BJJ

So I decided to join the BJJ club because having an outlet is pretty much necessary when you spend most of your time cooped up in a library or classroom studying/in lecture. I get fed all kinds of awesome food (chicken, bread, cream cheese pound cake, ginger snaps, chocolate, fresh berries/pineapples, energy bars, cream puffs…) in the library by Jerry (sweetest woman ever) and there are almost always fresh home-grown veggies/herbs up for grabs in the classroom, but still. We’re attempting to stuff mountains of knowledge into our brains and we actually need to retain it. An outlet is healthy. The gym is cool, but I’ve pretty much been a solitary gym-goer since…almost right after I realized I’d be a disgrace to my major if I didn’t do much of anything (I had Tahitian and hula, but still–ward off that osteoporosis and sarcopenia! Everything starts going downhill after 25, so in my opinion, the more of a base you build, the better >_>). Human interaction is pretty nice to have.

Said outlet involves rolling around on a mat with dudes, since I could not, for the life of me, convince a single one of my female friends to join with me. (To be fair, I didn’t try very hard to recruit them to BJJ. I figured it wouldn’t happen, given my observations of the reservations they had about the idea of sports bras and palpating both genders’ backs.) It also looks all kinds of wrong in some cases, and I have to admit, I could not keep a straight face when he said, “We’re going to do the rear naked choke now.” But anyway, I’ve wanted to learn some form of a martial art for quite some time now, partially because I think it’d be awesome (what with brag rights and all–I picked someone up when he put me in a guillotine at my second class and threw him on the ground; how cool does that sound? :D? Even the guy I threw was pretty impressed. :D!), and partially because I still have a hell of a lot of latent anger directed towards the creeper we never caught. If there’s ever another one and my taser does not get to him first, I’d like to at least be able to throw him on the ground and pummel him. In other news, self-defense would be pretty cool to learn too.

The guys at the gym are super nice. I’ve only been to three classes so far and had absolutely no prior experience, but they’re really good about breaking down each move, demo-ing it, and then walking me through it. I joined in on the “sparring” in my second class (I put it in quotations because although they said they were just going to attack me, it was more like “attacking” me and giving me hints if I forgot what to do/giving me suggestions on how to make it better) and that definitely helped me to cement what I’d learned more so than while I was just learning them. They’re still going easy on me and not actually sending me flying onto the mat for the time being, which I appreciate, because I’m still pretty weaksauce and/or not 100% confident on how to break my falls yet. It’s going to take a long, long while until this becomes second nature (will it ever? ;_; I wish I had someone to practice it on.)

Mondays and Wednesdays are BJJ/Judo, and Saturday is kinda a mix–mostly muay thai with some other things thrown in. Dan likes teaching us self-defense, which I believe is partially for my benefit because I look somewhat dinky and unthreatening. They say this makes it all the better because people won’t expect me to attack if they try to come at me (I keep wanting to say, “Come at me, bro!” in class :X ), so I can use that to my full advantage and just lay it on them. So yesterday, I started learning some striking so that I wouldn’t only know how to do take-downs. I rolled with one of em’ (I am pretty ashamed to admit that I can’t remember his name. ._. I feel kinda stupid asking now because I’ve had so many conversations with him and we’ve been throwing each other around for the past two weeks ._.) once and also joined in on one of the stand-up’s. Jason said there’s definitely a hell of a lot of anger in my eyes when I’m punching. har har. :X I got punched in the face twice, but I am improving, so that’s a definite plus. I also rolled with Dan and almost managed to choke him out. Granted, he is definitely going all kinds of easy on me, but the fact that I almost got it on almost-pure instinct was kinda nice. I think all the fights with my brother when we were little and didn’t get along really helped. :D He was always super frustrated because he could never pin me. >_>

I think it’s sad how every time I’m living in a town where people say there’s “never anything to do,” I always find all sorts of things I want to do and never have time to do it all. Back when I was in Davis, I did indeed try to do it all. It technically wasn’t the best of ideas, but I managed to cram a whole crap ton of things into my four years there. Here, it’s definitely not advisable if I want to actually make it out of medical school alive and well. Sacrifices must be made. I need to choose wisely. ;_;