My neck hurts and my ears are still ringing
Saturday I went to my first Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu class (which I will just refer to as BJJ for brevity). I had attended a class the previous Tuesday just to watch and see how the class is run, and get a general idea for the art. I wasn’t thoroughly convinced that I wanted to spend a few more hours of the little time I had during the week to attend classes. I was still undecided on Saturday morning whether I was going to sign up that day or not, but I finally decided to man up, go to Wawa (and use the ATM), and drive to Gracie Phila.
I arrived right as the class was starting and talked to Joe, the instructor. I signed the release waiver, gave him $200, and asked for my Gi. The warmups were already starting, so I quickly threw on the Gi. It was very loose, but Joe assured me that it would shrink. All I can say is: It better, because…damn, it’s looser than a $1 K&A hooker (If you live in Philly, this makes sense).
I came out of the all-in-one office/locker room/cat photo repository just as warmups were ending. Apparently, according to Ryan…I missed the part that everyone hates. I had a slight sly smile at the thought.
It was hot. No, I’m not trying to be like Paris Hilton….I am being literal: it was fucking hot in there. There really is no airflow, and the only relief is brought by a single slowly spinning ceiling fan. I guess Joe wants to toughen us up, or sweat us to death…who knows. It was a sauna in there, but at least it makes for a good workout.
For the practices, I was paired up with a blue belt (whom I had remembered from the Tuesday class) named Frank. Frank was about my height, but about 40 pounds lighter. He had a shaved head, wore glasses, and was an overall cool dude. He had the displeasure of working with the resident n00b, but he was cool with it. Everyone has to start somewhere, he said.
We started out with headlock escapes. The first one involved stepping across your attacker, and then sitting down; taking your attacker to the ground, and then rolling on top of him. At this point he still had you in the headlock, but the technique was to put yourself in frame, and torque your body out of it. This maneuver also had the additional advantage that it set up an arm bar, but I had no idea what I was doing yet, so I concentrated on the headlock escape. Frank was impressed with my fluid mobility in the takedown, but I still needed some work in setting up the actual escape. Eventually I started getting it though…right as Joe started demonstrating another headlock escape. This one was similar, except it compensated for your attacker’s counter to the step-around of the first technique. In this one, if you stepped around, and he stepped with you, the idea was to put your one leg through his from behind, and then sit down…effectively having him roll backwards with you. From there…the rest was pretty much the same.
From that we moved to the collar choke. This, I am told is not as easy to accomplish in an actual match, but it was more to practice the technique. Essentially, you grab the Gi of your attacker at the top of their neck with both hands, and pull your elbows down. This puts your forearm at their arteries and cuts off blood flow to the head, resulting in them either tapping or passing out. The premise seems easy….how hard can it be to put your arms across someone’s neck and pull down? Well, let me tell you: it’s harder than it sounds. In order to get the proper choke, you have to get your arms right next to their neck to prevent any slack in the Gi and to get them as far up their neck as you can…or else it doesn’t work very well. Getting the first arm in is easy…but sliding the second arm up high enough is the hard part.
After that, we did a defense against passing the guard, which involved throwing your leg around their neck, rolling your other leg around, and getting them in an arm bar. Yey! I finally was able to arm bar somebody. I need some work in this technique too, since I had a tendency push my opponent away with my legs instead of bringing them closer. Having had no previous experience with BJJ, this is natural reaction; you want to get your attacker off you…but the idea here is to bring them closer so they can’t escape.
Ryan stayed for open mat, but I have no business there quite yet, so I went back to the all-in-one to get changed. I took off my Gi, and the t-shirt I had on underneath. I think I could have filled the Philly water reservoir with all the seat that was in the Gi and my shirt. I don’t think I sweat that much at hockey practice, tennis, or running.
(yes, I will get to my neck hurting in a minute)
Around 6:00pm, Ry and I left to go to Atlantic City and attend the Tool concert at Boardwalk Hall.
Getting to Atlantic City when there is a concert going on makes me want to kill myself. Ryan chose to drive, so at least I didn’t have to go through the leg workout that was brake-gas-brake-gas-brake-gas-brake-oh shit crack dealer crossing-gas-brake. It was hard to find parking at Trump (which bordered Boardwalk Hall), but we managed to find parking at Caesar’s, which was the next casino over. We managed to walk to the venue without getting run over or shot, which is a good thing obviously.
Tool fans are fucking idiots. There…I said it. But seriously, I don’t think I have ever seen that many stupid people in one place at one time. I’m not even going to go into the details, but it ranged from standing in the middle of a fucking doorway as people are trying to enter….to taking pictures with their camera phones inside a barely lit venue….to headbanging (even though they had no hair) and dancing in their chairs even though they had absolutely no reason to do so.
The opening band was Melt Banana. The band name has potential…it’s actually pretty cool. The band themselves, unfortunately….made my ears bleed. No…they made my brain bleed.
Imagine this: Random dude on guitar…turn on distortion….play really really fast. Random dude on bass….turn on distortion…play really really fast. Random dude on drums….and just start hitting them really really fast. Now…add in a lead singer and have her cluck like a chicken. Now make them Japanese. This was Melt Banana. I feel lucky that it took us so long to find parking and we only had to listen to about 5 minutes of them. Trust me when I say that I would like those 5 minutes of my sanity back.
About 30 minutes after MB was done…the lights dimmed and Tool came on stage. Right from the opening riff I noticed something: Boardwalk Hall has terrible acoustics. So…to make up for those really bad acoustics, the sound techs just turned the volume up for the band. This was a mistake….the first song actually sounded distorted. This made my brain hurt. They turned it down a little bit after the first song, but it was still abnormally loud…and I’ve been to a lot of concerts in my day…this was abnormally loud, trust me.
The Tool show was pretty cool…they played all the songs I wanted to hear, save for Parabol and Parabola. There was some moments near the end of the show that were kind of mundane; the band just looped a riff over and over again, before breaking into the next song. The encore…I’m not really sure was an encore. They stopped playing and had a little bit of a light show for about 10 minutes, which might have been the downtime before the encore…or it might have just been an intermission…who knows, who cares. They ended with Vicarious, but nobody was quite sure if they were done or not. The house lights didn’t come on for a minute or two…so everyone was just kind of in their seats, unsure of what to do. We left, and I think Ryan pissed off 34 people as we were leaving. I started keeping count of how many people he cut out, almost hit, or was just generally an asshole to. He tried to break 50, but we only managed to piss off 34.
For the entire ride…our ears were ringing. We attempted conversation, but it usually ended in ‘huh..wha?’.
As we neared the house, we stopped at Wawa to get some iced tea and some food, since it was about 1am, and I haven’t eaten anything since about 3pm that afternoon.
When we got back to the house, I began to realize something: my neck fucking hurts. Goddamn you BJJ….Frank and his triangle locks and arm bars and collar chokes. Yes this is normal, but I didn’t feel it for the entire day….until then. And my ears were still ringing.
I woke up this morning and guess what: ears still ringing. And guess what else: neck still hurts.
Next round of BJJ on Monday, probably.
