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Welcome to the Happy Grappler. The key to a consistent practice is joy. As an aging athlete, I continue to seek out methods that help to keep a smile on my face, relatively fit and pain free. This is my mental graffiti. Enjoy!

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Simplicity..unfettering the mind.

Greetings one and all...which means about 4 people total who read this blog!

I am struck this morning about simplicity. Professor spoke the other day about how Roger Gracie wanted to prove that basic, simple jiujitsu was capable of making champions so he took out 9 competitors at the world championships with a sweep, simple pass, and a mounted choke. If I must be honest, I have to confess that I also get allured by things that are fairly complicated-deep half guard being one of them. Then I watch Roberto Abreu do tornado guard...what!? A man who weighs more than I do is capable of such feats...it must mean that I should do it as well. Riiiiiggggggghhhhhtttt. The simpler the better. A hard sparring session focusing on doing a few things really well rather than a ton of things poorly. A simple run...one foot in front of the other, breathing in and breathing out. A simple routine of calisthenics...pushups, pull ups, sit ups and burpees. Doing the work that needs to be done rather than the work that I want to do. Taking an honest look at the positions that I need to focus on. Left side half guard. An opponent with seat belt control and one back hook. Passing spider guard, lasso and DLR. Working the finish. Transitioning from side mount to mount and finishing. I also need to re-purpose my understanding of self-defense jiujitsu...I mean after all, isn't this why we do this stuff in the first place!?!?! What good is my x guard and deep half guard if I get crushed and my wallet gets stolen.

Word.

On the home front, everything is breaking down. In the span of a couple of months, our toilet went on the fritz, furnace busted some pipes, dryer shot craps and last night my TV went tets up. Sometimes you are the hammer and sometimes the nail.

In the spirit of the post topic, here is some traditional gracie self-defense jiujitsu as demonstrated by Phil and Ricardo Migliarese of Team Balance in Philly. Enjoy.


Oss.

1 comment:

  1. Hey, saw the link in your sig line at IronGarm, thought I'd check it out. Very nicely done, and your pleasure and commitment come through clearly in every post. Happy Grappling!

    ReplyDelete