In Jeet Kune Do, one of the big concepts was the lead straight punch.  It’s very similar to what’s known as a “stiff jab” in boxing, with the main difference being that you are doing this punch with your dominant hand– so whereas the leading hand in boxing is usually your weaker hand (usually a left punch for most people) and the big hand is the rear hand (the big right cross), in JKD you are performing the big punch with your lead hand.

The philosophy is a bit different, because in boxing, the size of gloves makes the game particular– it’s easy to just cover up and absorb damage with your forearms up and your gloves braced against your forehead.  As such, the jab in boxing is a tool more for creating openings for more heavy-handed attacks.  Yes, it’s true, some people have nuts jabs and can win with just that, but for the most part it’s not the jab that seals a boxer’s win– it’s just the lead in to something else.  That jab is to psychologically disturb the opponent, to set your pace, to gauge distance, and to commit your opponent’s guard to certain positions so that you can smash through with the follow up.  A jab is almost as useful blocked or dodged as it is landing, because it sets your initiative up (assuming you haven’t been countered).

JKD’s straight lead though is a bit different.  First of all, it’s your dominant hand– this is the power hand.  When you go in with the power hand first, it’s because you mean to land it.  The straight lead in JKD is not nearly as combo  friendly as a jab, because there is a whole lot more body commitment to it.  If it’s blocked, that kinda sucks.  The thing though is that JKD normally isn’t taught as a sport, so without gloves on your hand making it fat, and without gloves on your opponent’s hand making his guard cover a lot more space, it’s actually surprisingly a lot easier to land a straight lead than one would think, if it’s done properly.  Or rather, dodging or blocking a small fist is a lot harder than it is to block a fully gloved one.

My point isn’t about JKD being better than boxing or vice versa.  They’re apples and oranges.  Conceivably, for all the power of your dominant hand in a JKD straight lead punch, you don’t even need it– to me, the main advantage of the dominant hand is that it has more dexterity to more accurately eye jab, throat strike, hair grab or ear rip.

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The reason why I mention this actually has nothing to do with martial arts.  What I was thinking about rather is the ability to get an entire body behind a motion– to “burst” forward.

The thing about a JKD lead straight, more than a boxer’s jab (because the JKD straight has more commitment) is that it’s really a do or die technique.  IF you’re jabbing, a good jab has body commitment, but it also needs to have superior recovery time to either combo onto more jabs or crosses.  The JKD lead straight is a KO punch from the start, aimed at the chin or nose (or the eye, if you can really stuff a vertical punch in there).  As such, you have to make sure that the movement isn’t telegraphed and that you close distance as instantaneously as possible.

I was playing badminton with [CM] this morning, doing mostly drills.  She’s been interested lately in getting better to beat some of the people we play with, so normally when there’s just two of us, we spend a fair amount of time just working on technique instead of playing games.  We corrected quite a few things.

Like many casual badminton players, the main thing that I think she needs to work on is burst speed. I feel that hitting technique is one thing, but if you can’t get to where you need to be on the court, even the best hitting techniques are suppressed just beause you can hit from an ideal position.  If you have fast footwork, you can create opportunities and you have a lot more options– you can also fake a lot more, and causes enormous psychological strain on your opponents if they’re forced to wait for your racket to hit, rather than them being able to predict your weak, late return.

The proper footwork for badminton in many ways resembles the footwork from JKD.  Short, compact steps to get around.  And the hitting motion needs to be a whip which builds up all the way from your pushing foot to your racket hand.  Your whole body must be like a whip.

Unlike JKD, you are allowed a few liberties since you don’t have to worry too much about telegraphing your feet– I mean, the opponent knows that you will have to hit the bird, there’s no way around that.  So the footwork in badminton allows you a few liberties to make your burst super effective.

The split step is one of the important things.  As your opponent hits the bird, you do a slight “hop” that spreads your feet to shoulder width or wider… your feet should come down at about the same time the bird is leaving your opponent’s racket. 

The split step loads your weight down slightly.  Kind of like hitting the brakes on a car to load the weight forward and give you more traction, a split step is basically giving you a temporary boost in traction by storing the kinetic energy of gravity into potential energy.  As the bird comes off your opponent’s racket, you make a quick estimation of where the bird is going, then release the potential energy, using your calf muscles, quads, and back as a spring to dash in the direction of the bird.

Most people who don’t get good at badminton don’t get good because they are so focused on hitting that they don’t work on very simple things that are probably more important.  The split step, and the transition to the bursting dash, are a very good example of things people overlook, either because they’re so obsessed with the sound of a good smash or just don’t know any better.  By using a split step, you necessarily develop the habit of starting to move to get the bird sooner.

There’s a key difference here– physical limitations being what they are, it’s not only important to move faster but to move sooner.  The distinction I’m making here is the difference between acceleration (metres per second squared) versus time (seconds).  Basically, a split step buys you more time, because you’re starting sooner, so if you do it properly, you won’t have to work twice as hard just because you’re late.

Of course, if you’ve got speed AND you react sooner, then you’ve got everything!  But most people only have half the equation.

CM is improving quite quickly, but the main thing that needs constant work is the footwork.

We started workin on interecptions (cuts, or cutoffs).  As a result, she’s gotten in the good habit of keeping her knees bent and her racket up while at the net, which is a start.  The more she takes basics like ready position seriously, the faster she’ll get all this.

I just found out about this: http://www.google.com/chromeframe

It’s an interesting idea– basically, it seems like if you have a “shitty” browser, you can run a google chrome emulator to simulate using chrome securely from within your normal browser.  It’s not very useful for my particular circumstances, so i haven’t actually tried it out, but it’s an interesting idea.

Linux suffers the problem that the more emulation solutions they provide, for example, by supertweawking Wine configurations, the less incentive there is for developers to actually work on native Linux support (since emulators will do the work anyhow).  In that way, emulation works like a double edged sword.  Ask any game developper if they’re working on a Linux version of their game, and you’ll probably get a shrug and a “why bother?”

For Google Frame though, I think that the situation is a bit different, and it could probably work in their favour…

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I think that one of the problems with studying too much in a certain way is that you get so much in the habit of emulating areas of study (and what teachers expect you to write) that you kind of lose track of what you actually think.  As in… you get so caught up in gaming the assignment that you forget who you are in the assignment, and why you even care about taking this class (or this area of study) in the first place.  Layer upon layer, framing is a cool thing because it demonstrates a robustness of our brains and personalities– we are worldly people if we can see things from other peoples’ points of views.  But at a certain point, do we stop and wonder: who am I?

When I went to judo yesterday, I was told when swiping my membership card that my subscription had expired.  I was surprised, but in counting, I guess it made sense– I’d just not noticed that 6 months of training had already passed.

It was the first time I went to a beginners’ class in a while.  It’s not that I consider myself advanced enough to go to the advanced classes like I normally do nowadays– it’s just that with my work and school schedule, time conflicts don’t let me go to the beginners’ classes anymore.  I’m a yellow belt now, which really, is only one step above white belt.  I’ve never really felt that good at anything– as I mentioned in my last post, about 6 months of training has basically lead to one successful genuine throw during randori, which I feel is a pretty slow rate of return.

But when I went to the beginners’ class, I was surprised.  It’s a much more crowded class now, with twice or thrice the number of people on a typical advanced night.  But most of the people can barely stand after the warmup, which I now find to be a piece of cake (even though it’s almost an hour long).  In retrospect, I remember when I first started judo, I couldn’t survive the full warmup routine either– I always felt a bit sick in the stomach from the cardiovascular exertion and more than a bit dizzy from all the rolls.  I think the more senior students of the evening, a couple of brown belts and blue belts, were appreciative of the fact that I was keeping up with them when it came to at least that part of the routine.

The thing that always surprises me when it comes to meeting new people in an activity is how little substance people have.  Before class started, all the white belts were standing around socializing.  [JJT], one of the other yellows who was promoted at the same time as me, were warming up on the matts for fifteen minutes before class, and a lot of the more senior judokas were also loosening up.

There’s a sort of pack mentality I think– when people start a new event, they don’t have the confidence to look serious about things even though that’s exactly what they should attempt to learn.  I suppose there are a lot of different reasons to do a martial art– but being social has never been one of my aims, and because I gear myself towards other goals, I suppose I look down on the people who just jabber when they could be working hard.

To me, a dojo, a dojang, or a training gym is a scared place– it’s like being at a blacksmith’s.  It’s not supposed to be a comfortable place to be– at best, you get used to the heat and the exertion and you find some calm and manage to focus in the sweat of the forge.  In my book, perhaps occasional laughter is permissible, but this is no sunday picnic– unless you’re on the bench, get the fuck to work.

I have an expectation for everyone, including myself, that there should be no complaining– there will be failure, but there should also be anger and obstination to get better.  I maintain, always, that there should be no embarassment from not doing well, so long as you have genuine want of improvement.  Above all, there should be no whining, no sense of despair, and no giving up– the body should always break before the will.

And I think that’s the difference between a white belt who joined for social reasons versus someone who really wants to learn judo because he wants to learn judo.  One of them has the judo as an means to an end, some sort of auxiliarry or secondary goal– and the other has the judo as a stepping stone to another judo goal, which is another stepping stone to another judo goal, which is a stepping stone for…. you get the idea.  It’s a question of framing.  The former practice lacks substance, which is a word I haven’t been using in a while, but which should probably come back into my posts more often.

Subtance is that special something that, if somone else is adept enough to notice it in you, they’ll either be elated to meet someone who shares a passion with them, or they’ll downright be too scared to fuck with you because you’ve got “that look” and you just have that presence about you that says that you’re not there to dick around.

The amount of substance can clearly be seen in performance.  It’s not necessarily about results, it’s more about method, but eventually good methodology results in good good resuts, so the two aren’t mutually exclusive either.

The easiest way to see who is serious is to see who is working before you need to work, and who only works when they need to.  Warmups are a perfect example.  Who is warming up before the warmup?  Those are the ones who are just powering through the actual routine.  The ones who were chatting around the wattering hole about traffic, the latest movies, and Angry Birds?  They’re the ones who have crawled to the side of the mat because they don’t have the willpower to do spider laps across the room anymore. 

I don’t really feel I should or shouldn’t be annoyed with people for being who they are.  I don’t think it matters, frankly.  But I do sometimes mentally feel like teaching people a lesson when they have no humility.  When someone takes an activity non-seriously, I feel like, to a certain extent, they’re shitting on something that I think is important.  I know I shouldn’t take it personally, but I don’t like it when people take lightly the way they behave around the things that I love doing.

One of the white belts, [Bastien] was a pretty good example of that.  Before warmups, he was the centre of a crowd of whitebelts– I guess he’s a decent looking guy, hipster with good charisma and a joking attitude.  Pretty similar to my weight and height, although about ten years younger than me.

Warmup time?  He couldn’t get through any of the exercises, and was constantly making excuses when the seniors were giving him tips.

When a brown takes the time to tell you “use both legs at once,” you do not answer “I know, but it’s really hard! Do we have to do it like that?”  You answer “thanks for the tip, I’ll keep trying.”  Or, if your cardio can’t spare you any energy to form words, you just shut the fuck up, nod, and keep trying.  You don’t whine about how the program is too hard– this isn’t a tea party, this is fucking martial arts.  What did you think we were going to do here, except hurt you?

Later on, Bastien got a black eye, which was further threw his morale in the gutter– because he got the black eye while doing a cartwheel.  He lost strength in his arms, and basically collapsed in mid motion, and somehow managed to knee himself in the face.

Later in the night, the seniors told us to newaza randori.  This means groundwork sparring, or basically, wrestling from grounded position, usually on your knees (as oppose to standing up and trying to throw someone down).  Every white belt was attached to a higher ranking belt, and I just happened to be assigned Bastien.  Despite that I didn’t like him, I was being a great partner, frankly.  We were similar sizes, but from a few seconds of tugging I realized that the guy was basically a “skinny-fat person.”  He was about the same volume as my body, but pound for pound, his muscles and cardiovascular system could produce maybe half the output that mine could.  Anyway, we were rolling, and I resisted realistically by matching his power, while leaving particular openings for him so that he could apply the techniques that we were learning in class that day.

Eventually, this lead to him getting me with a strangle choke that we’d been practicing.  After I tapped out, I told him he’d done a good job, and gave him some pointers about how he could make it better with certain angles and leverage here or there, etc.

And he actually said “what rank is yellow?  It doesn’t like you’re any tougher than a white belt.”

And something inside of me snapped– I was thinking to myself… jeezus, kid. I might not be the strongest guy in the room, but I’m certainly shitloads stronger than you– and if you can’t even recognise how weak you are…

The next roll was him basically driving straight at me.  I sprawled, caught him in a headlock sprawl.  He just kept driving forward.  I butterfly guarded, then transitioned to normal guard when he just kept insisting on driving forward.  Note that by now I had established a tight lock on his neck,  a textbook guillotine choke, and with my legs around his waiste and loocked at the feet.   And I don’t know what he was thinking, but he trapped my arm against him just kept on driving forward, trying to stack me.  Maybe he learned how to stack from watching UFC on television or something, but that’s completely the wrong time to do it. 

To put it simply, the basic result was that he basically put himself into a headlock and was forcing me to break his neck with his own weight.  I was actually a bit alarmed by this so I struggled to push him away, because of our positions, and the fact that he wouldn’t let me take my arms away, he was basically choking himself.  He pretty much tapped himself out.

“Wow, that really hurt,” he said afterwards.   “That’s never happend to me before.  Is that technique even legal?”

And I thought to myself, yeah, that’s never happened to me before either.  You are one dangerous fucking moron.  I’m actually not sure if a neck crank is a legal judo move (I learned it from jiu-jitsu), and I wasn’t exactly aiming for it– I was using it only to deter him from his drive.  He just kind of went full force into my deterance, making it a full fledged counter somehow. Which is why I suppose they pair white belts with higher grades, so that the white belts don’t just naturally select themselves out of the genepool.  If I hadn’t fought to get him off of me, he probably would have probably hurt his neck really badly before he even felt the strangle or the choke, because of the way he was driving his weight into me.  If I was better, I could probably have transitioned this into something a bit more gentle– and, I must guiltily admit, if I had a bit more mental toughness, I probably wouldn’t have been bothered by his earlier comments, and it would have made me more likely to not subconsciously want to choke the shit out of the little bugger.

I should say it again– There’s nothing wrong with being a beginner– I myself am still one.  But there is something wrong with having no substance, and really thinking you’re the king of the world.  It is, frankly, not only annoying, but in martial arts, it can be dangerous.  What a beginner needs, and indeed, what anyone needs, is the willpower and humility to learn.  That means not scapegoating people for your failures– it means biting down on defeats, and finding ways to learn from anything and everyone.  You cannot be dismissive of any expereinces.  There are certainly some experiences that will teach you more than others, but if you’re too quick to think you’ve covered all your bases, you miss the details that will lead to lousy foundations.

Personally, and this is a life lesson that I’m working on, I think I need to take it less personally when people have attitudes I don’t like.  I’ve always kind of tried to associate with people of “substance” who I feel have something in them, beyond who they try to show off to be in crowds.  But I think the prolem with this is that it makes me a bit of a sociopath– I’ve gotten so focused on only trying to associate with people based on how we work together well (either at school, work, or activities) that I’ve cut out a lot of the social small talking skills that I used to have.  I find lots of topics boring and trite, because people are talking about them without really caring about what they’re talking about– so what’s the point?

Why not tell me about something you’re passionate about?  Something that truly dissaopinted you? Something that really made you feel good?  Not just the “lols” and the “OMGs” and the “like, kill me now!” situations– I mean the stuff that you have really thought about and lived with?

Social media nowadays makes things all about friendship and shared experiences– look at the average Coke commercial.  But what are these experiences about?  What is the substance that even makes these experiences worth remembering?  Is it enough to just have fun?  Or are real experiences characterised by the trust we place to suffer together?

Today, during standup sparring at judo, I got paired succsssively with a green belt, a brown belt, and then a blue belt.  The green belt and the brown belt just threw me to death. I am not kidding when I say that I got thrown at least 40 times by them combined in about 15 or 20 minutes… if that sounds like a lot, well, it’s because I get up quickly.  It’s not easy, but if I’m good at nothing else, I get up quickly, no matter how much of a beating I take.  All of my opponents were heavier and taller than me– the green belt was probably five inches taller than me and outweighed me by about 20 pounds at least.  The brown was only a few inches taller than me, but outweighed me by about 40 pounds.  And the blue was about a foot taller than me, and outweighed me by about 20 pounds.

All three of them just had so much upper body strength.  It’s one thing to practice a throw in technical training, where the partner is compliant– but when he’s against you in randori (sparring), it’s a whole other story.  With their superior strength, all three of my opponents were able to get to their dominant positions with dominant grips and just basically do whatever they wanted to me.  It was frustrating, as it always is, to basically be thrown the same way several times in a row but not be able to do anything about it, even if you know it’s coming.  But what should I expect? Not only are they physically stronger, but their ranks are higher– they have the physique and the technique that outclasses mine, so I shouldn’t expect much without paying my dues.

The truth is, since I started judo, I’ve never really managed to pull off a single really satisfying throw– a really clean one where I really felt “Yeah, I really got him!”

Until tonight!

I was going against the blue belt.  I was pretty exhausted at this point so I was eating more mats than anything, and the instructor told me plainly– “Do you know why this is happening? You’re letting him get that dominant position all the time.  Don’t fight the throw when he’s throwing you– you already know how that turns out.  Why don’t you try and prevent that grip?”

Well, easier said than done!  Did I mention the blue belt was one freaking foot taller than me?  His sweeping range is like a foot and a half longer than mine, and when I’m in close, it’s like my legs are being chopped out by a sledgehammer.

But I took the instructor’s advice– instead of fighting the throws, I started fighting his establishment of his favourite grip.  Another blue belt was saying that I was being too passive– just being satisfied with trying to survive, rather than attacking.  I guess that’s true– so I started really trying to get in and attempt to establish grips for my ‘favourite’ throws while preventing his.

Which, really, opened up a whole new bunch of dimensions to my play.  It was interesting– because at some point, I managed to clear his right arm (which he normally used for a behind my collar grip, for hip throws and uchi matas).  I had his left sleeve, and before I knew it, I just went for it.  I attempted to pull him forward while spinning into him for an ippon seoi nage– a shoulder throw– but I could feel that my pull wasn’t strong enough and that even though I had caught him off guard, my momentum was wanning.  It was impossible to add more forward pull to load him on my back from that position… so I just had some sort of reflex to drop down on my knees and use the sudden downwards pull to shift him more forward.

The throw actually failed, because he didn’t go over my shoulder– but he did fall slide over my back and land in a pushup.

“Good try!” he said.  “I think in that position, that was the right move to try.”

I felt pretty good about that.  The last time I sparred with this guy last week, I never even got close to attempting an actual throw, I was so busy trying to stay on my own feet.

There was something about the way that I used that pull to make him bend over, combined wtih my getting under him that took advantage of his height.  It might’ve been an epiphany, but I still don’t know how to really apply that feeling of a bit of a window opening up, so I can’t say I really figured it out yet.

But I do know that after that, he was guarding against me getting too close, and preferred to take me with “longer range” throws where he could use his long legs and arms.   By this, I mean throws where he uses sweeps, tripping and kicking throws to really scoop or tip me over, since I think my height made it hard for him to squat under me anyway.

I decied to see if I could use this to my advantage, and with a few tweaks, I pulled it off.  I attempted the same throw that I almost landed earlier.  As I was trying to lock his arm to control his left shoulder for the throw, he wheeled around slightly clockwise around me.  I converted my seoi nage– by uncurling my spin, I turned turned his backwards resistance into a kosoto gake (“small outside hook”).  Actually– I’d only ever seen this technique done in other peoples’ randoris.  I’d never been taught this technique… but somehow, it worked!

It just so happend that the instructor was watching, and he said “Good one!”

And it did feel good.  For the rest of the night, I was thrown, choked and pinned, but at least, they could not take back that one genuine ippon.

It’s just the first. Now to work for number two.

“Is the law a suitable solution to internet piracy?”

That’s the midsemester essay topic that I’ve chosen from the list of choices.  It’s pretty damn broad…  But I guess it could be an interesting topic.

I never read or watched Initial D in the past.  I think I took a glance at it, and was too put off by the drawing style (of the characters) so I just wouldn’t look at it.  However, I recently gave it a second chance and started reading the manga.  If you get over the ugly ugly drawing style (I really don’t like how the characters are drawn!) all the stuff about cars and driving is actually pretty interesting.

I like the idea of someone driving a shit car who is beating other people with pure skills rather than equipment.  I also like that he eventually lost because, all other things being equal, having lousy equipment will make the difference.  I feel that using my old badminton shoes and my outdated MP 77 for badminton is somewhat analogous.  Yes, I’m relating Initial D to badminton– that’s because I don’t own a car, and as you may know, don’t even have a driver’s license.

I had a pretty big win on saturday– I had been injured in judo about a week ago.  Hurt my left heel, so that I couldn’t really put weight on it to stand or walk.  Compensating by constantly walking on the ball of my left foot started hurting the ball of my left foot, as well as my right hip.  Even today, my heel is still not 100%… but it was worse when I went to play badminton on saturday.  Basically, I played 2 on 1 against two of the guys at badminton, without really being able to use my left foot for any sudden motions. I more or less had to stay on the balls of my feet for the entire game, and it was doable, but I was always conscious that if I overdid it, my calf muscle was going to tire out and I’d risk having an accident, something along the lines of twisting my ankle or something.  Anyway, things turned out okay.  I actually won the game with a score of 21-9 or something.

It was rough at first, because I was playing them the way I normally would, but without running, and that wasn’t enough.  What I needed to do was start playing seriously– I started watching their positioning patterns and shot selection habits, and started testing how good they were at cutting off drives and flicks, etc.  So at first, the game was quite even for the first 10 points.  But then once I’d really gotten a groove for their playing patterns, I made my way to the match point without too much of a sweat.

And I’m not saying that to look down on those two guys.  The exercise actually forced me to really look at their abilities objectively, from the point of view of someone who was trying to beat them.  It’s different when I have a partner– I guess I don’t care so much about losing when I have a partner, because I could always point at my partner for messing things up.  But when i’m playing alone? There’s nobody to scapegoat.  As such, it makes me play “seriously.”

Like I said, the point isn’t to put them down.  More, the reason why I’m writing this is because it’ll be a useful comparison to someday down the road, when I face them seriously again– and we’ll see how far they’ve come.  Playing them under such handicapped conditions really made me try and test the full range of their abilities for holes in a way that I wouldn’t have noticed passively from watching them play against other people, since there are so many variables in action at once.  But if I was their only opponent? I could standardize a lot of those variables.

So here’s what I’ve figured out, in terms of things that they could do to improve.

[Jayzee] has a pretty consistent hit.  Given that he plays other sports, he has at least average stamina, but I feel that his ‘burst’ speed isn’t as strong as it could be– mostly because his stance is lazy, and his footwork is poor.  By that, I mean that his neutral receiving position doesn’t have the racket up or knees bent consistently.  As a result, I feel that he’s especially vulnerable to smashes and drives aimed at his body or face, and his ability to cut-off or intercept fast counters is really limited.  When he’s covering the rearcourt, his footwork improves and he’s willing to run left to right, but his shot selection is poor, resulting in him being on the deffensive in long rallies.  He never plays drops, which is a huge disadvantage.  He doesn’t have a fullcourt backhand to backand clear, and his neutral situation clears can reach the other baseline, but again– there’s certain detail he needs to work on.  His attack clears need to be more shallow, and his deffensive clears need to be much higher.

Positioning in the front, Jayzee has undetermined net abilities.  I’ve never seen him attempt hairpins or crosscourt drops.  He doesn’t know how to tumbling drops either.  Mostly, I think this is because the opportunity seldom arises, because his front-court coverage position is too far back– he’s about a foot or two behind the “T” when he probably should be on the T or slightly further up, considering his height.  Instead, when he’s covering the front, he tends to be placed in a singles deffensive position, which tends to hinder the movement of his partner.

The biggest thing he needs to work on his ready stance, which ties in to his need to practice front-court play.  With him always in the back, and without the threat of drops, he’s too predictable.

[Chwang] is not as consistent a hitter as Jayzee, but has a better theoretical understanding of shot possibilities.  So, he will actually try hairpins and crosscourt net shots– however, like Jayzee, he has the habit of backing off from the net too much when he’s in charge of front coverage.  As a result, the potential for net kills and cut-offs is very low, which is unfortunate, since Chwang is pretty tall.  He’s getting better with shot selection, learning to play straight (instead of risky cross-courts) in risky situations.  However, maybe because of a combination of his height and stance, his hitting ability is rather weak  and he ends up hitting rather awkwardly for certain shots. When he’s receiving serves to his chest for example, he tends to do a chest height underhand-backhand motion, rather then getting below it and hitting with an overhand.  The same thing happens when he takes smashes or drives to his chest– he does this strange underhand technique, when he should be getting under the bird instead.

Chwang needs to mostly work on his ready stance and his hitting footwork, because I think he relies too much on his height and reach.  As a result, it’s making him hit from odd angles with low power and control.

I guess at the end of the day, it’s really just a question of them working on basics.  THey’re both guys, so their power is much stronger than the girls that I also play with– but when they’re forced to hit on the move or forced to hit from awkward positions, there’s clear weaknesses showing up in their returns.

[CM] and I went to the Sydney Royal Easter Show on sunday. That was a nice break from the everyday school life!  Part of the attraction was that there was a dog show– so we got to see several dozen dashunds.  One day, we will get a couple of them as pets.

I’ve never had a dog before, so to me, thinking about it is one of those things that gets me through tough days.

I wrote an email to my father a couple of weeks ago, in response to him asking me for advice.  I think that was the first time he ever explicitly asked me for advice.  I mean, he wasn’t just asking me to do something, or asking me to explain something to him– he was asking me for what I thought about something.  It was a question about work– more specifically, about stress.

My answer was that there are two kinds of stress– good stress and bad stress.  Good stress is the kind of stuff that challenges you and gives you a chance to be a better person in some way.  I mean, it lets you develop a skill or a character trait or something so that at the end of the day, you’ll be more of a man or woman than you were when you woke up.  On the other hand, bad stress is the sort of stress that doesn’t really have any point– it just makes you feel bad, nervous, and powerless.  Distinguishing between what kind of stress you’re dealing with will determine whether or not you should persevere, or say “fuck this shit” and get out before it hurts you.

He was asking me because he recently came out of retirement.  I think part of it is that he feels that he should be earning some money when the family is taking out loans to pay off my law schooling– although in reality, he knows that with my mom’s salary, the family earns roughly the same after taxes whether he works or not.  His initial problem was that, at his new job at a bike shop as a mechanic, he was having a bit of a hard time getting adjusted.  The person who is showing him the ropes only speaks Spanish and French.  I never realised it before, but my dad is pretty unsecure about himself when it comes to certain situations– he’s a real perfectionist, so in areas where he knows what he’s doing, he’ll want to get every detail just right.  The problem? Is that when it comes to learning something new, he feels discouraged easily when he can’t get it right from the bat.

Anyway, I told him to figure out which kind of stress he was dealing with, because he was thinking about quitting.  In the end, he decided that what he was feeling was good stress– at his age, it was good to be challenging himself and finding something to do outside of the house.  And I’m glad for that.

 I think that as I was growing up, I was so busy dealing with the stress of growing up that I never noticed really the kind of stress that my parents went through to raise me.  Nowadays, I find myself trying to shoulder more and more of the family concerns, even if that means trying to find roundabout ways to do things just because I’m halfway across the world from them.

The distance, though, helps me see things in a new light– in a sense, before, I was focusing on trees and not seeing the forest.  In a lot of ways, being in Australia has made me learn a lot about my parents, and how I am a product of their teachings– it has also let me learn a lot about myself and the reasons why I am the way I am.

Despite giving my dad advice about stress, I find that it’s an easy observation to make– but it’s difficult to always make the right choices.  For example, despite knowing what kinds of stress [CM] and I are going through, there are situations where we’re just undergoing bad stress due to school, but it’s unavoidable– we can’t quit.  You might argue that schooling is good in the long run, and I agree– but at the same time, there are pragmatically situations where the administration of the schooling process is simply abusive towards students in ways that serve no purpose.  These are situations that are attached to the status of being in school that do not make us better people, they just demoralise and degrade us. This is an institutional problem, I think– and in this sort of situation, the only real way of us dealing with it is to endure it and to get it all over with as soon as possible, and do damage control.

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?

On Sunday, I was still a bit sick but decided to push through it and try playing at the University of Sydney badminton club.  One of the med school people that I play with, [JZ], said that he’d gone once last year, and seemed a bit reluctant that we go to play there because “they’re pretty strong.” Well, I went, and won something like 8/10 or 9/11 of my matches (losing the last two mostly because I was getting really tired), including where I played mixed doubles against male doubles. /shrug.  They weren’t that tough.

It was nice to be able to play in this kind of environment though.  The problem with [CM]‘s group of badminton players is that they’re all friends with eachother.  Not that having friends is a problem– that’s not what I mean.  It’s just that although they all want to get better, there’s no one in the group who really has that “killing intent” that you get when you play among strangers.  Basically, when they play against eachother, they’re too soft– and that kind of play doesn’t do much to prepare them for the real world of badminton.

Despite doing really well in the games I did manage to play, there was clearly an ‘upper crust’ of the club that I didn’t get to play much– about 8-10 (out of the 50 or so people at the gym in total) players or so who were really good.  I unfortunately didn’t get to play them very much because I didn’t have a partner, and it’s hard to challenge the top dogs when you’re the odd man out.  But alas, it’s not a big deal– they gave me a good run for my money. I had to dig up old techniques that I haven’t had to use in the casual badminton I’ve been playing lately, like some jump smashes, fei-bo (“flying step”), and other things… it was, overall, a very nostalgic feeling to activate these techniques.

The level at the Sydney club was just right for me to shake off a lot of the rust, but I did notice some differences.  For one, my right shoulder is much stronger than it used to be, the last time I was playing badminton.  I think the thing was that the last time I was playing competitively (probably around 2006), I was overusing my shoulder to the point where it was starting to show up as some form of chronic rotator cuff damage.  Now, my shoulder has had a fair amount of time to heal up (yeah, 7 years is pretty good for a rehab period).  Doing martial arts doesn’t use my shoulder in the same ways, and if anything, doing judo has probably helped me strengthen it somewhat.

On the other hand, I noticed that a lot of the footwork actually hurts the balls of my feet.  In particular, using “flying step” to get those hard to reach birds is particularly taxing on my left foot– which I guess is a sign that my 7+ year old badminton shoes are probably due for retirement.  I also found that a lot of the sharpness of my reflexes for cutting smashes and drives while right at the net have gone down, although that’s also partly because my MP77 is a singles “sledgehammer” racket that is a bit heavy for high speed doubles.

That said, playing on Sunday really got my blood pumping.  It was fun to play under conditions where my body was more or less in good form– it was like rewinding the clock and stepping onto a court back in time when I first started playing badminton more seriously at Dawson College and eventually at the YMCA in Montreal Chinatown.  While I’m now three decades old, the people at the club are all about the same age as I was when I started playing badminton.  As such, they have youth on their side– incredible stamina, flexibility, and greed!

I’m being pretty frank when I say that as I am now, most of the players there outclass me in terms of sheer physical ability.   However, what I definitely felt I had going for me were the things that I had developped over the years, both on and off courts– mental toughness, fighting spirit, analytical ability, and perhaps most importantly, sadism.

That last part there is what I mean by killing intent– it’s a side of me that I can’t use when playing friendly matches against friends because, as much as I critisize others for being too soft, I am the same– I don’t play [CM] and her friends the way I do strangers.  So being in ennemy territory?  It’s a nice feeling– because it’s a dojo bust, and you don’t care what casualties get in your way.  It’s a delicious feeling when both of your opponents stumble to their knees because they completely misjudged a drop shot when they thought it would be an attack clear.  It’s delicious when you give someone the smash, just to do a light counter to the net because you know that their feet won’t even be on the ground yet.

Yes, I know, I’m a terrible person for picking on people who are less experienced than I am, and I am getting a little big headed from the experience– but sue me.  I think I’ve earned the right to savour this sort of success, given how much I used to suffer for badminton ten years ago.

Perhaps on some level, this is why I enjoy shonen tales so much.  I know I keep bitching about how classic animes like Naruto, Bleach and Hajime no Ippo shaped my way of approaching challenges– but even before that, there was Ranma 1/2, and if nothing else, Ranma was about the madness of adapting to constant challenges.  It was about suffering bitter defeats and trying desparately to figure out what could be done to get revenge.

I remember when I first started trying to play badminton seriously, there were so many things I was bad at.  Actually, to put it more succinctly– there was nothing I was good at, except that I had a high tolerance for nausea from running my cardio to the limits.  I hit backhand shots two handed (like tennis).  I ran from corner to corner as if I was on the track team.  I did net shots two handed as well, because I couldn’t control my racket well enough one handed.  But through years of it– and I mean, years of being beaten, and winning, only to find there were always people stronger, and that every division of competition I ever succeded at had another higher level– I just learned some tricks along the way.  I remember the great joys of winning, but I very much also remember the great pains of losing– especially when I was captaining my RsM team.

It is, without a doubt, a nice feeling that I have come so far in  this sport, even if it’s just a modest amount compared to really serious players.  I guess I’m just happy that I started off as a total nobody who nobody at the courts would give the time of day to to who I am now– which is the guy with the outdated racket (my 77 is considered vintage now for sure, compared to new racket technology), the ugly shoes (out of style by todays standards, even if so much of them weren’t scuffed right off), the knee brace, elbow brace, wrist brace and headband that is kicking the asses of people five or ten years younger than me.

It’s a good feeling.  During some of the matches, I found that the hostility of my opponents had awakened something within me.  I was shouting, the way I did in competitions– “GO!” “Got it!” “NICE ONE!” “Back up!” “Nice save!”  “DON’T WORRY, WE GOT THIS!”

Earlier tonight, I was wrapping an overgrip on one of my spare rackets.  I don’t have many rackets with me here in Sydney– 5 only actually, of which the 77 is my best racket here.  The 77 was my first serious combat racket when I was trying to get better at singles.  I have an MP55 as well, which isn’t a great racket, but it was my first good racket, and I keep it for sentimental value mostly.  I also have a couple of others– the first racket I ever bought for myself, and the first racket I ever bought when I opened up RsM.  So it’s mostly a sentimental collection that isn’t great for modern doubles badminton.  But still– working on equipment, doing simple things like wrapping the grip?  It’s a zen feeling.  It’s like taking a whetstone to a blade– it’s an easy process in theory, repetitive and simple, but small details of the process customise the racket so that when you hold it, without seeing it, you feel its an extension of your willpower, and not just some rusty unloved loaner that someone passed to you.

Sometimes, I miss the days when [Vittek] and I would be standing at a metro stop, bundled to our ears in winter clothes, with our huge badminton bags over our shoulders.  The weight on our backs was comforting.  There were always more rackets in my bag than I needed, more everything than I needed– it just felt nice to have this subscribe to this cult of badminton memorobilia that gave you court cred whenever you were out being a vagrant at some new gym.

I think that when I started off playing badminton, like many other things, I did it to be more like Vittek.  But since then, I think I’ve managed to love the sport because I’ve made it my own.