Downtime. What do?

After I get out on the 10th, I will have almost 4 months of downtime.

No work, no school, no real responsibilities.  In a way, it is freeing, but also very much upsetting.  I like to stay busy.  I like to keep my mind and body under a certain level of strain.  and I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to do that in the TriCities.

I know for damn sure I am going to miss training MMA.  There are a few very new upstart gyms, but none really seem to focus on groundwork.  There are also two boxing gyms, but the one closest to m,e wants $90 a month, just for boxing.  In addition to striking me as outrageous, this is a lot of cash on an unemployed budget.  I do believe there is an actual judo club in town though, which I can see being a place to share some of my newaza knowledge as well as learning pretty throws.

But I think the main physical journey may be a bodybuilding.com 12-week transformation challenge.  With 12 weeks of dedicated training, having time to prep my meals, and all the training time a boy could ask for, I don't see it being impossible for me to break the 200lb mark while leaning out from where I am now.  For a $100k grand prize, it is definitely worth a shot.

As for the mental side, I think I am going to pick up Dave Camarillo's books "Guerilla JuJitsu" and "Submit Everyone," as well as teach myself a good bit of HMTL5.

I'm happiest when busy, and I am not going to let this process bum me out.

Staying Busy

Lately, my mind feels like a whirlwind.  Between job hunting, school applications, work, lifting, and training, it feels like what falls by the wayside is sleep.

Making arrangements to not be dead in the water at the end of my enlistment is one of the more stressful things I've done.  The idea of applying for unemployment is a daunting one, even though I know it is there to be used.

So I've been coping by putting together a competition schedule for myself.  The big change this year will be gi competition.  Previously, all my tournaments have been no-gi matches, but I am actually looking to change that up and start strangling people with fabric, rather than just limbs.  The big US tournament for Gi competition is the IBJJF Pan-Ams, in Irvine California.  This year it is the olast weekend in March.  I'll be there.

After that there is a lull until July, where I plan to compete in the Seattle and Portland Western States Grappling Championships, as well as the Boise tournnament in August.  Should I place in any of these I will head to the finals in SLC, which would be awesome.

Looks like sleep will still have to take a backseat.

Stem to Stern

Last night, I had 2 (3?) teammates compete at a local show, and they went 3 - 0.  Deon took a UD, Gary got the TKO and won the 135lb belt, and our new kid, Tyler, got the technical submission.

Tyler's victory, however, really bothered me.  He had snaked up a power/figure-4 guillotine (incredibly tight and quick choke) and well, it was a fight ender.  Everyone seemed to know it, except the ref.  He looked on from the worst possible angle and Tyler choked this kid unconscious, and then let him hold it for another 5-6 seconds before checking on the now-limp fighter via arm shake.

This should not happen in an amatuer bout.  People don't tap and go out, I understand that.  But this was a horrid display of reffing, that allowed a guy to end up looking dead on the mat in front of his friends and family for 20-30 seconds after the ref had officially stopped the fight.

I accept how bizarre it is for me to have such a visceral reaction to someone getting choked out of their senses, but it truly upset me, and I hope it doesn't happen again.

Grappling-centric

It clicked a couple months ago.

I changed up my strength routine. I watched the scale with a most peculiar goal number.  I checked out schools in the area of job opening before I fired off an application.

Grappling had become the central point of my life.  It was, and still is, the reason for most of what I do.  There are so many point throughout the day where I simply grit my teeth and get the job done, due to the promise that the mats await me.  I spend hours thinking of takedown-break-pass-setup-submission chains and how to best implement them, and if they don't work, I spend hours changing out variables until they do.

There are so many days where the only part I can consider a positive is the time on the mats and what I learned from it.

And those positives have pulled me through some rough patches of time.

First up: The Archives.

So this blog will be the much more broad (and far better formatted) continuation of my previous project, which was an attempt to see if a vegan lifestyle is maintainable in an athletic and training-intensive sport such as Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu/MMA.

I stopped blogging because well, the long and short is that it can be done, though it is less convenient.  And also because tumblr (which I chose for it's outstanding mobile interface) is not the optimal tool for just straight blogging.

Regardless, here is the link.  Knock yourself out.
http://vegegrappler.tumblr.com/