous post on the subject I was unable to do any sort of exercise. Squats were out of the question as was walking up stairs.

Currently I am able to walk up and down stairs like before, and I can do one legged (bodyweight) squats with my right leg. I am nowhere near being able to do a leg pistol.

The next level of exercise for my leg are Hindu squats – they have a larger range of motion than regular squats and are closer in movement to leg pistols.

I’ve also been going to the gym – doing deadlifts. Just the bar though. And only one set. I overtrained one day and that set me back a whole week.

My flexibility goals are to do butterfly stretches and eventually work my way back to full seiza (sitting with my leg tucked under me, knees pointing straight). I don’t know how long that’ll take. I can’t even sit cross legged for very long.

I’m not putting myself on any timeline and yet the call of jiu-jitsu gets stronger and stronger everyday. I know I’ll train like a madman as soon as my leg meets my expectations. I just have to be patient. Sigh.

Look who’s a Brown Belt

Remember this?

It’s probably the most watched belt test on Youtube, if not the entire martial art online community. Jimmy DaSilva’s progression from blue belt to purple belt is an incredible feat and work of art. Jimmy trains under my favorite wristlock DVD producer and BJJ extraordinare Roy Dean.

And guess what. Jimmy’s a brown belt now. Congrats!

Don’t know about you, but that video just oozes inspiration! I’m really itching to train now! Oo, can’t wait.

Home in Hawaii

Family portrait – guess who didn’t pack black slacks for the last minute color scheme change