What a brown belt has learnt
Due to my training partner doing evening bar work to help pay for his mortgage I have found that I haven’t had anyone to train with which meant I have had to help teach.
Now I have helped teach when many of my training partners have been sick/busy/on holiday etc before but that was actually quite rare but more often or not I have been the guy my sensei has used to demonstrate techniques. However, this time I have been teaching properly
Thanks to Coronavirus, like most people, my martial arts training had to stop. As lockdown eased we could return to partial training which was no contact training which is quite hard to do with Ju Jutsu so we practiced striking and worked on our fitness.
I have to say I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. As I mentioned in my last post, I was unemployed so doing some pad work really helped to release a lot of frustration in a positive way. This is one of the things I love about martial arts is the positivity. If you are willing to work hard at it you will get more out than you put in. Now I will brag here that I lost 4kg in a month practicing striking and working on my fitness and the better news is that I have yet to put it back on!
It has been 5 months since my last blog post which is a serious neglect of my blog. I did have a good reason which was job hunting. I got made redundant in November 2020 which although wasn’t a shock caused meant we had only one wage earner. Then the Coronavirus pandemic hit and the world went into lockdown and made job hunting very difficult. We were a lot luckier than most as my wife was earning a very good salary so we were able to get by and I effectively became a house husband (I learnt looking after home and family while your partner is working is not easy and you don’t have have as much free time as you may think) so I’m not looking for any sympathy.
In Ju Jutsu there are a large number of throwing techniques which meant I had to learn to throw a training partner and get used to being thrown by my training partner when practicing these techniques.
As you can imagine getting thrown is an unnatural thing to be done to you and can be nerve wracking when you are not used to it. It took me a long time to get used to it. I often consciously and subconsciously resisted being thrown in any throw where my feet. My body would move away from my training partner and my weight would sink making it extremely hard if not impossible for me to be thrown.
I’m going to start this post with a mind blowing thought “CORONAVIRUS SUCKS”. Is your mind blown? I thought not. To get through the pandemic we have given up a lot that we have taken for granted. Sadly some of us have lost friends and family to coronavirus.
For me the most important thing in a dojo is respect. Respect for the dojo where you train, respect, for your teacher, the teacher having respect for their students. respect for your training partners, respect for other club members. Showing respect for all these is why we bow at the beginning and end of each training session.
I spend probably too much time on YouTube watching various martial art videos some are good, some are very good and most are terrible. Here is a list of 5 of my favourite martial YouTube channels.
As you may or may not be aware the UK, on Tuesday, started a new full lockdown for between 4 and 7 weeks depending on the where in the UK.
This means we can’t see our friends and families like we normally do. As such loneliness can be a problem. Human beings weren’t put on this planet to be alone.
When writing in this blog you will see that I am using the spelling of Ju Jutsu when talking about the martial art I do.
One of the oddities of Ju Jutsu is that you will see different spellings at different dojos. You can see Ju Jutsu, Ju Jitsu and Jiu Jitsu. All of the are correct, just about.
One criticism a martial art often gets is “it won’t work in MMA” as if in some way if it doesn’t work in the octagon then the martial art is no good.
I have never understood this argument. Firstly I will state the obvious that MMA is not a martial art, it is sports fighting. Also it is Mixed Martial Arts, clue in the name. Fighters who complete in MMA use a mixture of martial art techniques to win a one on one refereed fight where the winner knocks out, submits or the referee steps in to stop the opponent for their own protection.
Not Quite A Black Belt