Last Sunday was a long day, spent mostly in transit. Switching from bus to ferry to bus to ferry again really drains you. It's not physically demanding, it's the mental demand of waiting for the next ride, finding a place to sit or put your bag, watching and waiting for your stop, hoping you're on the right bus and going the right way that you deal with when traveling a new route for the first time that burns you out. All and all it was a pretty OK trip. I arrived early and had extra time to sit back and take the beauty of the open country in and read a book as I waited for my ride. Originally I thought about napping while waiting but I was too excited for that. I was full of energy, while also tired, excited to see the guys and train with the club for the first time. Tidal BJJ, our affiliated club, are brothers to us and although we always keep in contact online and have a blast when they come to town for belt testings or seminars, I've never had the pleasure of training with any of them before. This week of course changed all that. Everytime I show up at a new club, no matter or not if I know someone from that club, there's always the inner questions of "How are they going to roll with me, be hard or play nice?" "Am I going to live up to my rank in their eyes?" or even "How do they train and will I be able to keep up?" With these guys I never once thought anything other than "This is going to be awesome fun!"
I finally get to the Sunshine Coast, which at this point was more the grey cloudy coast, and get picked up by host for the week, Tyler, who drives me out to what is it quite possibly the exact center of the woods where his place is and shows me to the room he had set up. The next places I'm visiting I've booked a hotel room so my only couch surfing to be done on this trip was here and I've scored an entire room, awesome!
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| The misty moutain view that greeted me while waiting for my ride. |
Staying there was great, despite being in the middle of nowhere it actually made it easier to check out both nearby towns, Gibsons and Sechelt, which by the way definitely lived up to the Sunshine Coast title after the initial welcome as I was burned daily by the heat. The weather actually made me write down an important note, important to me at least and I'm sure to all other fair, pale and ginger folk out there, always bring a hat! After a only a few short hours, or less, on the first day I caved in and bought a simple black dollar store ball cap, and it's turned out to be quite possibly my favourite hat ever. This cheap piece of clothing has definitely proven it's worth protecting me from sunstroke all this time in the sun as I strolled around. Bringing a hat is now quite high on my list of items to pack for the full Odyssey trip around the world. Not only does it protect you but it's good marker if you're meeting someone for the first time, just don't buy all plain black hat I did, but I tend to stick out anyways.
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| Making my way back to civilization to explore the towns. |
One day, Marcel, another member of the club, took me out and showed me around the coast, what a beautiful area, lots of lakes, beach fronts camp grounds and cottages that I one day would like to visit more thoroughly. Marcel, affectionately nicknamed "The Viking" for his heritage and very suiting image, is a good friend and great person. He made sure to look after me the entire time there, coordinating rides, usually by him, and making sure I was well taken care of. He even put me up for the last night in town and drove me in to the ferry terminal early Sunday morning. On a side note, if you ever have the chance to take an outdoor shower in the woods, take it!
(I almost took a selfie for this post, just picture me in the woods showering, you're welcome.)
During the week I would check out more of the area, usually finding a place to read my book or study for my Goshin Japanese Jiu-Jitsu test I have when I get back. Everyday there, Monday to Saturday, I trained for at least an hour with everyone, rolling with everyone I could and even having a few private classes. Training with the Tidal guys was so much fun, it really was like an extension to our home club. It almost felt like I was just in a smaller class back in Victoria. When rolling time came around, especially on the first night, I couldn't help but feel the guest of honor, afterall, most the club had showed up to welcome me, and it seemed everyone wanted to roll with me. I expected that, and looked forward to it, I was not disappointed. Everyone kept it playful, respectful and fun but at the same time a played very close game not to make mistakes in. The Tidal guys are smooth and quick in their movements, I have no problem saying the first night I was mostly on the defence, learning to stay alive so I could keep up during the week. It's important not to go strong when visiting a club, that's like being a loud bossy guest at a friend's house, it's rude. It also breeds room for injury, and on a training trip that's something I want to avoid at all costs, especially when at the first spot on the trip. I'm happy to say we kept it kind, playful, respectful and injury free the entire time.
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| The welcoming committee. |
After the BJJ class there was Kyoshi Seamark's Kokodo Jujutsu, (Tidal BJJ shares the sapce with Sadohana Kokodo Jujutsu Gibsons but I consider them the same club as most the Tidal guys practice Kokodo and Kyoshi himself is a student of BJJ) a Japanese art of controlling the spine through the wrists. Let me tell you, I am a fan of all styles as I believe it is all one art and training in more styles just adds more to your game, more tools to use for protecting yourself and really just makes your jiu-jitsu better. Kokodo does all of that to the max, there's yet to be a single class I didn't walk away feeling full of new information to process and enhance what is already there. Kyoshi Seamark himself I believe is a grandmaster wizard of the dark arts and having a private class with him was amazing. We went over some techniques covered in the previous class and covered a few points for my Goshin test, concepts came out that brought everything into perspective really brought techniques together, everything shown both in the private and normal classes was eye opening, like I was Charlie and I had just stepped into the chocolate factory.
This brings up a rather big studying point, it's something I've been wrestling with since Kit Dale posted videos about it not too long ago. (I tried linking his videos from facebook on here but couldn't so now you're faced with sifting through his 100s of joke vidoes to find what I'm talking about, sorry) Learning concepts over techniques and practicing them to make each move work. This is new to me and so far I've really liked how it's been playing out, working on concepts and applying them to the techniques to successfully do the desired move. In one of Kit Dale's videos he explains how every sweep requires the same criteria and if you attain those you can successfully complete a sweep, how you attain the criteria determines the type of sweep. Funny enough, as much as I've always looked for similarities to link and chain moves, until watching his video I never thought about all the moves together in that way before. Training with Kyoshi Seamark nailed that point and he showed me just how much everything really is connected. During my private class with him we worked on the details for properly controlling someone's wrist, and thus them, as well as properly breaking their grip. The actual details of course is something you'll have to ask him about, I'm sure he'll be happy to demonstrate them to you...bring ice. So all week I've been relating these concept for control in practically all my training, finding the similarities in each move. This of course moved over to BJJ and since a lot of D'arce techniques were being covered and talked about, relating the simple criteria for what you need to a head and arm choke was natural, I focused a lot of my rolling on trying proper head control to set up shooting for one. Marcel and I on Saturday rolling for over 20 minutes of back and forth no gi, shooting for various head and arm, anaconda, D'arce and north/south chokes. And a some armbars to change things up. No longer I am thinking "what moves can i do from this position?" or "How can I get his head/arm/leg etc to do this particular technique?" now I'm thinking "How do I control what I need for a sweep/pass/armbar/choke?" and applying the concepts for that move. If you go for an armbar and the opponent rolls to escape you have two options, lay there and say "Dam, I missed that armbar" or roll with, keeping the proper armbar concepts in place and get a belly down armbar, or maybe end up back in same position. It may not be the original technique you were going for, but you still got an armbar.
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| Action shot of training some Kokodo. |
Thinking about this brought another point about how connected each style is in being all one art. If training in more than one style, and I recommend you do, take the time to learn the parallels between the different styles and finding the connections or similarities between the different schools. I've talked about this before on the similarities of different styles around the world. The example I always like to use is Turkish wrestling, where the two men wear only leather shorts and oil themselves up, making it so that basically all they can hold on to for grip is the shorts, and try to unbalance other another and take each other down. That particular style is more commonly known then the other styles around the world that are very similar, Laamb in Africa you wear a sash to hold on to and the "Viking Wrestling" of Glima you wear a leather belt on you waist and thighs to be used. So, to me anyways, learning other styles just enhances your game, your tools, and realy, youself. seeing three different views on how to do the same technique lets you understand more fully what it is your are accomplishing, or trying to accomplish.
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| Jason and I practicing some Kokodo, with a very familiar looking finish. |
During the week I would walk around Gibsons or Sechelt a find a place with wifi to use while going over the topics covered in class the day before, making sure to write all the details i could down. Each day would and start and end off with me doing a good stretch as well, taking my time to wake up or cool down. Both these points I find important, taking the time go over what you've covered in class and let it sink in and stretching out. Obviously stretching is important because you don't want to pull anything and end up missing class because you skipped a proper warm up or cool down. This is more important when traveling, because you can't just come back next week to make up for it, and if you're on a fast paced travel and training vacation, things can get overlooked and made worse easy enough. As for contemplating the classes, sometimes it takes a while for the moves to sink in, even though you got it easy enough when drilling it in class, seeing where it can come into your game or all the possibilities that particular technique has might take a while. I suggest writing as much as you can down, in as much detail as you can remember. now in a perfect world we would all remember every instruction perfectly first go, but that for the most of us, is not the case, so writing helps the brain go through the technique and really lock it down in your memory, and you always have it on paper to go back to and re-visit. I have a book i write everything i can when I'm visiting a club because I wont be back there again to ask the instructors how to do that technique again. I think we should write down as much as we can any time, not just when visiting a club but also when at your home club too. If you can't write down everything all the time, and really who can, then write down anything that jumps out at you and grabs your interest. Really, everything covered in class, no matter how many times you've covered it, should grab your interest, but sometimes there's that one technique that just hammers home to you, like it changes your game and or brings everything together. That is what you need to write down. Or if you're having problems with a particular technique and you've trouble shot it with someone to fix the problems make it work, write that down too. Every detail you can, so you bring it up again and remember to watch those grey areas you had before or work on that revolutionary new technique to change your game. On Saturday as I had my last class rolling with Marcel and I got to talking about different no gi techniques and the no gi concepts versus gi concepts that reminded me of some movements and moves I wrote down last summer when out training in Toronto and San Diego. I busted out the old note book and we practiced a few things that then reminded me of some submissions taught in class a long time ago, we linked them all up together and came up with a pretty deadly flow that I can't wait to try out. Although I'm sure you can already make the conclusion yourself, my point is this: Take the time to contemplate each classes topics and review those moves and study over those techniques. Write down what you can and help in the future. you'll be amazed how much it helps. Don't just be a robot showing up and doing a bunch of reps without thinking about the core movements and target end game. There's a reason behind every grip, movement, positioning and angle in this game, find it.
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| Me and "The Viking" after some epic rolling. |
After having such awesome time training and hanging out with everyone and having a great last roll with Marcel we ended the week off in the best way possible. It was Jason's birthday yesterday. It was also a UFC pay per view with a very exciting card lined up. The two had to be celebrated. It neither dissappointed, I don't if the UFC was better because I was in good company or the party was better because the UFC was on but it was a great nite and I'm very thankful for Jason hosting it on his birthday. Jason has recently taken the helm of Tidal BJJ and teaches the classes, unfortunately we never had the chance to roll but I look forward to the chance in the future. He's a great guy who you can tell really cares about the club and making everyone else better, not just the jiu-jitsu and not just himself, a true mark of good coach and a good mark of a great club. I look forward to watching Tidal grow and visiting them and the Sadohana Kokodo Gibsons Dojo again in the future.
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| Boarding the bus to Seattle, WA for the second stop of the Mini Odyssey. I lost the hat during customs...I miss it deeply. |
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