Archive for month: June, 2023

Dust Mop Jiu Jitsu: The Combat Base: Part Seven

SBG Portland-Portland, Oregon

-On changing your self concept, realizing nobody cares and leaving your gym

This is the Fifteenth article about my journey in Jiu Jitsu. If you want to know more about what this project is, you can read more about it in the first article here.

It’s also the last of 7 articles about my time as a member of Combat Fitness MMA. While I was there, I would learn to push myself beyond harder than I ever had.

Put yourself in my shoes. I’ve spent all day in Tyngsboro, MA at a tournament. It’s the fourth tournament I’ve been to and it’s not going well. I had a long slog of a gi bracket earlier that day that left me ragged and medal-less. I’ve got one more no-gi bracket that will be best 2 out of three with the same person. There’s just two of us, and I have a feeling it’s not gonna be me. We already did the first round and he beat me with an arm bar where I definitely tapped too late. As I ice my elbow, my coach, Amber Farr stands at the ready with a brace. She smirks and says, “…I mean, it’s gonna hurt tomorrow either way.” 

Amber taught the monday class. It was my first real introduction to wrestling. Instead of just learning techniques, we would do suicide sprints, wall sits, sit out and back takes, shoots and sprawls to the point where you would want to puke. I felt better having her in my corner but I wasn’t exactly feeling up to the task.

I had been psyching myself up for this tournament for a whole month. I had finally gotten my first victory earlier that day in my gi bracket but it wasn’t enough to place. I lost four matches aside from that. This was my fourth tournament and despite all the weight loss and strength training it was looking like it was going to end like all the other ones. 

The guy I was up against had never lost a match according to smoothcomp. I looked him up before my buddy Max, from Team Jucao in New York, could advise me not to. He was doing a great job of pumping me up. But still, the damage was done and I had let that get to me in the first round. 

I drag myself back to the mat and slap hands. I use an overhand headlock throw and get him to the ground. He reverses me and tries to pass my guard. I throw my legs up as high as I can and we’re both stuck in my lock down. I slowly, painfully, get my arms on either side of his neck. I think it took me a full minute, but I felt him tap. I couldn’t believe it. I had a shot of winning if I could make it through the next set. 

I got up, Amber takes my arm brace and gives me an ice pack. She starts talking to me about ankle picking. But I say I had an idea. I realized I had taken him down twice the same way. I had visualized this all week and it was happening. The ref called us back, I traded Amber once more for the brace. We slapped hands, I drove him down and we landed in Gesa Ketame. I used my legs immediately to get him in a kimura position, he escaped and fell right into my arm bar. In six seconds, I had won my first gold medal. Self concept=changed forever.

The coolest thing was the ref saying, “dude, you might’ve set the record for fastest win today.” I’ve never been able to confirm that. The match started before the refs were able to start the clock. 

I also got my first serious tournament injuries. My elbow was definitely over extended and sensitive to the touch and, the next day, I had a little bulge in my ear. It looked like something was growing in there. Alongside a gold medal, I had won me some cauliflower ear.

Or at least I thought I did. It turned out to be way worse. They sliced, drained and stitched it like everything else. But Cauliflower ear is swelling with blood. With stitches in, a cyst in my ear kept swelling up. On my ear, there was an unstoppable force meeting with an immovable object. I don’t enjoy weed, it doesn’t make me feel great mentally. But I used it that week to deal with the pain. I had to sleep on my side to prevent anything from touching it.

Eventually, they scraped it out and now my ear is fine if a little chewed looking. But I wasn’t able to roll for 6 weeks while everything healed up. While I had finally accomplished something, I had to take a pause. Ah well, in February of 2020, I had a feeling I would be back to competing in no time…

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While I was waiting to heal, I went about my normal routine. Substitute teaching, graduate school and BJJ. I would sit on the side of the mats and wistfully watch people roll. Like everyone, I tried coming back from my injuries too early but my ear would be in so much pain that I had to stop. 

Despite all my hard work, achieving a gold medal didn’t change much. I got back to work on Monday and remembered that most kids weren’t in the habit of asking teachers about their weekends. Instead, everyone was making jokes about this new virus in China that seemed to be spreading to Europe. 

Rachel and I were getting bored of our routine so we planned an epic trip. In March we would go to Oregon to visit some friends. Rachel would fly to Colorado to begin working as a backpacking guide. I would keep working in Burlington until the semester was over then drive to Colorado on an epic journey visiting friends and training at random jiu jitsu gyms until I began work at the same place as her. So off we went to Portland.

Since I was there, I knew I had to visit the legendary Straight Blast Gym. SBG is known worldwide as the franchise that holds Connor McGregor. I followed other people whose path took them to SBG Portland. The founder of BJJ Globetrotters had been there as well some youtubers, like Rokas Leo, whose guidance I relied on when I was living in Korea.

The only class I had time for was a beginner’s class. I liked going to those. I usually felt like they explained a certain detail that I had missed. And my ego was still brimming over from my gold medal. 

Everyone from SBG was really nice when I got there. But since I was at a beginner’s class, nobody had seen me before and I was renting the Gi, they probably assumed I had never done jiu jitsu before. The instructor talked to me like I had never done jiu jitsu a day in my life. He was even trying to sell me on the sport as a whole and to give it a try. He told some epic story about how his son had judo-thrown a bully at his school.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a cool story. And if you go there, I hope you get to hear it. But my only issue with being a white belt for so long is when people talk to you like it’s your first day. The deeper issue is that I, like a dick, wanted people to see that I won a gold medal and that this obviously wasn’t my first time. Going to SBG, I learned that most wins are anonymous. I had my 15 minutes of fame. Then I learned that nobody cares and life goes on.

Now I know, the win wasn’t the important part of my victory. It was learning that I could push myself harder than I previously believed capable. I went from someone who felt like he didn’t belong in Jiu Jitsu to someone who won a gold medal in 6 seconds. From the moment I entered Combat Fitness to the time I left Vermont, I became a different person. I was stronger, faster, capable of dealing with loss and looking myself in a mirror to see past my own bullshit. 

But I had only scratched the surface of that. And I had to hold on to that just at the exact moment that the world decided that we should all be standing six feet apart from one another. I got home from Portland and a week later, the Covid-19 Pandemic lockdown started. 

Our work in Colorado and our epic trip was canceled. We quickly realized we couldn’t afford to live in Burlington without income. We made plans to move to Massachusetts to live with my family. Combat Fitness MMA would no longer be my base.

More painfully, I never got to say goodbye in person. Not to Amber for teaching me wrestling and sitting in my corner. Nor Rob for teaching me the throws that led me to victory. Aaron for driving me to tournaments and being my first friend in Burlington. Anthony for making me stronger. Vince for always being willing to answer my questions and all my teammates for encouraging me and making me better. But the era of Combat was closing and a new epoch was about to begin.

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If you ever want me to visit yours and write about what it’s like to learn from you, feel free to reach out at [email protected]. You can also follow me @DustMop_JiuJitsu If you want to read my articles as soon as they’re published be sure to subscribe on my blog site!

Dust Mop Jiu Jitsu: The Combat Base: Part Six

Port City Brazilian Jiu Jitsu-Newington, NH

-On reinventing yourself in BJJ and remembering who you are

This is the Fourteenth article about my journey in Jiu Jitsu. If you want to know more about what this project is, you can read more about it in the first article here.

It’s also the Sixth of 7 articles about my time as a member of Combat Fitness MMA. While I was there, I would learn to push myself beyond harder than I ever had. 

There’s a funny way that Jiu Jitsu shapes your personality. You kind of forget who you were before you did it. That’s not instantaneous of course. There’s a slow process of getting absorbed into this cult-like lifestyle. A denial of sorts. 

You hear about some things that you can’t imagine  yourself doing. “I’ll train but I’m not gonna compete.” That turns into “I’ll compete but I won’t cut weight.” All of a sudden you’re intermittent fasting, watching ADCC highlights and quoting John Danaher’s most recent interview on Rogan. The thing for me is that all of this happened away from home. It started in Korea then I moved to Vermont where I continued to train.

After a year of living in Burlington, Rachel and I were at a crossroads. We loved it there. My gym, Combat Fitness MMA, was finally feeling like a community, I had competed twice and was about to compete again in the new year. But Burlington is small. Even as the largest city in Vermont, it only has around 50,000 people. Rachel wanted to get a phD and I wanted to be a therapist. We had to consider moving somewhere else.

In early December 2019, we found ourselves in New Hampshire. Here’s another interesting fact. New Hampshire is next to Vermont and is almost the exact same shape except for being upside down. Rachel was spending a few days looking at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. 

It’s strange visiting a place that you might be moving to. Rachel hadn’t even applied yet but the professors there were still willing to meet with her. I used to work there when I facilitated people on high ropes courses. That felt like a lifetime ago. But from my connections there we had a beautiful place to stay near the sea coast. Those friends weren’t around but I knew they would be if I moved there. I also knew it wouldn’t be difficult to find work in that area. But that’s not what I cared about. I had to find out what the Jiu Jitsu community looked like.

I found Port City BJJ because I was still in competition mode. Right before thanksgiving I competed in my third tournament where I lost every single match. I was determined to get back on the horse and was putting all my effort into it. There would be a new tournament after the new year and I was going to throw myself back in the ring.

Port City was part of a wider sports complex complete with a gym and a field area for track training. I used both before the class because, for the first time in my life, I had paid for professional strength and conditioning from Combat Fitness MMA’s very own boxing coach Anthony Bambara. Anthony was our gyms biggest draw. While a Jiu Jitsu class often had 12-15 people, boxing classes jammed the mats. He also was a certified fitness instructor who gave me my start at guided weight lifting and conditioning. I was determined to work harder than I ever had in preparation for the next tournament.

The Jiu Jitsu classes  at Port City were nice and intimate. I’ve written many times before in this blog about how important it is to measure success in a way that goes beyond the black and white of winning and losing. I remember being paired with someone bigger for sparring and making him panic. He tapped me for sure, but I made him work hard for it. 

The second class I went to was more memorable for me. The instructor was a goofy dude who drove up from Boston to teach. I remember him the most because he reminded me of the world I used to belong to.

People in the jiu jitsu world seem to love the reinvention trope. It makes sense, you get stronger, faster, more efficient and mentally tough. You realize that the person you are could kick the ass of the person you were. But that’s natural. It happens over time. 

I come from the world of outdoor facilitation. Goofy people who like to have fun and aren’t macho. It’s one of the reasons I’ve been so pleasantly surprised about feeling at home in jiu jitsu. But this instructor reminded me of a friend whose house I happened to staying at. A guy named Jeff Frigon.

Jeff is an incredibly nice guy. A great outdoors instructor, facilitator and a dad joke teller extraordinaire. He’s kind of the opposite vibe that most BJJ gyms cultivate. So imagine my surprise when his doppleganger is teaching the class at Port City BJJ. This guy looked and sounded like Jeff. They even had similar mannerisms.

I remember approaching him and asking him

Me: Do you have any relatives around here?

Him: No not really.

Me: You look and talk just like my friend Jeff who lives around here.

Him: He sounds like a really handsome guy!

Me: …See Jeff would say that…

Of course, I don’t want to give you the impression that everyone at Port City was like him. Sure enough, this old dude with a bald head bigger than Dana White’s was sitting on the side with his arms folded giving the instructor the stink eye.

Instructor: This guy always seems to have a problem with me

Dana White’s Twin: There’s no problem. You’re just not manly.

Dana White’s Twin had actually lived in Burlington Vermont. He got his black belt from Vermont BJJ. “He’s the weirdest Brazilian. He keeps everyone at brown belt forever and once you get yours, he ignores you. Once I told him I was moving to New Hampshire and he just told me to make sure I paid my last bill on time. That’s the last time we spoke.”

I had a blast that day. I felt like I would be comfortable living in that area and signing up with Port City if Rachel went to UNH. Spoiler alert, that’s not what ended up happening. But still, I left feeling okay with the possibility of moving.

The Dust Mop Takeaway from visiting Port City is about self acceptance. I was coming off a three tournament losing streak. I thought I had to abandon who I was to become someone who could win. Sure I would become stronger, faster and more confident. But that instructor helped me realize I didn’t have to forget who I was to be better at Jiu Jitsu.

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If you ever want me to visit yours and write about what it’s like to learn from you, feel free to reach out at [email protected]. You can also follow me @DustMop_JiuJitsu If you want to read my articles as soon as they’re published be sure to subscribe on my blog site!

Where is the gym located?
The gym is located in a suburb called Centurion in Pretoria in South Africa. About 40 km north of Johannesburg.

How many people train there?
We have about 80 clients including our kid’s classes.

Is the gym growing – if so by how many new members each month or year?
The gym is growing, slowly though, but it is growing. We gain about 1 to 2 clients a month.

What are the highest and lowest belt grades training?
We have white belt clients all the way up to brown belts.

When did Crazy Monkey Centurion, BJJ South Africa open?
We officially opened our doors to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in January 2000.

Some facts about you:

Name: Jacques Wagner
Age: 49
Belt: Second Degree Black Belt
Profession: Full-time Martial Arts Coach and Studio Owner
Years in BJJ: 23
Other martial arts: Functional Boxing, Savate, Taekwondo, Muay Thai and Krav Maga.
Currently living in: Centurion in Pretoria in South Africa
Originally from: Durban in South Africa

Please tell us the story of how your gym came into existence
I started training martial arts in 1993 after I left the military. I started with Kuk Sool Won and then went over to Taekwondo in 1994. I received my black belt in 1995 and bought the studio from my coach in 1996.

In 1999 I started training in boxing, MMA, and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu under Rodney King (4th Degree Black Belt under Master Rigan Machado) and in 2000 I changed from Taekwondo to a full-time MMA, Boxing, and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Academy. Initially it was a love-hate relationship with Jiu-Jitsu, as I was never trained in ground work, I mean in Taekwondo, you just kick, right? But I did love the challenge Jiu-Jitsu brought and fell in love with it to the point that my studio is now mainly Jiu-Jitsu based.

I have been fortunate to have trained with Master Rigan Machado, Chis Haueter and Matt Thornton.

Tell us about the people that train in the gym – who are they?
Most of the students that train with us are on the older side of 30, white collar workers, or a lot of people that are self-employed. It is not uncommon to have a doctor train with a lawyer or a varsity student train with the owner of a company. So we really have a widespread group of amazing clients.

Why do they train in Crazy Monkey Centurion, BJJ South Africa?
Most of our clients train for self-preservation and to do something to challenge them physically and mentally. They train to be a part of something bigger – a bigger community united by the love for Jiu-Jitsu. We focus a lot on taking the lessons on the mat and taking it into your everyday life. Besides that, all our clients have an insane amount of fun on the mats and they always leave feeling happy and ready to face the challenges in life.

What are some of the challenges of running a BJJ gym in general, and in your area specifically?
Where we are in Pretoria, not a lot of people want to do Jiu-Jitsu as they don’t want to “cuddle” on the floor. Fighting is done with fists. In Johannesburg and Cape Town the Jiu-Jitsu culture has a good base and they generally have a lot more members.

The economic climate in South Africa is not great, as our currency is very weak against the Dollar, Euro, and Pound. People really don’t have a lot of disposable income, and with our rolling blackouts where people do not have electricity for sometimes up to 8 hours a day, it really challenges a studio and trying to keep clients is a real hard thing to do.

How do you see the future for BJJ in your area?
Hopefully people will change their minds and get more into Jiu-jitsu as there are a few up and coming studios in our area and with the word spreading there seems to be a lot more interest due to people like Jocko and Joe Rogan etc. So hopefully the Jiu-Jitsu culture takes hold in our area.

We hope that the economic climate improves and that the rolling blackouts come to an end.

What’s the best thing about Crazy Monkey Centurion, BJJ South Africa?
I must say the people. My clients are some of the most amazing people you will ever meet and they all share the passion that is Jiu-Jitsu. I have some of the craziest and “feral” clients you will ever meet on and off the mats, but they will soon give you the shirt off their back should you need it.

We stand together and the bond we share is something that only a sport like Jiu-Jitsu can bring to the table.

What would you recommend Globetrotters to see in your area apart from the inside of your gym?
There are so many monuments, architecture, and historical landmarks, and the wildlife in South Africa is absolutely breath-taking. Most places are 40 minutes to an hour away where you can see lions, zebras, elephants, rhino, and various game. You can take a drive in a game reserve, hike an amazing trail in the bushveld, or cycle in some of the best nature spots in South Africa.

Our summers are the best, as it gets crazy hot but everything is green and lush and getting outside is a must.

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Thanks for sharing! If you’d like to visit Crazy Monkey Centurion, BJJ South Africa you can contact them here.

Dust Mop Jiu Jitsu: The Combat Base: Part Five

Team Jucao- Manhattan, New York

-On mentorship and learning to admire people who can handily kick my ass

This is the Thirteenth article about my journey in Jiu Jitsu. If you want to know more about what this project is, you can read more about it in the first article here.

It’s also the fifth of 7 articles about my time as a member of Combat Fitness MMA. While I was there, I would learn to push myself beyond harder than I ever had. 

For a while, I have been doing some volunteer work with an organization called WeDefy. It takes US Veterans with a high disability rating and gives them a scholarship to a BJJ gym near them. My role is to be their first point of contact should they need anything. 

Really, I’m there if anything is going wrong. If they’re injured or hurt they let me know so that we can put the scholarship on hold. But I always tell them the same thing. “I’m also here for when things are going well. I want to hear if you got your first arm bar or triangle choke. Did you try competing for the first time? Let me know! Because most guys get really excited about Jiu Jitsu and realize that most of their friends don’t know or care about it. So they have nobody to celebrate with.” 

That was true for me. I didn’t have any friends that did Jiu Jitsu when I started. Save for one guy. 

I first met Max when I was in college. He went to college with a few buddies of mine and later on I found out he was getting into boxing. Those friends told me I should keep in touch with him once they heard I was getting into BJJ. We weren’t even friends on Facebook. But we had come from a familiar enough background that we started bonding over it. 

It felt important to have a friend that knew I had a life outside of the gym. We had already gotten drunk together, he was friends with my friends and was dating someone from my high school. Max was already a purple belt and had done way more tournaments than I had. 

After Thanksgiving of that year, I was still motivated by my tournament losses. So I took the opportunity to train everyday in Lincoln, Nebraska. I had learned a ton in my classes at Lincoln Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Center and I was excited to go straight back to Combat Fitness MMA in Vermont. 

There are, however, no direct flights from Lincoln to Burlington. And Lincoln is one of those airports that is prone to cancellations. The only way we were getting home was to grab an available flight to NYC, spend the night there and hop on a puddle jumper up to Burlington. For those of you that aren’t American, the journey was gonna look a bit like this.

We realized we had to spend the night in NYC as we were flying there. Luckily, Rachel’s brother lived in Manhattan so accommodation wouldn’t be a problem. My worry was about seizing an opportunity to train somewhere in the city. I had a clean travel gi with me ready to go for the occasion. How could I miss this?

So I texted Max to see if I could train with him in the next 12 hours. As it happened, he was going to a lesson at Team Jucao that night on the Upper West Side and he just happened to live five blocks away from my brother-in-law. 

We met up and did the 30 minute walk together catching each other up on life and jiu jitsu. He and his partner were thinking of moving to Hong Kong for a little bit. Having lived in Korea, I was amazed at how much overlap we had in our lives. 

I had no idea what to expect for Team Jucao. Other than footage I’d seen of the notorious Blue Basement, I couldn’t imagine how you would fit a BJJ studio in a city that’s as famous for it’s lack of space as it is for the halal food carts, high fashion and subway fires. Most places I had trained were in strip malls so imagine my surprise when we took the elevator up to the 20th floor of a city tower apartment. I would have had vertigo looking out the window but they were all fogged up from the sweat and cleaning chemicals. 

It was a fairly small class of about 10 or 12 people and we got the drills going right away. As we ran forwards, backwards and started contorting ourselves to be ready for the class I couldn’t help notice a big bald black belt standing to the side chewing gum. There is a trope about upper belts skipping warm-ups but I had never seen that before. As the only white belt there, seeing this guy sitting out while we were all sweating our balls off was quite the novelty.

The class was really just a series of positional sparring. Most people were incredibly relaxed as I started on their back ready to squeeze the life out of them. But they got out of every hold while looking like they were ready to fall asleep. Max has an infuriating habit of whistling while he plays with your lapels like he’s just mowing the lawn while you are trying your hardest.

But then I got to roll with Baldy. He winked and waved me over with a smile. Baldy did something I had never yet experienced. I was in his closed guard and out of nowhere I felt a stinging sensation in my elbow that was gone before it even registered. 

Prior to that day, I had never been wristlocked before. Baldy had slapped my elbow and fist to send a shockwave down my forearm. He didn’t hold it either. He let it go as soon as I felt it. But then as soon as I lifted my arm again, he did it again. It was like being a fish caught on a line six or seven times in a row. 

It didn’t get better from there. Later on I found out that he had been doing martial arts for almost two decades. He told us how he almost threw up the first time he watched a Kyokoshin Karate black belt test. These were back in the days of dojo storms and style show downs. But for him, a tap didn’t mean start over. It meant that he would let go of the submission and fight from there. 

You might read this and think that’s not cool. I don’t really disagree with you. But I think  it’s important to have experiences like this from time to time. Some people in this world can kick your ass and make it look beautiful. Nothing personal about it. Besides, everyone at Team Jucao kicked my ass with a smile and wink. 

Max and I left Team Jucao feeling closer than we had. Remember, we had met each other before, but now we had shared an experience. He ended up moving to Hong  Kong and we still talk Jiu Jitsu. He has been a source of advice and inspiration as I geared up for tournaments and kept the journey going. 

Having people who care about your Jiu Jitsu progress is an important part of the process. Knowing that transcends your gym membership can be even more beneficial.

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If you ever want me to visit yours and write about what it’s like to learn from you, feel free to reach out at [email protected]. You can also follow me @DustMop_JiuJitsu If you want to read my articles as soon as they’re published be sure to subscribe on my blog site!