My Start

My Start

Well, I suppose you are asking at this point if I ever find a good home for my BJJ "jones", and the answer is, yes... but I needed something to really fan that flame under my ass before I made the commitment. 

Here is how that happened.

It's October 2012 and I am in Victoria, on Vancouver Island, BC and on a work assignment.  I get settled in at the place I was staying at and was just surfing the internet and stumbled across a YouTube channel of a guy that I had seen before, and said to myself "man, I have to see where in the USA this guy is located!". 

A quick search and I found out that this school is located in Canada... cool, a Canadian... wait, he's in BC... nice!  Oh wait, he is on Vancouver Island.. no wait, he is in Victoria... oh hell, this guy's school is less than a 3 minute walk from where I am this instant on the same street I am staying at! 

Sweet!!!

Since it was a bit early to go check the place out, I did some more internet searches about this guy.  The place is called Submissions 101 and the instructor's name is Ari Bolden.  A quick google search found that Ari was not really very well liked on the interwebs, but not being one that was  going to be swayed by opinions from unknown people, this did not deter me.  I know that "web talk" is often a poor indication at best of what a person is or is not.  I was still going to go check this place out!

A few hours later and I met the man face to face and explained to him that I was interested in starting, and what my physical limitations were... he was cool with them and I picked up my Gi and since I was to be in Victoria for 3 months, Ari was nice enough to not only give me a 3 month payment plan, but one that was very reasonable and fair to me.  That evening, I was going to officially start my BJJ experience, and I was really excited.  This was going to be my first dedicated effort at finally learning BJJ... Yessss!

(I really liked this Gi, and it fits very nice!)

First thing that I found out is that a lot of the internet badmouthing about him was just plain BS.  Ari is an honest goldmine of BJJ information... everything from the small details to the big picture was the goal of every drill and exercise and he was a good instructor. 

We were about 3/4 of the way through my first class, I was really tired but wanted to push on to the end and that is when it happened... I was hip tossed to the mat very hard by another white belt. 

During that throw, my foot banged hard off the wall and as I fell, the guy did not have control over his balance and fell on top of me... HARD.  I felt the pain in the foot, but it was nothing compared to the 200 pounds that fell low on my ribs.  Maybe it was all in my head, but I swear I heard and felt cracking.

Nice... my first class and I had an injury, and the X-rays from the hospital later confirmed what I felt.  I had a broken toe and a rib with multiple (well 3 to be exact), fractures.

Talk about disappointment!!

After the X-rays, the doc gave me some anti-swelling and pain medication and told me no exercise for about 2 months.  Yeah, right, here I was with a new Gi, a paid subscription for 3 months in a good school and I was not allowed to roll? 

Not... happening... today!

To see that I could go, I made sure that I had the ribs tightly taped and took no pain meds during the days I did no BJJ (I was supposed to take 1 pill 4 times a day) and on the days that I did go , I just took 3 pills together 2 hours before class to double up on the pain killing effect.  In class, I was also very careful to remind everyone that I rolled with to not go heavy on me, especially in mount and side-mount, and that worked well.  No one hurt me and I could slowly roll and have fun and at least learn.  It was still very painful, but not enough to stop me.  Yeah, of course I had a couple guys chuckle and prod me in a friendly way, but I smiled and continued doing the best I could.

(30 minutes after class this is what it looked like.  The toe was just starting to turn purple.  Two hours later at the hospital, the entire foot was swollen and 1/2 the foot was a nice deep purple)

Remember how I say that life enjoys kicking me in the nards every now and then?  Well, someone deemed it to be that time again... apparently I was due another kick in the privates.

I cannot recall exactly how many times I managed to go to class, perhaps 3-4 more times over 2-3 weeks, and I started to really get in to it mentally and I was enjoying it even through all the pain.  That is when I got the email that my work contract was cut short and that I was to return to Montreal in just a few days... two months early. 

I was not mad because of the lost income, not mad that the change came very suddenly, though courtesy and contract mandated that I had a couple weeks warning at the very least... nope... I was pissed because I would not be able to continue having my 1-2 times a week dose of "Jits". 

Not fun.

Eureka, finally!

It was somewhere between Saskatchewan and Manitoba at 35,000 feet in the plane coming home that I made the firm decision to not let it take another 5 years before I again was back on the mats, and that made me happy.  All I had to do was find a good local school where I could feel that same connection between me, the instructor and other students.

But first... the ribs and toe had to heal.

That was the easy part, letting time pass.  Life does that, speeds up the clock, especially once you are past 50... time just FLIES. 

The Christmas holidays came and went, and my ribs started to feel like one piece again and I was searching, looking for a local BJJ school.  Surprisingly, there were many in Montreal, but where I lived on the "South Shore", I found only one, and it was the same one that I previously had a bad experience at, and so in my head, this was not an option. 

Disappointed, I let the search stop for a while as life for me moved on.

It's now the new year... January 2013.  I am again determined to find something and I'm hoping it is close enough that going there isn't a 60 minute drive each way.  Around the 2nd or 3rd week of January, I am searching on the web and find this place about 35 minutes by car.  The place is called Bravado BJJ and they have ties with Gracie Humaita... that is a Royler Gracie affiliation.  Nice!

I call the place, get a quick schedule and let them know I'm coming in for a visit.  Talking to the instructor over the phone (who's name was Sylvain Moroney), he gave off good vibes and I felt excited about the prospect. 

Getting there I see that it's a small location, truly nothing special... except that the instructor and the students are genuine.  They are all friendly and open to me as an older guy with zero skills and some pretty strange physical limitations.  I feel sincerely welcomed.  The instructor ("Syl" as he likes to be called), makes me feel very welcome and relaxed.  He also has a great sense of humor!

I do the first 20 minutes of the class and feel really tired, but now the fun part starts, we get to roll.

The first guy that I roll with is called Fred.  Fred is a super nice guy, but at around 6"-2" and 230+ pounds, a bit of a BJJ animal.  He wears a white belt with 4 stripes, but I swear the man is a walking breathing strong blue belt if I ever saw one.   He rolls me around like a cat plays with a ball of yarn, but never hurts me accidentally or on purpose... even though I hear our instructor Syl telling Fred loudly from across the room, to tear off my arms.  Ok, I was worried for a good 2 seconds until I saw Fred smiling.  Hey, I didn't know if he was serious or not, and I've kind of grown accustomed to having 2 functioning arms!

I ended that session with a big smile on my face, and also quite sore.  Matter of fact, I had sore muscles in areas that I did not know I had muscles to start with!

It took me 4 days and many Tylenol to start to feel normal and to be able to take the next class, but I was walking in with a smile and anticipation.

And I also knew that I was going to be tapping... a lot. 

For those of you who don't do this BJJ stuff, one taps the mat or the person to let them know that you basically want to give up once being placed in a lock or position of submission.  Some people look at that as a bad thing, but in BJJ, tapping is actually a smart thing to do.  Often when one person has another in a choke or joint lock, it is difficult for the less experienced person applying the lock or choke to know how effective it is.  Tapping prevents you from either having your arm broken or getting choked unconscious, neither being a pleasant experience.  Tapping is your friend.

The young bucks that are all piss and vinegar don't like to tap, it goes against their grain.  Here is a small quote from the movie Pulp Fiction that comes to mind when I think about these kind of people:

"You feel that sting, big boy, huh? That's pride FUCKIN' with you! You gotta fight through that shit!"

I was not that young... I knew that my mentality had to be humble and that if I was going to want to advance and learn anything, I was going to do a lot of tapping, and to hell with any ego or pride coming into that picture.

I don't know where it came from, but the number 1,000 entered my mind.  Internally I decided that if I tapped 1,000 times per belt stripe, then that was OK with me, and if I tapped less, even better, I would consider that a small personal victory. 

The thought that I would ever submit or win during a roll with anyone was not even on my mind.  I was the "fresh meat" in the class and no one was less experienced or, with me at 255 pounds, in worse shape or at 52 years of age, older than me.  Under those conditions, to not tap because of ego would be pretty dumb.

Tapping was going to be the friend that was going to save my ass from injuries until I learned enough to at least try to defend myself a little better!

And so, my journey into exploring and learning BJJ has officially *finally* started.

(more in my 3rd post)