March 13, 2013

• Wild Eyes

  I coughed a bit, clearing my throat painfully.  He outweighs me by around 10 kilograms, and he’s in my guard– I’m on my back.  And I’m not sure what he’s trying to do, but it is uncomfortable, even if it isn’t very effective at making me tap out.

  “You’re not… doing anything,” I manage to say through my teeth, grit tightly on my mouthguard.

  “What?” He can’t understand me through my mouthguard.

  “[Matahachi], punching me in the throat isn’t a valid judo move!”

  “This is a valid strangle!” he says, without the slightest  sign of relenting.

  He’s on one knee with the other knee up, so it’s hard for me to pivot my guard around him.  His weight is pretty solid– I can’t seem to get him off me, and he’s trying to stack me at the same time.  I’ve got a pretty flexible back, but I’m out of position and the weight difference is making it difficult for me to get away.  So I’m stuck in this stalemate situation where one of his fists, wrapped in the collar of my gi, is pushing down straight into my throat.  I’m still new at judo, so I don’t actually know for sure whether it’s a valid move or not– but all he seems to want to do is rest all his weight on my goddam throat, which seems like a pretty dick move.  I thought if it was supposed to be a strangle, it should be going for my carotid arteries somehow?

   

   

  In the past few weeks, what started off as white belt camraderie with Matahachi back when I started judo at the November has started turning foul.  The thing is, he’s the closest opponent in the dojo to my weight size, so I often end up paired with him.  Basically, my problem with him is that I hate his softness– he’s too afraid to follow through with techniques because he’s afraid of hurting his partners, and on the other hand, he’s too afraid of being thrown.  At this stage, he should loosen up a bit.  I’ve tried to be supportive.  I daresay that I have been more supportive of him than anyone else in the gym, because I go out of my way to give him a chance.  In many ways, I recognise in him a lot of the insecurities I had when I started out martial arts– a lot of them have to do with the natural aversion to pain.  As a kid, I wasn’t into many contact sports– so overcoming the fear of pain was a huge hurdle for me.  I did get over it though, and learned that martial arts isn’t just about eating pain or dishing it out– it’s about a technical and strategic conditioning that help you prevent it.  Not just preventing your own injury– but the injury of others at your hands.

   

  But he hasn’t come even close to figuring any of this out.  He’s out of touch with his own body.  Almost half a year into training, he still doesn’t have the confidence to attempt cartwheels of breakfalls from handstands or jumps.  As a result, it’s very difficult to learn techniques with him.  When it’s your turn to throw him, he holds on or tries to resist a throw so adamantly that you can never get a feel for how it’s supposed to feel.  I mean, for the most part, anyone can counter a technique if they can see it coming.  And that’s what he tries to do when we’re practicing– he doesn’t want to be thrown, so he’ll hip block, sidestep, and just generally resist the technique to the point where partnering with him is just kind of useless.  On the other hand, when I am being thrown by him, I’m usually quite compliant– the whole point of being a good partner is to help your partner to learn.  It doesn’t always mean throwing yourself for them, but it means being compliant enough so that they can feel what a throw will feel like if everything goes right.

  Matahachi didn’t advance to yellow belt with [JJT] and I, and I think that the fact that some of the blues and greens are constantly picking on Matahachi doesn’t help his confidence.  One of the blue belts last week was literally standing on Matahachi last week.  I mean, Matahachi was doing some stretches when a blue belt literally walked up to him, and then onto him.  When some of the oranges told the blue to stop being so mean, the blue said simply: “I’ll stop when he tells me to get off.  But he won’t.  I’m waiting for him to say it.”

  Now, I was bullied a lot as child.  When I was in elementary school though.  Not when I was 24+ years old.  But nonetheless, I worry that Matahachi is perhaps too much of a coward for his own good at his age.

   

  WHen we were groundfighting, and Matahachi was actually trying to drive his fist through my throat by basically leaning all 75-80kgs of himself into it, I saw a wildness in his eyes– he was in a dominant position, and I saw that he was, perhaps unconsciously, actually trying to hurt me.  This is different from the determination of a martial artist who is trained and precise in their violence– these are the eyes of an animal, cornered and as willing to take off your limbs as they are their own if they believe it is their only opportunity to survive. 

  If I were someone who hadn’t done a lot of grappling against heavier, stronger opponents like Terminator, I might actually have been hurt too.  So, there really wasn’t that much of a danger– I just thought it rather scary how for a moment, someone who normally has no rage or bloodlust could suddenly rev into the redline.

   

  But there is no doubt– in a different circumstances, some of his less accustomed opponents, and even Matahachi himself, might not realise how dangerous this is.  My question is– what do we do with people like that?

   

  They have no self confidence, and they live fearfully.  But when they see an opportunity, they lash out.  They manifest all the rage as an extreme overreaction to all that pent up angst.  If I had actually tapped out against that ‘technique’– would he have immediately stopped, I wonder?

   

  And when the instructor’s voice boomed that it was time to switch partners, I saw the wildness receed from his eyes, as if he was coming out of a trance, almost as if he was unsure of what he was just doing.

  What do you do with someone who doesn’t realise his own wild eyes?

  • 9:24 am
  • 2 Comments