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Daut44's Poker Blog

February 11, 2009

So yesterday i overslept the tuesday afternoon bjj class. So i went to the 730 class instead. I had never been to the tuesday night class, but I go to the thursday night class once in a while and it's usually a small class with a good group of guys so i figured this would be the same. I showed up in my gi and my instructor looks at me and says "Ryan...its tuesday night.....no holds barred night....no gis". I look around and see this guy Sean who has a fight coming up on March 7th, and just 2 instructors there. I shrugged and thought to myself I want to get started in MMA more, maybe this is a sign that its a good time to start!

Nobody else showed up so it was just Sean and I, and the 2 instructors Ylan and Brian. Ylan is a black belt under my school's head instructor David Adiv and Royler Gracie and Brian is a brown belt in the school. While we were waiting for a few other guys who have fights coming up (all in the New Breed promotion www.newbreedfighters.tv/ ) to show up Ylan told us some stories about how good we have it now and how it was back in the 1990s.

Ylan started taking BJJ with David back in 1997 when David was a purple belt under Royler. David had done judo for years before he switched to BJJ so his skill level as a purple belt was really really high. According to Ylan and the other black belt instructor at my school Jason, David's level as a purple belt back then is about the same as their level as black belts now. Anyway they were training in basements with poles everywhere, once a week, really informal stuff with bad training conditions. They moved into a bigger gym and were training there a while, and it was a pretty hard crowd. Ylan told a couple stories about how he was rolling with skinheads with swastika tattoos (hes jewish lol) and how he choked one of them out in rolling once and the guy just looked at him with a blank expression and kept repeating over and over "but...youre jewish".

anyway, one saturday when theyre having an open mat session this Jeet Kune Do wannabe type shows up wearing all satin with the little Bruce Lee shoes and starts walking all over the mat. David's assistant at the time Alex refuses to even acknowledge the guy's presence, but some people tell the guy to take off his shoes and he starts talking to David a little bit. Ylan was there and said he heard some bits and pieces of the conversation, but basically David convinces the guy to spar with him a little bit. The guy seemed pretty tentative but David convinced him and when they started David looked at him with his hands at his sides, shrugged his shoulders and said "Look....buddy....dont be scared....dont worry.....im not gonna hurt you"

Now, some background on David. He's this badass israeli who looks the part. heres a short bio of him: www.evolutionjj.com/david.html

and heres a couple pictures of him with royler gracie and helio gracie:

so David looks at him and says "Look....buddy....dont be scared....dont worry.....im not gonna hurt you". This piqued
the interest of everyone in the class because they know something hilarious is about to happen. David says "just do whatever you want". So the kung fu guy throws some kick to the ribs, david catches it, does a judo takedown, lands in knee on belly, stares at the guy for a second then backs off and says "lets start again". The guy throws another retarded kick, david catches it and does a double leg takedown, passes to mount, sits on the guys chest staring at him for a while. he shrugs and gets off. the guy gets up, puts his little shoes back on, walks out the door and doesnt come back. its probably one of those stories that once you know david and can picture his voice and body languard in the story its just completely hilarious but not too funny if you dont.

Anyway onto the class. Since it was just Sean and I we mostly just held thai pads for each other and practiced some 2 strike combinations. We did left jab/right cross then right cross/left hook and ended with some leg kick practice and then right leg kick/left hook combos. Man holding those pads is tough as hell. My forearms up through my traps are sore as fuck. A few times it felt like Sean was going to kick my arm off. but it was great to finally do a little bit of standup and im going to do some shadow boxing on my own and continue going to that class because its great to have a few instructors and only a handful of people in a class.

After that we did some side control passes to mount, some armbar and triangle drills, and a pushkick circle to your power side drill where one person comes in and the other has to push him off using his left foot on his opponents upper thigh and circle around to his right hand. My footwork is pretty good, so is my right hand and right leg as i played baseball and tennis and turning into punches and kicks is pretty natural for me, but the left side of my body is pretty horrible. my jabs/hooks dont have enough pop in them and my pushkicks are pretty weak. im sure that will get better over time.

We werent able to spar or roll at the end of class because on saturday sean suffered a pretty bad cut at practice that needed some stitches and that needs to heal up before his fight on the 7th of next month. Another good tough blue belt at our school Wesley also has a fight on March 7th and before last saturday hadnt done much sparring and had this Jorge Gurgel/Andy Wang esque plan to go in and stand and bang for a while. My instructors were just like "uhhhhhh wesley....have you ever even done standup training???????" After saturday and getting his ass kicked by sean for a few hours he saw the light and decided clinching is a much better idea for him. But he did manage to land a Jon Jones spinning back elbow from the ground which caused the cut under his eye. Luckily for Sean its under the eye and in a pretty good place, but he wont be able to do hard training for another few weeks which sucks but he should be in good shape for the fight.

anyway, didnt eat my best today but it was still rather healthy and didnt have the greatest workout but still got one in.

meals:
woke up 12pm, ate string beans, brown rice, snow peas, mushroom and chicken leftovers.
3pm: bowl of fiber cereal, 2% milk, dried organic cranberries
6pm: half a serving of rigatoni w/ vodka sauce and chicken.
10pm: finished the pasta/chicken
1230 am: brown rice california rolls from whole foods
230 am: a banana, a yogurt and some more dried fruit and nuts before bed

also ate some peanut butter to add a little more protein into the diet. going to make sure i eat a tablespoon of peanut butter after every lower protein meal i eat to keep my carbs/fat/protein ratio pretty good.

workout:
went to the gym at 1 and did back and biceps today. was so sore from last night that i wasnt able to do the entire workout which sucked but i managed to get most in. the workout i planned on having is in my last blog, but here's what i got in:

-good stretch/little abs at the beginning
-1 set of 6 pullups. i was so sore after this and could only do 6 so i decided not to do the other 2 sets
-3 sets of seated rows
-3 sets of free motion lat pulldowns
-3 sets of 21's, did a little bit heavier than i did in the past which was good
-3 sets of bicep curls
-3 sets of hammer pulldowns

I skipped out on the lat pulldowns, the other 2 sets of pullups, free motion rows and the cardio. i did a few minutes of jumping rope instead of running or elliptical or anything. im going to do a stretch after this blog entry and some ab stuff that we do at bjj. hopefully im up early enough to make thursday afternoon bjj class so i can get a better workout in tomorrow night at the gym.

i havent been playing very much poker lately. I've played maybe 6k hands of cash this month and have broken even, have played 2 days of tourneys and broken even there as well. probably not going to play until sunday which is a big tournament day. im missing a bjj tourney because everything is much larger since its both the last day of ftops and the pokerstars 25th billionth hand mania. hopefully i hero something on sunday.

i've been watching some newer movies this week. saw slumdog millionaire and gran torino both of which i liked a lot. slumdog is about a kid who grew up really hard on the indian version of who wants to be a millionaire. i wont go into much more detail as it gives away the plot but its great, one of those movies that comes around every few years that is really enjoyable, interesting and different. i definitely recommend watching that one. gran torino is awesome as well. its basically clint eastwood grunting, making racial slurs and being a grumpy old badass for 2 hours which makes it a must see. im watching benjamin button now and its pretty cool so far but I still have another 2 hours left in so cant make any comments on it yet.

thats it for tonight. take it easy boogerfaces

Entry Tags:

Feb 12, 09 04:58:37

I don't follow the fighting scene but that guy on the right is pretty damn ugly. If he's smart enough he can blame it on fighting. If not... then being ugly and dumb is a pretty bad combination.
Ray

dymakel

Feb 13, 09 13:30:31

yo im a Gracie Jiu Jitsu blue belt from Gracie Miami Academy. Benjamin Button was sick.

vladkgb

Feb 13, 09 17:41:41

Your Workout

What are 21s?

mrfilthyrich

Feb 23, 09 08:57:05

To increase the power of your jabs and hooks, concentrate on rotating your hips more when you throw. A good way to measure it is this: If you're an orthodox fighter, your right shoulder blade and right hip should rotate about 45 degrees backwards, your left side in turn will do the opposite. An extremely powerful left hook, like you would see from many Mexican boxers will rotate even farther than 45 degrees.

Calind