I Have Never Been So Sore In My Entire Life

I am 32-years-old. Now that's not old by any stretch, but athletically, it's tough to make an argument that I'm not past my prime. Is that a tough thing to reconcile? Eh, it just kind of is what it is. Although I don't have same athleticism, I can sometimes make up for it with experience and savvy. Basically what I'm saying is that although I'd lose in a race, maybe I could trip the person early on to overcome their speed advantage. So, yeah, I ain't as good as I once was.

This hit me incredibly hard when I made my triumphant moderately successful return to training in grappling. I had taken about nine months off, partially due to my shoulder being so sore I could barely throw a ball for my dog, me not being able to straighten my leg without knee pain, and a job that meant that I wouldn't have as much time to devote to getting my ass kicked. It was the triple threat of excuses. But over time, my body healed up, my work schedule lightened, and I was ready to scratch that itch. Most importantly, Iowa wrestled like shit against Oklahoma State, and I was so mad that I needed a Wrestling class so I could prepare to go back to college to avenge their loss.

So I took advantage of ClassPass and signed up for a wrestling class at my old gym. Everyone I have ever talked to agrees that wrestling is more physically taxing than any other martial art. So there was a mix of anticipation and fear about how my body would react to this class. I have to say that things went fairly smooth while warming up at the beginning of class, and I was starting to feel alright about my cardio. We went through some drills for the rest of the hour, and my body actually held up pretty well, especially since I was drilling with guys who had 20-30 pounds on me.

After wrestling class, the jiu jitsu coach asked me whether I was going to stick around for his class or wait to let my body ease back into things. Well, I ain't no punk ass bitch, so I certainly wasn't going to ease into anything. I would not say that this was an intelligent decision, but as a stupid person, I rarely make intelligent decisions, so this basically followed my M.O. Wrestling was exhasuting, and jiu jitsu was an absolute core killer that night. Then I ended it with back-to-back five-minute grappling rounds against people who were in far better jiu jitsu shape than me.

At the end of it all, I felt great. I put out a good performance from beginning all the way through the 2.5 hours I was there. I knew I was tired, and I knew I'd be sore, but I had so much adrenaline pumping through me that I really couldn't feel much of anything at the moment.

I drove home, took a shower, slammed a protein shake and got ready for bed when all of that adrenaline finally faded away, and I felt pain. It wasn't close to the worst pain ever, but it was enough to keep me waking up throughout the night and any sort of movement definitely hurt quite a bit. I would say my abs hurt the most, followed by neck, my back (and let's not finish that phrase), my legs, my arms, my fingers, my shoulders, my feet, my throat, my knees, and my butt. Basically, the only thing htat didn't hurt was my face, and even then I got lucky, because I could definitely feel the blood filling up my ear at the end of practice, but luckily it naturally drained away.

Basically, everything hurt which made moving my body suck. In fact, staying still wasn't all that great either, as I could not get comfortable. by the second day, it got a little better, and by the third day, it was really just my abs and neck that were bothering me. I'm a big believer in listening to your body to guide exercise, but I will admit it's much harder to listen to your body when it's telling you things you don't want to hear. Still, it would take a total idiot to not listen to his message which came across loud and clear.

I'll be back next week to do it all over again.

I Suck At Yoga

I have started to supplement getting my ass kicked with yoga. It has been something I have wanted to do for a while, but I kept coming up with excuses not to do yoga. I think a lot of this is it is never all that great to go into something and know you are going to be really bad at it. I have never been known for my flexibility, so I was quite positive that I would be very bad at yoga, and that fear stopped me from taking the first step towards progress. I way overthought everything, like do I need to have a mat, and are gym shorts and t-shirt acceptable yoga clothing? Those are stupid excuses to not try something, so I had to get over myself.

I finally tried yoga, and guess what? I did suck at it. This is not some magical story where I conquered a mild fear and it turned out I was great. If it required much flexibility, I was very awkward while doing it, and I often needed adjustments, because I cannot follow simple yoga directions. Even though I am fairly strong for my size, I often felt my muscles blowing up while holding poses. It was embarrassing, as I watched 60-year-old women handle things with ease while my shoulders were screaming in agony. But even though it has only been a couple weeks, I can feel myself improving. I definitely feel a little looser when it is over, and physically, I know that I am improving. And as bad as I am at it physically, I am even worse at it mentally.

My problem is that I enter with a very calm and relaxed attitude that is ideal for yoga, but once I start going, I get more and more aggressive and start wanting to attack every pose. I look around to see how others are doing, and I want to do better, despite me not being flexible or even all that good at core strength, because I get blown up trying to hold poses. Still, I want to strive beyond my limits, which is the total opposite of what you want to do in yoga. I can't even relax properly, because I'm side eyeing the people next to me to see if I am relaxing better than they are.

Still, I am getting better, and the cool thing about being really awful at something is that you get to see vast improvement quickly. So now I'm ready to stretch so hard that I tear muscles off my bones and breathe so deep and peacefully that Kim Jong-Il destroys all of the nuclear weapons in North Korea.

I'm never going to be good at this.

It Feels Good To Be An Idiot

I'm not a big fan of thinking. If I'm not doing anything, I get anxious, and I can get into my own head with simply overthinking everything in my life. I basically need to be constantly doing something for happiness. Although I prefer to be active physically, something as simple of a process as reading and writing is enough. If my brain is working, that's good, if it's thinking, that's bad.

I think that is why training in mixed martial arts has been such a good feeling for me. It's a sport based on action and reaction, and if you're thinking, you're probably losing. It's a high to get to turn off my brain for 60-90 minutes and just get after it.

Although it is a controlled violence, training in jiu jitsu and MMA is still purposely inflicting pain on whoever you're going up against. In its simplest form, it is putting a person in enough pain for them to give up and concede defeat. That is kind of animalistic, but when training, I'm never trying to hurt anyone, but I am trying to put them in a whole mess of pain, and I expect them to want to do the same.

And logically, this is all very stupid. I'm not saying people who train for fun are stupid, but I am saying that the act of training for fun is an inherently stupid activity. It is dumb to go through pain When I am training, I am an idiot. As I let my instincts take over, my brain takes a back seat, and that's good. I laugh at stupid jokes and don't really worry about anything. Through it all, I can temporarily attain an almost childlike presence of mind.

And ultimately, a person can find peace in the constant transition between offense and defense of pain. Not thinking, and just doing, doing, doing until practice is over leaves me in a state of euphoria. Letting my mind become so slow and stupid is a super pleasant experience.

All of this is just a long-winded way of saying, "Thinking sucks; be an idiot instead."

I Got My Ass Handed To Me By A Girl

As I mentioned a while ago, I have started grappling again. Call it jiu-jitsu, call it submission wrestling, call it whatever you want, but it's fighting without strikes (because I need to protect my pretty face). Not to brag or anything, but after a few weeks, I'm pretty well-respected for my skills in class. I'm not great, but I can beat a good portion of people and can push anybody.

So as practice starts, our coach will always pair people together. Since I'm getting pretty good, they will either pair me with somebody else who is pretty good, or they will pair me with somebody new to help teach them the moves that we are working on. My coach called out my name, and then he called out a girl's name. Since there was only one girl in the class, and she was very new, I'm like, "Cool, this should be an easy class where I can relax a little bit." What happened next was something out of a movie, as behind this girl stepped another girl who was about 5'5" and built like a brick shithouse. I'm not a big guy by any means, but I've got some decent-sized pipes for a skinny guy, and this girl's arms dwarfed mine. She was not fat at all, but she was just solidly built. Good for her, bad for me.

As we warmed up and went through some new techniques, she felt solid, but I'm pretty confident in my wiry strength, and I assume that anybody bigger than me just has popcorn muscles, you know, all fluff, no stuff. But I knew the moment was coming where we would have live sparring, and I'd have to prove myself.

Finally, it came time. And right before we were about to go at it, somebody tells me, "You know she's a wrestler, right?" and my only thought was, "Oh shit." Because I know that somebody with a ton of strength isn't all that difficult to beat if they don't know how to use it. I can usually out leverage bigger and stronger people due to my junior high wrestling abilities (this sounds like a joke, but somehow it is actually the case). Luckily for me, she had a foot issue so we locked up from our knees as opposed to starting on the feet. All it took was that first lockup for me to realize that she definitely did NOT have popcorn muscles. Her muscles were not fluff; they were all stuff. I have never been manhandled like that from that position. She threw me around like I was nothing, and then flew around like a damn ninja to take my back. I managed to get out of that bad spot, only for her to throw me against the cage and start passing my guard while grinding my head into the steel. It was not a pleasant experience.

But don't worry faithful readers, I was not going to give up. Because even though she had more strength and wrestling ability, she wasn't great with submissions, and she hadn't grappled in a while, so she didn't have a ton in the gas tank (which she admitted would be her issue before we started). As she grinded away at me from the top, I waited for my opening, and eventually, she went for a pass and I got her off balance and managed to end up on top of her. Since she was gassed at this point, I passed to side control and locked up my favorite submission, a key lock. I had beaten a girl, fuck yeah.

Although I did get the submission, don't get this story twisted; I got my ass handed to me. Had we been in a street fight (and yes, this would require me to live in some weird alternate universe where I fought random girls on the street), I not only would have lost, I probably would have had a hospital visit afterwards. And for me, that's not embarrassing; it's just a fact of life. I got my ass handed to me by a girl.

Through this experience, I feel as if I have learned some valuable lessons:

1. I take pride in my wiry strength, but there are still girls who can outmuscle me (fun fact: I later learned that she can squat 440 pounds, which is basically three of me).

2. Although Junior High wrestling in Iowa gives me a strong wrestling base, there are girls out there who have slightly better technique than that and can use it to manipulate my body in ways I never thought possible.

3. Although I had never really considered it, this just cements the fact that I should not challenge random girls to street fights, as I might just get my ass whipped.

You probably should have already known these three things, but if you didn't, I'm glad I could help you avoid the humbling experience.

Why CM Punk Will Never Fight in the UFC

This past weekend, the UFC announced that CM Punk had signed a contract for the UFC to fight in 2015. This was a big time news story for the UFC and will undoubtedly get them a lot of mainstream publicity. If CM Punk steps in the octagon, it will no doubt be one of the UFC's highest selling PPV's of the year. However, I still do not think CM Punk will ever fight in the UFC.

To become a mixed martial artist at the caliber of the guys in the UFC, it takes incredibly difficult training that involves a ton of pain and misery. Don't get me wrong, pro wrestling training is on the same level as UFC training, so it is not that I don't think Punk is tough enough. It's that he's 36 years old and has a body that has been ravaged by pro wrestling industries. With that against him, it will be incredibly tough to make it through a proper training camp.

Punk seems like a guy who is doing this to do his best, and I think his body will not allow him to do that. He is making the step up from hobbyist to fighter, and that is an incredibly large leap. He has primarily focused on jiu jitsu, but full honesty, jiu jitsu is one of the easier martial arts. It's fairly easy to stay injury free as the people you are training with are looking out for your health. Most people can handle that, and I think Punk can probably handle the striking aspects as well. But man, that wrestling part is brutal. Mentally or physically, wrestling will break you. It breaks everyone. A guy with no real wrestling experience cannot go through the proper training in one year to prepare himself for a fight in the UFC.

And that last point is the biggest issue. There is no way to train for a year and be ready to fight in the UFC. The UFC will do everything they can to make it happen, but I have serious doubts he will ever get in the cage. Even if he does, it will only be a UFC fight by name. It will not be the caliber that people are used to seeing in the UFC, because no athletic commission will give him a legitimate UFC fighter. He's going to be fighting a guy with a couple pro fights and no elite skills. And that's best case scenario.

Nothing against Punk, but I don't think he'll ever end up fighting. I think he'll struggle with injuries and realize that he can't put on a fight that is worthy of his own high expectations. I know this post seems negative, but it is nothing against CM Punk. He has an incredible opportunity, and it makes sense for him to take full advantage of it. I hope he proves me wrong, and if he does, I can guarantee I'll be watching.